D&D 5E Pick only one: What should the next class be?

[Tony Vargas]

Warden would make a GREAT Barbarian I think.

Well, they were both Primal in 4e, and both nominally shape-shifted, the Barbarian with Rage, the Warden more explicitly with his dailies. One thing about the Warden was that his shape-shifting was not just into animal forms - "Form of Mountain's Thunder" is one I remember, for instance.

The Battlemaster is a poor fit for the Warlord because it's too selfish and too limited. It focuses too hard on the extra damage and too little on the tactical options.

The fighter chassis is very much all-in on tanky-DPR, just d10 hps, good AC, lots of damage via Extra Attack & things that synergize with it. That's the whole class but for ribbons, really.

The BM has little to work with, and, if it's blurb is to be believed, it's standing in for the 4e-style spell-less ranger, the 4e encounter-exploit-using fighter, and the Warlord. With 16 BM maneuvers - when those three classes, together, had accumulated a thousand in the 2 years before Essentials.

Still, the Battlemaster's Goading Attack should just be a basic power of the Fighter (minus the extra damage) so they can properly incite others to attack them instead of their friends.

There's a fair bit of reasonable combat options locked up in the BM. But, one of the problems with the fighter has always been that anything it gets tends to be diluted and given out to everyone, so holding the line on that isn't all bad.

 

[Undrave]

The BM has little to work with, and, if it's blurb is to be believed, it's standing in for the 4e-style spell-less ranger, the 4e encounter-exploit-using fighter, and the Warlord. With 16 BM maneuvers - when those three classes, together, had accumulated a thousand in the 2 years before Essentials.

The Battlemaster feels like it is to a non-existant Warlord class what the Eldritch Knight is to the Wizard... a MC subclass, a martial 'half caster'.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

There is a space for the warden as primal defender or nature paladin if it is a class with shapeshifter powers. Then the subclasses would be different totems or monster/animal species.

The warlord with "healer powers" could have got an explanation if we allow the martial maneuvers (ki power source) from the school of the white raven (Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords).

I have suggested sometimes in the past to hire Dreamscarred Press for a 5th Ed. of psionic powers, martial adepts/paths of war and incarnum/akasha.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The Battlemaster feels like it is to a non-existant Warlord class what the Eldritch Knight is to the Wizard... a MC subclass, a martial 'half caster'.

1/3rd caster, even, yes
(I suppose, Paladin & Ranger could be said to be 1/2 caster, rounded up, and EK & AT, half-caster, rounded down, but 1/3rd caster seems to get used a lot on the boards.)

Imagine if the was no Wizard (or sorcerer or warlock or bard), just the Acrane Trickster, but, go ahead, pick the Hermit or Sage or Entertainer background or whatever, and that's all the arcanist you need to fit your hermetic-bookworm, pact-with-devil, dragon-blooded, or music-of-creation concept.
Oh, and you only ever learn 6 spells.
Oh, and they're all first level.

That's how close the BM is to being the Warlord (and the 4e defender-role Fighter, and the 4e non-casting Ranger).

 

[MechaTarrasque]

The only reason they didn't have a 4e martial controller is because the best name for one, the warlord, was already taken. It should have been "my army of witless flunkies, go over there and dig a hole so it will be rough terrain", "army of flunkies, lasso that ogre and drag it over here", "get out your bows and arrows and fire on my command", "minions, row faster", etc.

Proficiencies with sack of gold and whip, of course.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

My vote is for warlord because a) The edition is light on non-magical class options, b) it probably doesn't require adding substantial additional systems, c) a battlefield tactics oriented class seems like a prime opportunity to use intelligence or charisma as a secondary stat to do something (anything!) other than magic and skill checks, and d) I like seeing martial options that get to do more than hit things.

That said "Warlord" is an absurd name for a low level character and I'm not sure exactly what they'd bring that couldn't be handled with a fighter subclass.

 

[gyor]

My heart said dedicated summoner, but my head said, Psion, it's too important to the lore, and so I went with Psion.

Still Blood Hunter should also be on your list as WotC had it on their list of favourite classes during the last survey.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The only reason they didn't have a 4e martial controller is because the best name for one, the warlord, was already taken. It should have been "my army of witless flunkies, go over there and dig a hole so it will be rough terrain", "army of flunkies, lasso that ogre and drag it over here", "get out your bows and arrows and fire on my command", "minions, row faster", etc.

Proficiencies with sack of gold and whip, of course.

There were a few places where a martial class's exploits or features ran aground on "but that'd be Controller turf."

Compare & contrast what you could do with a polearm build in 3e vs 4e, for instance. The former would've, if taken wholesale into 4e, stomped all over the battlefield-control (heck, some 3.x fighter builds were called battlefield-control) and minion-sweeping functions of the Controller role.

The Warlord commanding a nominal unit of troops like some sort of 'pet class' could certainly have been another. So could the 'Hector' style of Warlord pointed out by Wrecan, had there been a lot more such exploits available.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Psion I think should be next, due to the history of the game, what I'd want is the summoner though.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

I also note - all those options are "What old class concept to they replicate next?" I'd be happy if they didn't replicate something old, and instead found some fertile new ground.

I'm curious, what new ground would that be?