D&D General Which of these should be core classes for D&D?

[Micah Sweet]

that is fair it is more that both druids and bards are well less varied archetypes and I would prefer not to double up in the core and if the bard is the arcane half caster there will be fights.

I kind of agree but wizards are built wrong for the modern game and need to have both less spell versatility but also more thematic stuff to do to make you feel like more than a general wizard who is master of all as that cuts into many possible party niches and that steps on toes.

on warlocks and cleric we are in agreement you are getting gifted power your a similar type of object.

To be honest, designing for "the modern game" is not an argument likely to win me over. Neither is niche protection or brevity in rules or options for its own sake. Put in the options you want, add the rules you need to get the experience you want. Tweak for elegance afterward.

 

[Minigiant]

Whittling down to 6 is easy for me

Fighter:The Traditional Warrior
Rogue: The Skill User
Barbarian: The Nontraditional Warrior
Wizard: The Master of Magic
Cleric: The Divine Agent
Sorcerer: The Infused with magic.

This is under the assumption that the other classes are now "major talents" that is one of which a PC must choose. Like anyone can choose Bard Music, Rage, Martial Arts, Leadership as a "super feat" at level X.

 

[jmartkdr2]

The more I think about it the weirder it is that DnD divides casters not by what kind of magic they use, but on how they initially gained access to magic, with some pretty fine distinctions (did you make a pact, swear an oath, join an order, or whatever it is clerics do? These are three distinct concepts that apparently don't overlap.)

It just makes so much more sense to me to divide by source of magic: is it holy/celestial, fiendish, primal, arcane (unaligned), from dragons, or something else? I do see how this could lead to class bloat if the sources aren't well-defined first, but it would be a lot easier to make types of magic stand out and let relationships be backstory stuff.

 

[Tony Vargas]

To be honest, designing for "the modern game" is not an argument likely to win me over. Neither is niche protection or brevity in rules or options for its own sake. Put in the options you want, add the rules you need to get the experience you want. Tweak for elegance afterward.

Really, elegance as a design ideal is something that comes from the core/root of the design. But, then again, it's a pretty rarefied, elusive, ideal. It's probably very hard to design in, even if it can be easy to see, or find lacking, in a finished product.

IDK for sure what "modern game" is supposed to mean in reference to D&D. 5e is on par with a run of the mill game from the late 80s, traditional, but polished. 4e might have stood out as innovative in the early 90s. Systems the equal of d20/3.0 were being designed at the end of the 70s or codified as core systems a few years later, 1e was behind the times when its DMG hit the shelves in '79, and D&D basically spun it's wheels for the next 20 years. Nothing about D&D seems modern, to me. D&D shouts "Tradition!" to the heavens.

 

[Mecheon]

Just move heavy armour proficiency out of the core class into the fighter and paladin subclasses.

The thing to do is say "what do all of these have in common?" Those are the core class abilities. Everything else is a subclass ability.

The problem is, all of these classes have shown they're able to stand on their own and have wider options from their base concept.

"What do we gain from merging them all together" is the question I'm asking. Because no one has given me a convincing argument why we should worry about removing them, no arguments on how it reduces things, makes it easier for people to play archetypes (if anything I'd argue it makes it harder), or that they're making it more complex, as each of these ones has its own thematically appropriate niche that doesn't intrude on other classes (Aside from pally and cleric being similar but, D&D being the only thing with Cleric means I'd be much more willing to ditch Cleric before pally). The only argument I've heard was "Older editions had it like this" and the nostalgia argument isn't working on me

Why not? You seem to be universalizing some particular design choices made in 5E. This thread is posted in the general D&D forum.

Subclasses are a 5E thing, so when discussing subclasses of course we'll discuss 5E's percularities. Likewise if discussing Kits I'd be talking 2E, or Prestige classes would be 3E and 3.5E

Ranger should. That it doesn't is IMO an error.

The ranger's idea is being not a full on front-line fighter but more of a skirmisher. The full armor concept doesn't really fit with the idea of the ranger as presented by most people. I can't see Dritz rocking up in full plate for sure. If a ranger is being dumped down with that, that's an example of how the class merge idea won't work, as you're being given stuff irrelevant to the character concept you're playing

The more I think about it the weirder it is that DnD divides casters not by what kind of magic they use, but on how they initially gained access to magic, with some pretty fine distinctions (did you make a pact, swear an oath, join an order, or whatever it is clerics do? These are three distinct concepts that apparently don't overlap.)

It just makes so much more sense to me to divide by source of magic: is it holy/celestial, fiendish, primal, arcane (unaligned), from dragons, or something else? I do see how this could lead to class bloat if the sources aren't well-defined first, but it would be a lot easier to make types of magic stand out and let relationships be backstory stuff.

Blame D&D for pushing hard on the "Wizards have books that store their spells" in early editions on that. That being so heavy on book-based wizardry meant that other ideas on casting were well open

 

[Tony Vargas]

The ranger's idea is being not a full on front-line fighter but more of a skirmisher. The full armor concept doesn't really fit with the idea of the ranger as presented by most people. I can't see Dritz rocking up in full plate for sure. If a ranger is being dumped down with that, that's an example of how the class merge idea won't work, as you're being given stuff irrelevant to the character concept you're playing

The Ranger has sure gotten muddled over the decades. It started out as a rough attempt at Aragorn given a game that had basically no skill system, which was, well, rough. Then it got Drizztz'd, which I should probably spoiler, it sounds kinda nasty, but included TWFing & light armor, because Drow liked TWF and light armor. But, not to go into the whole sad history of the class that would never had been if Dave or Gary had thought of skills in 1972....

Aragorn didn't go around fighting wraiths and orc hordes in Fellowship sans armor because armor was proscribed by his class, he did it because he was on a fast/secretive travel mission. JRRT spelled that out for us (Gimli kept his mail because he was dwarfbaddass enough that it didn't slow him down). In pitched battles, Aragorn wore armor. Same with Conan, climbing around in a ruin trying to steal something, no armor, pitched battle for Aquilonia, full mail.

3e tried, and failed so badly, to make the sort of armor you wore a logical decision instead of a class dictate. Spell failure, skill check penalities, max DEX to AC, touch & incorporeal touch AC... Armor was prettymuch just a terrible idea, especially heavy armor, unless you liked being STR-drained by Shadows...

...it would be super nice if a D&D, someday, actually pulled that off, made it so that the armor your character wore became more a function of what they were going to be doing than what choices they made at chargen... I don't expect to live long enough to see it, but, in theory, it'd be nice.

 

[schneeland]

My guess would be a solid quarter of the voters wanted a stripped down, back-to-basics core, and thus voted for 3-4 of the big 4 only.

That would definitely be true to me. Especially if we look at it from a cross edition perspective, D&D-like fantasy, at its heart, has four large character buckets for me:

1. Fighting expert
2. Skill expert
3. Arcane caster
4. Divine caster

Now each specific campaign might have more classes, but those four are basically the foundation for me (and also a reason, why I'm not fully onboard with some OSR/NSR systems folding arcane and divine caster into a single class).
However, there two additional reasons why I find it hard to pick something beyond those four as core:

1. For me, the level of abstraction differs between these four and something like Druid, Bard or Ranger - the above-mentioned four could also serve as building blocks, so a Bard could be mostly skill-fokused with a bit of arcane casting, or a Range a hybrid between fighter and skill expert with a focus on exploration skills, bows and traps
2. The above four have a rather clear distinction and while multiple hybrids would be possible, the moment you e.g. add Barbarian, it overlaps with the fighter and the moment you add a druid, it overlaps with the cleric

Now it would be equally possible to look at possible archetypes of classical fantasy and decide that each should have its own class. In that case, the above four should rather be broken up.
However, if we keep the above four, then I'm fine with those. And since we have two more "slots" for the 6 class model, we can add Elf and Dwarf as class. Halflings lose, but I'm sure they don't mind spending their days tending to their gardens and having second breakfast instead of going on adventures

 

[jmartkdr2]

The Ranger has sure gotten muddled over the decades. It started out as a rough attempt at Aragorn given a game that had basically no skill system, which was, well, rough. Then it got Drizztz'd, which I should probably spoiler, it sounds kinda nasty, but included TWFing & light armor, because Drow liked TWF and light armor. But, not to go into the whole sad history of the class that would never had been if Dave or Gary had thought of skills in 1972....

Aragorn didn't go around fighting wraiths and orc hordes in Fellowship sans armor because armor was proscribed by his class, he did it because he was on a fast/secretive travel mission. JRRT spelled that out for us (Gimli kept his mail because he was dwarfbaddass enough that it didn't slow him down). In pitched battles, Aragorn wore armor. Same with Conan, climbing around in a ruin trying to steal something, no armor, pitched battle for Aquilonia, full mail.

3e tried, and failed so badly, to make the sort of armor you wore a logical decision instead of a class dictate. Spell failure, skill check penalities, max DEX to AC, touch & incorporeal touch AC... Armor was prettymuch just a terrible idea, especially heavy armor, unless you liked being STR-drained by Shadows...

...it would be super nice if a D&D, someday, actually pulled that off, made it so that the armor your character wore became more a function of what they were going to be doing than what choices they made at chargen... I don't expect to live long enough to see it, but, in theory, it'd be nice.

You just need to make the gap between armored and unarmored small enough that reasonable people can disagree on which is 'usually' better. I'd say no more than 3 points of AC, although 1-2 would be better.

As it stands, a heavy armor paladin would lose about 8 points of AC if they had to wander around unarmored. That's never gonna be a good idea unless armor is somehow not an option at all, in which case the paladin is just no longer able to survive melee - which really curtails their options.

So... all new way to calculate AC. That's what you need.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You just need to make the gap between armored and unarmored small enough that reasonable people can disagree on which is 'usually' better. I'd say no more than 3 points of AC, although 1-2 would be better.

DEX is part of the problem, I think.
TSR era, DEX improved AC by up to 4, but that was vs one attack per round, and it added regardless of armor worn. So, very nice, but the best armor you could wear (due to class) was still the way to go.
3.0 on, heavy armor is often not as good as light armor + DEX, so it's the option used by classes that have too much demand for other stats to maximize DEX. And heavy armor is a bad choice if you do have high DEX, because it caps your bonus.

Essentially DEX, rather than situation, dictates armor worn in WotC D&D. Class, rather than situation, dictated armor in TSR D&D.

 

[Lanefan]

The Warlord is the Teamwork class, something that's only happened once in the history of the game and never should have gone away.

The tricky bit there is to make a "Teamwork" class functional while at the same time not having it become one (or both) of:

a) the Support class, whose primary role is to stand to the side and do nothing but help the other characters shine. Those have never been popular player choices - example: the 1e Cleric or the 3e buff-monkey.
b) the Tell-People-What-To-Do class, who becomes effective only when the other characters fall into line. Those have never been popular among other characters - example: Paladins (though they're more Tell-People-How-To-Behave) - and only serve to cause in-party fights.

Rogue is simply the class that deserves to exist the most.

On this we agree, though maybe not for exactly the same reasons.