D&D 5E Q&A: Basic Subclass, Can Subclasses Change the class, Non-Vancian Subclasses

[Sadrik]

Why make barbarian into a fighter subclass? I think it fits better as a subclass of ranger. They're both "wilderness warrior" types, both lightly armored, tending to avoid the use of shields. One branch (the "traditional ranger") could focus on nature magic, and the other on toughness and ferocity.

Wilderness background is something I would like to see pulled out of druid, and ranger. I want to see urban rangers and urban druids too in the base game. I can envision many rangers who don't have to be the uber-woodsy guy. My vision of a ranger is likely different than most though. I like the ranger to be the smart and knowledgeable warrior. He knows stuff and can put it to use in combat. He knows the terrain, he knows the monster, he knows its weaknesses, heck he might even know a few spells. So I think of them as highly skilled and use those skills to their advantage, often this means knowing the environment, tracking, and woodland like stuff, but it could also easily encapsulate an urban environment, investigation and searching for clues, and city stuff. So open them up to more than a woodsy background.

 

[Li Shenron]

Wilderness background is something I would like to see pulled out of druid, and ranger. I want to see urban rangers and urban druids too in the base game. I can envision many rangers who don't have to be the uber-woodsy guy. My vision of a ranger is likely different than most though. I like the ranger to be the smart and knowledgeable warrior. He knows stuff and can put it to use in combat. He knows the terrain, he knows the monster, he knows its weaknesses, heck he might even know a few spells. So I think of them as highly skilled and use those skills to their advantage, often this means knowing the environment, tracking, and woodland like stuff, but it could also easily encapsulate an urban environment, investigation and searching for clues, and city stuff. So open them up to more than a woodsy background.

That is a little bit too much for me... a Druid not living in nature feels to me like a Wizard living in a land without magic. I'm not saying it can't be done, but we don't really need it in core IMHO.

 

[Sadrik]

I see the Druids case more like they use nature magic the elements and all that. That does not mean that they have to be woodsy and wildernessy. For instance, I think the shugenja of oa is a perfect example of a Druid of a more urban bent. So again just because you use wilderness magic does not mean your background has to be implied that you are from the forest and have little feathers tied on your hair etc. I think broadened it can include a whole host of archetypes.

 

[Li Shenron]

I see the Druids case more like they use nature magic the elements and all that. That does not mean that they have to be woodsy and wildernessy. For instance, I think the shugenja of oa is a perfect example of a Druid of a more urban bent. So again just because you use wilderness magic does not mean your background has to be implied that you are from the forest and have little feathers tied on your hair etc. I think broadened it can include a whole host of archetypes.

I don't know... Personally, I see the elemental-druid the least "druidy" of all the druids concept. I can understand if you argue that historical druids lived more often in cities than not, but that's also because they encompassed also the concept of wizard, sage and teacher. I rather think that whenever the term Druid comes up in a fantasy RPG, the immediate image is that of a nature-bound magician or mystic. Urban druid is not impossible but quite a stretch.

Shugenjas in Rokugan (OA might have slight differences) are pretty much everything. They are magician capable of everything and manipulating raw elements thus cover the Wizards role, but magic is always divine and they are the religious figures of the world thus covering the Clerics role, however technically spells are the result of asking favors to the kami (spirits of anything you can think about from "Spirit of the Water" to "Spirit of Rivers" to "Spirit of this river" to "Spirit of this tiny drop of water jumping out towards me from this river") which feels like a Shaman, but these also includes animals and plants so there's a bit of Druid in there too. It also helps, that Shugenja are practically the only non-evil playable spellcaster characters in the setting

 

[Sadrik]

Urban druid is not impossible but quite a stretch.

In general, I would like to see the it taken out though. It really would open up the class to a lot more character concepts of which do not have to be tied to them running around in a forest only. This is not to limit their forestyness but to expand the class to other possible ways to interpret it.

While we are at it, the monk should lose the oriental theme, and the bard should lose the performer theme. I think any class could be a performer. If the ranger is druid/fighter and the paladin a cleric/fighter, the bard can be a wizard/fighter.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

So backgrounds could perhaps shoulder the load of concepts like culture, or civilization. It doesn't look like it will happen now, but breaking down the class system into a set of tools, and decoupling the culture and mechanic stuff; rangers/woods, druids and culture, barbarians and culture would free up these complications.

We know you are a barbarian or a tribesman by your background. A fighter with a rage-based subclass happens to be the cultural tendency for warriors in a "barbaric" society, while a cleric with some shamanistic subclass fills another obvious role. This simultaneously provides the tools for people to produce character concepts as they see them; with such a system we can still create the urban ranger because its a cool concept, or a non-barbaric (background) rage-fighter, because the story i want to tell with my character is of a civilized warrior who is blinded by rage, or who has a demon-blooded taint or whatever.

IMO it would be better if the focus was changed just a little; I think that there is room for both backgrounds and subclasses if their respective domains are strictly defined. I also wish that instead of producing the subclasses, such as knight (which sounds like a great subclass, by the way), they would focus on producing sound mechanical frameworks (i.e. core classes) and tools for players to produce their own interpretations of the archetypes. The subclasses that they are putting forward would be better I think as suggested tool packages that characters may choose to follow, along with suggested alternatives to produce the same concept. I think this is important because anyone who is interested enough to bother with a more advanced module probably already has very strong ideas about what their character concept will be mechanically.

Even looking through this thread, and many others makes this clear!

 

[Li Shenron]

So backgrounds could perhaps shoulder the load of concepts like culture, or civilization.

No, backgrounds are doing a great job at differentiating PC and NPC characters within the same culture.

Currently there closest thing to differentiating cultures is races and subraces. However they cover also biological/genetic differences.

Some of the backgrounds could be adapted for different cultures, maybe a "sage" is a bit different in two cultures, but the current idea is that the "sage background" tries to capture what is common among all sages of all cultures, and leaves it up to the DM to eventually make slight modification. Take the current "knight background" and try to imagine it being used to represent a Samurai (I know that in the next packet both Knight and Samurai will be Fighter subclasses) instead of a medieval european knight, and see that in fact it still works pretty well!

I think that the term "background" confused a lot of people. There were even people suggesting there should be an "oriental background", what is that supposed to mean? :/ How can you possibly lump all civilians of an oriental land into the same set of features? As I mentioned before, this might work only in selected cases such as barbarians, but only if you are using such background to represent a rather horde-like group of barbarians (e.g. all being hunter-gatherers, or pillagers), not so much if you are trying to depict a whole barbarian society.

 

[pemerton]

backgrounds are doing a great job at differentiating PC and NPC characters within the same culture.

<snip>

I think that the term "background" confused a lot of people. There were even people suggesting there should be an "oriental background", what is that supposed to mean? :/ How can you possibly lump all civilians of an oriental land into the same set of features?

Isn't part of the issue how fine-grained we need the game to be. For instance, in a game set in fantasy Europe, in which any "Oriental" PC essentially represents "the wisdom of the mysterious East" (I'm thinking eg Iron Fist, the Ancient One, etc in Marvel Comics), then a simple "Oriental" background might do the job.

Whereas if you are running a game set in fantasy Japan or fantasy China then you obviously want the standard suite of backgrounds.

Likewise for demihumans and humanoids - a single "dwarf" background might be good for a certain sort of game which wants to focus on stereotypical dwarves (eg ones which detect traps and sloping corridors and fight orcs using axes), but a game with all dwarf PCs would again need the standard suite. "Barbarian" is similar.

(This sort of approach to backgrounds - how much do we want to zoom in, how much do we want stereotypes? - can also be an alternative to races as classes that nevertheless delivers a comprable vibe.)

 

[Li Shenron]

Isn't part of the issue how fine-grained we need the game to be. For instance, in a game set in fantasy Europe, in which any "Oriental" PC essentially represents "the wisdom of the mysterious East" (I'm thinking eg Iron Fist, the Ancient One, etc in Marvel Comics), then a simple "Oriental" background might do the job.

Whereas if you are running a game set in fantasy Japan or fantasy China then you obviously want the standard suite of backgrounds.

Likewise for demihumans and humanoids - a single "dwarf" background might be good for a certain sort of game which wants to focus on stereotypical dwarves (eg ones which detect traps and sloping corridors and fight orcs using axes), but a game with all dwarf PCs would again need the standard suite. "Barbarian" is similar.

(This sort of approach to backgrounds - how much do we want to zoom in, how much do we want stereotypes? - can also be an alternative to races as classes that nevertheless delivers a comprable vibe.)

Well but this is different from what background has meant so far.

Maybe you can use the same mechanic (background) to represent different things, but it's quite odd. "Who are you?" "I am a doctor." "I am a a lawyer." "I am a teacher." "I am Asian." Doesn't feel right to me...

 

[Bluenose]

Well but this is different from what background has meant so far.

Maybe you can use the same mechanic (background) to represent different things, but it's quite odd. "Who are you?" "I am a doctor." "I am a a lawyer." "I am a teacher." "I am Asian." Doesn't feel right to me...

I tend to think of Backgrounds as "What I was doing before the game started". While I can say "I was working as a doctor", I don't think I'd say "I was an Asian." On the other hand, if Backgrounds are also doing duty as covering where you come from, then it's possible to go with backgrounds that include Noble (because nobles from different cultures have a fair amount in common), Sailor (because trading vessels in particular recruited crews from nearly anywhere they stopped), or Viking (because it's possible to define people by a common cultural background as much as it's possible to define them by their work).

I'd personally prefer two backgrounds, one Cultural and one Career, but that path ends with a strongly implied setting.