D&D (2024) In Interview with GamesRadar, Chris Perkins Discusses New Books

[Kurotowa]

I think the D&D monk can fit a similar role. Primarily being a damage dealer, but in times of need they have the ability to move around the battlefield better than most. They can go from being front of the pack, punching the boss in the head one round, and then next round slip to the back of the group to help protect the wizard from the wave of minions that just showed up.

The UA8 Monk is a little different because a lot of it depends on an active defense; using their reaction on Deflect Attack. This makes them very good in a 1v1, even against a boss, where they're not likely to get hit more than once or twice a round and can mitigate a lot of the damage. Meanwhile a minion swarm can overwhelm them, when someone with more passive defenses (high AC, Barbarian damage resistance) can weather the minion swarm more easily.

It's a bit of a new niche, but that's why I think it may work. There's not a lot of direct competition for it. And thematically it kind of works, that the martial artists excel at single combat but can get overwhelmed by numbers in a way a more battlefield focused warrior wouldn't.

 

[Parmandur]

That's not what it looks like he's saying. You seem to be reading a lot into that. He looks like he's just saying "average forum poster" stuff where he's just come up with the "genius" idea that that Fighters and Barbarians cover some of the same ground. He doesn't even mention the approach you're discussing.

An awful lot of the article is clumsy-looking paraphrase, which I'm not going to read too closely without Pwrkuns exact words available, buy here are the direct quotes from him, and the obvious read to me seems to be that wanted the 4 wide open Core Classes with lots of diverse Subclass options in 2012, and he issomewhat wistful that got voted down, but whatchya gonna do?:

"Speaking frankly, [and] this is my own personal opinion, 12 classes is actually a lot," Perkins says. "If I were redesigning, if I could go back to 2012 to when we were talking about fifth edition for the first time, I would probably put a strong case forward that we could actually do with less classes in the core game. You know, keep the choices simple. Because when you're asking somebody to choose between a Sorcerer and a Wizard, to the untrained eye, it's not clear what the difference is until you start to drill down and you realize where they get their power from and how their spell-casting works. When you look at it superficially, they seem pretty much the same. And you know, what is the difference between a Barbarian and a Fighter? A Barbarian could almost be a subclass [for a] Fighter if we were designing this game from scratch."

"Subclasses, as far as I'm concerned, [are] the Wild West," he adds. "There is no end of subclasses that we can do to basically explore a niche within a world."

Which ones? Because I've seen games attempt to minimalize classes for decades - since the 1990s - and it rarely proves popular or successful. In fact it seems to be a pretty great way to ensure your game never becomes terribly popular. Even classless games tend to do a lot better than games which have 3-4 broad classes. Don't get me started on the Cypher system lol.

I am not intimately familiar, but my understanding is that Shadowdark has very few Classes (but it is is easy to expand in homebrew), and Dungeon Crawl Classics isn't the next Pathfinder but has been around and selling a long time with few Classes. It's not something thet nobody has tried.

I do think 5Elanded on a pretty good number of baseline Classes, the sweet spot is pribavly between 9 and 15 somewheres...but thst doesn't mean minimalism isn't viable. If Subclasses made upper of a PC's power budget, that would allow Subclass to provide more varied experiences than they do in 5E.

 

[mellored]

Fighters and Barbarians cover some of the same ground. He doesn't even mention the approach you're discussing.

There are many ways to do it.

It could be as simple as
Level 2: choose between Rage or Actions Surge.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

An awful lot of the article is clumsy-looking paraphrase, which I'm not going to read too closely without Pwrkuns exact words available, buy here are the direct quotes from him, and the obvious read to me seems to be that wanted the 4 wide open Core Classes with lots of diverse Subclass options in 2012, and he issomewhat wistful that got voted down, but whatchya gonna do?:

"Speaking frankly, [and] this is my own personal opinion, 12 classes is actually a lot," Perkins says. "If I were redesigning, if I could go back to 2012 to when we were talking about fifth edition for the first time, I would probably put a strong case forward that we could actually do with less classes in the core game. You know, keep the choices simple. Because when you're asking somebody to choose between a Sorcerer and a Wizard, to the untrained eye, it's not clear what the difference is until you start to drill down and you realize where they get their power from and how their spell-casting works. When you look at it superficially, they seem pretty much the same. And you know, what is the difference between a Barbarian and a Fighter? A Barbarian could almost be a subclass [for a] Fighter if we were designing this game from scratch."

"Subclasses, as far as I'm concerned, [are] the Wild West," he adds. "There is no end of subclasses that we can do to basically explore a niche within a world."

I'm confused. You're quoting the exact same bit I did, but acting like I didn't? How are you getting "4 classes" from this?

Also I don't think he got outvoted - why would he have had a vote? He wasn't a game designer (in terms of his role at WotC) back then and he still isn't as far as I can tell! I don't think he got input because he's still saying stuff like "A Barbarian could almost be a subclass [for a] Fighter if we were designing this game from scratch", which is trite and obvious, and fails to understand why they're not the same class.

I am not intimately familiar, but my understanding is that Shadowdark has very few Classes (but it is is easy to expand in homebrew), and Dungeon Crawl Classics isn't the next Pathfinder but has been around and selling a long time with few Classes. It's not something thet nobody has tried.

Shadowdark has 14 official classes so far, so yeah, more than D&D 5E. It has fewer in the main book, but they very rapidly started adding them.

So that rather runs against your argument! Particularly it goes with the "narrow class design, just make more classes!" approach, rather than the "four broad classes, everything else is a subclass or just a way of operating within that class" approach - which has continually proven relatively unpopular.

DCC is OSR using race-as-class. It's got an audience, but it's not hugely popular and it's also not using the broad approach to classes, just an extreme OSR one.

Even games that look like they're going to use the "broad classes, specialize within them" are often actually fake-outs. Like Worlds Without Number looks like it has three/four classes - but then it actually turns out to be taking a more Shadowdark-like approach with a whole bunch of classes further into the book.

 

[Vael]

To quote Commander Ivonova - "No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow."

"I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova is God. And if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out."

So, moving onto the next question that I'm more interested in, is what happens after the new Core? Are they just reworking all prior 5e material, or are we actually fresh content? Are we likely to get other full classes aside from the Artificer?

 

[Parmandur]

I'm confused. You're quoting the exact same bit I did, but acting like I didn't? How are you getting "4 classes" from this?

Also I don't think he got outvoted - why would he have had a vote? He wasn't a game designer (in terms of his role at WotC) back then and he still isn't as far as I can tell! I don't think he got input because he's still saying stuff like "A Barbarian could almost be a subclass [for a] Fighter if we were designing this game from scratch", which is trite and obvious, and fails to understand why they're not the same class.

The reference back to what they wanted to do in 2012, which was reduce the number of Classes to 4 (and the paraphrase in this article does point towards the Warrior and Priest Class Groups, which match up with what WotC wanted to do in those early playtests). The voting in 2p12 were the player surveys: if the designers them had their druthers, 4 Classes with choices to modify them along the line seems likely how they would have gone. And that seems to be what Perkins is saying here.

 

[Parmandur]

"I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova is God. And if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out."

So, moving onto the next question that I'm more interested in, is what happens after the new Core? Are they just reworking all prior 5e material, or are we actually fresh content? Are we likely to get other full classes aside from the Artificer?

All 5E material remains usable as-is, they seem to be intending to keep it in print and on Beyond. We may see new takes on some stuff, but nit necessarily. Most if what has been printed since 2014 doesn't need any changes, since Adventure material is Adventure material. They might give the Subclasses from Xanathar's and Tasha's another go, similar to Mosnters of the Multiverse replacing Volo's and Tome of Foes...but not necessarily, either.

 

[gorice]

The thing about classes is they do a lot of things at once. Mechanics, niche protection, tropes, narrative direction, and probably others. This makes them really useful and appealing, but also means it's possible to work at cross purposes.

I have nothing against lots of specific classes, but you need to actually make them distinctive (like the playtest sorcerer, sure), and make sure that each class ticks all of the necessary boxes for whatever it is you want classes to actually do. The problem with 5e is that it falls between two stools. The existence of subclasses implies broad class categories to place them in, but in reality, some classes are broad, some are narrow, some (ranger, druid) have hyper-specific attributes that no-one can agree on because there is no referent outside D&D-land, etc. So, we now have a meta-meta-category that groups of classes are placed in -- except there is also an exception to that, the artificer! It's such a confusing mess.

If it were my decision, I'd either remove subclasses and lean hard into a bunch of different class fantasies, or have only a few broad classes, and lean hard into sublcasses/paragon paths/whatever.

 

[Vael]

The thing about classes is they do a lot of things at once. Mechanics, niche protection, tropes, narrative direction, and probably others. This makes them really useful and appealing, but also means it's possible to work at cross purposes.

I have nothing against lots of specific classes, but you need to actually make them distinctive (like the playtest sorcerer, sure), and make sure that each class ticks all of the necessary boxes for whatever it is you want classes to actually do. The problem with 5e is that it falls between two stools. The existence of subclasses implies broad class categories to place them in, but in reality, some classes are broad, some are narrow, some (ranger, druid) have hyper-specific attributes that no-one can agree on because there is no referent outside D&D-land, etc. So, we now have a meta-meta-category that groups of classes are placed in -- except there is also an exception to that, the artificer! It's such a confusing mess.

If it were my decision, I'd either remove subclasses and lean hard into a bunch of different class fantasies, or have only a few broad classes, and lean hard into sublcasses/paragon paths/whatever.

Credit to Mike Mearls for breaking me out of this particular rut ... maybe not all classes should have subclasses.

There's a desire for design symmetry and consistency, but a narrower, more niche class maybe shouldn't have subclasses.

That said, I still believe that class bloat is a thing to be avoided, I like that 5e hasn't exploded with dozens of classes, I just think it might have been too much.

 

[Parmandur]

Credit to Mike Mearls for breaking me out of this particular rut ... maybe not all classes should have subclasses.

There's a desire for design symmetry and consistency, but a narrower, more niche class maybe shouldn't have subclasses.

That said, I still believe that class bloat is a thing to be avoided, I like that 5e hasn't exploded with dozens of classes, I just think it might have been too much.

I think they hit on a pretty decent balance, but could be improved.