D&D 5E What about warlocks and sorcerers?

[Dausuul]

That's not nitpicking, its flat out wrong. That's a wizard not an invoker, who is a divine magic caster, not arcane. The closest pre 4e class to invoker would be arcivist and even that is stretching it.

There was an invoker in 2E and it was a wizard. Just because 4E grabbed the name and stuck it on a revamped archivist doesn't give the 4E version exclusive rights to it. I could just as easily look at the 4E version and say "That's not an invoker, it's a specialty priest."

The title should be amended to Sorcerors, Warlocks, and Psions are all mages now.

Yes according to Mike Psions will be under the Mage purview, Pyschwarriors and I think Battleminds will be under the purview of fighters.

Bwah-HUH?

*brain melts*

Wow. I trust that particular change will get revoked when it comes time to create the Complete Psionics Handbook or whatever the 5E equivalent is. I've never been a fan of psionics, but it's well established in D&D as being its own beast, distinct from both arcane and divine magic. In the one published setting to make extensive use of psionics (Dark Sun), that distinction is vitally important.

Lots more was said by mike on topics like the Warlock and Sorceror. Like both stuff like binders, hexblades, as well as individual pact types would fall under the domain of warlocks like wizards schools, and sorceror bloodlines.

Now that I agree with. The binder concept overlaps heavily with warlock, and hexblades have always struck me as being more "warlock gishes" than anything else.

 

[Li Shenron]

This is just....wow. I'm at a loss for words. I can't even describe how awful this is. As much as I like Next, they've actually managed to so something so colossally stupid that I'd rather play Pathfinder instead. I can only hope that a tidal wave of negative feedback will ensue and knock some sense into them.

Ditto. At this point, I can only hope that none of those non-wizard options are in the core books, so that I don't have to deal with it. This is really such a wrong idea that it's almost a deal-breaker for me.

 

[Dausuul]

Ditto. At this point, I can only hope that none of those non-wizard options are in the core books, so that I don't have to deal with it. This is really such a wrong idea that it's almost a deal-breaker for me.

I wouldn't go quite that far, but then I don't like psionics anyway. It's certainly a bad decision though. Keep your dang psionics out of my arcane magic!

I suppose there are arguments in favor of consolidating classes, but the implications are pretty far-reaching. I mean, if you can justify lumping warlocks in with wizards, then there's no justification at all for having the barbarian, ranger, or paladin. Dump them all into fighter (the paladin might get dumped into cleric instead). Likewise, druid gets shoved into cleric, and bard into rogue.

And you know what? Even then, I wouldn't put psion under mage. If psion has to be consolidated with one of the Traditional Classes, they should do what 4E did and put it with the monk.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

With the Hexblade I wouldn't bother putting it under Mage despite it being a Warlock subclass in 4e, it's something that I see as being a Paladin subclass, especially the 3e Hexblade.

 

[Dausuul]

With the Hexblade I wouldn't bother putting it under Mage despite it being a Warlock subclass in 4e, it's something that I see as being a Paladin subclass, especially the 3e Hexblade.

That's an interesting thought. It does make a lot of sense. For that matter, the warlock itself has a case for being a variant breed of cleric rather than mage.

 

[Plaguescarred]

Mike Tweeted earlier tonight;

@Edwin_Suijkerbu ijkerbu will scorcerer be a seperate class or alternative for the Mage wizardry feature
@mikemearls alternative to wizardry

@Clockworknektie so is the warlock still likely to be a full class at release?
@mikemearls Will be a flavor of mage, like wizardry, with pact choices that fill niche similar to wizard's school of magic

 

[Dausuul]

Mike Tweeted earlier tonight;

@Edwin_Suijkerbu ijkerbu will scorcerer be a seperate class or alternative for the Mage wizardry feature
@mikemearls alternative to wizardry

@Clockworknektie so is the warlock still likely to be a full class at release?
@mikemearls Will be a flavor of mage, like wizardry, with pact choices that fill niche similar to wizard's school of magic

Did he say what class the ninja would go under?

 

[Li Shenron]

Did he say what class the ninja would go under?

All of them, obviously.

I wouldn't go quite that far...

Yes ok, admittedly I overreacted... I won't skip 5e just because of this idea, but still, lumping all arcane casters under one class is just plain nonsense. Once again, they haven't yet explained what would be the benefits (sharing the same spell list is not, since they are already suggesting that not all wizard spells will be appropriate for sorcerers for instance, and even less for psions).

It seems from the tweets that for some reasons they want to keep the number of base classes limited. That's good, I largely preferred the limited number of early 3e days than the latter flood. But how is 12-13 classes such a bad deal compared to 10?

The problem is that this way there are either going to be 10 times more subclasses for Mage than any other class (unless they only release 1 sorcerer subclass, 1 warlock pact, etc.), so instead of class proliferation we'll have subclass proliferation. Wizard alone will have 9 at least (8 schools + 1 generalist), while the other classes (except Cleric) are already struggling a bit for subclasses ideas...

It would be understandable if they purposefully wanted to forbid multiclassing between arcane casters, but why?

 

[Warbringer]

Great information.

So the Mage is now the grab-bag arcanist, while we have 5 classes for swinging a stick.

The only way I an make sense of this (and its not a bad idea) is that it reflects the inherent dichotomy of the complexity of the class. Picking a stick swinger is a two step choice (class/way) a grab-bag arcanist a three step (class/tradition/specialty). From a book perspective, the section sizes (a few pages vs. half the book inc. spells) certainly points a new player towards simplicity.

Apart from that, feels like a cluster.

Also interested if multiclassing is at the class or subclass level for permissible classes ( guess is subclass ok, tradition/way not ok)

 

[tuxgeo]

I complete agree with these...

Why can't they just continue with the simplest solution i.e. designing separate classes for each arcane caster?

Where exactly is the benefit in having one class to rule them all? Why having 5 martial classes but 1 giant arcane class? < snip >

We can only guess about what the benefit is supposed to be.

My guess: the company calls itself "Wizards of the Coast," so everything magical has to be "wizards." It's a corporate-ego thing, that's my guess.