D&D General Path of Feats: a Superior Design than Subclasses

[Frozen_Heart]

If they kept expanding into this design space, I feel that lycanthropy and vampirism equivalents to lich and death knight would be quite cool.

Could go nuts and work out divine, fiendish, elemental, and even more versions.

 

[FrogReaver]

If they kept expanding into this design space, I feel that lycanthropy and vampirism equivalents to lich and death knight would be quite cool.

Could go nuts and work out divine, fiendish, elemental, and even more versions.

IMO. There's not much space in 5e's design to expand on such concepts. You either lock them into a specific subclass or you use the only space you have left which is feats.

Neither of those options work very well thematically for those particular types of concepts. Honestly I think the best option for that kind of stuff is to just give DM's advice on how to do it well outside of normal character leveling options.

 

[Silam]

IMO. There's not much space in 5e's design to expand on such concepts. You either lock them into a specific subclass or you use the only space you have left which is feats.

Neither of those options work very well thematically for those particular types of concepts. Honestly I think the best option for that kind of stuff is to just give DM's advice on how to do it well outside of normal character leveling options.

I tend to agree that racial/species type of abilities fit awkwardly as either subclasses or feats. It can be done but feels weird.

The lich thing is not so bad since it’s a transformation that requires a lot of effort. I can see how one character spends their effort training to be a War Caster while another spends effort gathering rare ingredients, crafting their phylactery and performing an unholy ritual. (Lycanthrophy is either an inherited condition you’re born with or an affliction you get from being bitten, so it could go either way.)

But the powers you would get from being a stronger than normal species should not be something you train for. It’s just who you are. You grow into it.

And yet, there’s still a need to balance that. I think 3.5e’s ECL adjustment is the best way to model that (from Savage Species, etc). You want to play an elemental, or troll or whatever? That’s fine, but your Effective Character Level is bumped up. If your species has ECL +4, then effectively at the 1st class level you are a 5th level character and your next class level will require the XP of 6th level.

This is pretty clean and could be dropped into 5e without too much trouble… it would just need to be decided if the character level for the sake of PB and cantrip scaling is equal to the ECL or to the total class levels. Once that is decided, the ECL adjustments can be balanced accordingly.