D&D General The 3.5 Binder was a really cool class

[I'm A Banana]

Right, but that's a very niche taste. Which sure, there's room for narrowly niche options in the game. But as pointed out, getting buy in from the entire group can sometimes be hard when it impacts everyone.

I do not think it is a very niche taste.

I have seen multiple wild sorcerers played in different groups without issue.

Rather, I think randomness appeals to one of the reasons why people enjoy TTRPGs, and control and decision-making, both being mentally exhausting activities, are part of why D&D (and to some degree other TTRPGs) can be hard to play.

Emergent gameplay is desirable, and randomness is a key element. We roll dice to find out what will happen. Determining what happens is often a lot less fun than finding out what happens.

 

[Hussar]

My personal experience has been that it’s very frustrating at low levels if one of the bad results come up. IE a tpk from a fireball centered on a party of level 2 pcs.

But, how would you get that result? In 2024, you could cast a Fireball but it's extremely unlikely. Like about .3% chance. And, even then, that's after you've surged. Most campaigns are never going to see that happen.

Having seen more than a few Wild Mages in action, I don't think anyone really seems to have much of an issue with it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But, how would you get that result? In 2024, you could cast a Fireball but it's extremely unlikely. Like about .3% chance. And, even then, that's after you've surged. Most campaigns are never going to see that happen.

I don't think the "fireball yourself" is even an option in '24, and that is likely specifically due to that particular result sometimes being a bummer. I think it's fine to not have subclasses that might accidentally kill the party (even if it is a real low chance to do that -- you'd have to cast a spell, roll a 20, roll that result, and ALSO have your entire party within 20' of you...).

About the worst thing you can do in '24 is turn yourself into a plant or frighten yourself or poison someone. None of which are quite at the same scale. Though, they do suck a bit, getting a bad result on the die is not really a problem. It's part of the fun. If you don't want to roll bad sometimes, maybe don't choose a subclass where rolling bad sometimes is part of the fun.

The idea that narrative decision-making is the fun part of the game is only partially true. Rolling dice and reacting to what they tell you is ALSO a fun part of the game -- and a part the wild sorcerer leans into a bit more than others.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

In a scripted format, you'd get the silly results when the situation is low stakes, a negative result when failure is recoverable, and a beneficial result when you're in a pinch. No Fireballs out of nowhere when you're showing off in the tavern, very few moment where your magic fails you when you need it most, lots of praying for a lucky result and getting it when you need it most. Because that's the fantasy of wild magic.

I have absolutely no idea how to translate that into a game format better than the current version. The random result table is blindly random, which doesn't produce narratively appropriate results. But what else can you do? Have the DM hand pick a result? Give that power to the player and trust they won't always just pick the best one? Neither sounds like a great idea.

If you can dream up a better way, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise I'm marking it down as a character archetype that doesn't translate between mediums well. It'll go on the list right next to "Brooding lone wolf who refuses to interact with the party a majority of the time but in a dire situation turns out to have anticipated and prepared for exactly that crisis."

the only thing i can think of would essentially be to make multiple spell riders players can pick from that are flavoured as wild magic.
so like, you can have a feature where your magic does something silly like give you a duck's beak or make the chairs in the tavern dance, and mechanically that results in bombing the performance BUT being very distracting, so it becomes a useful tool for, say, buying the rogue time to break into someone's room.

that kind of rips the experience of wild magic out of the fiction, though, so...

 

[W'rkncacnter]

the only thing i can think of would essentially be to make multiple spell riders players can pick from that are flavoured as wild magic.
so like, you can have a feature where your magic does something silly like give you a duck's beak or make the chairs in the tavern dance, and mechanically that results in bombing the performance BUT being very distracting, so it becomes a useful tool for, say, buying the rogue time to break into someone's room.

that kind of rips the experience of wild magic out of the fiction, though, so...

well, actually, hold on, you could also do a "scrolling" random table (i.e. a table for which the possible results change based on some variable unrelated to the dice) that keys off, say, what percentage of your hit points you have remaining. so, like, at full HP you could have results be fairly trivial or mostly RP related, but then as you lose HP the results get more and more dangerous. then you could maybe have a turnaround point (e.g. bloodied) where results start getting more and more positive until nearly everything you've got at low HP is some form of comeback. i'd probably have the table's results scale as you level up too.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

In a scripted format, you'd get the silly results when the situation is low stakes, a negative result when failure is recoverable, and a beneficial result when you're in a pinch. No Fireballs out of nowhere when you're showing off in the tavern, very few moment where your magic fails you when you need it most, lots of praying for a lucky result and getting it when you need it most. Because that's the fantasy of wild magic.

I have absolutely no idea how to translate that into a game format better than the current version. The random result table is blindly random, which doesn't produce narratively appropriate results. But what else can you do? Have the DM hand pick a result? Give that power to the player and trust they won't always just pick the best one? Neither sounds like a great idea.

If you can dream up a better way, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise I'm marking it down as a character archetype that doesn't translate between mediums well. It'll go on the list right next to "Brooding lone wolf who refuses to interact with the party a majority of the time but in a dire situation turns out to have anticipated and prepared for exactly that crisis."

Maybe with a meta-mechanic like compels in some games I've read about on EN World?
You stat with 1 "Wild Flow" point at session start.
When you use something involving wild magic, the GM can say: "Hey, I'd like to give you some bad wild result. If you agree, you'll
get a wild flow point." or the player can say: "Hey, I'd like to spend a wild flow point to get a benefitial wild result." I guess that still leaves something open for "silly" results? Maybe that could be random, and the player or GM can override it then by spending/granting a point and getting a different or no effect.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Missed opportunities.

So are the truenamer and shadow caster like Bruno? We don't talk about them?

Truenamer is legitimately the most broken class in 3.5e, which is a remarkable achievement given how bad 3.5e's design gets. However, unlike most broken things, it's broken because it genuinely doesn't work. Like it is actually unplayable as written. You have to bend or even occasionally break the class's own rules just to get something vaguely playable.

So, yes, Truenamer is Bruno, we don't talk about it.

Shadowcaster is just a somewhat pigeonholed themed caster, one amongst several in later-era 3.5e. It's not that we don't talk about it; it's that there's hardly much to talk about. Like the Dread Necromancer or Beguiler, it was much too little, far too late. Folks knew they could do better with just core classes, so the only people who went for these were the already-adventurous types.

I liked the idea that clerics would petition for spells, instead of simply taking them for granted. The problem (as I saw it) was that everyone treated this like it was at best a chore and at worst an invitation for the DM to screw you over under the auspices of your god punishing you for some religious infraction (something that shouldn't be done unless you were going out of your way to be heretical, i.e. your cleric of a healing god kept executing prisoners).

The way it should have worked (again, to me) is that your god trusted you enough to grant you the spells you wanted, but made sure to tailor your spell selection when they thought you might need a bit of a helping hand. So if the GM asked to see the player's character sheet, and then informed you that you didn't get those anti-undead spells you wanted, instead granting spells meant to fight demons, you were getting a helping hand from on high.

Well that's...sort of an unavoidable problem with this type of power?

Because what you're doing is very literally telling the GM "Rewrite your divine casters' sheets whenever you like, however you like, as much as you like, and they aren't allowed to say no or even complain lest they lose all of their abilities completely." That only works as a default, everyone-does-this thing when you can be certain that nearly 100% of GMs will use that power exclusively for good ends, or avoid using it at all.

I think you can see why that doesn't work. Even if only 20% of GMs abuse that power, it's 19.9 percentage points too many.

 

[GMMichael]

Truenamer . . . is actually unplayable as written. You have to bend or even occasionally break the class's own rules just to get something vaguely playable.

So, yes, Truenamer is Bruno, we don't talk about it.

Well, if we don't talk about him, he comes back to bite us.

I thought the truenamer was broken, and refused to believe it. So I min-maxed it a long time ago. I think it took level-appropriate magic items to buff the truenamer's attributes (and what class didn't have level-appropriate magic items in 3e?), but I got a truenamer that was hitting just about 50/50 odds of any truename working its wonders. It was playable, but you had to force it. Of course, I was perma-DMing back then, so I didn't get to see it in the wild.

Shadowcaster is just a somewhat pigeonholed themed caster, one amongst several in later-era 3.5e. It's not that we don't talk about it; it's that there's hardly much to talk about. Like the Dread Necromancer or Beguiler, it was much too little, far too late. Folks knew they could do better with just core classes, so the only people who went for these were the already-adventurous types.

. . . which is unfortunate. It was a cool class. So which ENWorlder is going to update these classes to 6e for us?

Because what you're doing is very literally telling the GM "Rewrite your divine casters' sheets whenever you like, however you like, as much as you like, and they aren't allowed to say no or even complain lest they lose all of their abilities completely."

I'd say it's implicit.

That only works as a default, everyone-does-this thing when you can be certain that nearly 100% of GMs will use that power exclusively for good ends, or avoid using it at all.

It also works because the 3e cleric was often rated as overpowered anyway. Arbitrary nerfs from the DM are more acceptable when a nerf is already warranted.

 

[Alzrius]

Well that's...sort of an unavoidable problem with this type of power?

In general, I find it hard to discuss things with someone who's intent on misrepresenting the other person's outlook, particularly when they insist on doing so in the most over-dramatic way possible. Hence, I'll just point out that this "problem" is not in the least "unavoidable," as that's wildly overblown by even the most sympathetic take on things.

Because what you're doing is very literally telling the GM "Rewrite your divine casters' sheets whenever you like, however you like, as much as you like, and they aren't allowed to say no or even complain lest they lose all of their abilities completely."

Really? "Whenever you like, however you like, as much as you like"? So the GM can change their divine caster's race? And their experience level? And what magic items they have? Don't even get me started on that "aren't allowed to say no, lest they lose all of their abilities completely" part, which is so ridiculously divorced from the reality of play that it's honestly not worth discussing.

That only works as a default, everyone-does-this thing when you can be certain that nearly 100% of GMs will use that power exclusively for good ends, or avoid using it at all.

I think you can see why that doesn't work. Even if only 20% of GMs abuse that power, it's 19.9 percentage points too many.

You've literally just described all of GMing, apart from any discussion of their relationship to divine casters. In fact, that's true for your entire post; it can be accurately summarized as "you can't give the GM that much power! What if they're a jerk?!" Well, what if they are? The game cannot correct for that, and so designing it around the idea that it should at least insulate players so that they can justly claim that jerk GMs are breaking the rules if they try to act on their jerk impulses, as opposed to being a good RPG, is a bad design goal.

 

[Tigris]

Well, if we don't talk about him, he comes back to bite us.

I thought the truenamer was broken, and refused to believe it. So I min-maxed it a long time ago. I think it took level-appropriate magic items to buff the truenamer's attributes (and what class didn't have level-appropriate magic items in 3e?), but I got a truenamer that was hitting just about 50/50 odds of any truename working its wonders. It was playable, but you had to force it. Of course, I was perma-DMing back then, so I didn't get to see it in the wild.

A lot more is actually possible. The truenamer had a quickcast "metamagic" which gave -20 on the truename check. And it is possible to hit sometimes with them. So having a >100% chance to hit is possible. (There are 2 types of 5/10/15 bonus to a skill check items (different bonus type) existing in 3.5 and they help with this).
The problem more is thst everytime you hit it gets harder with the same attack.

. . . which is unfortunate. It was a cool class. So which ENWorlder is going to update these classes to 6e for us?

Well before we know how 6e looks thats hard. And the tries now look more like 5e homebrew and I really hope 6e is not a 5e homebrew but something new.

I do think that several of the more experimental classes of 3.5 are really cool and I would love to see more such experimental classes in D&D. (Thats also why it was such a shame 4e ended so esrly because they just started with a bit more experimental classes like Vampire or Berserker or even the Elementalist of course this was nowhere yet near end of 3.5 experimental).


Truenamer might be a bit annoying because of tracking, but having a caster which spells are weaker, not needing a ressource instead have limitation and get harder to cast is something which can definitly work.

And this even moreso in an edition where the power curve is not as extreme. (Like 4e or 5.24 starting at level 3).

And with the spellcaster design of 4e and 5e they would just get some kind of cantrip to have something to do without their normal spells. (Which is the big problem for them and shadowcaster at low level).