D&D General The best representations of the power fantasies D&D has had

[Eric V]

For bards, what about the AD&D bard that appeared in (I think...) Best of Dragon Magazine 3? Perhaps Monte Cook's variant for 3e Book of Eldritch Might?

 

[Yaarel]

5e Wizard is the best Wizard of any edition, and I like the Wizard in every edition. The spell mechanics with spontaneous slots is excellent. The only better mechanic is the Short Rest spell points of the LaserLlama Psion. The Short Rest spell points system might make its way into the 2024 Dungeon Master Guide. The Wizard class might benefit from more thematic focus, such as only mastering two or three spell schools, where the schools are more like thematic domains, and well thought out. Not a fan of vancian casting, but thats the way it was in earlier editions. Glad 4e and 5e ended those mechanics. The 5e Wizard is better than the 4e one, because the 5e spell system is more ad hoc for freer spell selection (rather than AEDU), yet retains the 4e goal of balance.

5e Bard forever! The mythologically accurate full caster Celtic Bard is the only way to do the class properly. Additionally, the 5e bardic themes and spells are relevant for many Nordic (Norse, Sámi, Finnish) concepts, and other shamanic concepts from various other cultures around the world. The D&D tradition of Bard has always been an awkward mishmash of Arcane, Primal, and Divine. The Bard should be a Psionic class: the magic of the mind of an artist. This personal mindful source of magic power is likewise relevant for the Nordic shamanics. It is very important for the Bard to function properly WITHOUT a musical instrument. In this case, the Verbal component can function as the spell focus. From shaman to dancer to commander to the Celtic poet Bard itself, too many Bard concepts have nothing to do with a musical instrument.

I love the 5e Paladin. It is a muscle mage, that is so versatile for building character concepts from Tolkien Gandalf to Norse Thor, plus Jedi. I would like the player to choose which damage type the default Smite inflicts. Radiant is great for Gandalf, but Lightning-Thunder for Thor, and Force for Jedi. Etcetera with other kinds of principled tough mage concepts. In any case, I love the 5e version of Paladin.

Druid is a great concept, but its mechanics all over the place making hard to synergize concept and mechanics. I like the 5e Druid narrative. The Primal source is all about the Material Plane, and actually has little or no interest in the Feywild or Elemental Planes. It is the Fey and Elementals who sometimes take an interest in the Material Plane.

Warlock has the best mechanics in 5e. Its solid range of balanced Short Rest casting, always-on Invocation features, and access to highest tiers spells, plus melee competence, are a virtuoso of design. I want to see 5e Psion, Swordmage, even Warlord using the Warlock chassis, albeit with Short Rest spell points in place of Short Rest slots.

Barbarian. 5e is fun and leans into the Primal source. Its Berserker should be more shamanic, and animalistic, even with Wildshape capability. But as a whole, the class dabbles in this.

Fighter. Should split between heavy infantry heavy armor Knight and light infantry highly mobile Skirmisher. Skirmisher keeps the name "Fighter", with a nod to fight sports. 4e is ok, splitting up the Martial source into Fighter, Rogue, Warlord, and Ranger. Here the noncaster Ranger handles the Skirmisher, then Fighter handles Knight. Rogue is like special ops. By far my favorite is Warlord.

Rogue is fun. Probably the 5e Rogue is my favorite version. It holds its own, balances with other classes, can handle different concepts, and is fun to play.

The Cleric of every edition is too presumptive about what the setting must be − too fixated on polytheism. 3e is a bit more officially customizable, and 5e is loosening up, such as with Xanathars. I hope 5e 2024 will just once and for all let the player decide whatever "sacred" concept is appropriate for the character concept, and for the player and the DM to figure out a sacred community in whatever setting. Because of the meaning of the word "cleric" and "clergy", the choice of a specific sacred community and the official position the character has within this community, is the most salient aspect of the class concept. Mechanically, 5e is decent, by relying on "Domains" for thematic spells and how gishy.

Monk. 5e is ok. The base class needs to transfer much content to a specific subclass. Then the base has less design space and the subclass has alot more design space. Then the subclass can open up many different Monk concepts. Perhaps even call the class Athlete with the Monk as one of its subclasses.

Ranger in the sense of competence in the wilderness seems best as prestige subclass that any class can take. Then the nonmagical Ranger has the Fighter or Rogue as the base class. A Druid base yields a wilderness caster. And other concepts are possible as well.

The 5e Artificer disapointed me when it went partial caster. The 4e Eberron Artificer is best, an Arcane healer and magic item master, who can function as a full caster. I would love it if the 5e 2024 Artificer used the Warlock chassis instead.

The 3e Sorcerer was hero for putting a crack in the "vancian" mechanics spellcaster. But has done little since. The critique of the underpowered 3e Sorcerer versus the overpowered 3e Wizard, resulted in the creation of a fantastic 3e Psion and 3e Warlock. But the Sorcerer found little or no improvement. When 4e and 5e ended vancian casting, the purpose of the Sorcerer class remains in question. I find the fiddly mechanics of the 5e Sorcerer to be unpleasant. Meanwhile its supposed innate magic is absurdly sabotaged by its need to cast spells using a material component.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I can’t speak for anything in other editions and I can barely speak for my own experience with 5e but the fundamental 5e wizard design as it appears to me really doesn’t do it for me, it might be a weird sentiment but I’d say that their design is too focused on combat and doing damage to properly fill my concept of being the smart guy with the long list of all the intricate utility hyper-niche-but-super-effective-problem-solver spells that nobody else has the smarts or desire to learn, sure you might be weak and fragile, but you know the entire rest of the team is going to do all they can to protect you because you’re worth three times your skinny weight in platinum with the magic solutions you can provide.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

This thread mostly makes me realize that 13th Age did a better job of most of these than any edition of D&D, and the couple where it didn't are classes it didn't bother to add at all. And there's a second edition coming, which will probably widen the quality gap even further. It's almost embarrassing for both TSR and WotC.

I’d say 4E across the board. Peak power fantasy in D&D. Everyone was capable and had a stack of cool things they could do. The only class fantasy that didn’t work for was the players whose class fantasy for the wizard is being orders of magnitude better than everyone else.

If I have to pick actual official D&D stuff, I'm with overgeeked here. 4e was power fantasy from first level onward, and only became more so as new material poured out, which also offered more and more differentiation between classes - especially post-Essentials with its big break from the set AW/E/D/U power structure.

 

[TwoSix]

Just some random thoughts.

Artificer - I don't think any iteration really hits the Artificer fantasy, because the Artificer fantasy is Iron Man, and you can't really fit Iron Man into a D&D power scale. You can't do "genius billionaire playboy philanthropist" as a starting background. Most systems don't care enough about resources to echo the "Tony Stark did it, in a cave, with a bunch of scraps" concent. And the game has been moved away from allowing "time + resources = power" because, well, wizards, so the ability to grant anyone superpowers (via suit) and call up dozens of clone backups has been heavily (and fairly) nerfed.

Sorcerer - This label gets used on a bunch of concepts, but the two most common I've seen are "Raw Channeler of the Elements (or specific Element)" and "Artistic Magical Savant". The PF1 Kineticist has probably been the best iteration of the Element Channeler (although slightly on the weak side). D&D-style magic systems just fit way too awkwardly with the Magic Artist concept, which demands a lot of freeform, improvisational magic.

Druid - I think Druid has a lot of conceptual fantasies, that aren't unrelated but still distinct.

"I am One with Nature, and Untouchable,", the fantasy of going anywhere in the world and being unhurt by the terrain. Wild animals, insects, hunger, thirst, none of that touches you as a Druid.

The Dr. Doolittle, empathy for beasts concept. All of my animal friends are here, and I can finally talk to them!

The shapechanging fantasy, the ability to gain visceral, personal power and see the world with different eyes and different senses.

There's enough weight there to fill several classes. I think the closest in any system has been 3.5 with Natural Spell, which lets you be a squirrel riding a dire wolf friend who summons tornadoes to destroy cities from a mile away.

Wizard - I think the closest expression of the Wizard fantasy is "Being at a remove from humanity through lost or forbidden knowledge." Wizards have isolated towers. Wizards spend months or years in libraries deciphering ancient languages. The good ones often have habits that keep them in contact with "normal people", so they don't become monstrous (Elminster likes a good meal, Gandalf brings fireworks to entertain hobbit children, but that doesn't eliminate the essential division between a Wizard and others.

The best implementation of those concepts, to me, are the 3.5 Archivist class (a better framework for actual Wizard concepts) and the Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil PrC, which embodies "mystical knowledge protects me and makes me untouchable".

 

[roger semerad]

As a huge fan of 4th, I'd say most class concepts were done best in that edition. There are only two exceptions in my own opinion.

Ranger - The Ranger has always been a bit murky on what the class fantasy actually is. As a result, every edition has taken it in different directions. When you really think about it though, the DnD concept of the Ranger really is just the 2nd edition one. Every DnD Ranger is compared to that one.

Artificer - This class was originally built around the 3.5 item creation rules. Those rules where dropped or simplified for a reason, but that has led to the class being aimless ever since. I'll even say that the 4th edition version was the only 4th AEDU class I didn't like. I think going forward the Artificer should be more like Batman or Jarlaxle. Someone who uses a huge variety of gadgets to solve problems, choosing their gadgets as they level up as class features similar to 5th Warlock Invocations.

Finally, I want to talk about the 4th edition Swordmage.

Gish - While not a core class in any edition, it is still one of the most popular class concepts in DnD. Much like the Ranger though, it's always been a grab bag of ideas that never solidified into a single class identity, until 4th's Swordmage. That's a class where the spellcasting and physical attacks were completely and perfectly intertwined. When I think of a DnD gish, I'm thinking of the Swordmage.

 

[Clint_L]

I think "power fantasy" is so subjective that I'm not sure how to answer. When I think "power fantasy," I tend to think "overpowered" relative to the other classes, so that you feel like your character is the best. And I think that's bad design.

Archetype is, again, subjective. For example, TwoSix sees the artificer archetype as Iron Man, whereas I see it as a steampunk inventor who uses gadgets to replicate magical effects.

You could argue (and I would) that 4e is actually more about archetypes than traditional D&D classes. So maybe it does that best, but I don't enjoy 4e's take on D&D; I find it very homogenous and more like World of Warcraft in that the role is more important than the class. In general, I think 5e delivers best on my internal versions of D&D classes. But it is hard to remove nostalgia from the equation; my first main character was an AD&D Ranger, so I will always have a soft spot for that, even though wielding a 2-handed sword and wearing plate armour is not exactly what most would call the ranger archetype.

The updated monk is the only version of that class that comes close to delivering how I always wanted monks to play, so I am big on that right now. I think limiting magic to the Vancian system means that all spell casters more or less play like Wizards.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can’t speak for anything in other editions and I can barely speak for my own experience with 5e but the fundamental 5e wizard design as it appears to me really doesn’t do it for me, it might be a weird sentiment but I’d say that their design is too focused on combat and doing damage to properly fill my concept of being the smart guy with the long list of all the intricate utility hyper-niche-but-super-effective-problem-solver spells that nobody else has the smarts or desire to learn, sure you might be weak and fragile, but you know the entire rest of the team is going to do all they can to protect you because you’re worth three times your skinny weight in platinum with the magic solutions you can provide.

Every class is too focused on combat in some ways, because mechanics are more acceptable and needed in combat than they are anywhere else.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Every class is too focused on combat in some ways, because mechanics are more acceptable and needed in combat than they are anywhere else.

sure, but my point was some classes are too focused on combat simply because combat is a major part of the game rather than because it's required for representing the class fantasy.

 

[Voadam]

Druid. I'm again giving this to 5e. Largely for the versatility of the 5e wildshaping and the way it's used by the subclasses.

For me the 3.5 druid variant from Player's Handbook II was the best. Unlimited at will wild shape but a beast form with enhancements based off your stats and level. So you can do the D&D movie druid thing of turn into a weasel to run under a table to avoid someone chasing you then turn into a squirrel to jump up and climb away then turn into wolf to break out into a long distance run. Mechanically it prevented SAD CoDzilla druids dump statting physicals but still being a great physical attribute melee combatant by wildshaping into a dire bear. It provided options to be a SAD spellcaster or a MAD physical combatant wildshaper role.

I am just starting to play a 5e druid and it feels very much just a spellcaster with limited use turn into a weak polymorph. The 5e wildshape is turn into a low AC low CR monster so you basically buy yourself some easy to hit animal hp which makes the wildshaping druid a damage soaker role, which feels off theme to me for a druid. Also the big class feature being so outclassed by polymorph feels disappointing.

1e druids had weird xp, weird level limits and advancing combat, weird true neutral alignment stuff, and they took a few levels to get going at all (cure light wounds as a second level spell).