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

[wingsandsword]

A bard is a very good class for a noble

Given that bards can't have lawful alignments, which most nobles probably have, no, it isn't.

 

[Minigiant]

I'd prefer not to have a noble class added, at least not one that leans on a noble title or wealth, that fits better as a background I think. The class itself could exist, but I'd prefer to divest it from what in 5e is a background. There are even some 3rd party subclasses that might fit this kind of class well like the Scholar class by Benjamin Huffman.

That class is very similar to how I'd see the noble class. Except tougher, less focus on brilliance, and more focus on connections and economy. Sort of a magic-less bard with to add back in magic or go for warrior or military officer.

I'd actually want both a scholar/sage class and a noble class for D&D. The scholar would be the upgrade of the 3.5 expert. The noble would be the upgrade of the 3.5 aristocrat.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I would have voted for swordmage if it was an option. Arcane half-caster is a big enough niche to already have 10 subclasses trying to fit the fantasy but since they're not half-casters none of them quite nail it.

Give them subclasses based on magic style (hexblade, arcane archer, and bladesinger can be core, or maybe rune knight), their own spell list that are actually designed to fit the theme and playstyle, and Weapon Runes for your Bonded Weapon to add customization similar to how Invocations fill out a Warlock.

 

[wingsandsword]

I'd actually want both a scholar/sage class and a noble class for D&D. The scholar would be the upgrade of the 3.5 expert. The noble would be the upgrade of the 3.5 aristocrat.

I also wish there was a scholar/sage class for D&D, and was always sad they never made one.

It's one reason I like the Archivist class so much, it's the closest thing they ever made to it as a core class. It's also a spellcasting class (intelligence-based Divine spellcasting out of a prayer book instead of a spellbook) but its abilities and skills are definitely the scholar/sage skill set more than anything else. The closest you could get to scholar/sage otherwise as a PC would be Bard or Wizard and then into Loremaster, but Archivist works much better for the base class in that build.

This idea that D&D classes need to be based around combat roles/niches, or their usefulness in a traditional dungeon crawl needs to die. If it's a staple role in fantasy fiction or pre-industrial history, D&D should be able to emulate it with a reasonable level of accuracy.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Literally not a single one of these needed to be a core class when Subclasses exist (if they didn't, it'd be a different discussion).

Some of them should be added to 5E as subclasses though.

It's a very different situation from 4E, where there are classes so fundamentally different that adding them as subclasses doesn't work (even when they've done it, as with Avenger, what they got is cool, but not at all the same thing).

If it's a staple role in fantasy fiction or pre-industrial history, D&D should be able to emulate it with a reasonable level of accuracy.

This doesn't make a lot of sense. A staple role in fantasy fiction, sure, but pre-industrial history? Absolutely not. D&D does not need classes for every role in pre-industrial history. It is not a historic game, nor even close to one.

Further, re: fantasy fiction, only the sort of people who actually go on adventures, and become heroes, need to be possible to replicate as a player character (the rest can be NPCs). This means that the archivist is a poor fit, because such characters are extremely rare in fantasy fiction as actually going on adventures (rather than hanging out in towers giving out quests). I can't even think of a single one who matches that and does divine magic from fantasy fiction (arcane, sure, but that's well-covered by Wizard, even if you might want a new subclass).

EDIT - Looking at Archivist specifically, even if you wanted that kind of thing in 5E, you could probably do it as a Wizard with an alternate spell list and the usual feature replacements of a Wizard subclass. It wouldn't break the game - if anything it might be a bit weaker than some subclasses.

 

[Minigiant]

This idea that D&D classes need to be based around combat roles/niches, or their usefulness in a traditional dungeon crawl needs to die. If it's a staple role in fantasy fiction or pre-industrial history, D&D should be able to emulate it with a reasonable level of accuracy.

They don't need to die. The idea just needs to be expanded. It's still D&D. Your character should be an aid in a dungeon and killing dragons. However there is more than swords, fireballs, spring traps, and cure wounds. The "it's not a fighter, thief, or a spellcaster soit doesn't belong" needs to go. D&D needs to expand within its worlds.

There is still gathering information. solving puzzles, talking down hostiles, haggling prices, appraising items, identifying items, leading NPCs, creating items, using tools, etc.

All of which can be beplace on a character with competent combat skill.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There is still gathering information. solving puzzles, talking down hostiles, haggling prices, appraising items, identifying items, leading NPCs, creating items, using tools, etc.

Pretty much all of which is covered by either the players themselves, or by the Skill system in 4E and 5E. I don't think any of that at all warrants a class based around it as a major feature. A subclass of an existing class, maybe.

 

[Neonchameleon]

. . .and there's a LOT more to D&D than just dungeon crawls.

The point of D&D classes isn't just dungeon crawling roles, it's to emulate heroes of fantasy.

And almost none of those heroes gets to take their tutors with them. They drink the same booze as the rest of the party, eat the same food, and get stabbed by the same swords. And in parties they hold up their share, not doing things outside the normal range of the rest of the PCs.

Give me these "heroes of fantasy" in mainstream fantasy novels please. Because, other than for cases where being a noble either makes the character an obvious NPC, I can't think of any where there isn't a class that fits.

And as mentioned above I listed a set of Game of Thrones nobles, all of whom have noble as a background - but even Cersei and Jaime Lannister do not belong in the same class despite being brother and sister. Neither do Jon, Arya, and Sansa despite being siblings (ish). But giving them all the same background makes sense.

There's a lot of precedent in history and fantasy fiction for the idea of a nobleman as a separate skill set.

I can't think of much that goes beyond the level of a background except in the cases where the reason nobles are nobles is because they are powerful spellcasters and have a near monopoly on magic.

Could you name these precedents please? There are plenty where a noble background is relevant - but could you name some where the class is?

I always thought it silly when reading though lists of major NPC's for settings, how mighty Kings and Emperors are usually listed as high level Fighters or Epic-level spellcasters, that just by being a longtime king you're also a world-class warrior or mage.

Indeed. That's why more sensible editions don't force NPCs into the mold of adventurers, using the same classes that professional adventurers have. Taking a Game of Thrones example, Margaery Tyrell is a great character - but is entirely unsuited as a player character for most D&D games.

I was replying to you saying that Dungeons and Dragons has a limited skill system, where you did NOT qualify what edition you were talking about. Don't try to presume that everyone plays 5e or that by saying "Dungeons and Dragons" everyone just assumes you're talking about 5e. There's a LOT more to Dungeons and Dragons than 5e.

First all versions of dungeons and dragons have a very limited skill sytem. 3.0 and 3.5 have the magic user/muggle divide meaning that their skills aren't that useful unless they are absolutely broken. 4e and 5e have more or less the same skill system. And Non-Weapon Proficiencies are a subordinate bodge-job tacked on to the side of D&D. And the only later editions after 3.5 are 4e and 5e.

I cut my roleplaying teeth on GURPS and WFRP. I use Fate fairly regularly, and am currently in a campaign using World of Darkness rules. The idea that there is any edition of D&D with a focal skill system is to me frankly risible. 4e and 5e have the two best skill systems in D&D because at least they are doing light skill systems pretty well rather than creating arbitrary and haphazard messes that serve to restrict rather than enable DMs and PCs alike.

I always thought it was silly they made Warlock a core class in later editions, out of dozens of classes they could have taken, they took a class that was literally the same "flavor" and roleplaying as a Sorcerer (i.e. arcane caster that gets spells through something other than study) and gave it a weird, highly counter-intuitive mechanic and shoved it into the core rules.

There is a huge difference fluff wise between "I get my powers from random stuff that only impacts how I act by giving me powers" and "I literally made a bargain with an overwhelming force for my powers". If you think that the fluff there is the same between having made bargains for your powers and getting them by inheriting them I wonder what you think that fluff actually is. And which mechanics are you calling counter-intuitive?

Indeed "something other than study"? There's a huge range there and that you lock them all into one box is something I find confusing. Maybe they're born with it, maybe they literally sold their soul for it. I find these two on opposite sides of study.

There always seemed to be a LOT of options that would have been better options to put into the core rules instead of Warlock, like Noble, or Favored Soul, or Mystic, or Artificer, or Knight, or Marshal, any of which would have fit far better into core D&D than warlock.

Noble and Artificer don't belong in any core edition because they have a cripplingly strong effect on the world building. This doesn't make the artificer a bad class - it makes it a very much setting specific class.

Sorcerer , Mystic, and Favoured Soul are patches in D&D 3.5 for how much of a straightjacket Gygaxo-Vancian casting is and how much some people hate it. Seriously, the fluff for favoured soul is "chosen by their God to wield divine power" - literally the same as a cleric. However 5e doesn't actually use Gygaxo-Vancian casting so all three of these classes should be utterly redundant. The sorcerer goes in by virtue of being in the 3.0 and 3.5 PHB - but few would notice if you pulled the sorcerer out entirely and replaced it with a Metamagic Arcane Tradition.

The Marshal isn't in there because the Warlord is a much better version of the same concept and the anti-4e edition hated it. And the knight should be a fighter.

Given that bards can't have lawful alignments, which most nobles probably have, no, it isn't.

Ah yes. That famous rule that more or less prevents professional concert pianists from being bards. And that 4e and 5e both wisely dumped for being utterly ridiculous. Citing a bad rule that is only present in older editions to justify creating an entire class is ... odd.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's a lot of precedent in history and fantasy fiction for the idea of a nobleman as a separate skill set.

Yeah that definitely isn't true in fantasy fiction. Indeed the direct contrary is frequently emphasized in fantasy fiction. I can think of countless fantasy series where, off the battlefield, the nobleman and the commoner have very different skills, but on it, they're very similar, even identical, or where the nobleman wizard has a fancy education, but the commoner can match them spell for spell when it comes down to it. Those are real staples of fantasy fiction.

Nobles are often shown to have exceptional skills in manipulating people, or persuading them, or navigating high society in order to get to their goal, but equally commoners will be shown to have skills the nobles lack - escape routes, getting out of dangerous situations, evading patrols, knowing what's edible, and so on.

This in D&D 5E terms, is clearly just a matter of two people of the same class/subclass, but with different stats and skills. The noble likely has higher CHA and a bunch of social skills (sadly 5E has no "etiquette"-type knowledge, so it's up to DMs and players to handle that), whereas the commoner likely has a higher WIS and skills like Survival and Perception.

History is another matter entirely, but history is totally irrelevant here (I say that as one who has studied history, note, not as an outsider). This is D&D. It bears less relationship to history than, say, Game of Thrones does, let alone actual historical fiction.

 

[wingsandsword]

This doesn't make a lot of sense. A staple role in fantasy fiction, sure, but pre-industrial history? Absolutely not. D&D does not need classes for every role in pre-industrial history. It is not a historic game, nor even close to one.

Maybe it's my background having started playing with AD&D 2e, but D&D used to explicitly model itself on historic and folklore characters and openly encourage, or outright expect, characters and campaigns built around historic characters and events. It has been explicitly historical in the past.

The 2e AD&D PHB specifically Alexander the Great and Richard the Lionheart as examples of the Fighter class, it used Homer and Will Scarlet as examples of Bards, it used Reynard the Fox and Ali Baba as examples of the Thief class, it used Robin Hood and Orion as an example of the Ranger class, it lists Roland, the Peers of Charlemagne and Sir Galahad as examples of Paladins. It explicitly said that the Druid class was based on the Germanic tribes of Western Europe during the era of the Roman Empire, it gave Archbishop Turpin from The Song of Roland as the example of an iconic Cleric, it notes that while the Wizard has no direct historic counterpart that examples from folklore would be Merlin or Circe.

D&D sourcebooks used to often assume that a D&D game was set in a world that was essentially the same culture, technology, and mindset as Medieval Europe, with magic and monsters being real instead of folklore and superstition, that demihumans would exist only on the fringes of society with humans presumed to being predominant, that magic was rare, and that to a typical peasant the only real difference between D&D and history would be that instead of a monotheistic religion, they had a polytheistic one.

The Castle Guide, a D&D sourcebook meant to be a guide to castles in D&D, was almost more a textbook on the role of castles in the middle ages with annotations on how D&D magic and monsters would change things and a few notes on how demihumans might build castles differently. There was the entire "Green Book" historic reference series that was explicitly about using various historic eras from antiquity until the 17th century as D&D settings (I once ran a year-long using those rules for a campaign set during the 3rd crusade).

. . .and even then in the main D&D multiverse we had Masque of the Red Death, which was explicitly a D&D campaign set in a Ravenloft version of 19th century Earth.

The idea that D&D is meant to model pre-modern society as well as purely fantasy worlds is hardly an alien one, and until not too long ago was even an outright official presumption in the core books and officially published settings.