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

[Neonchameleon]

Because people would enjoy it and want one. That's why you would have a paladin class. And without it you would see the same as with the swordmage in 5e. You would get threads on a regular basis asking for it, and you would get people saying we don't need a paladin as you can make divine martial caster person with xyz subclasses and multiclassing. And none of those combinations would offer the experience in the same quality that the actual paladin class does, as every one would carry thematic or mechanical baggage, or miss the things out which actually define a paladin.

The thing is that with adding new classes there is also a cost. This cost is paid by everyone who comes to the game fresh and gets lost in all these classes. It's paid by a whole lot of DMs who need to know what their PCs can do. In short it's paid by those most vulnerable. And 5e has been very disciplined about not adding to the burden of the number of classes in the game, and it's one of the things they do well. By adding a class that would make some people have a better experience you're also adding something that would make a lot of peoples' experiences slightly but meanignfully worse.

The call for the Gish appears to not be "we can't mix spell and blade" because as mentioned there are at least half a dozen methods of doing so using different subclasses. It appears to be "I want this one hyper-specific class ability" (spell strike). For which you want to make everyone else put up with adding an entire class to the game. It's not, unlike the Warlord, a concept with almost no meaningful support. It's a hyper specific implementation that isn't on the list of things a newbie would be looking for.

Could the Eldritch Knight and the Pact of the Blade be higher quality? Definitely. And I hope that the 2024 version of the PHB does overhaul a number of classes (and makes the Tasha's Ranger the default). But when what's missing is one single class feature that appears not to be a reason to add an entire new class to the game.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

The thing is that with adding new classes there is also a cost. This cost is paid by everyone who comes to the game fresh and gets lost in all these classes. It's paid by a whole lot of DMs who need to know what their PCs can do. In short it's paid by those most vulnerable. And 5e has been very disciplined about not adding to the burden of the number of classes in the game, and it's one of the things they do well. By adding a class that would make some people have a better experience you're also adding something that would make a lot of peoples' experiences slightly but meanignfully worse.

The call for the Gish appears to not be "we can't mix spell and blade" because as mentioned there are at least half a dozen methods of doing so using different subclasses. It appears to be "I want this one hyper-specific class ability" (spell strike). For which you want to make everyone else put up with adding an entire class to the game. It's not, unlike the Warlord, a concept with almost no meaningful support. It's a hyper specific implementation that isn't on the list of things a newbie would be looking for.

Could the Eldritch Knight and the Pact of the Blade be higher quality? Definitely. And I hope that the 2024 version of the PHB does overhaul a number of classes (and makes the Tasha's Ranger the default). But when what's missing is one single class feature that appears not to be a reason to add an entire new class to the game.

You say that like having hundreds of subclasses adds nothing for DM's and players to have to learn and look through. And when you say 'put up' with a class, do you have to 'put up' with the existence of other classes?

And yes, I do enjoy certain mechanics of that those prior class iterations. But ultimately that's what classes are. A barbarian is a fighter with a rage mechanic. Why not get rid of rage and just make barbarian a fighter subclass with an 'angry person' theme. A paladin is based around its smite mechanic. But you could just get rid of smite and make it a fighter subclass with 1/3 casting cleric spells. A cleric is just a wizard with healing spells. Why not just make a 'restoration wizard' subclass, and axe cleric?

The most simple thing for players and DM's to learn would be 'fighty person', 'skills person', 'magic person'. 3 classes are all that's needed. Why not do that?

 

[Scribe]

The thing is that with adding new classes there is also a cost. This cost is paid by everyone who comes to the game fresh and gets lost in all these classes. It's paid by a whole lot of DMs who need to know what their PCs can do. In short it's paid by those most vulnerable. And 5e has been very disciplined about not adding to the burden of the number of classes in the game, and it's one of the things they do well. By adding a class that would make some people have a better experience you're also adding something that would make a lot of peoples' experiences slightly but meanignfully worse.

The call for the Gish appears to not be "we can't mix spell and blade" because as mentioned there are at least half a dozen methods of doing so using different subclasses. It appears to be "I want this one hyper-specific class ability" (spell strike). For which you want to make everyone else put up with adding an entire class to the game. It's not, unlike the Warlord, a concept with almost no meaningful support. It's a hyper specific implementation that isn't on the list of things a newbie would be looking for.

Could the Eldritch Knight and the Pact of the Blade be higher quality? Definitely. And I hope that the 2024 version of the PHB does overhaul a number of classes (and makes the Tasha's Ranger the default). But when what's missing is one single class feature that appears not to be a reason to add an entire new class to the game.

This is fair too. The ramp up time on picking up a game with many classes, many feats, many subclasses, is way way higher than 5e. Almost daunting.

But when you come to grips with the system, not even mastery just a baseline comfort level? Man does it feel good.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

There is already an Arcane Gish, the Artificer. Though Arcane magic isn't based in the rules in 5E, at all. Not like it was in earlier Editions.

Do you not see the contradiction here? Besides the fact that the Artificer class was never designed as an Arcane Gish Class (it was designed to be a magic item crafter, like is core to the idea of Eberron), simultaneously saying "there is an arcane gish class" and "arcane magic doesn't exist in 5e" is a hell of a paradox.

Even if the rules are not based around arcane magic . . . that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. That's like saying "alignment doesn't exist" because there aren't any mechanics for it in the PHB.

The Artificer is not an Arcane Gish class. Just because it has one or two subclasses that are gish-like does not mean that it is a Gish class. It is not a "half-martial" that the Paladin and Ranger are. If the Artificer were an Arcane Gish class, every subclass would be an Arcane Gish. Neither the Alchemist nor the Artillerist are Arcane Gishes, so the class is not an Arcane Gish.

The Artificer is a magical tinkerer/inventor class. Not a magical warrior. The paladin (and every subclass of it) is a divine-magic warrior. The ranger (and every subclass of it) is a nature-magic warrior. There is no arcane-magic warrior class, as the Artificer was not designed around that concept, and does not have the base theme or capabilities of that a class designed around the theme of being an Arcane Gish would have (fighting style, magic starting at 2nd level without cantrips, extra attack as a base class feature, a spell-strike ability, etc).

You're trying to force a square peg through a round hole. As much as I absolutely love the Artificer class (it is by far my favorite class in D&D 5e, thematically and from a design stand-point), it is no Arcane Gish class. It was not intended to be one, it is not one mechanically or thematically, it has too much baggage from its amazing but distinct theme to be one, and there is still a design space in the game for one.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I just have some name recommendations here:

The smart fighter

The Strategist or Warlord

The athletic fighter

The Champion or Gladiator

The lordly fighter

The Knight

 

[Neonchameleon]

You say that like having hundreds of subclasses adds nothing for DM's and players to have to learn and look through. And when you say 'put up' with a class, do you have to 'put up' with the existence of other classes?

And yes, I do enjoy certain mechanics of that those prior class iterations. But ultimately that's what classes are. A barbarian is a fighter with a rage mechanic. Why not get rid of rage and just make barbarian a fighter subclass with an 'angry person' theme. A paladin is based around its smite mechanic. But you could just get rid of smite and make it a fighter subclass with 1/3 casting cleric spells. A cleric is just a wizard with healing spells. Why not just make a 'restoration wizard' subclass, and axe cleric?

The most simple thing for players and DM's to learn would be 'fighty person', 'skills person', 'magic person'. 3 classes are all that's needed. Why not do that?

Apparently you don't know what the 5e classes are and are going by the 3.5 or Pathfinder versions of them.

If the barbarian were simply a fighter with a rage mechanic the way the 3.0 and 3.5 ones were then I would fully agree that it should be a subclass of fighter. But it isn't. The barbarian is a warrior with specific types of temporary empowerment; if the 5e barbarian were just the Path of the Berserker it should have been a subclass. Instead the Path of the Storm Herald and the Path of the Beast fit together pretty well but would be pretty faffy to put into the fighter class.

The Paladin isn't based round the Smite mechanic but the Oath one conceptually. The fact that Pact of the Blade Warlocks with the right invocation can use their spell slots to smite doesn't somehow make the paladin redundant. Almost all 3.5 and earlier Paladins fit under a single oath - the Oath of Devotion. (And the classic paladin rules sucked). There is strong conceptual space for a determinator as a fighterish type.

As for making the wizard and cleric one class when one of them is intended to be unarmoured and squishy and the other has to cover the plate armoured front liner, nope.

And yes you could have just three classes as it was in the beginning. There is an advantage to more classes in terms of having more detailed characters. But there is a very good reason that since the launch of 5e there has been a grand total of one new class added - and that for a popular archetype that none of the existing classes covered or even really could cover. Meanwhile the gish is covered in half a dozen different ways by half a dozen different subclasses already. If you propose leaving those subclasses then you've caused a lot of confusion, and if you propose tearing them out then it's unlikely your singular gish will cover as much as they did because they come from so many angles even if there's a narrow gap that isn't covered.

This is fair too. The ramp up time on picking up a game with many classes, many feats, many subclasses, is way way higher than 5e. Almost daunting.

But when you come to grips with the system, not even mastery just a baseline comfort level? Man does it feel good.

Hitting yourself in the head feels great when you stop.

Yes, I'm aware that system mastery feels good - but it also puts newbies off.

 

[Scribe]

Hitting yourself in the head feels great when you stop.

Yes, I'm aware that system mastery feels good - but it also puts newbies off.

Yeah its a balance.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You're trying to force a square peg through a round hole. As much as I absolutely love the Artificer class (it is by far my favorite class in D&D 5e, thematically and from a design stand-point), it is no Arcane Gish class. It was not intended to be one, it is not one mechanically or thematically, it has too much baggage from its amazing but distinct theme to be one, and there is still a design space in the game for one.

The artificer isn't an arcane gish class, agreed. The alchemist and artillerist certainly aren't gish. But both the battle smith and the armourer do mix arcane magic and swordplay and thus are classified as types of gish. Other arcane gish include hexblade warlocks, college of valour and swords monks, eldritch knights, and bladesingers.

And making a single gish class treads on the toes of all those half dozen classes. The hole for the gish isn't round. It might have been if you were starting from scratch, but with all those parts of the gish already filled from different directions in the existing 5e rules what's left is an exceptionally weird shape that you need to be fairly deeply into D&D lore to see as a problem.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

The artificer isn't an arcane gish class, agreed. The alchemist and artillerist certainly aren't gish. But both the battle smith and the armourer do mix arcane magic and swordplay and thus are classified as types of gish. Other arcane gish include hexblade warlocks, college of valour and swords monks, eldritch knights, and bladesingers.

And making a single gish class treads on the toes of all those half dozen classes. The hole for the gish isn't round. It might have been if you were starting from scratch, but with all those parts of the gish already filled from different directions in the existing 5e rules what's left is an exceptionally weird shape that you need to be fairly deeply into D&D lore to see as a problem.

I talked about this in an earlier post. If I were in charge, I'd get rid of those redundant subclasses. We don't need an Eldritch Knight (which barely functions mechanically as a gish), a Bladesinger (super restricted in armor/weapon types), and possibly even an Arcane Trickster if there is a base class for the "Arcane Gish" idea. There is still a design space for the Arcane Gish class in D&D 5e, but there also is too much overlap with subclasses that don't fulfill that niche.

It's like the Warlord scenario. We have subclasses/options for the Martials in 5e that fill the same design space as the Warlord (PDK, some Battlemaster maneuvers, maybe Valor Bards), but they still aren't a Warlord. They don't fulfill the role well, and there is space for something else. Those subclasses would probably have to be dropped to make way for this space to fit more comfortably, but there is still a place for it.

The same applies to the Arcane Gish.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I do fully understand that 5e has no room for a dedicated swordmage class, simply because each part of the swordmage has been done elsewhere either themewise or mechanic wise. Just in lots of individual bits which can't be stuck together as a whole anymore. No gish subclass in 5e fills the role as well as the duskblade, swordmage, or magus has in the past. But adding those classes would invalidate all the gish subclasses in the game now.

It's one of the reasons why I'm frustrated with 5e's approach to classes as a whole. They're so desperate to make everything a subclass that it's causing option bloat due to the sheer number of subclasses, while they're still doing it worse than a full class would.

Hopefully the 2024 edition gives a chance to rejig the classes from scratch.