D&D General The Resurrection of Mike Mearls Games.

[Shardstone]

I feel so vindicated by @mearls latest patreon post. For years I have argued the same points but people acted like I had no idea what I was talking about. Thank god the actual game designer himself says the truth: subclasses and multiclassing holds back design and are not necessary for an advanced class.

 

[Zaukrie]

Technical debt is the worst. Multi classing is the bane of the game design. And now I know why I find subclasses boring.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

great appreciation for pointing out that multiclassing has held back 5e game design. I would love to read Mike tackling an alternative that offers the fantasy people use multiclassing to achieve but not turn every class level of every class into a cafeteria menu.

 

[el-remmen]

The untitled 5E clone (maybe "mutant" would be a better term) I am working on very slowly and piecemeal reduces classes to four base classes (Priest, Rogue, Warrior, Wizard) and then every few levels players choose another "path" for their character - so kind of like a sub/prestige class - and some of these are shared by the four base classes. So if you start as Warrior, at 3rd level you choose between Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Berserker to continue and then later (5th or 6th? - still working) each of those has a choice that branches (some of them having a new path in common - so for example the Archer path would be open to Fighters and Rangers, but not Paladins or Berserkers. The paladin path is also open to Priests who want to be better at combat).

So yeah, I am in agreement that the established subclass and multiclassing system doesn't need to be how it works for 5E influenced games (even though I love multiclassing and for core D&D no multiclassing is kind of a dealbreaker for me)>

 

[Shardstone]

There's just so many better ways to do multiclassing IMO. For example, feats and backgrounds. A feat that gives you a few features from another class, or a core feature, etc; a background that comes with free feats and other feats in the future. These things are just so much better then multiclassing imo

 

[darjr]

I dropped feats and multi classing from my latest Planescape campaign and I’m very happy about it.

 

[jgsugden]

I'm focused on the 5e SRD for now, as that's the system I am most familiar with. In terms of D&D Beyond, if that ever happened it would be pretty rad. But that's getting way ahead of myself!

When great talent and great planning align, amazing things result. I hope you'll set some long term goals for your materials and keep working towards them. The community has historically had a lot of respect for your essential contributions to the quality of the game we hold dear.

 

[Distracted DM]

Hmm, sounds like a great topic for my skill series!

Yeah I'd appreciate this, I used a version of skill challenges but would love if you revisited the topic thoroughly.

 

[mamba]

There's just so many better ways to do multiclassing IMO.

I like how SotDL does it, branch into something new every 5 levels or so (translated to D&D)

 

[mamba]

The community has historically had a lot of respect for your essential contributions to the quality of the game we hold dear.

agreed, I am underwhelmed by 2024, so am curious what Mike comes up with