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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silam" data-source="post: 9888986" data-attributes="member: 7055898">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.Baelnorn says hi.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."</blockquote>

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