D&D 3.x What D&D 3e/3.5e classes do you wish had become core in later editions?

[DammitVictor]

I voted in the Poll, but I'm gonna vote lemon curry in the thread:

I don't want the Book of Nine Swords classes to be core in D&D Xe... I want what I wanted when I first saw it, for the martial initiator systems to have been incorporated into the existing core classes. All of them.

None of the Expanded Psionics Handbook classes were in the poll, but I would have voted for the Psion and the Soulknife in a heartbeat. Monk and Lurk should be subclasses of Psychic Warrior. Having a class for wild talents contradicts the entire concept of wild talents.

I really liked the Dragonfire Adept and the Dragon Shaman, but felt like they were awfully redundant standing next to the Sorcerer... even though they really didn't have many mechanics or party roles in common. I feel like you could easily make two good classes out of remixing these three.

Shugenja's a great class, the best "Divine Sorcerer" on the block. It just needed class features to keep up with the other divine powerhouses.

 

[wingsandsword]

For everyone asking why Book of Nine Swords, Incarnum, and Psionics weren't in this list, my thought was for classes that didn't introduce new styles of powers to the game.

Since the psion/psionicist had never been a core class in 2e, 3e or 4e, and apparently were never introduced to 5e at all, I hadn't thought that making them into a core class wasn't really an option, and if you weren't going to add a new kind of power that had a long history with D&D like psionics into the core rules, then a much more obscure source like incarnum or nine swords seemed very out-of-place.

. . .that and it was my first time creating a poll here in many years and I didn't realize that there was no ability for end users to add items to the polls. I included everything that I thought was a 3e base class from a sourcebook (other than Warlock, since that WAS made core in later editions) that didn't introduce completely new powers

. . .I do find the talk that you can somehow recreate all these classes in 5e to be puzzling. I always found 5e to be staggeringly limiting and straitjacketing, a simplified version of D&D without a lot of options, one reason I have come to avoid it like the plague. My attempts at playing 5e were all "Here's the kind of character I'd like to play. . ." as I name off something I like from 3.5 (my preferred edition) to the DM, typically using some of the above classes, and I'm told point-blank that those classes don't exist in 5e and I should stick to the 12 classes, as written, in the PHB. After the 3rd separate group saying there was NOTHING like any of the above classes in 5e (each one saying there was explicitly no "divine sorcerer" like the Favored Soul/Mystic/Shugenja, since that's a favorite character type of mine), I rather took it to be the way 5e is played and written.

Why would you need to make warlock its own class, if you could create things as completely different from other classes like artificer, favored soul, or archivist with the existing core classes. . .wouldn't warlock just be a variant of sorcerer then (since both are arcane casters that gets magic though means other than study)?

 

[Li Shenron]

None.

Core is best limited to wide archetypes, all those in the list are either narrow concept better left to subclasses or feats (or outright forgotten in a few cases), or genre-specific concepts that should belong only to selected campaign settings.

For example, I absolutely love Rokugan and it is essential to have Samurai, Shugenja and Courtiers classes. But if they had put them in the PHB then it would had cr4pped everybody's game with feudal Japan stuff, no way...

 

[wingsandsword]

For example, I absolutely love Rokugan and it is essential to have Samurai, Shugenja and Courtiers classes. But if they had put them in the PHB then it would had cr4pped everybody's game with feudal Japan stuff, no way...

Is that any different than putting monks drawn from ancient China and medieval Japan and inspired by 1970's Kung Fu movies into the pseudo-medieval environment of D&D? Or is that acceptable as something grandfathered in, since it's been core to D&D since the 1e AD&D PHB was released in 1978?

Also, courtiers are very much a western character concept and a concept that appears in other settings, note the Noble class from the Dragonlance setting. The Noble or Courtier was very much a class I felt should have been in later editions as a core class.

(I didn't include the classes Rokugan book in the poll because it wasn't a D&D branded, WotC published book, I just included the stuff in the 3e Oriental Adventures)

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

None.

Core is best limited to wide archetypes, all those in the list are either narrow concept better left to subclasses or feats (or outright forgotten in a few cases), or genre-specific concepts that should belong only to selected campaign settings.

In my opinion, bards, barbarians, rangers and druids are narrow concepts and genre-specific classes, while nobles and mystics are not.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I do have to agree that the 'feeling' of playing a lot of these classes can't really be captured with 5E. You can get close to a few with single class builds, and the concept behind most can roughly be achieved via multiclassing shenanigans, but when it comes to actually representing the feel of the class, most of them truly don't have a decent representation in the current edition.

 

[TwoSix]

Voted for Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Warmage, Healer. Obviously, water under the bridge now, but I advocated hard for narrow spell list casters with broader non-spell abilities baked into the class during the D&D Next playtest.

I still think an alternate-reality 4e, using these classes and the Book of 9 Swords model for martials as a base, would have worked really well.

 

[Neonchameleon]

. . .I do find the talk that you can somehow recreate all these classes in 5e to be puzzling. I always found 5e to be staggeringly limiting and straitjacketing, a simplified version of D&D without a lot of options, one reason I have come to avoid it like the plague. My attempts at playing 5e were all "Here's the kind of character I'd like to play. . ." as I name off something I like from 3.5 (my preferred edition) to the DM, typically using some of the above classes, and I'm told point-blank that those classes don't exist in 5e and I should stick to the 12 classes, as written, in the PHB. After the 3rd separate group saying there was NOTHING like any of the above classes in 5e (each one saying there was explicitly no "divine sorcerer" like the Favored Soul/Mystic/Shugenja, since that's a favorite character type of mine), I rather took it to be the way 5e is played and written.

The reason you can't find a "divine sorcerer" is that the sorcerer and by extension the divine sorcerer is a mechanical hack that is almost entirely unnecessary in 5e because it's quietly dropped so-called Vancian Casting in favour of people getting spell slots. This gives the sorcerer itself identity issues (they made metamagic its "thing") and means that a divine sorcerer is just a cleric.

And to me that's a reflection of how overspecified and straightjacketed 3.5 is that you need an entire separate class to do something like the Favoured Soul when it has exactly the same spell list as a cleric and has very few non-casting class features; the only things you get before level 12 are from memory weapon focus and energy resistance 10. The Mystic is from memory little different, getting a domain rather than class features. These should not need to be separate classes and it's only due to how constraining 3.5 is that they are.

Almost everything you do with a Favoured Soul or Mystic is exactly the same as you'd do with an ordinary cleric, and had you just described what you want to do and not been so hung up on the 3.5 names for classes you'd have been directed to a cleric - and found that the 5e cleric is in practice closer to the 3.5 Mystic or even Favoured Soul than to the 3.5 cleric.

Why would you need to make warlock its own class, if you could create things as completely different from other classes like artificer, favored soul, or archivist with the existing core classes. . .wouldn't warlock just be a variant of sorcerer then (since both are arcane casters that gets magic though means other than study)?

The thing is that a favoured soul isn't different from a cleric in anything but their metagame mechanics that let them shuffle spell slots around. The archivist is little different to a cleric other than that they get a spellbook and fewer hit points. That should be a cleric domain rather than being an entirely separate class (cleric domains are far bigger and more expansive than 3.5)

The Artificer is a new class - and is a class in 5e. It just isn't a core class - and I agree with both decisions. The Artificer has a massive impact on worldbuilding because it defines both how magic items are made and what they are; this is something that different fantasy worlds should be allowed to vary and that 3.5 makes magic item creation a core player-side resource is yet another way it's overspecified.

And the Warlock? The warlock gets powers from their patron. They get a total of two spell slots before level 11 - but they recharge every short rest. They also get invocations that do not work at all in the same way as spells; their relationship to both magic and time is fundamentally different from a full caster. You can't do the same things at all.

tl;dr: You aren't finding what you are looking for because what you are looking for is something 3.5 doesn't offer you on the base classes but 5e does. So you're looking for something you only need because of how restrictive 3.5 is.

 

[Minigiant]

In my opinion, bards, barbarians, rangers and druids are narrow concepts and genre-specific classes, while nobles and mystics are not.

To me, the noble really feels like a missing archetype of D&D. There is no good was to play an adventuring child of a noble or king whose increased wealth provides them with better training.

The 3e fighter lacked the knowledge and conversation skills a noble should have.
The 3e rogue gave you that but it added the criminal and backflippy elements.

It would be cool to have a noble or aristocratic class that gives you the bard's speech, the rogue's knowledge, and the fighter's skill with light arms.

4e helps as you could play a warlord and focus on the buffs and heals. But it forces you into a heavy and sticks you in the frontline in combat. Plus it doesn't really give you the option of an magical twist as the magic classes are very magical.

5e lets you give speech sills to your fighter but you are a super warrior. It's almost there but It misses the expertise. You can kludge one together as a fighter/rogue/bard but it is ugly. It would be geet to havethe option of light amror, simple weapons, a choice of the Int, Wis, Cha skills, bonus languages, and a choice of "tutors" that give you bonus weapon, item, armor, and tool profiecency or a few spells.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To me, the noble really feels like a missing archetype of D&D. There is no good was to play an adventuring child of a noble or king whose increased wealth provides them with better training.

I couldn't disagree more. Backgrounds are what you were born, Classes are about what you do. There is no inherent reason why a noble should or shouldn't be a fighter or a wizard - or the balance between physical skill and magic. For that matter there is absolutely a case for a warlock noble, either getting their powers from their hereditary pact or from their land or people.

The 3e fighter lacked the knowledge and conversation skills a noble should have.
The 3e rogue gave you that but it added the criminal and backflippy elements.

It would be cool to have a noble or aristocratic class that gives you the bard's speech, the rogue's knowledge, and the fighter's skill with light arms.

And what disadvantages? But seriously I think you're looking in the warlord or marshal category.

4e helps as you could play a warlord and focus on the buffs and heals. But it forces you into a heavy and sticks you in the frontline in combat.

The 4e warlord is far more flexible than that and goes right down to the lazy warlord that never makes an attack in combat. I think all the PHB options were frontline - but the later options increased the flexibility.

Plus it doesn't really give you the option of an magical twist as the magic classes are very magical.

Other than e.g. ritual casting, some multiclassing, and some other stuff. Or if you want a low-medium magic spin there's the bard which needn't be that magical. This also is why the noble as a class is a bad idea - nobles can be very different.