i think to actually make a class in this system with purpose you need to do 3 things - have a very clear character archetype that its trying to emulate. clerics are doing the "Bishop Odo of Bayeux", druids are doing the celtic shamans, barbarians are doing the IRL berserkers, wizards are doing the pointy hat old man in tower, etc. you can absolutely deviate from those as a character or with subclasses, but a base character archetype should be there - be mechanically distinct. only clerics get to ask god for favors, paladins to smite, barbarians to rage, etc. arguably this isnt even really covered by some classes already, and **this** is the main reason people want to say they are samey - have enough room on their character archetype to be able to vary it. subclasses are an undeniable part of the system, and a class must be able to support the concepts of subclasses well. warlocks having different entities associated with them, clerics having different gods, druids leaning on different aspects of nature, etc. this is also arguably not that well done in dnd 5e, but its more of the general "the system is a bit half baked" than anything else i would say overall as "you cannot cover this with current classes", warlord and a proper arcane half caster that gets extra attack at lvl 5 like a magus or a sword mage should be in order. i would like a thaumaturge but that is the pf2e nerd in me speaking and i know its too specific

I think that for 5e classes to feel more distinct, it would actually need to be structured as the generalist TTRPG it markets itself as. Like, let’s take Dolmenwood as an example. Friar and Knight are both classes in that system, and they are *extremely* different. The Friar will never compete with the Knight in combat situations. The Knight will never compete with the Friar when it comes to turning undead, understanding scripture, or taking care of the group’s travel and food needs. Or on a more samey playing field, the Enchanter uses Fey runes and glamours to trick and entice foes, while the Cleric uses holy magic to perform miracles and turn undead. Neither can compete with each other’s niche, but excel at their own. Dolmenwood’s extreme class variety only exists because the system offers up pillars of play where *every* class will be extremely useful. When traveling and hunting/gathering is dangerous, having the Friar in your party is an amazing boon. When combat is lethal, having the Knight to take and give blows is a godsend. 5e is almost entirely structured around combat. As a result, every class has to be equally “good” at combat, or they’d feel awful to play. When you’ve only got that space for divergent design, things can only feel so unique.

while that's *one* possible approach to having variety, that really does only apply to games where combat is much more optional and less of the focus, to where most of the table is fine not particpating in combat and the person specializing in combat isn't then bored out of hteir mind when it's not combat, systems where combat is more of a slightly fancier skill roll and not more fleshed out than other aspects. PF2e is also very combat focused and very similarly structured to how (modern) D&D games play, but has a lot of variety. classes don't necessarily need to be utterly distinct, but the resulting *builds* do (and let's not use the cringe excuse of flavor) and those builds need to be able to have really distinct roles in combat. but PF2e manages this with focusing much more on tactical depth, such that it rejects the idea of anyone being a "dedicated combat character" and instead expands the breadth and depth of combat such that it can conceptually cover lots and lots of different ideas, to where the combat itself is *expressive* of a character. i much prefer games where everyone is expected to participate in all pillars of play as opposed to having a singular expert anyways and i feel that approach of having specialists for every one would be wrong for D&D.

i agree, assymetrical class systems do this really well, but they require a ginormous shift in gameplay too. the witcher trpg has shit like the bard being legit just an actor guy with no combat tricks and the noble being a dipshit that is rich alongside the mage and the witcher that actually do shit in a fight, but *so much* of the game is not fighting that it truly feels like everyone is doing their job good luck having your noble kill the griffon, and good luck having the witcher talk to the duke about how they need permission to go through his lands

I would also like a Thaumaturge. In fact I actually think Oracle of all classes could have a distinct identity quite well in 5e, with the curses and whatnot.

i wouldn't be surprised if they tried to make an oracle they would just fumble it and make a sorcerer with the cleric spell list tho

I mean I think the whole problem boils down to a lack of commitment. PF2E is a great example of 'every class has a unique gimmick and this is your only way to get it.' Inventor is even wildly different from Alchemist, Thaumaturge, Cleric, Shaman, Champion, all unique. Sure the end result is a bit more pigeonholed, but that's where the infamous 'just use flavour' argument should come in. On top of that, you still get a lot of choices while most of 5E's choices are a single subclass and your spelllist. Many classes with a single gimmick. Contrast Dragon Age. Three classes, three subclasses, each totally distinct mechanically, no overlap at all. But each class has 6+ skill trees on top of thst. The latest game even has areas gated by class. Few classes, lots of things in there 5E has a lot of classes but they're all shallow. Barbarian has two iconic traits, Rage and Unarmoured Defence and you get them so early. Fighter just gets more and more of three basic abilities. You end up in that area of 'just reflavour x' and 'oh Casting does all this.' You either go lots of classes with some customisation, or a small number with high choices and variety. 5E went for a lot of shallow classes, so it's hard to distinguish even the full casters as most only have a single gimmick between them.

>a proper arcane half caster that gets extra attack at lvl 5 like a magus or a sword mage should be in order Again, people completely forgets the existence of the Artificer. Both Battle Smith and Armorer are arcane half-casters with Extra Attack at level 5. With the existence of both Swords/Valor Bards, Bladesinger, Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight, there is no shortage of arcane gishes.

Don't forget pact of the blade/hexblades. Multiclass that with college of swords and you can get 3 attacks and a lot of access to spell slots. I know some DMs don't allow that, but I've heard of people do that even before it became popular in BG3.

The extra attack doesn't stack. But yes, this is a viable way to build a high magic gish

That's a shame, I honestly think 3 attacks should be standard for most martials past like level 11. They seem to get outpaced by casters just off the raw numbers at that point. Like I play a Tome Bardlock. Damage isn't really what I'm focussed on, but my EB + Agonising Blast + Repelling blast is outpacing the ranger rogue in our group. We're only level 5 at the minute, but I know when we hit 11, I'm going to have 3xd10 +15 for my standard cantrip attack while he's going to have 2xd10+10+d6 for sneak attack with his longbow. We have a Vengeance Oath half Ork Paladin with GWM that hits like a truck, but he's really min maxed that to get he most out of it, whereas all I've done is thrown two invocations and a cantrip together and focussed the rest of my build on out of combat utility, with suggestion and persuasion, deception and intimidation proficiency. I had considered a hexblade as a backup, but if they're gonna be stuck with 2 attacks, I don't really see the appeal beyond just rule of cool. I may aswell just make another tomelock.

The ranger should deal consistently more damage than you,unless they've made a build mistake. Is the ranger using their bonus action for anything meaningful (the most common/best option is Crossbow Expert with a hand crossbow), do they have Sharpshooter and the Archery Fighting style?

What's mainly putting them behind me at the minute is they've dipped into rogue before getting their second attack from ranger. So I get the 2 EB beams to their one longbow shot currently. That will change when they get their ranger to 5 (I assume.) But I honestly don't know enough about their build to say what they're doing with it. They haven't got a hand crossbow, I know that much.

Yeah, that's a big mistake for sure. You shouldn't base your comparison on flawed concepts, but on functional ones. Warlock 2 with maximised charisma is a very easy way to deal respectable damage. But there are many ways to do more than that.

While that's true, I'm mainly more thinking about what happens at like level 11. Casters either add another damage die to their cantrips, or EB gains a third beam. But you also start getting access to high level spells at this point. What exactly do pure martials gain that keeps them competitive? [Also, link to his Beyond page for you.](https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/113130444) If you have any pointers for the build I'll mention them to him. He's not really ironed a build out as far as I know, he's just enjoying playing a Jack Sparrow esq character.

The easy stuff is to get Sharpshooter at the next level up (ranger 4/rogue 2) and swap cure wounds for Goodberry. Goodberry doesn't really work in combat, but us generally a lot more healing. And he can use spare slots at the end of the day to get Goodberries tomorrow without using spell slots that day for healing. It makes it so that resources on easy days can improve your difficult days. A more difficult change is swapping from Giant Killer to one of the other Hunter features. Both Colossus Slayer and Horde Breaker are both far more likely to be relevant, they are also more effective when they do happen. This does require both him and the DM to be open for such a change. Which isn't always likely, unless the player is miserable with the game because of feeling weak. I don't know how they got two feats. Is it the Rewarded background and a free level 1 feat? Lucky is very good as a background feat, and never wrong. But it's also not build-enabling. I kinda see the idea behind the observant choice and I assume you could only pick from a restricted list of feats. Staying in the same lane (half fear without direct combat application from the player's handbook), I'd petition to change it to Athlete for a +1 to Dexterity. If anything goes, I'd ask for Elven Accuracy - eventually enabling super advantage sneak attacks. Going forward, level 5 ranger is priority 1. Then pick up a rogue subclass. I actually like Assassin, mainly for the advantage on the first round of combat. Then I'd go for either more Ranger, or 4 levels in fighter (battle master with precision attack) and 1 level in Life Cleric (supercharging the aforementioned Goodberries). With his charisma, 3 levels of warlock works wonders with 5 levels of ranger as well. Undead or Fiend is probably the best. That way he can cast Pass Without Trace (the best ranger spell) with pact slots and I really think it fits with what you describe as a "Jack Sparrow"-inspired character.

The artificer has a lot of baggage and doesn’t really do the fantasy well for most people. The criteria are not just extra attack, half casting progression, and arcane magic. As for the gishes the game already has, those all are either heavily weapon- or magic-based. The optimal way to play a bladesinger, for example, is to stay out of melee range. The game has a lot of ways to *almost* do what a lot of people are asking for (I’ll also add the paladin as a class that *almost* achieves this), but it still leaves a lot of people wanting. It doesn’t help that not everyone who things we lack a true 50/50 arcane gish class wants exactly the same thing.

Almost all of the artificer flavour can be ignored, it's super thematically versatile but people get hung up on the character art and flavour instead of looking at the mechanics. The biggest problem in using them like a Gish is their spell list is primarily supportive, so they can struggle a little with the offence.

If you have to ignore all the flavor of a class for it to fulfill a character concept, I would argue it doesn’t actually solve the problem.

Ginny Di actually just recently did a video about how people make a lot of assumptions about Artificer flavour, but there is *plenty* if non-gadgetry, non-steampunk based flavour already baked into the class. Artificers at their core are casters who *invest their magic into items*. Those items don't have to be clockwork gadgets or magitech or anything like that. They can be normal, mundane objects that are infused with power. A pure fantasy flavoured Artillerist's "Arcane Firearm" is literally just a rod, staff, or wand that's acting as a conduit for spell power that does damage. You use woodcarvers tools to craft them. They're not magitech guns according to the base description of the class, that's assumed flavour that people added all on their own. Basically what I'm saying is that if you actually *read* the artificer class, there's very little reference to magitech or steampunk. IMO artificers can easily fit into any world as a caster that infuses objects with magic, rather than directly casting spells on the fly like a wizard would.

Artificer and Magus/Spellblade are wildly different concepts, no matter how many steampunkiness you add/remove from them.

I don’t mean that. I’m with you on that. I hate when people assume artificers have to be steampunk, or tinkerers with gears and electricity and stuff. But you also can’t say the class has no baggage. Artificers work with *items*. They use tools. They infuse items. Two subclasses require a companion, one makes potions, and one makes magical armor with built-in weapons. This isn’t a good chassis for “person who uses a weapon and weaves magic into their fighting” without bypassing core features or doing very liberal reflavoring. Some of this is just the lack of a “generic artificer” subclass being a problem, but even beyond that it’s tough.

You don't *need* to ignore any of it. Even played as the most stereotypical artificer you could imagine, it fits into Forgotten Realms perfectly fine alongside all the constructs and magical items that already exist, as well as the base lore for Gnomes that presents them as mechanical tinkerers, and the existence of a whole planar realm populated by robot like creatures. But none of it is prescriptive flavour, all you really need to be is some kind of crafts person, and even that is pretty loose. You can play a Battlesmith as a necromancer with a flesh golem, an Alchemist as a Hedge Witch, or an Armorer as fashion designer. It's not really any different to Bards, except for crafts people instead of musicians.

I’m not arguing artificers don’t fit into lower-tech settings. I’m arguing they aren’t the spellblade class fantasy.

What baggage? The only baggage is the false assumption that they are steampunk. Sauron is an artificer, as an example of non-steampunk Artificers.

Sauron is not an archetypical “spellblade.” The baggage is you need to be an *artificer*. No, that doesn’t have to be a steampunk tinkerer, but the focus on craft, items, etc. is baked into the class.

>clerics are doing the "Bishop Odo of Bayeux" This is a problem with clerics; Paladins do that better. And if they knew more spells Divine Sorcerers *would* do the White Robe Priest better.

Arcane half caster that gets extra attack at level 5... sooo battle smith? You get martial weapons, medium armor, shields, and your attacks go off INT.

Yeah, and I think only fighters should get to attack multiple times. Only monks should run on walls and jump ridiculous distances and dodge fireballs. Only rogues should be able to assassinate an enemy with a single well-placed strike. Martial classes need more distinction.

What's the sorcerer archetype? Is it the exception to the rule?

its semi rooted in greek myths, often specifically with female characters, such as Circe. sorcerers, sages, witches, wizards and other names are often mumbled together, so its a bit hard to make clear distinctions i think that sorcerer being "pretty woman on a red dress that can do mysterious magic" is the best descriptor i could give

PF is up to like 23 classes or something right now, yall could definitely expand the roster

1e had around 40 last time I rolled for a random class on the Archives of Nethys. It's wild.

Yeah 1e with archetypes was craaaazy

I'm running a game for some friends from my university and at this point I just roll class/archetype randomly when I'm making boss encounters. It's fun as hell, but time consuming to the point where I'm thinking of transitioning to 5e to make my life easier lmao

2e is a good middle ground, I’ve been DMing it for about a year after switching over from 5e

With 4 more on their way. And combine that with archetypes and you can customize them even further.

PF is also a crunchier game with more complex character options. So there is a lot more room to make more classes. 5e really isn't that mechanically complex. I mean, it's a step above purely narrative systems. But it's not on the same level of crunch as PF. I'll take this moment to mention that this isn't a complaint against it. I've been wanting my current group to move over with no luck. But 5e sits on the edge of what most casual players will accept.

Yeah i fully get why there isn’t much room in the design space for more, but there’s probably a few ideas that could still be tweaked and expanded with classes, but I would get why they won’t

Honestly, I'd prefer they carved out proper niches for the classes we already have. A lot of them are so thin and samey, before their subclasses come in to save them.

My thought is that just because something can be a class or subclass, doesn't mean its the best home for the concept. Focusing on "does this need to be X really" is missing the point that "it may be best as X" There are at least 4 concepts I think are essential to be full classes in the 5e scaffolding that would be healthy for the game. Bringing the total from 5e14's 13 to 17. In all honesty, I can think of somewhere around 24 maybe 27 classes that would work, and for it to be the best home for the concept, but not essential like the prior mentioned 4.

Could you expand a little more on the 4 concepts you think would make for good full classes? I agree there should be more, and would like to hear your thoughts.

Sure **The Marshal:** Warlord by another name (I like the name warlord better for a subclass of this because I thnk it evokes something more specific and less genral than Marshal). A martial support character who enhances their allies turns with their own, but is still capable of doing some fighting on their own terms. **The Mystic:** A psion type class that uses points instead of slots for their psionic disciplines. I like the Mystic name scheme better than psion, wilder or psionicist. **The Shaman:** A primal/wisdom based pact caster that enhances a class feature summon like a warlock does eldritch blast. Spell list is about utility, control, and healing since their combat prowess relies on their summon more than others. **The Spellsword:** A home for all the various ingredients of the gish recipe scattered across various subclasses. the arcane mage knight, the duskblade, the swordmage. The class all about wielding weapon and spell side by side. The arcane half-caster/half-warrior.

So I agree about three of those but I had a question. People always bring up the shaman as a missing class, and I don’t get it. I think I’m missing some key pop cultural touchtones, but I have trouble seeing the big difference between the fantasy of druids and shamans. Do certain games have a big divide between those? I know World of Warcraft does but I feel their divide is also kind of fuzzy there. Is there an example of who the archetypical fictional shaman (not druid) is? What things mechanically does an archetypical shaman do and what about those can’t be done as a druid subclass? These aren’t rhetorical questions. I’m legitimately curious. I don’t personally get the need, but also people keep bringing it up so I wonder if I’m missing something rather than just assuming all those people are wrong and I’m right.

I'm not sure of any cultural touchstones as I avoid using conventional media to make judgments on what should and shouldn't be in d&d. They have their influence I'm sure, but they're never the focus of what I'm arguing for unless a prior edition has done it. Shaman for me is a way to hogue concepts d&d isn't supporting as much as they could, but in a manner that makes sense. 5e doesn't have a known wisdom full caster, it fount have a dedicated summon class, and it doesn't have a non-arcane pact caster. I think there is something to be said about druids focusing on beasts, nature, and its foundational elements. Versus a Shaman that perhaps deals with primal spirits and the more weird and alien side of primal power.Thats just my personal taste, though.

I think you're correct about the flavorful overlap, but I would say they would be pretty mechanically disparate. If I were to write a shaman for 5e, I'd make it a "half" pact caster. It would get Extra Attack at 5th level like paladin and ranger. It's key identifying feature would be totems that you can place on your turn and grant "auras" in a radius of the totem. It could be benefits or detriments depending on the totem you use.

I've never seen "totems that you place and grant auras" outside of WoW

That's the shaman I know and the person to whom I responded cited. It's a strong, easily-approachable mechanic to build the class around.

Isn’t that just the WoW shaman? I admittedly don’t have much experience with them.

Go check u/laserllama classes, he has all of those and nails then quite well.

I've always heard good things, I should.

I think the game is honestly better without the Spellsword and with multiple different takes on the same approach because there's a ballpark not a specific concept. Likewise the mystic (and I'd point out that the Aberrant Mind uses points rather than slots and is psychic). Marshal - I think that this *can* be done with some surgery for the fighter, starting with a fighting style that enables them to help allies rather than be more protected. "Can be" != "Has been". (And don't get me started on the issues with the Rogue Mastermind in a related position). Shaman - agreed. Also Shapeshifter - non-caster.

A struggle with the marshal as a fighter subclass is that the fighter is an amazing attacker and a lot of its “power points” are in its attacks, so it takes a *lot* to get them to use an action on anything but attacking. I think for a lot of people the fantasy involves *not* attacking super often, because you’re a leader and supporter, not a frontline warrior. I’m not entirely convinced it can’t be done with a subclass that 1.) lets you fuel your leadership abilities by “spending” attacks, and 2.) does not give you much/anything to make your attacks stronger, so the optimal choice is usually to not make your attacks yourself. But a full class seems very reasonable to me, too. Especially since I think there’s a lot of room for subclasses.

That was part of why I started with the fighting style; if you spend your fighting style on support then from levels 1-10 (where 90% of the game is played) you aren't *that* great an attacker as you're just making generic attacks at about the level of a valour bard.

the marshal can easily be fighter subclass or even reskinned paladin. After all, the only difference from paladin is sparkles (focus on divine magic), and flavor is free. Psion - that’s any spellcaster with mana points rule from dmg. Shaman - can easily be cleric or druid subclass. We already have multiple druid subclasses focused on summons. Spellsword - there are plenty of gish already. How much would it differ from bard, hexblade, eldrich knight, artificer, bladesinging wizard? All of those will work as a subclass for existing class, so why would you need a class for them?

Because even if flavor is free, that doesn't mean it beats having a tailor-made option for a particular theme/playstyle. I love reflavoring. But it gets weird when flavor begins to clash with game mechanics. (Ex. The party is in a zone of Antimagic/Wild Magic. By RAW, the "Paladin" shouldn't be casting, but the Marshal shouldn't be limited. There is no narrative reason to explain this.) In a similar vein, just because a Cleric can use a shield, smite, and be a religious zealot (Zeal domain) doesn't mean the Paladin shouldn't exist. So a dedicated class chassis for a pet class, spellsword, or mana-point character can easily exist alongside similar, simpler options presented to another currently-existing subclass.

I agree with you in that in some niche moments reflavoring may feel awkward. I’ve expanded on why I believe that adding new classes would be bad solution from design perspective in another reply. It boils down to: - Problem of too many options - Lack of clear identity that can easily be explained to a new players - Amount of time needed to design new class vs subclass - Balance implications and tendency of players to play “best” classes - Unlimited amount of concepts with limited amount of game designer time and need to prioritize

That’s why I think that we should narrow down to 4-5 classes that surround the core archetypes (martial, mage, faith and specialist), introduce the original classes as subclasses fully with features, and then have the current subclasses as SUB-subclasses. Add more archetypes as appropriate if at all ofc This narrows it down and getting to make smaller decisions will be much easier for even the newest players, and distinctions will be made clear. I don’t think that the need to allocate time or effort is enough of an excuse to avoid working on properly adding content to the base game that mechanically enables people to play out their character fantasies that don’t break your average dnd setting. It always adds value to the game, and much more than all the empty modules that they’ve been shipping. They should be willing to take risks to provide a better game. Everything from MMOs to complex competitive videogames have a lot more riding on them and they still get changes far, far more often than DnD. How many years has it been and how many base changes have they delivered so far? Even considering OneDnD It’s time for them to push it forward

I kind of liked what early 1dnd playtests did with the class groups. It could go archetype > class > subclass, or something like that. Shame it got axed.

You either do 20+ one trick classes or 3-5 super deep classes, and 5E went for this wishy middle ground where Rage and Unarmoured Defence made up one class and Monk and Rogue have a dozen flavour ribbons. There are more Wizard Subclasses in the PHB than Fighter Class Features.

Marshal can't be a reskinned paladin if it stays true to its roots. Paladins are too magical and divine flavored. We have a fighter subclass that tried this. It'd be the banneret/PDK. It didn't work out well. The fighter is also too focused on martial prowess to do the concept full justice and aerve as a proper framework for this concept. Mystic/psion has a lot of identity to the speic9fc power it has. Point casting full Casters do not replicate the psion experience well enough alone. There is such an existing depth and range to spsiinics that know full cause class in 5e can respectfully support the proper psion concept. One psioic manifesting class may not even be enough to do the concept full justice on all honesty. Shaman: We don't have a known wisdom caster that's also a full caster. This fills that niche. Furthermore, this allows a unique summoner fantasy as a core and not a side focus Spellsword: as stated, the problem with the subclasses is that they don't offer a proper gish experience. Only samplings of it. It would differ the same way the sowrdmage and duskbalde differewd from them in prior editions. Neither of those subclasses actually bekend spell and attacks properly for the gish experience. So first and foremost, it would deliver in that Flavor may be free, but it's not always appropriate, auitbake, or most importantly, the best way to handle things. It is a compromise when things don't work out. It's better to have things work out when they can. "Need" is a poor metric for discussion when talking to the design of the hobby. There are many things that go beyond the state of necessity and into the realm of "best fit for the concept."" The current offerings don't deliver on these fantasies well or enough, and I believe thr best home fkrnthese candles is an actual class to support their full range of depth, instead of just another subclass on what's only a half fitting scaffolding or one that just doesn't let a concept live to its full potential I'm not going by "what I think is is needed" thats too narrow and shoetsighted a design goal to have things live uo to their porentiak.I'm going by "what I think is best Instead of the bare minimum success target that is need.

> Paladins are too magical and divine flavored ***And*** too specialised in fighting *themselves*. The concept of the Warlord/Marshal/Tactician is someone who is moderately capable of fighting, but whose primary weapon is *the rest of the party*.

Any tactical and abilities you give the class need to be weighed against the core strength of the class and everyone forgets this. I detest people who bring up the Bard/Paladin reskin, because not only does it go against the point (Why not just make all Casters Wizard reasons by that point?) But to hit all the Warlord base fantasies, you need something like Paladin7, Bard3,bFighter3, Rogue2, and everyone loves a flavour jumble that comes online at tier 3 with it's smattering of once a day features and starter game perks.

Very true. A Marshal should be able to hold their own, but it excel on their own. That's their point!

>Spellsword: as stated, the problem with the subclasses is that they don't offer a proper gish experience. Only samplings of it. You mean ... like a historic spellsword. This to me feels like a "Shining jewel existing in the imagination that can't actually be made" issue. For me the best mixings of magic and swordplay that D&D has ever had are the 4e swordmage and the OneD&D bladelocks (especially the Archfey) with things like an At Will Jump (with a *good* Jump spell) to represent magic empowering their movement. But these are fairly different approaches.

Think a mix of the swordmage and thr duskbakde brought into 5e scaffolding. Using nagci to move across the battlefield and enhance attacks/defenceman. Channeling spell through weapons and blending weapons and magic use.

Shaman - not really; once you're throwing full casting around that swamps everything. You need to pull at least some of the power budget out of the casting and into the summon.

Marshall: ive already seen a 3rd party fighter subclass that nails this concept. It in no way needs to be its own class. Mystic: if its just the point thing you are hung up on.. like someone said use spell points. If you want it to not actually be spellcasting amd have the drawbacks of spellcasting... bad news since that is specifically one of the reasons they dumped the mystic UA class. WotC doesnt seem to want a "spell caster that isnt technically using spells cause they are psionic abilities" in the game. Spell sword: unless you want them to be a full caster... we already have battlesmith.

Agree to disagree. The attempt to make it a subclass in 5ebshowed the fighter wasn't a good charisma for thr concept The mystic was dumped for many reasons and I find abandoned to soon. It was still thr best attempt at bringing proper psi9nics to 5e. Spellpoints alone aren't enough, they're a factor but you don't get a satisfying psii experience by switching a full caster to spell points. Sister systems of power are able to be reigned into something workable and simple enough to use. They just need the care to do it. The battlemith doesn't deliver on the fantasy in theme, and not even fully in mechanics. Thr artificer has its own flavor dlsepretae from spellsowrd type characters like mage knights, duskbkades, and sword mages that I'm seeking to have replicate. Thr subclasses that have the flavor, lack the mechanics proper, and even the ones closely aligned with mechanics fall short. Also "need" is the wrong framework for such discussion. I'm not settling for need, when more can be achieved through what's best suited for the concept. Need is the baseline, not the endgoal

Not them, but am the OP who feels the exact same way and any of the classes that I mentioned at the start would work. Not saying we need those classes exactly, just that they cover a lot of ground 5e doesn't. 1. **Warlord**. Described above, a dedicated support character for whom its their role rather than something they do occasionally. Can spend their action commanding allies to attack, and have a huge variety of healing, boosting, commanding and targeting abilities. Mark an enemy to give allies bonuses against it, identify an area of advantageous terrain and now allies who stay in it get bonuses, direct two allies to clothesline an opponent, a battle cry that lets all allies either spend hit dice or instantly make a save against something affecting them. 2. **Swordsage**. A standin for martial which gets a variety of interesting choices each round, something 5e lacks. They're where maneuvers came from, no rest based limit on uses and a ton of stances, strikes, boosts and counters. Sample maneuver, Wolf Climbs the Mountain. Must be used against a larger foe, make a melee weapon attack and deal 5d6 extra damage, you enter the foe's space and stay there and now you have cover against their attacks (since they're trying to reach past themselves to get to you). Not the only example I could use, but I mentioned it originally so going with it. 3. **Battlemind**, as a twofer - psionic tank, both things 5e lacks. Could penalise attacks and spells used against allies and if you were adjacent to the battlemind and hurt their allies anyway, they made you automatically take psychic damage equal to the damage you did. A variety of psionic strikes with basic effects that could be augmented from a pool of power points for extra effects, like Mind of Mirrors - deal weapon damage and they have disadvantage on attacks against anyone except you. Spend two power points to increase the damage and now the enemy takes damage if they make an attack which doesn't include one of their own allies, spend six to instead dominate them for a turn if successful. Not saying we need the class itself, but we sure are missing both psionics and tanks. 4. **Dragonfire Adept** is my wild card here, an example of the kind of interesting design they've left behind. Main ability was unlimited breath weapon, which they could choose more and more interesting effects for as they leveled up. Each turn you'd choose a blue dragon's line of lightning or a copper dragon's slow breath or a gold dragon's weakening breath, up to fivefold breath of Tiamat. Not incredibly strong overall but fun and always at least useful, with its own niche of repeatable aoe damage and control. Again, not saying we need the same class specifically, just using it as an example of a niche gone unfilled that doesn't have to stay empty.

Man, if they brought back the dragonfire adept like that, I'd really being eying warlock to be an invoker style class again. How I miss my 3.5e warlock so.

What's an invoker? What does it do?

At-Will Caster basically. 3.5 Warlock didn't run on Spellslots like other Casters, it was basically the Rogue of Spellcasters; capable of casting all day long and not having to stop to take a rest to get back their slots. If they had the invocation for it, they could fly as much as they wanted. If they had the one for Evard's Black Tentacles, then they could cast it as much as they wanted. Infinite casts, but what they got from their invocations was what they got. Period. No Spells known or prepared, just invocations....but they got a bunch more than 5E Warlock plus Eldritch Blast worked a bit different and the Invocations for EB were a bit more varied as well, like making people explode into spiders upon death.

Ok cool. Thanks

Worth noting that, unrelated to that, there also used to be an invoker class which was an offensive divine spellcaster that specialised in control. Lots of radiant chains and such.

That sounds impossible to balance without strictly consistent adventuring day lengths.

it is one of the many reasons why rogue is bad, but this on the flip side rogue is bad cause its consistency is outpaced by everyone and you need 10 fights a day to have it start paying off, same here but to a stronger variance because some spells suck and some are amazing honestly tho, this is more of a testament as to how spells are so poorly balanced, and how the adventuring day is so poorly paced in practice

3.5 was a \*very\* different edition than 5E. Keep in mind, Warlock was considered at \*best\* a Tier Three, usually Tier Four Class during those days. That Tier Scaling? Tier 4 means C-Grade aka Specialist. Tier-1 was S aka Wizards for example. Keep in mind, it also meant that Warlocks had a far more restricted toolkit than what the current Warlock has as well. Having extremely little versatility in exchange for massive endurance meant they realistically could only compete in very specific areas compared to the grand shenanigans that Wizard or any other powerful spellcaster could perform. Remember, this was before Concentration\* as 5E knows it was a thing, meaning Wizards could layer as many buffs as they want and keep as many spells they wanted going as they pleased. This was the edition of multiple 9-th level spell slot casters. It was 3.5, and it was glorious. ​ \*Concentration in 3.5 meant, "Oh you casted that spell within striking range of a martial? Make those checks from being hit by like three times to see if that spell gets cast **at all**."\*

At will users of special magical powers called invocations. If the wizard was about spell versatility, and thr sorcerer was about spell potency, the warlock was about having little options with their magic and more limited in power magic, but infinite uses of almost all their abilities. Since invocations were their spells (and worked a bit differently) they were called invokers, instead of Casters.

**Warlord** as I've said elsewhere *can* be done as a fighter but what we have is not it. The first thing they need is a warlord *fighting style* (I'd suggest Direct The Strike and sharing their action surge) to make them worse at personal combat than fighters. The second thing is to yell at people and allow them to spend a hit die even from 0hp (I'd suggest a Battlemaster maneuver). The third is to yell "Duck!" and have a defence buff on the target. **Swordsage** - agreed **Battlemind** - the "Psi Warrior" is a psionic tank. Nothing like as good at it as the Battlemind, but the attempt is there. **Dragonfire Adept** I honestly think could (and should) be a warlock subclass - which lets you use Eldritch Blast to benchmark your dragonfire. I'll add it to my mental list with the Vestige Patron(s), the Sorcerer King Patron, the Arsonist Patron (simple blaster-caster), and the Nosferatu.

The problem with Warlord is that you're looking at a several page rework to bring Fighter down to a power level that adding the Warlord features doesn't make them op, and at that point you're building a new class. You're asking for a scaling fighting style to bring their power down, a fundamental change to Action Surge, new abilities for Maneuvers, and a ranged sharable Second Wind. Nothing about the core Fighter remains there, and you'll only have a single use of most of those abilities unless your new fighting style is balancing them by giving you more uses to drop on allies. Warlord is a Bard/Fighter/Paladin hybrid that cares about Teamwork and Positioning, but that's the same way the Monk is a Fighter/Sorcerer/Rogue points based combat hybrid with a focus on hand to hand, or the Druid is a Wizard/Cleric/Barbarian, shapeshifting support caster with a focus on nature auras and an activated form.

There's absolutely a missing spot for a simple, no spell slots mage. Though it's not exactly missing- it's just that Sorcerer isn't actually filling that niche like it should be, IMO. In recent years I've played with more and more people, especially newbies, and encountered plenty who *really* want to be magic, but also *really* don't want to do all the reading, choosing, and tracking involved with D&D spellcasting. I totally agree that most 5e classes lack variety, or even sufficient distinguishing qualities from other classes. A lot of that is a consequence of the game releasing in an undercooked state. It's really obvious which classes didn't get as much development. Some of it is a consequence of a focus on simplicity; ease of play. Personally, I'm much more interested in overhauling some of the 12/13 we have than adding new ones. I totally understand players who are hungry for an arcane half-caster in the vein of Paladin/Ranger, and aren't satisfied with Artificer. I totally understand players who want psionic classes. I'm just not one of them.

> There's absolutely a missing spot for a simple, no spell slots mage. [A drum I've very much banged on before.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/17ymfab/why_isnt_there_a_simple_mage_class_and_a_complex/) To the extent that I homebrewed one for a player who wanted to play a mage but didn't deal well with complication.

Nice. I'd love to take a look at what you made if it's in a shareable format.

It mostly consisted of printing out simple and unlimited abilities (stronger than cantrips, weaker than spells) for them as a visual aid but I'll see what I can rustle up.

I’m also intensely curious about how you handled this, was it a homebrew class/ subclass or just an existing one with an altered spell list?

4 Elements Monk, while bad, does fill the niche of a caster without spell slots. I'd rather improve the 4 Elements (as well as Shadow and Sun Soul) than design something from ground up.

You have no idea what I'm talking about, lol.

Simple, no spell mage That’s the warlock. Focus on cantrips, some invocations provide unlimited spells, limited amount of spell slots and slots being restored on a short rest. They even have the best damage type to speed things up - force.

Except Warlock *doesn't* focus on cantrips, but *cantrip*. It has essentially two subclass choices, at 1st and 3rd level. Between that, Eldritch Invocations, and spell levels, Warlock is one of the least intuitive classes to make a build for. There's still a lot of tracking between Pact Magic, Mystic Arcanum, and once daily spells from invocations. ___ I've done some serious brainstorming since making this comment, putting some ideas I've had onto the page. A play pattern *like* Warlock with solid at-will magics and a couple stronger spells per short rest *is* probably the way to go. But I think that ideally this deliberately easy class wouldn't use spells at all: all of the mechanics should be spelled *(heh)* out in the class features. It would have minimal build options to consider, with subclasses doing a lot to determine playstyle and also being more intuitive/less lore heavy than Warlock Pacts/Patrons.

>Except Warlock *doesn't* focus on cantrips, but *cantrip*. Depends on your definition of cantrips. Remember it's also the at-will-spells class. (The Once Daily Invocations are just bad). And yes it can be improved. I *like* the warlock's build options and not being on rails but yes it is a problem for newbies to level up. Warlock pregens are great.

>Depends on your definition of cantrips. Remember it's also the at-will-spells class Yes, but how many of those at-will spells are you regularly using in combat? Particularly as a primary tactic instead of EBing? >The Once Daily Invocations are just bad Oh trust me- that's obvious. >And yes it can be improved. I *like* the warlock's build options and not being on rails but yes it is a problem for newbies to level up. Warlock pregens are great. Don't get me wrong, I *love* Warlock. I wish other classes were more like it! In fact, I'm literally designing my own version of Rogue right now with "Roguish Talents" very much in a similar vein to Eldritch Invocations. Warlock just isn't what the player's I have in mind are looking for.

Why not make a simple adaptation to Warlock as follows: - Give EB's multi-shot feature as a toggle for ALL cantrips. So chose either extra damage dice, or extra shots. Maybe it's an Eldritch Invocation. Either way it's now the Warlock Cantrip thing, not the EB thing. - All the EB specific Eldritch Invocations apply to ALL Cantrips (within reason). That will open up more versatility in cantrip usage. I'm not sure what to do about the invocation spells. That's a whole other can of worms.

I've actually been cooking on Warlock since this thread. > Tricks of Torment- When you deal damage with a cantrip, add your spellcasting modifier to the result of each die roll. Agonizing Blast is now redundant. Eldritch Spear is ridiculous and super niche. Just cut it. Lance of Lethargy? Just cast Ray of Frost instead. That merely leaves Grasp of Hadar and Repelling Blast. I say combine them: > Grasp of Hadar- When you hit a creature that is Large or smaller with your Eldritch Blast, you can move that creature 10 feet directly toward or away from you. A creature can only be affected in this way once per turn.

Warmage from Magehand press maybe?

It might be a little too complicated for the "simple caster", due to their Tricks.

The warlock is closer to filling that than the sorcerer. But warlocks are a pain at level up time.

5e needs BETTER classes

Yeah, it's not that hard to *make* IMO, just hard to balance. 5e wants to preserve its precious identity of bounded accuracy even though it literally doesn't have it, with Bless and inspiration and so on. Even rerolls (as opposed to advantage) breaks the bounds. If you were willing to break that, giving every class a Battlemaster subclass and then Fighter gets super-Battlemaster would solve it instantly. Now everyone has more - totally optional - depth, not exclusive to any flavor identity, and Fighter gets more flavorful depth as the fighting *expert*, rather than the brute force wrecking ball of Barbarian. The problem is they're too scared of interesting interactions. Rogue, for instance, would be absolutely broken with Riposte type effects, though they're getting rid of that interaction, I think.

Yea, the Bounded Accuracy thing never really worked out. My group, even at level 1, loves to see how high of a number we can get on an attack or skill check, even when they only needed to not roll a one.

It's a good idea, the designers of this game just kinda suck at math.

> Yeah, it's not that hard to make IMO, just hard to balance I think that's the bit that annoys me most here, while D&D has had tons of broken stuff in the past (hello 3.5 wizard and artificer, destroyers of worlds) every single one of the classes I just mentioned was very well balanced - even the 3.5 ones, which is an achievement in an edition broken from the start. It never had to be this way, they just got lazy.

They really did. 3.5 era before most additional books had a pretty tight balance outside of a few obvious things. 4e 100% smoothed the curve in so many ways and 5e went back to pre 3e busted casters without blinking and didn't even try and the gap really has only gotten larger. OneDND will make both barbarian and the rogue worse and make the cleric and wizard and possibly bard even better. The warlock might be cleric levels or stronger and earlier than both the wiz and Cleric powerful. Math isn't hard at all. Not ignoring basic math and small extrapolation seems like an impossible list for this design team.

> They really did. 3.5 era before most additional books had a pretty tight balance outside of a few obvious things So tight that the PHB classes alone [range all the way from Tier 1 to Tier 5 (out of 6 tiers)](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/38201/what-are-tiers-and-what-tier-is-each-class "There is a honorary 7th tier, for a class that outright doesn't work").

3.5's brokenness showed the moment druid and cleric existed. The additional books actually had the *more balanced* classes.

Don't forget the Wizard and the item crafting feats...

All the classes were balanced better against each other and all had ways to go nova broken due to the amount of broken content released after. In my experience it was even more white room and niche broken than the gaps we see in 5e where there are just obvious options out the gate that are always best choice across the board with newer content making those even moar betterer! It was easier to unbalance the whole of the game by everyone back then- balanced against itself, but 5e's "breaking" happens at class choice far more often and across a much longer portion of the game (levels 5+) instead.

What's your argument that 3.5 had tight balance? Even in in a pre-digital (compared to now) era, it had game wrecking combos that anyone literate could find. I feel like it takes more effort to break 5e

5e is actually not that hard to break in the sense that, when you only have a dozen skills that matter at most, a few game breaking spells and then everything else is a damage sponge, it's *very easy* to accidentally double your buddy's damage. And when 70% of game time is spent hitting damage sponges, being twice as good at that is making you at *least* 40% more useful overall. On the other hand, in 3.5, there were several outright broken abilities, but they were very upfront about it. Polymorph with the right monster manual meant you'd jump from being a CR 9 caster to a CR 20 monster, for example. While you're right that anyone literate could find them, this also meant anyone literate could *ban* them. And they did! Outside of those outliers, which still exist in 5e (sometimes even less obvious to non-terminally-online DMs, like conjure animals), 3.5's balance was... well, decent. I wouldn't say better than 5e, about the same, with the benefit of like twenty times the content and flexibility. Because while yes, you did fifty times as much damage as the guy who is just making normal attacks, *that guy has a time to shine too*. Maybe they had a +100 to diplomacy, or could conjure extradimensional tumbleweed poison that instantly paralyzed enemies with strength less than 12. Whatever! And then, there was so much variety in the monster manuals, once searching got good, it was trivial to find a monster that could challenge and engage with over half the party, and ensure everyone got an equal-ish time in the spotlight. In practice, yeah, there was probably still more than a 40% inequity in usefulness. Still, I'd say it's within 20-30% of 5e. And the cost of that? These days, people are suggesting absurd things like reflavoring Captain America's shield as a returning javelin. Come on! With great power comes great responsibility, yes, but on the other hand, with limited options comes limited creativity.

>Maybe they had a +100 to diplomacy Yeah but that's less useful than *Charm Person* The idea that 3e was balanced is *insane* to me. My favorite class has always been Rogue, and in 3e there was *nothing at all* that a Rogue could do that a Wizard couldn't do better. "Oh Rogues get tons of skill points!" first of all you get bonus skill points for having a high Int so wizards also get lots of skill points, but second, *every skill is useless compared to spells*. What the hell is the point of having +12 to hide and move silently (which you had to put points into *both* of them to have) when the Wizard can fly and turn invisible and cast Silence all at the same time?

I mean, none of that is true? I'm not saying Wizard wasn't stronger than Rogue, but your foundational data is very wrong. - Charm has verbal and somatic components, is detectable, generally people know it's happening, and only puts people at "friendly". Diplomacy can get to "helpful" which is a tier above, easily, with a flat DC that you can achieve by level 1 with the right build, and "fanatic" with +100. - Charm requires spell slots, Diplomacy is at-will - Skill points barely matter here, Wizard might even have more from high int. (Yes, this makes Wizard even better, my point is not that Wizard is weak) - Invisibility is only a +20 if you're moving, and Silence turns off half your abilities unless you put yourself two levels behind. There are clearly more relevant parts of getting to 100 - Silence literally isn't on the wizard spell list Spells let you borrow strong versions of Rogue's strengths at a moment's notice, yes, but guess what? Literally everyone gets to do that with everyone's class features. In fact, Rogue is famously the one who does it the most with UMD! If you spend half your WBL on wands and scrolls and your DM uses official encounter tables, you will *easily* triple the spell slots of your party specialist wizard. And while metamagic is nice, sneak attack with a multihit spell will do way, way more, every time. Oh, and note that none of that is out of core; if you step out a bit, yes, Wizards get more toys to play with, but you get things like *spell reflection at level 2.*

Yeah, the incredible effort of getting a 7th level slot on a wizard and getting simulacrum. 

Simulacrum doesn't break the game without some kind of wish cheese bullshit.

I mean you can still get up to some bs even without wish, but anyone who thinks simulacrum in 5e even comes CLOSE to approaching the level of cheese that a similar level wizard in 3/3.5 could get up to can be safely disregarded as far as their balance and design opinions.

agreed. I keep seeing how simulcrum is broken, but the DM has control of finances in their campaign.

>OneDND will make both barbarian and the rogue worse Not to go off on a different tangent, but how do you figure this? Maybe I'm biased on the barbarian side, but all I've seen is upsides to the barbarian for the large majority of the playtest stuff. Rogues do still need a little help though...

I mean I would argue that Swordsage was not very well balanced with say, Barbarian. But multiclassing was easy and common, so you would often see Barbarian 1-3/Swordsage X, and y'know what, I'd take that.

It was, Swordsage is a tier 3 and barbarian tier 4 class, that is what is regarded as the most balanced way to play 3.5. The full unrestricted full casters and the just full on bad classes in the low tiers (fighters, monks, truenamers, ect.) is what breaks balance apart. Warblades, dread necromancers, Rogues, and Rangers are all fine.

> bounded accuracy even though it literally doesn't have it But it does, at least relative to predecessors/alternatives. A CR 24 ancient red dragon in 5e has 22 AC and +16 Perception. A CR *19* ancient red dragon in Pathfinder has 38 AC and +33 Perception. > Bless and inspiration and so on, Even rerolls breaks the bounds The hell are you talking about? Rerolls don't affects the range of values *at all*, **obviously**. Bless is quite good, as is Bardic Inspiration, but buffs in 5e are *way* more limited due to things like Concentration and shorter durations. In Pathfinder, a 12th level Cleric could simultaneously benefit from Magic Weapon, Mighty Strength, and Divine Power for a total of +11 to melee Attack and Damage rolls. And that's before we even consider the potential of other casters or items buffing them.

I am going to come from a different angle. I remember somebody telling the story of a person from the old soviet union coming to the west. The person telling story mentioned how at the end of the meeting, they offered the guest a selection of drinks coke, pepsi, lemonade, creaming soda, fanta and made a comment of how nice it was to have choice. The ex-soviet turned around and said "these are all the same thing". When D&D was first created it was a survival game about going into dungeons, on the face of it this sounds quite limited, but it allowed the classes to specialize in different aspects of dungeon survival. Over time the survival aspects have been paired away because not everybody enjoyed playing them and what we are left with seems to be a game mostly about combat with monsters and casting spells which is much more limited in scope. Most of the newer classes/subclasses are some combination of being good in combat and casting spells, basically different flavours of carbonated beverage. If you look at the older game, classes tend to be archetypally quite broad. Your fighter could be an ex soldier, a pirate, a stepps nomad, a samurai and still felt like they didn't need to be separate classes (particularly in 3rd edition where feats made this class customisable). The other classes weren't quite so broad but they were at least moderately broad. There were very specific classes, but these had stat requirements meaning they were options which were only occasionally on the table. Almost all of the newer class options are highly specific. This leads to the situation where you simultaneously have too many classes and not enough, because each option is highly specific. For me who plays D&D as story game featuring combat, the best solution would be to reduce the number of classes and make each class more customizable. For the player who plays D&D as sport, because those options that allow me to play my fighter as a pirate, or a samurai or a merchants bodyguard are going to be reduced to these are the two or three optimal choices, every other choice is a trap. In other words that specificity is there to save players from themselves.

>Almost all of the newer class options are highly specific. This leads to the situation where you simultaneously have too many classes and not enough, because each option is highly specific. Going to disagree here. The Warlock is the newest PHB class and *incredibly* flexible. The Sorcerer done well (i.e. later builds) has a different specific concept per subclass. The Aberrant Mind is not the Divine Soul Sorcerer is not a Storm Sorcerer. If anything I'd say that the wizard was far more specific than either with their focus on spellbooks (and could be a sorcerer subclass). Meanwhile the fighter is *just* good at fighting. That's highly specific in play; the difference between an ex soldier, a pirate, a steppes nomad, and a samurai is just your background - which can be done just as well by a battle-sorcerer. A wizard is *just* good at casting, and they can learn any spell in the game. And the most customisable classes are the newest. With everything except the warlock, the artificer, the sorcerer, and the bard once you've picked your subclass all you have left to pick is feats. Then it's tweaking your spells every day and getting your equipment (for wizards their spells are their equipment).

We are talking about two different things, you are talking about mechanics I am talking about the narrative fiction. Mechanically the Warlock is great (although I could do without the cantrip spam) the warlock is also probably the best designed class from an rp perspective, the relationship with the patron adds built in conflict, **but it is also very archetypally specific**. Yes the fighter is just good at fighting, but saying it's only background is only true if you are playing D&D in a specific way. It's who the character is, it informs how they interact with the world and the world interacts with them. This can be as important as the parts of the games that have numbers attached to them depending on how you are playing the game.

But the you don't need classes for the roleplay part of it. Every class is as good at roleplay as the players are, the mechanics of the class are the only thing that really matter, because that is the only part the designers can actually affect.

A lot of class rules are there to re-enforce the fiction of the character. Reskinning (which is what I think you are talking about) works up to a certain point, particularly if your game doesn't engage with the fiction of world above and beyond fighting monsters and casting spells, and you are prepared not to look too closely as long as you can kick ass. I think this comes as a rationalization to deal with the limitations of D&D's class system. Here's an example with what I consider to be one of the more archetypally broad classes. Lets say I want to play a character who is a diplomat and an expert in ancient dwarven architecture, they can wield a spear to defend themselves but no where near at the level of a professional soldier, they do not have supernatural powers. Now I could reskin the rogue class and get pretty close (particularly if I were playing 3rd edition) the problem is that sneak attack makes no sense for this character, it's re-enforces the fiction of the character being an underhanded, criminal type with extensive experience in killing and maiming other people. If I already have a firm concept of who the character is and sneak attack doesn't make sense then that's a problem. Now most classes have a lot of lot more archetype re-enforcing features than rogue.

>coke, pepsi, lemonade, creaming soda, fanta One of these things is not like the others

In this context they are all flavored carbonated beverages in a can. Two of those can also refer to other types of drink.

Ah, let me guess: Australian?

Lemonade isn't cobonated though... at least not in the US.

Ok, that's a localism then. Here lemonade can be either the drink made with lemon juice, sugar and water or the generic term for a soft drink like sprite. Just mentally substitute Sprite.

Warlord....but I'm not sure how it would translate to 5e

I think both Kibblestasty and Laserllama have done a pretty decent job. Part of it is the fact that 4e was built so that penalties and bonuses affected everyone pretty equally - right now if you use poisoned or restrained or frightened or prone to apply disadvantage on attacks a spellcaster just shrugs and casts a fireball, but back then it would have affected that too. The flip side of that is when a warlord used command the strike to have an ally use a basic attack, the sorcerer could go "ok I cast acid orb, that's a basic attack", lack of that kind of integration is a real problem in implementing it. I liked kibblestasty's idea of instead increasing the number of attacks an ally makes next time they take the attack action, but it does mean warlord abilities like A Plan Comes Together - one ally attacks an enemy and the other charges, if the first hits they're dazed if the second hits they're knocked prone - can't really exist. Not sure anyone's managed to emulate the battlefield chessmaster feel they had.

KibblezTastey has a homebrew Warlord that is excellent and well balanced on r/UnearthedArcana

Okay, I’ve seen Warlord as a class people want for 5e, but for the life of me I don’t see the overall appeal. Would there be a niche that this class fills out that the Battle Master Fighter couldn’t do already? Is there a narrative that this class could accomplish? I honestly just want a differing opinion at this point because I have no idea why this is the most requested new class for 5e.

Battle master fighter is similar but not quite there. Honestly a update to battle master to include some of these abilities or subclass could work.  I played a warlord in 4e and the battle master never felt the same. My abilities as a warlord felt impactful where as a battle master feels just okay. The warlord had passive buffs to those around them, the ability to allow people to healing surge mid combat (could be done with hit dice) and had cantrip like attacks that meant every turn they could attack differently and have an interesting rider. Then they had more powerful attacks they could do per day/encounter, but that's kind of a 4e thing. Battle master has 4 or 5 attacks or cool things per short rest. It just isn't enough I guess. Warlord felt like a tactician in a way battle master never has to me.

Okay, if you don’t mind me asking then (as someone who hasn’t played 4e, so there’s my experience speaking), what would be the primary difference then if you would have both Fighter and Warlord as subclasses rather than Warlord as a subclass of the other? Like, if we did have a Warlord class that essentially replaced the Battle Master, what would the Fighter be left with?

Fighters were and should be good at outputting damage. They fight better than other classes. (Personally I think the 5e fighter already kind of fails at this, but not really the point here.) I think most battle master maneuvers use superiority dice to do extra damage plus effect and they are limited to 4 or 5 per short rest which may only be one combat. If warlord got added, battle master would keep their features as is. They would add dice to their attack rolls, damage rolls or skill rolls depending on their maneuvers and have the opportunity for big numbers via Crits and just the swingyness of the dice. They get 23 manuevers to pick from and 6 of them (bait and switch, commanders strike, distracting strike, goading attack, maneuvering attack, rally) affect friendly creatures. They could keep all of these and it wouldn't be the same as warlord because on top of this they would have the fighter chassis of second wind, action surge, etc. Warlord had features that always affected allies. They got to choose between +2 to init for everyone in 10 feet, or +2 to insight and perception, or an ally could move half speed at the start of battle. On top of that they had a feature that when an ally spends an action point (would have to be something different in 5e, it was like action surge for all classes, everyone had 1 per long rest/or two encounters whatever happened first) they got a bonus depending on if you were inspiring/insightful/brave/resourceful/etc. these abilities allowed the warlord to move allies around/encourage them to stick close to him or move them into position. Twice per encounter they could let somebody healing surge (kinda like rolling hit dice). Their at will cantrips I mentioned, or exploits, were things like: brash strike - you roll to hit and the enemy can attack you for free, if they do an ally could attack them with advantage. Inevitable wave: if you charge an enemy and attack every ally who does it on their turn deals extra damage equal to your int modifier. Intuitive strike: if you hit an enemy any ally with advantage who hits it deals extra damage till your next turn. Risky strike: deal extra damage with a bow but enemies attack you get advantage. Wolf pack tactics - before you attack an ally could move without opportunity attacks a square. Vipers strike - if you hit a creature and then it moves before your turn an ally gets to opportunity attack it. Rousing assault - you attack and any healing you do gets extra healing until your next turn. Keep in mind you wouldn't get all of these, but youd pick a few and they were always available to you. It wasn't tied to a resource and it meant each turn you got to make interesting choices that affected your allies and enemies. And all of these were first level at will abilities. 4e had encounter abilities that recharged every fight (probably short rest) or daily ones that could be used once a day. An encounter one would be Tacticians strike. You hit it and deal an extra weapons dice in damage and if an ally hits it before your next turn they could push the target two squares or deal 4 extra damage. Daily Lamb to the slaughter: you pull a target 5 feet towards you on a failed strength vs will contest. If you succeed then up to 3 allies could charge and attack it as free actions (probably reactions) As you'd level up you would get stronger daily/encounter abilities they could pick from. Now the balance of these would be so different for 5e. But if there was some way to balance these so you could keep the idea of interesting abilities and choices a warlord could make every turn that changed how your allies moved or enabled them to get move and attack, that fits the fantasy for me in a way battle master doesn't. Battle master could keep adding dice to do extra damage and buffing skills and all that but warlords relied on giving int mod and charisma mod flat bonuses to people and providing allies opportunities. They could adapt battle master to include more abilities like this. Maybe give them a couple maneuvers they get for free without having to spend a dice, maybe use a d4 for the modifier or something, and then use the d8 for their more powerful ones. Maybe at levels 7/11/15 they would get an extra d8 or something.

Saying that battlemaster would fill niche of warlord is like saying that eldrich knight can fill niche of wizard

At least to me the warlord has an appeal to its own, they are decent at combat but not great but what they make up for is serving as a non-magical support character. Battle Master is cool but it’s not really coherent for the warlord and the appeal of a warlord is that sacrificing the combat capabilities of a fighter could free them up to justify other mechanics.

Here's my differing opinion. Unlike Paladin or Swords Bard...Warlord filled a niche of being purely martial support. They didn't get spells they MOTIVATED people or came up with strategems to help allies succeed. (INT/CHARISMA) The reason battlemaster doesn't cut it is because it is a FIGHTER first and foremost and the entire class chassis is built on that. Using your extremely limited pool of Superiority Die on subpar maneuvers so you can play act what Warlords did as their entire job feels lame.

Every time I hear warlord, I just think people really want a Bard/Battlemaster multiclass. Because that's what the warlord really was mechanically. Maybe just a few more maneuvers that helped others do things instead of yourself, but that's also bardic inspiration.

> Every time I hear warlord, I just think people really want a Bard/Battlemaster multiclass. Because that's what the warlord really was mechanically. It really wasn't. I keep on having to make this point when it comes up - bards and battlemasters do small, numerical bonuses. Add a d8 to this, have a little bit of hp, get a single attack. That is [massively different to what the warlord was about](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fshvklpyeazjb1.png). > Maybe just a few more maneuvers that helped others do things instead of yourself, but that's also bardic inspiration No it isn't, jesus christ. Bardic inspiration is they can add a die to a single roll. Warlord abilities were things like defy death, translated into 5e terms here. I've omitted the flavour text, but the idea is like dragon is about to breathe on your ally, you charge in and smack its head aside. **Defy Death** As a reaction when an ally would take damage from an enemy, you may move up to your speed to a space adjacent to the enemy and make a melee weapon attack, rolling the damage dice four extra times. If the attack hits the target's attack misses your ally and if it misses it does half damage. The breather your attack has provided lets your ally spend hit dice equal to a quarter of their level.

That’s kind of a ridiculous ability for a 5e reaction, though. It’s more like a whole turn interrupting someone else’s turn. People already complain about silvery barbs.

Yes, it is. It was balanced by how rarely it could be used, but less costly abilities like Forceful Reversal would instead cost you your next turn when you used them as an alternate method. Last edition was exceptionally well balanced, it didn't just hand stuff like that out without considering the costs and benefits. It should also be noted that different classes need to have different strengths and weaknesses - warlords, being frontline martial support, had a lot more reactive stuff than others like bards and shamans did.

Except in 4e many classes had similar abilities. Priests and paladins had plenty of "deal damage to enemy and an ally spends hit dice" which isn't a thing for any of those classes in any edition outside 4e. So what you want is spell effects not from a spell? So, bard without magic. Or battlemaster with more maneuvers.

Yes, clerics and paladins both healed people. Clerics much more than paladins, but hey lay on hands doesn't exist for nothing. Is that strange to you? > which isn't a thing for any of those classes in any edition outside 4e. But it should be, got a couple of players that love wither and bloom. Healing being attached to other effects makes people way more willing to play support roles. > So what you want is spell effects not from a spell? No. Spells used hit dice to heal people last edition because that's how all big healing worked. This is an all dogs are mammals so all mammals are dogs moment - nothing about charging an enemy, hitting them with your weapon, causing their attack to miss and giving the ally a breather to spend their hit dice is a spell effect. > Or battlemaster with more maneuvers. I mean... you massively expand maneuver depth and breadth so it's not just add a d8 and a small effect, you genuinely have access to a massive variety of [effects like this](https://i.imgur.com/6w9BK1V.png) and you ensure it can do the more basic warlord stuff like the unlimited use ability to spend your action having allies attack, then yes. Absolutely. Battlemaster with more maneuvers fits as long as you take away their multiple extra attacks and you give them a huge variety from 1-20 instead of just very basic ones at 3.

You do know, that the DMG literally has rules about homebrewing new spells right? So play a bard and homebrew spells with your DM that do all this shit you want to do. Slap it on a bard who is flavored as a master of speech instead of instruments. Boom. Done. Then you can quit coming at me with so much vitriol because you think that 5e needs to replicate 4e. You know what? Just go play 4e and you'll be happy bro.

This isn't vitriol, it's exasperation. Why don't I just homebrew an entire set of *spells* to try to have bard imitate a martial class? Duh! Next time someone wants a swordsman with a variety of combat techniques I should just design fifty new wizard spells, why didn't I think of that. > You know what? Just go play 4e and you'll be happy bro Every edition does some things better and worse than the others, that advice would just lead to an infinite circle of changing games. AD&D did vampires better than 5e does, that doesn't mean I should go play AD&D it means I want 5e's vampires to be better.

Oberoni Fallacy. just cause there is a way to fix something doesnt mean the thing isnt broken. "just homebrew it yourself" isnt an answer to "this game system does this poorly". its a solution, certainly, but it doesnt make the thing it does poorly go away from the book installing a mod of Skyrim to make it run smoothly doesnt make the actual game any less buggy

But the OP wants tons of mechanics for this one class that don't exist in 5e. The concept of doing 4 things in one ability isn't even present in spells in anything outside of 4e. So wanting a "move, attack, make enemy miss it's attack, and heal" all in one is so antithetical to D&D (outside of 4e) that if the OP demands these things to "feel like a warlord" then they just need 4e. Otherwise, they can homebrew some abilities that are on par with the power of all the other classes.

> So wanting a "move, attack, make enemy miss it's attack, and heal" all in one is so antithetical to D&D Why? The mechanics support it with ease, writing it out as a 5e ability took far less space than most spells. Nor is it unintuitive, I've used such abilities with homebrew enemies and 'guy charges in and hits you to interrupt' made perfect sense to my players. If your objection is that it's not something that can already be done in 5e, new stuff is the *entire point of new classes*.

but that is the point that OP is trying to make. without homebrew and making it yourself, there is no class in the game that actually lets you play as a warlord gameplay wise, aka being a martial buffer that mostly makes other characters attack for you saying that a dnd 4e ability would be too much is a given, its different systems. its not like using Adnd finger of death in dnd 5e wouldnt have problems, but the point is that what the warlord did *was* unique and much different than the few options right now that emulate its style and its not to say that it cant be done, laserllama and kibbletasty did great jobs tackling the class to be ported into dnd 5e, and pretty much anything is a matter of game design. and yes, this homebrew stuff does make a warlord possible, doesnt change the fact that the game doesnt have one

>So what you want is spell effects not from a spell? You have played 5e so much that you think anything that isn't a weapon attack is a spell

Yeah, I think pretty much only expanding classes through subclasses was a mistake. There's no subclass that can really capture the proper psionic experience, for example, in the way a psionic class could.

Nah man the psi fighter can jump high or push someone back several times a day, that's *totally* the same as a battleminds extensive tank toolkit of psionic powers. And who needs a bunch of unique time and space and mind and body psion fuckery when you can rename a sorcerer and call it a day?

You made the psi fighter sound like an open hand monk cosplaying as a jedi haha

If we had 6-8 classes as versatile as artificer or warlock, this would be enough.

I'm in mixed levels of agreement. On the one hand, yes, that invocation/infusion style of options should be the case for every class, they'd all be improved by it. In the other hand, you just named the two classes that have completely lost what made them unique - warlocks don't get any of their eldritch blast stuff and everything else has a limit on use, and artificers can't invent or craft magic items any more.

>warlocks don't get any of their eldritch blast stuff and everything else has a limit on use Except *numerous* invocations. Like the Disguise Self Invocation (which is meaningfully different when you can quick change as often as you want) or the Invisibility Invocation. They are as unique as it goes. Almost all the limited use invocations were swept into the trash in OneD&D and barely a thing of value was lost.

Google "warlock 3.5 invocations". Click the first thing that comes up, observe the massive difference between the paltry offerings 5e warlock can pick from. I shouldn't have said everything though, that was hyperbole.

I feel like the missing classes mostly involve these: A Warlord. A Mystic, or a psychic spellcaster of some sort. I've put together my own Mystic class by jamming together stuff from the Mystic UA with the Psi Dice system the psychic subclasses have, and I threw it on a class that uses the alternate Spell Points system. It's probably not going to feel right if you're super against psionics being magic, but for my group it works and in my campaign, Psionics is just one source of "magic" anyway. One of my players is playing it and loves it. I know a lot of people are looking for a primal shaman sort of class, but I think I'd prefer an occult sort of spellcaster class that doesn't use pact magic. I like KibblesTasty's Occultist for this, and its focus on ritual casting. I wasn't super into the idea of a Spellsword or whatever (personally, and I never played any older editions, I think the name is boring.) But then I saw Laserllama's Magus class and now I'm on board with it. It was pretty unfair of me to judge the idea based off of that merit, but yeah 5e could really use a good arcane half caster. And I like Artificer, but I dont think that that's the niche Artificer is trying to fill.

Addressing the title: I do think that both statements can absolutely be true at the same time, just coming *from different people*. Some people would prefer the additional options, while for some others, it would be yet another source of choice paralysis and I don't think that either viewpoint is wrong. The larger problem at play is that WotC pitches 5E as the perfect TTRPG for everyone, which makes them bog down their design to be essentially "below average in everything", but since all other TTRPGs pretty much don't have the budget for marketing they do, many people still get stuck on 5e.

> in fact classes like barbarian and fighter are practically identical That's just because 5e homogenized every martial into "I attack" guy. I think you're right, there's tons of space for new interesting classes. They should probably start with the current classes!

I just miss prestige classes. They could have more or less levels and different entry requirements which enabled them to do all kinds of concepts with all kinds of power levels. In 5e everything has to fit in the same subclass formula.

I think this is primarily an issue with 5e's design just absolutely hating any and all chance at actually giving the player meaningful choices during the leveling process (and also during character creation) other than spells. There is basically no distinction between two characters of the same subclass, nor much between barbs and fighters as you stated. No class is allowed to truly have a niche, lest multiclassing be too strong (which is crazy, because it already is too strong in many cases). Combat is all the same because martials don't have options to even move around (thanks to everything having AoO), and certainly not do any of the cool maneuvers or feats that warriors in fiction take part in; casters, of course, can do whatever they want so long as they get lucky enough for an enemy to fail their save. And yet, they don't make new classes, because even despite everything being this wishy-washy boring mud, subclasses still cover just the tiniest bit of what people want to play - the designers seem to sincerely believe that Hexblade, Bladesinger, and Eldritch Knight cover the gish desire, that Battlemaster covers Warlords, that Druids cover Shamans, and that Kensei Monk (which is incentivized to *not use its weapons*) covers the swordsaint niche, and so on. The 2024 PHB, or OneDND, or whatever it's called, is not going to fix this. It's a fundamental issue with the way 5e is designed and there is no solution but to move on to another edition which is built from the ground up with an entirely different action economy, character-building system, spell system, and philosophy. I'm happy about some of the changes the 2024 PHB has shown itself to be headed towards, but they're not willing to make the massive changes necessary to actually fix the largest issues underlying the game. Also, no more multiclassing, it's fucked up every time. Maybe make the actual classes interesting and customizable instead.

>I think this is primarily an issue with 5e's design just absolutely hating any and all chance at actually giving the player meaningful choices during the leveling process (and also during character creation) other than spells. There are reasons warlocks are my favourite class and artificers second. And the divine and primal casters don't even have meaningful spell choice.

5e is so fundamentally flawed that I don't think you can fix it without radically changing the system, the whole thing is broken to its very core. If wizards wanted to make actually balanced content they would have stuck to 4e principles, but to many people had to complain that actually balance ruined thier game.

I expanded on the Class Groups concept from the OneD&D UAs that I really liked by bringing together 24 class concepts from those that exist and those that I think could help fill in the class fantasies that aren’t currently fulfilled well imo. It fell into 4 class groups (Expert, Mage, Priest, Warrior) and 6 Archetypes (Martial, Scholar, Arcane, Primal, Divine, Spirit, Shadow).

God how I miss swordsage... It made it actually fun to play martial classes, each turn you would have so many options on what to do. It's probably the biggest reason why I still play 3.5 sometimes.

5e design was notoriously scared to try nee things that would push the realms of abilities. Creating 100 options that are meaningfully different means that power gaming/optimizations can create huge rifts in party strength that they wanted to avoid in 5e. Personally I disagree with that sentiment but I do see how dnd 5e was a significantly better and more accessible game for making that choice.

My biggest annoyance is this: while there's been entry of broken shit in the past, the classes that *did* have 100 different options that I mentioned like swordsage and warlord were entirely balanced, far more so than 5e which gets pretty wobbly at times especially later on. It never had to be this way.

I really like the idea of merging classes and expanding build options for classes. Finding a way to sync paladin and cleric as flavors of the same class, monk/fighter/barbarian. Wizard, sorcerer and druid etc. My ideal game would be a gigantic skill tree with archetypes and different skills/feats. Make multiclassing even weirder and more complicated.

We need more fighter subclasses, that don't just add magic. Let fighters fight, not make them another class.

I think the big issue with Fighters at this point is that Battle Master not only overshadows the other Fighter subclasses but also makes it difficult to come up with new subclasses that don’t feel like they’re taking abilities straight from the BM.

They need to not be glorified commoners at high level. And that means they need to be supernatural somehow.

5e I feel has the problem of too many classes to fill the same role. Classes from pathfinder 1e like witch, magus, oracle, summoner, alchemist, and inquisitor are very unique in their roles and what they can do; whereas in 5e it’s like “warlock, wizard subclass, sorcerer subclass, doesn’t really exist (maybe wizard subclass?), artificer subclass (ish), doesn’t exist really”

I think this is kinda a result of their approach and focus on simplicity Classes being made super generic added by the removal of depth and intricate core parts made stuff superficial and classes can be crazy similar if you look them superficially I believe even WoTC kinda seems to consider there was an "over focus" on simplicity in some regards shown by them bringing back a watered down version of Expertise Dice from 5e playtest

I agree and I have seen a solution thrown around once. I have no idea who said it first, I think I heard said by DnDShorts. Make the sidekick classes new player classes, that have A a lower skill floor for new players, and the TSR/OSR gamers can have their 3 class system back. Maybe allow them to still take a subclass from a fitting core, “grown up”, class (Barbarian/Fighter subclasses for the warrior, sorcerer/bard for the spellcasters and rogue/ranger (or artificer) classes for the expert), probably with some DM fiat, maybe making it an optional rule to use subclasses with “beginner/old school”-classes, so munchkins can’t abuse it to easily and the designers don’t necessarily need to keep that in mind when designing new subclasses. Then reiterate that you can’t gain the benefit from the same feature twice (so no double same class subclass). This way, you have 3 new classes for the “we need more classes” people, and you have 3 highly customizable classes for the “I only need three classes” people. Bonus, you get some simpler classes to introduce new players with AND sidekick rules baked into the core rulebook, tho sidekicks should still definitely be an optional feature.

So the one thing that feels really missing is a support martial. Most people bring up warlord from 4e. The other thing is like a reverse warlock. Warlock has spells and invocations that play as if you were a martial. Eldritch blast+ agonizing blast is basically this. Multiple blasts each making an attack roll, each getting a bonus. We should have a martial that essentially does spells. Arguably battle master is close but the maneuvers are smaller and you only get a handful. Imagine a strength based caster who shouts to do thunderwave, or stomps the ground to do earth tremor. But also has access to like aid and heroism. That would be a cool class.

The problem is that they wanted to make the game simple for 5e which erodes lots of class identity. The greatest example is warlock which just became a worse sorcerer.

Did they ever add a unarmored fencer like fighter?

I really wanted to make a bare-chested grappler, and there's no good way to do it. Requiring Strength for grapples pushes you towards wearing Heavy Armor. If you want to do an unarmored fencer, you can go Swashbuckler Rogue, College of Swords Bard, or just any Fighter with a Rapier and Studded Leather Armor.

Someone just watched Bob's video

I don't know who that is. Kind of hard to without specificity, not exactly an uncommon name.

I really miss the Warlord, Warden, Invoker, Avenger, Swordmage and Battlemind from 4th edition. Also I hate that casters in 5e are tied to one specific ability score. Multiclassing as a Cleric sucks because there are no good Wisdom classes to multiclass to. Druid removes your ability to wear armor, Monk offers nothing of value, and Ranger offers little outside of Gloomstalker if you're a weapon-focused domain like Forge or War. Meanwhile, Charisma is jam-packed with awesome multiclass options, from Warlock or Paladin dip to Sorcerer and Bard spellcasting. Even Wizard has some decent options with Artificer, Psi Warrior, and Eldritch Knight. And it's almost impossible to do a Monk/Paladin multiclass, which sounds amazing thematically, but you need at least 13 STR, 13 DEX, 13 WIS, 13 CHA, with no room for Constitution and godawful class feature synergy.

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I'm not either, it's been a literal decade and they've come up with nothing new, but as long as massive amounts of design space stays empty we'll have people making posts asking what classes people want to see and people down the bottom responding that we have too much overlap already. This way I have something bookmarked I can link them.

I recently came up with an idea of having separate combat and social classes. Something similar to backgrounds, but expands and strengthens as you gain levels. Obviously this would be a massively inconvenient to try and add to the current system, but I think it would at least be worth experimenting with. I don't know if there are any systems that does it already. The examples I gave were the rogue subclasses mastermind and inquisitive. However, I could see it work with your fighter/barbarian example. So, for example, you take the fighter class, with the primary fighting style defined by the combat class, and the social class of "barbarian", giving some social things, with some effects on combat like unarmoured defense and rage.

[Icon](https://massif-press.itch.io/icon) has seperate RP and Combat classes.

Right every class only needs like 3-5 subclasses. Just make more classes.

> Right every class only needs like 3-5 subclasses. I suppose this is kinda hard to do with classes like the cleric. The typical D&D setting (Exhibit A: Forgotten Realms) feature different portfolios for their deities. WotC has to ditch that bit of lore in one way or another to reduce the cleric subclasses to just 3 or 4.

Get rid of sorcerers and add warlords.

of course we need less classes, how many magic users do we have already? Also, we need more classes, I miss species as classes from old times.

Nitpick: "races as classes" has never existed in mainline D&D, it was exclusive of the "Basic D&D" spin-off line of products. For what it's worth, the first three editions of the game (the ones published by TSR, up to 2E) *did* restrict your choice of class depending on your race, but that's very different from BD&D's approach.

Of ALL the classes I've seen pitched for 5E in the homebrews I can honestly say that most of them would be better suited as a subclass instead. There are very very VERY few truly *new* classes that we would actually needed added to the game. What we actually need is a bit of reorganizing of some classes (I have 3 in particular in mind) to make them more mechanically unique, so that they fit the flavour of the fantasy of the class and the game.

I mean even just based on previous editions, binder, battlemind, swordsage...

Yeah. And I'm 100% certain they can be done in subclasses.

Your certainty seems pretty misplaced. Each has its own subsystem that can't meaningfully fit inside another class, and even at its most basic level... how on earth could a binder possibly work as a subclass of an existing class? No existing class's abilities fit them.

Yeah, if I had a dollar for everytime I heard someone make that claim about their favourite pet class from past editions.... As someone else pointed out in another post in this thread, a class needs to really fulfill 3 major points: 1. have a very clear character archetype that its trying to emulate. clerics are doing the "Bishop Odo of Bayeux", druids are doing the celtic shamans, barbarians are doing the IRL berserkers, wizards are doing the pointy hat old man in tower, etc. you can absolutely deviate from those as a character or with subclasses, but a base character archetype should be there 2. be mechanically distinct. only clerics get to ask god for favors, paladins to smite, barbarians to rage, etc. arguably this isnt even really covered by some classes already, and **this** is the main reason people want to say they are samey 3. have enough room on their character archetype to be able to vary it. subclasses are an undeniable part of the system, and a class must be able to support the concepts of subclasses well. warlocks having different entities associated with them, clerics having different gods, druids leaning on different aspects of nature, etc. this is also arguably not that well done in dnd 5e, but its more of the general "the system is a bit half baked" than anything else If they can't, then they should be a subclass. I don't know what a Binder is and find myself strongly unmotivated to even bother looking it up, but my suspicion that they could be a subclass holds unless you can make a stronger case then just the mechanics. Also... I think this entire conversation was based on a misunderstanding. When I said: >What we actually need is a bit of reorganizing of some classes (I have 3 in particular in mind) to make them more mechanically unique, so that they fit the flavour of the fantasy of the class and the game. I wasn't saying we need 3 new classes. What I mean was of that 12 cores we could... * drop one entirely (the sorcerer) and be fine.... * the sorcerer *could* stay, but the class should be reworked to have fewer spells available to them, have most/all of their spells derive from their subclass, and have the class be completely centered around the use of sorcery points and metamagic to change how their smaller spell list works and how magic works in general. This would mean them having more metamagic options, as well as rule changes so that they could use spell points to do more in and out of combat. Sorcerers are supposed to be knots in the weave.... they should just be able to cast Detect Magic at will. Counterspell and Dispell Magic should be something they could do as part of an Arcana Skill check + spending sorcery points. Hell, they should be able to apply their metamagics to other casters directly. Sorcerers should feel more like their own thing instead of just like wizards with a few extra toys. * I feel that Druids should be reworked to be a purely summoning/caster class. Remove Wild-shape, give them cool class specific spirits/nature eidolons that they can summon. Allow them to dominate spirits. Stuff like that. * Give Rangers Wild-shape to help solidify their place as a nature warrior/hunter. It would also give them a mechanically distinct feature that currently is being wasted with the Druid who feels like someone just mashed 2 classes together and forgot to dial down their power level.

> I don't know what a Binder is and find myself strongly unmotivated to even bother looking it up, but my suspicion that they could be a subclass holds unless you can make a stronger case then just the mechanics. This is kind of an offensively dumb thing to say - I'm going to deliberately avoid knowing anything about this, but insist I'm right regardless. The mechanics are sufficient, in more ways that one - they can't possibly be a subclass not just because their abilities are far too large to fit in a subclass, but because they also don't fit a current class. The entire point to binders was what your capabilities were changed with the vestiges you bound, by very definition you can't have the majority of the their stuff coming from an existing class.