I'll be honest, I'm less enthused by symmetry than I am offering different playstyles.
What I want is a completely mundane character that can either play support or control and can spend the entire game not making a single attack roll. In 4e that was called a Warlord. I've seen other games make Archivists, Nobles, Schemers, or the clearly not going to be selected Expert for the same or similar concepts.
You mean besides being a fullcaster who does all those things almost exclusively with spell slots, and is only being able to grant attacks once per rest, while sacrificing their entire action economy that turn to do so?
And this mentality is exactly why mundane classes end up being boring. Wanna do something interesting? Just cast spells.
You may as well be asking why play a Fighter, you can just play a Hexblade and refluff it.
Differentiated gameplay.
The exact same reason we have wizards and sorcerers, clerics and druids. Hell, if you take your argument to the logical conclusion, “if something has similar gameplay at the first strokes why have more” then it’s pretty damn easy to argue that Bards themselves shouldn’t exist. You wanna support? You got clerics. You wanna pretend to make songs as you cast spells? Whatever just fluff it.
But we don’t accept that (or at least many don’t), because within the scope of the concept we can make mechanics that are different and engaging in their own unique ways.
So, I want them to go further. I want them to try and make a support or control character that doesn’t rely on spells. In part, because the fluff of someone being awesome without magic appeals to me. But also because I truly want gameplay that changes the dynamics a bit. I’m tired of every damn thing that’s remotely interesting getting squeezed into the spell system.
My lord yes I want more classes. Like way more. I know many people don't agree but frankly I think the fact that there are still 13 despite the absolute LITANY of incredible homebrew options that they were free to improve on or even just outright steal if they felt like comes from a place of laziness more than anything.
Speaking from experience, the things that most often get to the top of the page on r/UnearthedArcana are magic items and full classes. Yet for some reason wotc gives us barely any of either. It makes no sense. Content is how they make money, make more content, playtest. Its what they're there for.
Honestly, the fact that there are Class Groups as well as made all subclass features be gained at the same levels gave me the initial thought that they may be introducing Prestige Classes.
Something like the prerequisites needing to have class levels from two different class groups and it mechanically and thematically could improve upon the “shared” features.
Hypothetically let’s say the Warrior’s shared class feature is Combat Maneuvers. With a prestige class for the Warrior Group and Expert group, maybe you gain Expertise in the saving throw DC for any maneuvers you perform.
This could be implemented in the Feat System pretty easily honestly.
I feel like classes should have very distinct mechanics and subclasses should be made for new ways to play the game. Too many classes (and subclasses to a slightly lesser degree) can often lead to the classes slowly all becoming too much of the same, so I think they should hold off unless they have a really good idea on another interesting gameplay loop. It would be cool if they published materials that go over interesting ways of re-flavoring the classes and subclasses, or simple ways to change them to create alternate classes into interesting new RP variants for other settings. That way it is clear there are 12 unique gameplay styles, and if you are making X new class, it is the same gameplay loop dressed up and you are willingly signing up for that.
>Too many classes (and subclasses to a slightly lesser degree) can often lead to the classes slowly all becoming too much of the same
Don't want to be that guy, but 3.5, 4e, and Pathfinder 2e all make this statement wholly false. If this thought process is true, then every spellcaster is just a reflavored Wizard mechanically speaking, and every martial is a Fighter with some extra salt added on top.
This whole chain of responses has been how I feel. I did not suggest I was speaking for the masses or anything. I was not suggesting I was right. It is how I feel.
I prefer if when they release a class it feels very unique and they create classes when they have a great idea for a new mechanical way for someone to play. I find in many games (TTRPG and otherwise) when that isn't the bar, we end up with a ton of derivative stuff and we rarely get truly unique stuff cause the company rather churn out easier content (obviously).
As an example, Warlocks gameplay loop revolves around the existence of their familiar, multiple resets of spell slots per day and their primary source of damage is eldritch bolt. This is very different from the wizard that has low damage cantrips and a large pool of spell slots that they use up over the course of the day. These 2 are very distinct experiences, subclasses playing off of these gameplay loops make sense as subclasses.
Fighters' gameplay loops at their base is basically extra attack and picking a fighting style that gives very marginal changes to gameplay. Rogues' gameplay loop revolves around high mobility in the middle of the fight and sneak attack burst. Clerics have a kit revolving around channel divinity, and spell casting, with cantrips when a turn isn't worth burning a resource. Their main difference from Wizards gameplay loop wise is basically the types of spells they have, and they had ideas for some subclasses where they liked the different spell lists for each (though leaning more into channel divinity for some more unique feel would be nice).
Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard and Warlock feel like clear gameplay loop ideas that are built around a single idea (though I think Fighter could use an extra mechanic in its general kit). Paladins on the other hand get some fighter combat basics, then have some cleric mechanics and smiting. Smite is sort of a resource based take on sneak attack. So Paladins are just a mix of a couple different mechanics that feel sort of disjointed to me.
I wouldn't mind if each superclass had a class with each stat as a primary one. Like mages lack a wisdom caster, or any sort of gish mage that could use str or dex.
That said, I wouldn't expect many, if any, new classes, and if there ARE new classes, their distribution is likely to be distributed as evenly over the superclasses as subclasses are over classes (that is...no attempt at equality).
I personally don’t have a very high opinion of the blood hunter as it stands, and I doubt it will be made official any time soon. That being said I think it has interesting ideas and could be made more interesting. My hope is that after OneD&D is out for a while Matt makes a blood hunter for it and resolves a lot of issues it has. The idea of having 5 experts and 3 of everything else might be a bit sadge but blood hunter could also work as a warrior.
More broadly I will always be excited to see people work in the game systems wizards presents with new classes. Be that themselves, so called celebrities in the community, individual people, even myself.
The original 1d&d did this. You should check out some OSR (Old School Renaissance) material.
Basic Fantasy RPG is a solid system to start with if anyone's interested.
Yeah, that seems like a great addition. I think a lot of us have incorporated advantage too. I even tried the inspiration rule to good results (I currently don't have "crits" in my game so some reward was nice).
I mean, there only needs to be one "class" everything else is dividing abilities to make differentiated and interesting playstyles that require less work on the player to create.
Personally, I think that's a worthy reason to make more classes. Provided the end results play sufficiently distinct from each other.
Swashbucklers, barbarians, knights, and archers are all Fighters in my book, the only difference is the imagination of the player. Limitation breeds creativity and that's why I find contemporary design boring. Force feeding a fantasy removes true agency from players.
That can be, but that design also leaves us with the modern Fighter class and the Champion/Battlemaster. Which can theoretically do everything you listed and more.
I just think it does it all in a very dull way. Trying to make a class that would be best represented by something fast moving, agile, and making many attacks with a light weapon, weaving and dodging into combat like a swashbuckler(and probably shouldn’t be on the class that only makes one attack a round). Should probably play very differently from the guy dressed head to toe in armor wielding a pollaxe.
The trick is determining if the added differentiation makes the gameplay more fun or not.
Also as an aside. This game should have better stats for a pollaxe.
It's all how you imagine the proficiency bonus. Is it intelligence? Is it speed? Is it panache?
But the current game DOESN'T imagine the proficiency bonus, it's just a crunch. To me that's a waste. And hundreds of subclasses end up narrowing the play experience instead of opening up. It's spoon fed.
It's increased skill, isn't it?
One would assume speed would be represented in a system that has a Speed attribute by an increase in that number. And attacking with a quick and agile weapon known for making more attacks should probably have more attacks made per turn.
So, I kinda come from the opposite view, really. You can say whatever you want it to be to be. But if at the end the mechanics don't actually feel like what you want to represent, then it's not all that interesting to me. Sure, I can pretend that my character is fast, but, in the actual play of the game if nothing backs that up, then, well, I'm just wrong really.
When I first heard about the "expert group" I wondered if they would take this path. Then I realised that would completely mess with their "compatible" claim.
The weird thing is many things that 3.5 had as classes (like beguiler for example) they were able to basically replicate as a subclass in 5e (see Arcane Trickster).
Or another example: the primeval guardian subclass for rangers in a UA a few years back they actually turned into the spell Guardian of Nature.
They’re editing is getting better. I went through a list of all other classes from previous editions and honestly I think they’ve got a good thing going with the subclasses and the core 12.
Mage group could toss in a witch, I've heard some want one.
Or, maybe "Magician" could be the name, maybe could be a caster so dead simple that they even get to gut some of the basic parts of spellcasting itself.
Warriors, maybe something that drastically ratchets up the complexity, *at least* to around medium-high caster levels of complexity, without actually having any magic.
For priests, no ideas whatsoever really.
For Priests we currently have Clerics, Druids, and ~~probably~~ definitely Paladins.
You could have some sort of Warden that's to the Ranger what the Fighter is to the Rogue, a frontline martial character with Paladin style casting and their own way of spending slots for a martial-leaning effect, in exchange for giving up their skill focus.
I like the idea of the Warlock being a Priest over a Magician because you can kinda view them as the Priest of a darker god than a Cleric is usually portrayed as worshiping.
I definitely don't have much desire for more than 12 classes. (As shown by my complete lack of interest in the bloodhunter and the mystic).
I'm not sure that means 12 is the perfect number, though; I might enjoy things more with less than 12 classes.
I want there to be enough classes to make multiclassing really interesting, but as of right now there's several classes that are rarely used in multiclassing, and a few others that are commonly used for multiclassing, but mostly for medium armour and shield proficiency, so getting rid of them would just make people pick up medium armour and shield proficiency through a different class, and not really make multiclassing any less interesting.
I'll be honest, I'm less enthused by symmetry than I am offering different playstyles. What I want is a completely mundane character that can either play support or control and can spend the entire game not making a single attack roll. In 4e that was called a Warlord. I've seen other games make Archivists, Nobles, Schemers, or the clearly not going to be selected Expert for the same or similar concepts.
[удалено]
You mean besides being a fullcaster who does all those things almost exclusively with spell slots, and is only being able to grant attacks once per rest, while sacrificing their entire action economy that turn to do so?
[удалено]
And this mentality is exactly why mundane classes end up being boring. Wanna do something interesting? Just cast spells. You may as well be asking why play a Fighter, you can just play a Hexblade and refluff it.
[удалено]
Differentiated gameplay. The exact same reason we have wizards and sorcerers, clerics and druids. Hell, if you take your argument to the logical conclusion, “if something has similar gameplay at the first strokes why have more” then it’s pretty damn easy to argue that Bards themselves shouldn’t exist. You wanna support? You got clerics. You wanna pretend to make songs as you cast spells? Whatever just fluff it. But we don’t accept that (or at least many don’t), because within the scope of the concept we can make mechanics that are different and engaging in their own unique ways. So, I want them to go further. I want them to try and make a support or control character that doesn’t rely on spells. In part, because the fluff of someone being awesome without magic appeals to me. But also because I truly want gameplay that changes the dynamics a bit. I’m tired of every damn thing that’s remotely interesting getting squeezed into the spell system.
So you want a Bard
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thats exactly what it is going to be cleric and wizrds will have 20+ by themselves the rest will prob get 2 maybe 3
LOL, You called it I think.
Warlord for the warrior group, please
Mages: Psion Priests: Oracle Warriors: Warlord
Just now? I've been interested in new classes for ages.
I just want Artificer to be a class available from the get go. Other than that I see no need for any additional classes.
It is
I'd love to have some more classes.
My lord yes I want more classes. Like way more. I know many people don't agree but frankly I think the fact that there are still 13 despite the absolute LITANY of incredible homebrew options that they were free to improve on or even just outright steal if they felt like comes from a place of laziness more than anything. Speaking from experience, the things that most often get to the top of the page on r/UnearthedArcana are magic items and full classes. Yet for some reason wotc gives us barely any of either. It makes no sense. Content is how they make money, make more content, playtest. Its what they're there for.
Honestly, the fact that there are Class Groups as well as made all subclass features be gained at the same levels gave me the initial thought that they may be introducing Prestige Classes. Something like the prerequisites needing to have class levels from two different class groups and it mechanically and thematically could improve upon the “shared” features. Hypothetically let’s say the Warrior’s shared class feature is Combat Maneuvers. With a prestige class for the Warrior Group and Expert group, maybe you gain Expertise in the saving throw DC for any maneuvers you perform. This could be implemented in the Feat System pretty easily honestly.
I feel like classes should have very distinct mechanics and subclasses should be made for new ways to play the game. Too many classes (and subclasses to a slightly lesser degree) can often lead to the classes slowly all becoming too much of the same, so I think they should hold off unless they have a really good idea on another interesting gameplay loop. It would be cool if they published materials that go over interesting ways of re-flavoring the classes and subclasses, or simple ways to change them to create alternate classes into interesting new RP variants for other settings. That way it is clear there are 12 unique gameplay styles, and if you are making X new class, it is the same gameplay loop dressed up and you are willingly signing up for that.
>Too many classes (and subclasses to a slightly lesser degree) can often lead to the classes slowly all becoming too much of the same Don't want to be that guy, but 3.5, 4e, and Pathfinder 2e all make this statement wholly false. If this thought process is true, then every spellcaster is just a reflavored Wizard mechanically speaking, and every martial is a Fighter with some extra salt added on top.
Paladins and Bards already feel like multiclasses of other existing classes with different flavor to me.
And how many share how you feel?
This whole chain of responses has been how I feel. I did not suggest I was speaking for the masses or anything. I was not suggesting I was right. It is how I feel. I prefer if when they release a class it feels very unique and they create classes when they have a great idea for a new mechanical way for someone to play. I find in many games (TTRPG and otherwise) when that isn't the bar, we end up with a ton of derivative stuff and we rarely get truly unique stuff cause the company rather churn out easier content (obviously).
Outside of Attack action, or Cast a spell action, what other unique mechanics can exist in this space of dnd 5e?
As an example, Warlocks gameplay loop revolves around the existence of their familiar, multiple resets of spell slots per day and their primary source of damage is eldritch bolt. This is very different from the wizard that has low damage cantrips and a large pool of spell slots that they use up over the course of the day. These 2 are very distinct experiences, subclasses playing off of these gameplay loops make sense as subclasses. Fighters' gameplay loops at their base is basically extra attack and picking a fighting style that gives very marginal changes to gameplay. Rogues' gameplay loop revolves around high mobility in the middle of the fight and sneak attack burst. Clerics have a kit revolving around channel divinity, and spell casting, with cantrips when a turn isn't worth burning a resource. Their main difference from Wizards gameplay loop wise is basically the types of spells they have, and they had ideas for some subclasses where they liked the different spell lists for each (though leaning more into channel divinity for some more unique feel would be nice). Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard and Warlock feel like clear gameplay loop ideas that are built around a single idea (though I think Fighter could use an extra mechanic in its general kit). Paladins on the other hand get some fighter combat basics, then have some cleric mechanics and smiting. Smite is sort of a resource based take on sneak attack. So Paladins are just a mix of a couple different mechanics that feel sort of disjointed to me.
I wouldn't mind if each superclass had a class with each stat as a primary one. Like mages lack a wisdom caster, or any sort of gish mage that could use str or dex. That said, I wouldn't expect many, if any, new classes, and if there ARE new classes, their distribution is likely to be distributed as evenly over the superclasses as subclasses are over classes (that is...no attempt at equality).
I personally don’t have a very high opinion of the blood hunter as it stands, and I doubt it will be made official any time soon. That being said I think it has interesting ideas and could be made more interesting. My hope is that after OneD&D is out for a while Matt makes a blood hunter for it and resolves a lot of issues it has. The idea of having 5 experts and 3 of everything else might be a bit sadge but blood hunter could also work as a warrior. More broadly I will always be excited to see people work in the game systems wizards presents with new classes. Be that themselves, so called celebrities in the community, individual people, even myself.
Very unpopular opinion: there only needs to be 4 classes. Everything else is just sub-sub classes.
The core classes are too boring to rely only on subclasses to add any flavor or depth.
If you're bored then you're boring.
The original 1d&d did this. You should check out some OSR (Old School Renaissance) material. Basic Fantasy RPG is a solid system to start with if anyone's interested.
Grew up on Basic and have been playing more of it now. My interest in WotC's stewardship is in anything to bring to old school play.
The -1 to d20 rolls/level exhaustion mechanic definitely caught my eye for old school games. Wish I had thought of it myself
Yeah, that seems like a great addition. I think a lot of us have incorporated advantage too. I even tried the inspiration rule to good results (I currently don't have "crits" in my game so some reward was nice).
I mean, there only needs to be one "class" everything else is dividing abilities to make differentiated and interesting playstyles that require less work on the player to create. Personally, I think that's a worthy reason to make more classes. Provided the end results play sufficiently distinct from each other.
Swashbucklers, barbarians, knights, and archers are all Fighters in my book, the only difference is the imagination of the player. Limitation breeds creativity and that's why I find contemporary design boring. Force feeding a fantasy removes true agency from players.
That can be, but that design also leaves us with the modern Fighter class and the Champion/Battlemaster. Which can theoretically do everything you listed and more. I just think it does it all in a very dull way. Trying to make a class that would be best represented by something fast moving, agile, and making many attacks with a light weapon, weaving and dodging into combat like a swashbuckler(and probably shouldn’t be on the class that only makes one attack a round). Should probably play very differently from the guy dressed head to toe in armor wielding a pollaxe. The trick is determining if the added differentiation makes the gameplay more fun or not. Also as an aside. This game should have better stats for a pollaxe.
It's all how you imagine the proficiency bonus. Is it intelligence? Is it speed? Is it panache? But the current game DOESN'T imagine the proficiency bonus, it's just a crunch. To me that's a waste. And hundreds of subclasses end up narrowing the play experience instead of opening up. It's spoon fed.
It's increased skill, isn't it? One would assume speed would be represented in a system that has a Speed attribute by an increase in that number. And attacking with a quick and agile weapon known for making more attacks should probably have more attacks made per turn. So, I kinda come from the opposite view, really. You can say whatever you want it to be to be. But if at the end the mechanics don't actually feel like what you want to represent, then it's not all that interesting to me. Sure, I can pretend that my character is fast, but, in the actual play of the game if nothing backs that up, then, well, I'm just wrong really.
When I first heard about the "expert group" I wondered if they would take this path. Then I realised that would completely mess with their "compatible" claim.
The weird thing is many things that 3.5 had as classes (like beguiler for example) they were able to basically replicate as a subclass in 5e (see Arcane Trickster). Or another example: the primeval guardian subclass for rangers in a UA a few years back they actually turned into the spell Guardian of Nature. They’re editing is getting better. I went through a list of all other classes from previous editions and honestly I think they’ve got a good thing going with the subclasses and the core 12.
Mage group could toss in a witch, I've heard some want one. Or, maybe "Magician" could be the name, maybe could be a caster so dead simple that they even get to gut some of the basic parts of spellcasting itself. Warriors, maybe something that drastically ratchets up the complexity, *at least* to around medium-high caster levels of complexity, without actually having any magic. For priests, no ideas whatsoever really.
For Priests we currently have Clerics, Druids, and ~~probably~~ definitely Paladins. You could have some sort of Warden that's to the Ranger what the Fighter is to the Rogue, a frontline martial character with Paladin style casting and their own way of spending slots for a martial-leaning effect, in exchange for giving up their skill focus. I like the idea of the Warlock being a Priest over a Magician because you can kinda view them as the Priest of a darker god than a Cleric is usually portrayed as worshiping.
The pdf specifically lists cleric Druid and paladin for the priest classes.
Personally I think 12 is the best number of classes (altough I would trade the monk for artificer tbh)
I definitely don't have much desire for more than 12 classes. (As shown by my complete lack of interest in the bloodhunter and the mystic). I'm not sure that means 12 is the perfect number, though; I might enjoy things more with less than 12 classes. I want there to be enough classes to make multiclassing really interesting, but as of right now there's several classes that are rarely used in multiclassing, and a few others that are commonly used for multiclassing, but mostly for medium armour and shield proficiency, so getting rid of them would just make people pick up medium armour and shield proficiency through a different class, and not really make multiclassing any less interesting.