D&D General What elements does D&D need to keep?

[Minigiant]

I could do without multiclassing. But I feel as though that might be left over resentment from 3.5.

Mutilclassing, like feats, deities, and cosmologies are more like core options. Not default in D&D for the feel but should be official supported by D&D.

 

[cbwjm]

Yes to all of the above! Variations of each can be subclasses of fighters, clerics and magic-users. I'm a big fan of the Man of War, Man of Faith, Man of Magic archetypes, whether I'm reading Gordon R. Dickson or Giambattista Vico. Backgrounds, feats, and subclasses handle thieves, assassins and rangers just fine.

Assassin, thief, and ranger could all be skill/power packages that add to other classes. Like, adding assassin to the 3 basic classes and you get fighter (assassin), priest (holy slayer), magic-user (mage slayer).

 

[TwoSix]

S&P clerics could replace every other class with maybe exception of thief.
The split ability thing was dumb but point buy classes and races had issues as well cleric being front and centre of that.

Even thief wasn't that hard to pull off; you could get select 4 thief skills for 25 points per Spells & Magic. I remember a guy did a bunch of warrior stuff, 4 thief skills and Animal and Plant domains to make a pretty nice ranger facsimile.

 

[Greg Benage]

Because there is not class for them to be.

The blacksmith doesn't know spells nor how to fight at a high proficiency.

So if your blacksmith's or farmer's village is burned down by a dragon, there is no class for him to take for revenge if all the specialists are gone.

What in the world?!?

The blacksmith doesn't know how to fight or use magic, so you should bolt it onto a "class" that gets Dex and Int save proficiencies, sneak attack, and Thieves' Cant?

The blacksmith is a fighter. About all that should tell us is that he's comparatively tough, hard to knock down, knows his way around weapons and armor, and gets extra damage with his hammer. Everything else can come from subclass.

 

[Zardnaar]

Even thief wasn't that hard to pull off; you could get select 4 thief skills for 25 points per Spells & Magic. I remember a guy did a bunch of warrior stuff, 4 thief skills and Animal and Plant domains to make a pretty nice ranger facsimile.

I think you could also build a cleric with all wizard schools and minor access to healing.

Said "cleric" leveled up faster, 1d8 hd and weapons and armor of cleric.

 

[TwoSix]

I think you could also build a cleric with all wizard schools and minor access to healing.

Said "cleric" leveled up faster, 1d8 hd and weapons and armor of cleric.

Yes, and also had way more spell slots; the only downside was not getting 8th and 9th level slots, which wasn't even a factor until 16th level.

Nobody did that, in my experience; the spellcaster types took 3-4 schools and a bunch of good domains.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yes, and also had way more spell slots; the only downside was not getting 8th and 9th level slots, which wasn't even a factor until 16th level.

Nobody did that, in my experience; the spellcaster types took 3-4 schools and a bunch of good domains.

I had a wizard player who wanted to do that. I had to say no.

He figured out the level 16 thing as well even if we got that high he didn't care.

The cleric as wizard was pretty damn good.

If I built something like that would probably do 6 schools and some cleric spheres.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I feel like there's a lot more variety in Pathfinder

More in PF2, which I would likely enjoy more if I could actually play it.

A lot more in PF1, although a lot of that is rendered false choice because of balance issues. Even if it was balanced, I'd probably say they went overboard.

But 5e has just barely enough for my taste.

 

[Minigiant]

What in the world?!?

The blacksmith doesn't know how to fight or use magic, so you should bolt it onto a "class" that gets Dex and Int save proficiencies, sneak attack, and Thieves' Cant?

The blacksmith is a fighter. About all that should tell us is that he's comparatively tough, hard to knock down, knows his way around weapons and armor, and gets extra damage with his hammer. Everything else can come from subclass.

The issue is that the blacksmith as a fight is leagues weaker than the trained military soldier, tribal warrior, semiexperienced gladiator, questing crusader, or defender of the forest.

That's the core issue with paring down classes. You cannot boil the Barbarian, Ranger, Monk, or warrior former warrior class down to its elements and include the blacksmith and farmer in the same class. If the Cobbler is a fighter, the Berserker can't be.

D&D is a class based game about archetypes. So there is only so much you could bolt on before it becomes a skill based game. Also the archetype range too much into much to compress down.

 

[TwoSix]

I had a wizard player who wanted to do that. I had to say no.

He figured out the level 16 thing as well even if we got that high he didn't care.

The cleric as wizard was pretty damn good.

If I built something like that would probably do 6 schools and some cleric spheres.

Yea, the upside to using only one class was that class balance ceased to be an issue. A point-buy cleric is straight up better than a wizard, but since there weren't any wizards, it didn't matter.