Unpopular opinions go here

[Thomas Shey]

In general, I think the few class with a lot of options for building archetypes through choices is a better model anyway.

Perhaps surprisingly for me, I generally agree if you're going to bother with a class system, as long as the options are extensive enough.

 

[Rushbolt]

Ideally, the answer to the bolded question should be "sorry, you're out of luck; cast a spell of another level for which you still have a slot available".

The second bolded bit is the exact reason why spell points become more and more broken as character levels advance.

I am a little bit slow on the reply, but I want to reiterate that spell points would only be given for the level 1-5 slots. This makes the point total 64 points at level 10. You don't end up with the crazy 133 points in the DMG. You might bump the total to 71 at 18th level because full casters get another 5th level slot there but that's all. That does mean a 10th level caster can fire the magic missile spell 32 times but is that broken? It's an average of 10 damage a round at level 10!
Let's even consider a great spell for damage like fireball. Spell points allow a level 10 full caster to cast it 12 times at level 3. Spell slots still allow fireball to be cast 8 times with level 3,4, and 5 slots. My belief is that allowing the extra spells goes a long way in solving the five minute adventuring day where casters only do a few battles before taking a long rest. It's even more useful at lower levels where this problem is even more prevalent.
The other way this is really helpful is in fixing the Warlock. You can keep spell progression normal but limit spells points to better represent the class. The wonderful designers of A5E already do this for the Warlock to address the limited spells from pact magic issue. If you want to remove the Warlock short rest recharge mechanic you can just multiply the points on the A5E table by the number of short rests you believe the warlock would typically receive in a day. I would multiply by 3 as 5e is actually designed assuming 2 short rests per day. The 10th level Warlock ends up with 51 points at level 10 instead of 64 so they basically become 80% of a full caster. This also explains why the playtest version of the Warlock seemed underpowered with them as half-casters.

 

[Autumnal]

Torchbearer!

Torchbearer for a while campaign of minimal combat? Huh.

 

[deganawida]

Fantasy Europe should be retired from RPGs, novels, and media for the next 25 years, at minimum.

 

[FrogReaver]

Fantasy Europe should be retired from RPGs, novels, and media for the next 25 years, at minimum.

Fantasy Australia sounds fun.

 

[DammitVictor]

No matter how hard I’ve tried over 30 years, I cannot get into FR. Something about it just hits the unconscious part of my mind in such a way as to actually make me nauseous every time that I have made a serious attempt. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know if it would be the same with the gray box (never read it), but my mind rebels from it in a way that very few things have caused.

Zakhara, Kara-Tur, and even Maztica would have been better settings if they hadn't been shoehorned into the Forgotten Realms. The latter, too, Forgotten Realms would have been better without its reality-warping attempt to do a Very Special Episode about colonialism.

 

[Faolyn]

Not so much an unpopular opinion as an unpopular taste: I want a game with the smart good stuff from class and level games like various chunks of D&D lineage, 13th Age, etc etc, and/or various versions of WHFRP, with cool magic of various sorts and multiple species of PCs and lots of room for adventure, but with very little combat. I want characters to go places, meet people, uncover secrets with minimal bloodshed - often, none. But designing such a game in which almost all the combat-related mechanics, advice, and setting elements are outright replaced by other things is apparently not a thing to do.

For a game like D&D, "all" you'd need to do is remake the classes. People expect combat when half the classes are designed around combat and the other half have access to combat abilities. Just come up with new class ideas where combat is a distant third.

 

[Autumnal]

For a game like D&D, "all" you'd need to do is remake the classes. People expect combat when half the classes are designed around combat and the other half have access to combat abilities. Just come up with new class ideas where combat is a distant third.

My thing is that I’m not currently capable of that much creative effort, between mental health problems, physical health problems, and demanding family needs. I’m happy to pay for it, but I’m really stuck as a consumer these days.

 

[Reynard]

My thing is that I’m not currently capable of that much creative effort, between mental health problems, physical health problems, and demanding family needs. I’m happy to pay for it, but I’m really stuck as a consumer these days.

Yeah. You can't give the Lawyer class a Trial Law feat chain without there being a Trial Law rules system in place. You might be able to use the basic framework of d20 or 5E to build such a game, but nothing in D&D beyond the core mechanic is going to help you get there.

 

[Aldarc]

Unpopular Opinion:

The Paladin is just a Fighter/Cleric.

Maybe unpopular but 100% true.

More Unpopular: there is no difference between the cleric and paladin.

I've been saying this for years. The differences are purely mechanical, not archetypical.

More unpopular opinions: One thing that I dislike about D&D's classes is that they are a weird mix of too broad and too narrow. Like you have these classes like the Wizard and Fighter that were originally meant to encapsulate all mages and all warriors, respectively, but then a bunch of classes were added later for narrower archetypes, like Ranger, Barbarian, or Monk and Sorcerer, Warlock, and Bard. I kinda think that D&D would be better if it either gutted the narrow classes or the broad classes, but the mix of both causes a lot of redundancies. But it feels stuck with the classes they have because legacy and the backlash if they were removed or altered in any way. And this issue isn't helped by some oddities like having clerics and paladins, as seen above.