Making the Cut: Non-core classes

[Meatboy]

In DnD the Core Four ( fighter, rogue/thief, cleric, mage) probably aren't going anywhere anytime soon. It is highly debatable if these 4 are the best classes to represent fantasy archetypes but we are not here to talk about these I would like to talk about what it takes to be included AFTER the big guns. I personally don't think that every niche needs its own class nor does every interesting mechanic but sometimes you come across an idea or archetype that simply needs to be its own thing so here is my topic.

What classes do think are so unique that they deserve to be their own, not a subclass or kit or anything, and why?

For me the I feel its the bard and the monk.

The bard is the jack of all trades character. If I want a character thats a little bit of everything and don't feel like multi-classing this is the class. No other class does this right off the bat. Thats why it deserves is own spot.

The monk... well nothing else is like the monk one might debate if its needed in a western-european medieval themed fantasy game, but you certainly can't get the wu-xia flavour from anything else. And at least for me, I love asian kung-fu stuff just as much as knights and wizards, so why the heck not.

 

[steeldragons]

I think you've covered them all...except, perhaps, the psychic/psion...I would consider them their "own" archetype/class, not a spellcaster offshoot.

But other than that, everything falls into a "subclass or kit" as you note, above.

So there you go. lol. : Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Mage, Bard, Monk, Psychic.

S'all she wrote.
--SD

 

[MoonSong]

I think your basic premise is extremely flawed, when I first read the title I thought "mmm, non-core classes, he must be talking about shadowcasters, avengers, seekers, archivists, favored souls, runecasters and stuff" instead of "mmm, non-core classes, he means paladin, ranger, monk..." because you see rogue, wizard, cleric, fighter are the "Big Four", not the "core four". Bards, paladins, druids, rangers and monks are core beyond any doubt, and while it is disputable for some, to many sorcerers, warlocks, warlords and barbarians are core too. (Assassins are a more contentious issue).

I think we need to put an end to this "d&d is always been four classes" myth, thankfully I've been able to see a good number of corebooks of d&d across the early editions and can count the classes each one had, so far none of them has had 4 classes as core (not taking into account supplements and stuff):

Original D&D: 3 classes, fighting man, magic user, cleric
1st edition: 10 classes, fighter, magic user, cleric, thief, paladin, ranger, assasin, druid, illusionist, monk. with bard as an optional prestige class
2nd edition:9 classes on four groups, fighter, ranger, thief, paladin, bard, cleric, druid, illusionist, magic user. with templates for specialty priests and specialist mages
Mentzer Basic: 7 classes, fighter, magic user, cleric, thief, elf, dwarf and halfling
Rules ciclopedia: 8 classes, fighter, magic user, cleric, thief, mystic(monk), elf, dwarf and halfling, with druid, paladin, knight and avenger as "prestige classes"

I think this myth might have originated by the fact many retroclones typically feature the big 4, or that the big four constitute the archetypical party, however those are completely different things, and while the big 4 always will be core, they have never been "The Core".

Back to the main topic, I think it is reasonable to say those 14 classes have to be in the core as their own classes (though some say warlords and barbarians could potentially work out fine as fighter subclasses and assassins as rogue subclasses, however such is the minimal expresion they could take, and no doubt they will work best as their own classes). While some might argue you could have paladins as a cleric-fighter multiclass, rangers as refluffed fighters warlocks and sorcerers as refluffed wizards and druids as refluffed clerics, that simply won't work for and will upset many (and I bet this "many" will be a sizable chunk if not the majority of the player base)

 

[Tuft]

The bard is the jack of all trades character. If I want a character thats a little bit of everything and don't feel like multi-classing this is the class. No other class does this right off the bat. Thats why it deserves is own spot.

I've always loved the idea of an adventurer with entertainment as day job. Good reason to travel a lot, encounter many people, and run into many plot hooks. I just want bards to have a wider role model than the celtic fighting poet. That is why I do love the Pathfinder archetype system.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

For me the I feel its the bard and the monk.

Oddly, these two would be on my 'Better as kits/PrC/build' classes. I like broader classes, so the specificity of the bard and monk archetypes make them feel out of place among any collection of base classes.

As for myself, I like classes which can be adapted to fill a variety of archetypes: paladins (or holy warriors if you like) without alignment restrictions, wuxia classes without built-in fluff restrictions and predefined powers, etc.

 

[Remathilis]

My line in the sand: fighter, ranger, paladin, cleric, druid, wizard, rogue, bard, monk. Getting rid of these classes will squarely put me in the "no purchase" category for a new edition.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The bard and the monk, agreed. Also the Warlord - so you can actually play in a low magic world (like Middle Earth) without the game crawling for lack of a cleric.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I don't think being unique is the test for whether an archetype is a class or a subclass (or something else). I think a class has to encompass several archetypes to warrant being a full class. The more niche it is, the better off it is as a subclass or a feat. Whereas, if you can come up with a handful of distinct subclasses that don't feel forced, it should be a class.

 

[Meatboy]

I think your basic premise is extremely flawed, when I first read the title I thought "mmm, non-core classes, he must be talking about shadowcasters, avengers, seekers, archivists, favored souls, runecasters and stuff" instead of "mmm, non-core classes, he means paladin, ranger, monk..." because you see rogue, wizard, cleric, fighter are the "Big Four", not the "core four". Bards, paladins, druids, rangers and monks are core beyond any doubt, and while it is disputable for some, to many sorcerers, warlocks, warlords and barbarians are core too. (Assassins are a more contentious issue)...


...While some might argue you could have paladins as a cleric-fighter multiclass, rangers as refluffed fighters warlocks and sorcerers as refluffed wizards and druids as refluffed clerics, that simply won't work for and will upset many (and I bet this "many" will be a sizable chunk if not the majority of the player base)

I guess I'm just coming at it from a different perspective. I honestly don't feel that rangers, barbarians, sorcerers et al are different enough to be their own class. Yes they are core in the very literal sense that they are in the core rule books for most editions. I still think that they are just not worth it in terms of page count. I have precious little time these days to scour over books that double or even triple up on classes whose differences amount to almost nothing.

For me a class really should offer me something I can't get else where. If all I need is a single class feature to add to something I already have (I'm looking at your rage.) Then I'd rather have it as a feat, or power, or whatever, and not have it wasting pages rehashing a class.

 

[MoonSong]

I guess I'm just coming at it from a different perspective. I honestly don't feel that rangers, barbarians, sorcerers et al are different enough to be their own class. Yes they are core in the very literal sense that they are in the core rule books for most editions. I still think that they are just not worth it in terms of page count. I have precious little time these days to scour over books that double or even triple up on classes whose differences amount to almost nothing.

For me a class really should offer me something I can't get else where. If all I need is a single class feature to add to something I already have (I'm looking at your rage.) Then I'd rather have it as a feat, or power, or whatever, and not have it wasting pages rehashing a class.

Well, it all comes from the perspective I guess, from mine the big four simply don't cut the bill as generic enough from a thematical or mechanical stand point. Fighter, yes you can hardly get more generic from a thematical standpoint, and is very flexible from a mechanical standpoint, but if I want to play a ranger as a refflufed fighter I quickly find that while from a combat perspective it plays almost the samewith no ill effects (after all ignoring heavy armor and shields is easy), out of combat I find that all of the rangery things I would want to do (like track, fighting the environment or going comando) are just not supported, in other words while tematically notrhing contradicts the character I want to play, mechanically there is not enough support for the theme I'm looking for while also having lots of redundant and unnused mechanics.

The same applies for the Wizard/MU, yes the name implies a generic spellcaster, yes mechanically they have a lot of flexibility, but those same mechanics only go so far to support one very specific variety of spellcaster -the scholarly one, more Presto from the cartoon or Mickey from Fantasia than Merlin or Mogan la' fey from the Arthuric myths or Gandalf- and get in the way if you want to play any other kind of theme. And it's precisely that kind of thematic gap that is filled by the sorcerer and warlock, they are way more than "easy mode wizards" (however note that from a mechanical standpoint this is a huge boon of the classes -their simplicity- forcing esoteric ways to get them from the inherently more complex and different score dependant wizard is practically the same as not having them at all) they fill other archetypes that are compelling in their own way and which are a poor fit for the wizard's mechanical ideosyncracies while needing different mechanics and fine tunning of their own in order to be balanced. Yes, if the wizard was truly generic -like the microlite wizard- I could be convinced we don't need those two classes, but that isn't the case. Saying they should be the same class becuase they all cast spells is the same as making a motorcycler buy a 4x4 remove the extra parts and wheels and buy special parts each time he needs a new bike just to save space in the catalog because hey both are motor wheeled vehicles, who cares if people wanting a motorcylce had to go out of the way to only get clunky equivalents!