D&D (2024) New Classes for 5e. Is anything missing?

[Mind of tempest]

Adding 11 spells seems simpler than making a new class

simpler is not the same as better.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Asha'man from Wheel of Time are another potential example.

 

[Minigiant]

Overall Gishes are popular in High Magic use Fantasy. Magocracies, civilizations of the "magic race", and cults of the God of Magic often spew out squads of magic using swordsmen

The issue before was in the 70s, 80s, and 90s,all the settings were almost all low magic.

Then 00s hit and it became HIGH MAGIC BABY!
Now that 9 of the 13 classes are spellcasters, it's time.

 

[bedir than]

Simpler =/= Better

It's better to make a new swordmage class. It's just not braindead easy.

simpler is not the same as better.

if all the features are just renamed versions of what the EK and BS have, then yes, simpler is better than new.
Because for all the compelling statements about the need for the class, in the end it runs into issues of "like the Bladesinger but..." and then we have multipage threads about it like we do the Ranger.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Completely untrue.
While you could claim the idea that the inspirations for the cleric and paladin are the same, claiming that there are no clerics in the literature means ignoring history

It may be more a matter of different strictness of definition. I can’t think of any clerics in fiction that actually look like a D&D cleric, but aren’t better made as paladins.

It's less the difference between a 1/3 and 1/2, and more a load of other abilities which set them apart.

As eldritch knight is tied to the fighter power budget, all the things which set the gishes apart in prior editions have had to be axed, nerfed, or delayed to high level.

Like for example due to being a subclass it has to just use the wizard list, which is awful for martial combat blended with weapons. A single class swordmage would have its own list, full of spells which it can integrate into its weapon strikes. Look at the paladin and ranger lists, and compare them to the cleric and druid lists. The theme is the same, but the spells have a different focus.

Exactly. When they did what was actually needed to make a spellcaster (Hexblade Warlock) into a working gish (kinda, still has too low HP), half the community freaked out that it was super broken! And it’s still just not tough enough and too much of your actions are spent choosing between weapon-attacking and Spellcasting.

Still, it's useful to know the narratative examples of the archetype (from whatever the source) to use as a basis to build a class or sub-class.

Idk about that. How useful is familiarity with Gandalf when designing the Wizard?

Adding 11 spells seems simpler than making a new class

Simpler, but also won’t make the Bladesinger a swordmage. Maybe if you could also spend spell slots to extend the Bladesong, it’d get closer than nearly anything else in 5e, but it’s still gonna mostly just be a Wizard.

 

[Parmandur]

I’ve never seen an example of a cleric in fiction that wasn’t a terrible fit for the class in any edition. Nor most of the classes.

But I also don’t care, nor do I view the “justify wanting a thing” mentality as at all valid.

It's not so much "justifying" as I can't envision the proposal as laid out being distinct from existing options (all of @Minigiant and @AcererakTriple6 suggestions being doable as is, at any rate).

 

[Minigiant]

if all the features are just renamed versions of what the EK and BS have, then yes, simpler is better than new.
Because for all the compelling statements about the need for the class, in the end it runs into issues of "like the Bladesinger but..." and then we have multipage threads about it like we do the Ranger.

Well the D&D community is good at designing characters but not at creating classes. That's something I've learned over the years. Many can describe what they want but few know how to put it down on paper and make something. It's why game designer is a job.

Typically many wont even attempt to grok a new proposal until its official and they have to. Many can't even envision new ideas. So it takes passion or skill to head off the "It's different. I don't like it" instinct

Personally, I'd lean on comics and manga as a source and rely more on custom attacking spells and boosting low level spells.

 

[Parmandur]

Simpler =/= Better

It's better to make a new swordmage class. It's just not braindead easy.

As a general rule of design, less is more: elegance trumps many considerations.

5E could afford to be more elegant in the Class structure, but theybhit upon a pretty hood balance of options and elegance. I could see room for a Gish in the game...but I'm not sure the Artifficer, Ranger and Paladin don't have the space covered.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Ironic that after the gish styled playtest sorcerer, the sorcerer is now the only caster with no melee options.

It's like they were so scared of the idea that they won't put a melee subclass on the sorcerer even years later.

And ironically the main classes missing from 5e are the Gish and the Warrior on Magic Steroids.

Entirely because of the playtest sorcerer. As that was meant to be the arcane half caster gish, they didn't make a separate gish class.

Then when playtest sorcerer got axed, nothing then filled that void.

Yeah, I think "put their eggs in one basket, then that basket got cut and never replaced" is sort of a theme for the Next playtest. That is, exactly the same thing happened to the Warlord Fighter; despite the crappy edition-warrior rhetoric used in that one podcast, Mearls did explicitly say in a tweet that martial healing was in, and if DMs didn't like that, they could just forbid people from playing it. But then they said, "Hey, this makes more sense as a thing ANY Fighter could opt into, so let's use this cool new Specialties mechanic!" Aaaaand...then Specialties were not particularly popular (I didn't mind, personally, but I get why they were disliked), so they axed them. At which point, they were almost certainly aware that there just wasn't enough time to playtest any new stuff...so they just quietly dropped the subject and never spoke about it again.

The perils of outright dropping mechanics when people don't respond well to them, rather than at least trying to make them work: you're constantly going back to the drawing board, despite time being a rather finite resource.

And if there aren't any that perfectly match up . . . D&D can create its own stuff, can't it? It's been doing this for nearly 50 years already.

Oh it can, sure. The issue is getting people to accept creating stuff. See also: dragonborn being widely panned and mocked by critics of 4e upon release, yet as of 2020, they were the third most popular race in D&D (after human and half-elf, assuming you split Elf into its various sub-races; if you don't, Elf-combined rises to third, and Dragonborn is fourth overall.)

if all the features are just renamed versions of what the EK and BS have, then yes, simpler is better than new.
Because for all the compelling statements about the need for the class, in the end it runs into issues of "like the Bladesinger but..." and then we have multipage threads about it like we do the Ranger.

See, it's exactly this kind of logic that's incredibly frustrating.

Why would you even bother making something where "all the features are just renamed versions of what the EK and BS have"? Of course that would be pointless, even foolish. A proper Swordmage should actually have its own mechanics. Ideally, they should be ones where you can see some kind of relationship to what Bladesingers or Eldritch Knights do, because that enhances the lore of the situation (making EK and BS more like half-steps toward Swordmage, rather than half-steps from Fighter to Wizard or vice-versa), but that's an ideal that may not always be workable.

Hence why I suggested the "Spell Combat" proposal earlier, using runes that ride on top of physical attacks to deliver spells. Or perhaps you literally dual-wield, with a sword in one hand and a spell in the other like how it's done in Elder Scrolls games, and Swordmage blends the two together in its own unique way. Maybe if you hold a spell focus in your offhand, you can shape magical energy into various forms for a round, e.g. a shield of force or a bonus-action attack or a temporary utility effect like "pull one enemy into melee range" or "ensnare one foe within 15 feet" or whatever.

It's not that hard to come up with actually-interesting but reasonably-straightforward mechanics to play around with in this space, ones that differ from EK, BS, and Paladin. But what can be really, really hard is getting some folks to even consider the possibility that something with new mechanics could actually be interesting to engage with.

Edit:
And, on the subject of D&D Clerics in fiction: I challenge you to find any example in fiction, let's say before 1960, of a holy warrior wearing relatively heavy armor (doesn't have to be plate precisely, but shouldn't be parsed as light armor, e.g. not just leather), who fights abominations in the name of their deity, but does not fit the mantle of Paladin. I have set the date specifically so that we avoid picking up fiction that has its roots in the Cleric, which is exactly what I'm criticizing.

If I were a betting man, I'd put real money on the idea that the vast majority, if not the entirety, of your examples will come from Crusader-related literature or King Arthur's knights, both of which very much look more like Paladins than D&D Clerics.

 

[Minigiant]

As a general rule of design, less is more: elegance trumps many considerations.

5E could afford to be more elegant in the Class structure, but theybhit upon a pretty hood balance of options and elegance. I could see room for a Gish in the game...but I'm not sure the Artifficer, Ranger and Paladin don't have the space covered.

The point is that strict adherence to simple elegance can lead to bad ideas and shunning of good ideas

The 3e Fighter was simple and elegant. It also was a bad class with bad design because of it.

I'm sure a Gish that can designed that is different than the Artifficer, Ranger and Paladin. The key is getting the people who don't see it to not instinctively hate it for being different.

I mean the easiest laziest way to design the class is to have a class that has spells use weapon hit rolls over saving throws. Guy hits you with Exploding Sword, there is an explosion, you fly back 50 ft and take bonus fire damage. No saving throw. Classic Comics/Manga/VideoGame move.