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

[tetrasodium]

Because the undead in D&D have been given the short end of a stick when it comes to alignment.

Id say that's a stretch. Alignment in 5e is so watered down and toothless that it doesn't really have any relevance to PCs or their actions. It's not like an alignment shift could risk class features experience penalty or anything else once a consideration I ponder

 

[Morrus]

Well there is soo much 5e homebrew that almost everything was done already by someone. (Especially things (like feat chains) which was present in earlier editions).


The difference is that with official content you have a way way higher probability a GM allows it (and good chance not even needing big discussions) and it will be always (mostly nicely) included in D&D beyond and there its enough when 1 person buys it for 2-3 groups.


This has nothing to do with the quality even. Just with general trust to what one knows (official D&D) vs other company gm has never heard of it.

Thanks for the explanation! Finally after 27 years of publishing D&D compatible content somebody has explained to me why it doesn’t sell as well as official D&D content. Who knew?

Phew!

 

[Corinnguard]

Well thanks for the explanation. Finally after 27 years of publishing D&D compatible content somebody has explained to me why it doesn’t sell as well as official D&D content. Who knew? Phew!

Even if a product doesn't sell as well as D&D, it can be better than D&D in a number of ways.

 

[Tigris]

Well thanks for the explanation. Finally after 27 years of publishing D&D compatible content somebody has explained to me why it doesn’t sell as well as official D&D content. Who knew? Phew!

This was not about why its not selling. This is about why I think it matters that these ideas are made in an official manner, this will allow more people to play these ideas than any 3rd party book.



Also I think on why things sell less there are a lot more things which play into it. Like having high quality art, or having a lead figure being known for being good at gamedesign (MCDM) or ethics of the consumer. Like I am way way more likely to spend money on a new innovative system I will never play than on 3rd party content for popular systems, because I want to reward innovation over directly derrivative work.


Also a lot of people do buy stuff they will not play in the end anyway. Even one of my GMs bought some kickstarter unofficial 5e content because it had nice looking pictures.


As a consumer in this case it matters not really if material sells, it matters if I can play with these ideas (eithout having a big discussion with a GM)

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I haven't read the whole thread but I would really not like the idea of subclasses being replaced by paths of....feat trees, I will be calling them that for simplicity.

For one, we can look to different systems as evidence that new players can get utterly overwhelmed by too many options from the get go. This happenned for Cypher, hence limiting of what your role gives you in 2e, it also happenned to Blades in the Dark, which had no class system - players were supposed to just pick up abilities from one big list, but many found it overwhelming.

Second, I think it would be much easier to abuse if all subclass abilities were converted into feat trees, especially with more elastic requirements it could lead to something like a Paladin taking early abilities of Oath of the Crown and late-game ones of Oath of Redemption, effectively picking best of both worlds.

 

[Silam]

3e prestige classes are maybe 75% redundant in 5e.

[…]

Of those, 5e has no need for Prcs of #1-6. 7 is straight up a new class. So PRCs we could only be good for 8 or 9. Like Shadowdancer as rogues, rangers, and bards play Very differently.

While this may be subjective, I think a lot of PrC would ideally fall in the same bucket you place shadowdancers in. For example, Arcane Archers should at the very least be buildable off of a Fighter or a Ranger. Building them as a subclass means half the relevant audience is sidelined. And we’re not even getting into more interesting/exotic builds, for example, why wouldn’t an Arcane Trickster grow into an Arcane Archer? You could say they can and they simply need to dip into Fighter first, and maybe that’s fine, but maybe that does not fit the character theme as well as if there was a more direct path to get there. That is why I say subclasses are like straight jackets. Needlessly constraining.

Because the undead in D&D have been given the short end of a stick when it comes to alignment.

Baelnorn says hi.

I haven't read the whole thread but I would really not like the idea of subclasses being replaced by paths of....feat trees, I will be calling them that for simplicity.

For one, we can look to different systems as evidence that new players can get utterly overwhelmed by too many options from the get go. This happenned for Cypher, hence limiting of what your role gives you in 2e, it also happenned to Blades in the Dark, which had no class system - players were supposed to just pick up abilities from one big list, but many found it overwhelming.

Second, I think it would be much easier to abuse if all subclass abilities were converted into feat trees, especially with more elastic requirements it could lead to something like a Paladin taking early abilities of Oath of the Crown and late-game ones of Oath of Redemption, effectively picking best of both worlds.

These are all legitimate concerns, and difficult game design challenges. I do think they are surmountable, but should not be underestimated.

The gold standard of ultimate game design, Starcraft, famously had the motto of "easy to learn, hard to master".

Clearly, a sophisticated and interesting system which is "hard to learn, hard to master" is going to be disappointing for most players.

While this is admittedly hand-wavy, I have a vision of a skill tree or feat tree system where there is not only "one big list" to pick from, but there are also many curated "packages" or "recommended progressions" to make it easier to get started with. Just like the classes and backgrounds of the PHB have some preconceived (but optional) recommendations. "50 gp or the following specific pieces of gear", "4 x 1st level spells, the following specific ones are recommended", etc.

So you could have a "Battlemaster" package and an "Eldritch Knight" package which tell you exactly how to spend you "skill points" at each level. The end result is basically a class exactly like the one you would get playing 5.5e rules. But if you wanted to swap out one ability, there would be clear rules (you get this many skill points back, go shop around). A lot of this could be made easier with digital tools (e.g., "show me the skills I can actually afford with my free skill points and the prereqs I already possess", and then further filters like "show me only the options belonging to the martial paths, as I don’t care for magic in this build", etc). And if you wanted to do tabula rasa you also could. All sophistication levels should be supported within the same system, at the same table. "Easy to learn, hard to master."

 

[BenjaminPey]

I for one am not interested in a hard to master system. DnD is not a competitive game like Starcraft.

 

[Silam]

I for one am not interested in a hard to master system. DnD is not a competitive game like Starcraft.

I’ve personally had a lot of fun playing SC (1, I didn’t play the 2nd one much) even though I never mastered it and certainly came nowhere close to performing competitively. But anyway, the analogy has limits. D&D is very different from a RT strategy computer game.

 

[BenjaminPey]

Indeed.
In my opinion, in a ttrpg, especially in a ttrpg as bulky as DnD is, the cognitive load attributed to the system should be as light as possible. It's better spent elsewhere. The system should be easy to lear AND easy to master. Ideally, players should be able to master it intuitively as soon as they learnt it.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I for one am not interested in a hard to master system. DnD is not a competitive game like Starcraft.

Moreover, we pretty much had 3e and all its iterations strongly rewarding system mastery and punishing not making "optimal" choices and it was one of worst things about this system, that I do not think even its own creators liked, considering they put lot of alternative options for different styles of play but the way the game as a whoel was constructed lead to everything suboptimal being labeled a trap choice.