NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6607299" data-attributes="member: 6790260">It would seem that the overall direction of this thread disagrees with your position: that is, the rather vehemently stated consensus thus far is, unless a concept can achieve a critical mass of unique mechanics, it doesn't deserve to exist as its own class, regardless of how people feel about it.I also disagree with that consensus, but for different reasons than you do. I do think that there's *something* to be said for both sides: classes ONLY exist, in a game sense, as mechanics, so it is somewhat silly to say that narrative is ultimately primary. Yet at the same time, there's clearly something different about, say, Dungeon World vs. Dungeon Planet, even though they are the same engine and often the exact same mechanics with a different label. The experience, or narrative if you prefer, is different, so mechanics alone cannot be telling the whole story.Yet the narrative for each of those conceits is still bound to some kind of mechanical construct, is it not? If it weren't, there would be nothing stopping people from just scratching out "Fighter" and writing "Ranger"--because the narrative in their minds is all that matters. You seem to be saying that the ONLY thing that matters is the fact that someone has a particular narrative in mind. If that were the case, why does the execution matter at all? Because the thing on the page, and in the book, itself has a grounded meaning and significance--but the thing on the page is always a mechanical "object" (of a sort), with a label. The inter-relationship between mechanics and labels cannot be characterized solely by examining one or the other.I mean, you even mention "Warlord," yet the designers didn't see fit to include a class for it, and even the supposedly sufficient subclass (Battlemaster) is woefully inadequate. And how does one even begin to describe classless games, like Savage Worlds, where "Paladin" is (at very, very best) a label for a point-buy guide?Emphasis mine: Why shouldn't we? Not specifically in terms of the "awesome unique cantrip" thing necessarily, but in other terms?In a very real sense, the Warlock is a half-caster that can't choose not to become a "full caster." If there were a feature that traded in its Mystic Arcana, the Warlock would be, in a certain sense, a half-caster. They gain new spell levels at the rate of a full caster, until 5th, at which point they stop. What if we applied something similar to the regular casting track? That is, having spell slots--or whatever usage mechanic, I don't care which specifically--which grow up until you hit 5th level or whatever, and then at that point your casting prowess grows in some other way, with just one path being 6th-9th level spells a la Mystic Arcana? Riffing off  @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=63508" target="_blank">Minigiant</a>'s WoW Shaman suggestion, what if the "Augmentor" Artificer gains powerful, encounter-long, totem-like abilities instead of a new level of Mystic Arcanum? A different build, that focuses purely on the magic of magitek (whatever that means, since I still don't have an answer there), could get Arcane Schemata at those levels instead. Boom: A half-caster, which develops in a radically different way from every other class, and which provides the opportunity to either gain "full-caster-like" benefits, OR get some other big boost instead.I'm afraid my last post was...rather delayed, so I missed a lot of the middle of the thread. What in specific do you mean by this, and why is it such bad design? Yeah, when a new 5e class actually takes into account 4e class design, I'll celebrate. Until then, I don't expect much of anything. (And before the derail starts: no, I'm not particularly interested in discussing why I don't think 5e classes actually take into account 4e class design.)</blockquote>

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