D&D 5E Making the classes more generic

[Haldrik]

@Xeviat

I am a fan of the 5e Paladin. I find it incredibly versatile. I have used the Paladin class to build character concepts ranging from the Nordic smiter Thor to the Tolkien gish Gandalf. The heroes worked seemlessly in gameplay.

With regard to oaths:
• Thor swears to enforce oaths, and to defend humans from chaos. Despite his anger-management Flaw, he seems Lawful Neutral to me. I made him a Human with a feat. (I tweaked his radiant smites as thunder/lightning damage, but even if I didnt, the radiant would be fine enough.)
• Gandalf is an unarmored Aasimar Dexterity Paladin fighting with two weapons, who vows to passionately but humbly safeguard humans, like a parent who respects their freedom of choice to grow into independent adults. He seems Neutral Good to me. (Influenced by the movies, where Gandalf the White blasts his friends with light, and uses light to drive away the wraiths, the radiant is fine enough. He also finally got the Flame Strike spell in a nod toward that one-time fire storm scene.) Gandalf is a fun character to play because of his passionate-fire and humble-ash tropes. I tried to work these in wherever possible.

I also have in mind to use the Paladin for a Jedi Knight, but I havent created this one yet. (While the radiant is fine for lightsaber-esque, I also want force-damage smites. I plan to customize the oath to get telekinetic spells.)

 

[R_J_K75]

You've never heard of the paradox of choice? Give people too many options and they don't know what to do. It's confusing, causes anxiety, people give up without following through. Add in the vastly greater combinations and the need to keep them more or less balanced.

D&D never was a simple game, so if one of my players cant make 20 choices at character creation perhaps they shouldn't be playing. I wasnt talking about hundreds of options in a core PHB I just want more flexibility without classes or multiclassing, or maybe more flexibility in within the class system. Then perhaps the OP is right less choices b y making the classes more generic and then give the DM and players the option to ad lib/make up the rest.

Regarding the paradox of choice Ive never heard of it, but Im pretty sure no matter what choices I have I usually make the wrong one. Posting first in this thread was definitely a wrong one, lesson learned.

 

[DND_Reborn]

A thread about fighters and one about monks got me thinking that a few of D&D's classes are really specific. We might be better suited if we made tweaks to them to make them more broadly applicable.

What I'd like to accomplish here is to identify baggage that classes have that prevent them from being used more broadly. It's odd to mention things that could be taken away from classes (and moved to Subclasses) as an improvement, but I do think there are a few.

The Ranger and Paladin are both rather specific. The Paladin was shifted to being about oaths instead of just LG and instead of inherently being tied to a deity. This oath connection helps differentiate a paladin from a fighter/cleric, and that's good! The ranger is another story and is its own thread, but I'll leave things open here in case people have ideas on what might be excess baggage.

The Druid is a very specific class. Wild Shape might be over applied. Without it, other nature oriented priests/spellcasters could be emulated.

The Bard is an interesting class, but it could be so much more if it didn't have it's tight connection to music and performances. What do I mean? The bard could serve as a magical interpretation of the Warlord (just like the paladin is the fantastical knight in shining armor, and the ranger is the fantastical woodsman). As the jack of all trades, the bard can also function well as a Hero class, referencing open JRPGs and the like where the protagonist character can do a little of everything.

The Monk could be made more diverse if they had a choice of their ki abilities. Choice here would allow the Monk to range from a more grounded martial artist to wild wuxai and anime inspired stuff. Tomorrow, I'll post something I've been working on in this regard.

The Fighter has an opportunity to make their heavy armor more of an optional thing. Dex fighters don't really get the full use of it, and might not even qualify for it, so making it an option could be good (trade heavy armor for an extra skill, for instance).

Last on my list, if the Rogue didn't have their thieves' tool proficiency and thieves' cant feature, they could apply to more characters. Nobles come to mind. Swashbucklers and other rogue archtypes don't necessarily need those thief trappings as well. They could be moved to the thief subclass or be part of the criminal background, and the rogue could get something else.

This reminds me a bit of the poll I did a while ago:

D&D 5E - What Seven Classes Would You Keep? (and why!)

So, I've been thinking lately about classes and archetypes. Many of you probably see this in my threads about the Battle Master, "Which Class is Best", etc. For reasons to be disclosed later on, if you HAD to remove 5 classes from the core 12, keeping only 7, which ones would you want to see...

www.enworld.org

The seven classes that scored above 50% were:

Bard
Cleric
Druid
Fighter
Paladin
Rogue
Wizard

Although Bard, Druid, and Paladin barely exceeded 50%.

I think Bards fill there role as jack-of-all-trades nicely, but would prefer to see them as half casters, but will access to all spells so you can have even greater variety. Maybe even allow them to attempt spells of higher levels but with a chance of failure?

Clerics and Paladins I would differentiate into more of a "priest" and "crusader" of sorts. Focus clerics more on the spiritual than martial, and vice versa for Paladins.

Druids I would blend into a mixture of druids and warlocks. The idea of "Merlin" type who has tie to nature, elements, and occult.

Fighters would encompass via subclass Barbarians. Monks could be "pugilists" or such under fighters.

Rogues would encompass via subclass Rangers. Think the difference between urban and wilderness. Rangers might fall under Druids if you want them more mystical.

Wizards could gain metamagics and you could but Sorcerers here--as natural talents of arcane instead of the studied, learned wizard.

I think a choice of 7-8 classes would be optimal as sometimes I feel like some of the current classes are really stretching for a reason to not be a subclass of the others.

 

[Oofta]

D&D never was a simple game, so if one of my players cant make 20 choices at character creation perhaps they shouldn't be playing. I wasnt talking about hundreds of options in a core PHB I just want more flexibility without classes or multiclassing, or maybe more flexibility in within the class system. Then perhaps the OP is right less choices b y making the classes more generic and then give the DM and players the option to ad lib/make up the rest.

Regarding the paradox of choice Ive never heard of it, but Im pretty sure no matter what choices I have I usually make the wrong one. Posting first in this thread was definitely a wrong one, lesson learned.

I guess I find 5E fairly front-loaded, at least in comparison to the last couple of versions of the game. The most recent UA article on feats does seem to give people a bit more flexibility without multi-classing.

Oh, and I didn't mean to pile on! I just listened to the paradox of choice ted talk not that long ago and it kind of struck me as interesting.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Play with just Core Four, as those are the four classes with the least baked-in story. Players who want to be ranger types can play Scout Rogues, players who want to be white knight paladin types can play Noble War Clerics, bard types can play Entertainer Enchantment Wizards, barbarian types can play Outlander Champion Fighters, warlord types can play Battlemaster Fighters with the Healer feat and applicable maneuvers.

I think this was the whole point of the design as it was... the ability to use Backgrounds and the Core Four classes to create and embody the spirit of the other eight classes. Sure, you don't get "class specific" game mechanics for those other eight classes... but that seems to be what you are rebelling against anyway. You can still be a "druid" as a Nature Cleric even without having Wild Shape as an ability. Those mechanics are nice for variety, but are by no means a requirement.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

The ranger is another story and is its own thread, but I'll leave things open here in case people have ideas on what might be excess baggage.

The Ranger is a narrow concept which is fairly specific to D&D.

The Druid is a very specific class. Wild Shape might be over applied. Without it, other nature oriented priests/spellcasters could be emulated.

If I got to redo the class, I'd probably make wildshape the main class feature and then have one subclass as a half-caster and another more combat-based.

The Bard is an interesting class, but it could be so much more if it didn't have it's tight connection to music and performances. What do I mean? The bard could serve as a magical interpretation of the Warlord (just like the paladin is the fantastical knight in shining armor, and the ranger is the fantastical woodsman). As the jack of all trades, the bard can also function well as a Hero class, referencing open JRPGs and the like where the protagonist character can do a little of everything.

Outside of getting Musical Instrument proficiencies and using them as a spellcasting focus, the bard isn't really tied in too badly to music. I've already allowed a warlord that was simply a bard without "flashy" spells and whose spells didn't count as magic.

The Monk could be made more diverse if they had a choice of their ki abilities. Choice here would allow the Monk to range from a more grounded martial artist to wild wuxai and anime inspired stuff. Tomorrow, I'll post something I've been working on in this regard.

Monks are just a martial artist (i.e. Fighter) who uses magic to do supernatural physical feats rather than cast spells.

The Fighter has an opportunity to make their heavy armor more of an optional thing. Dex fighters don't really get the full use of it, and might not even qualify for it, so making it an option could be good (trade heavy armor for an extra skill, for instance).

I don't think that Dex Fighters need that boost.

Last on my list, if the Rogue didn't have their thieves' tool proficiency and thieves' cant feature, they could apply to more characters. Nobles come to mind. Swashbucklers and other rogue archtypes don't necessarily need those thief trappings as well. They could be moved to the thief subclass or be part of the criminal background, and the rogue could get something else.

An option to swap Thieves Cant for a different Language and Thieves Tools for another tool would be pretty good option.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I've already expressed (in a recent thread) my desire for a "less is more " approach to base class features, to allow subclasses to do more of the heavy lifting.
I find this to be especially true for full spellcasting classes: having a full caster progression in your class features is very powerful, and thus it really reduces subclass design space for those classes.

Well that saves me a lot of writing - I agree with the thesis entirely and you express it well.

 

[Olrox17]

Well that saves me a lot of writing - I agree with the thesis entirely and you express it well.

Thanks!

 

[dave2008]

D&D never was a simple game, so if one of my players cant make 20 choices at character creation perhaps they shouldn't be playing. I wasnt talking about hundreds of options in a core PHB I just want more flexibility without classes or multiclassing, or maybe more flexibility in within the class system. Then perhaps the OP is right less choices b y making the classes more generic and then give the DM and players the option to ad lib/make up the rest.

Regarding the paradox of choice Ive never heard of it, but Im pretty sure no matter what choices I have I usually make the wrong one. Posting first in this thread was definitely a wrong one, lesson learned.

Personally I would like D&D to be designed like a classless system, but presented as a class-based system. So the underlying structure is there for a classless system (or nearly classless) but the PHB presents various "builds" to make what we now call classes. That way it would be easy to mix and match whatever you want to essentially have a classless system for those who want it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Personally my preference would be 4, maybe 5 base classes that sat at a more macro level and defined basic class structure, Subclasses at a comparable level and number to the current base classes that gave you your main features, and a third more granular level for further customization - something like kits or feats.

For example,

Fighter
• Barbarian
• Paladin
• Ranger

Mage
• Sorcerer
• Wizard
• Warlock

Mystic
• Cleric
• Druid
• Monk

Rogue
• Assassin
• Bard
• Thief