I actually made a homebrew class recently, named the Puppeteer. I could use a homebrew class builder to put it on dnd beyond if your getting at a home rew class maker is what your getting at.
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If your eyes tell you what your seeing how do you know there not lying?
I’m curious about these purported seven new classes the OP mentioned. They made a point of calling them “new classes” rather than rewrites of old classes. I don’t know what new classes they are referring to and would like to learn.
I’m curious about these purported seven new classes the OP mentioned. They made a point of calling them “new classes” rather than rewrites of old classes. I don’t know what new classes they are referring to and would like to learn.
Illrigger -MCDM-
Champion, Captain, Messenger, Scholar, Warden, Treasure Hunter -Free League- (Technically, these only have 10 levels, but still.)
It's worth noting that they're also both unofficial sources, perhaps leading into the future addition of homebrew classes. Or maybe that's just wistful thinking.
I feel slightly sad that so little people believe in the future of "homebrew subclasses." Although, I am intrigued to know-
Why don't you think there should be homebrew classes? Something of a balance issue?
"Should" doesn't enter into it. Homebrew classes are vastly more complicated for them to support than everything else.
The homebrew tools are supposedly pretty close to the tools they use to enter content. The lack of a homebrew tool for classes suggests they don't have one on the back end, and somebody has to do programming for each class. Even if it's not a lot of programming, that's 100% not something they can let the users do.
And even if there is a backend tool that can just add classes without any programming, there are likely to be scaling issues that would be real problems if there were thousands of classes instead of dozens. Exactly what those might be depend on how things are stored on the backend, and we can mostly only speculate on the details. But for one likely example: from homebrew, it appears that class spell lists are assembled by each spell getting a tag for each class with access. If there had to be a tag for every single homebrew class, it would likely get pretty slow to do these lookups. (It's not unlikely that the tagging is just for homebrew spells, and base class/sublcass lists are represented differently, but the tags still have to exist. (Well, OK, I can think of ways to finesse that one, but it's just an example of the sort of problems there likely are.))
And DDB is very obviously rather brittle and hard to modify. Look at all the things that are broken or wonky with official content.
My current group played a short game with me using the new Illrigger class. Sort of a quick one-shot to see how we liked the class. It was a blast. But don't use it unless you are ready to deal with group politics .... "good group" and "evil illrigger".... Its easy when you are playing a "Find the evil, kill the evil" game as the Illrigger's patron simply wants a competitor off the board. But more thought-invoking, sleuth type games could be more challenging to exp[lain why the illrigger is there.
core classes are balanced, the subclasses though have some work left to be done.
And that’s the point. If the official core classes still require some reasonable measure of refinement, just imagine how much refinement homebrew classes and subclasses would take.
Better to just not give yourself that headache by simply denying it from the get go.
( official core classes, D&D based classes, are based on a core framework that has been around since the beginning. Fighter, Rouge, Cleric or Priests, and Magic-User. Every class thereafter has been nothing more than a variation of those core four classes. Subclasses are the multi-classed versions of those variations. Over 40 years of tweaking, and some part of the core framework still exists, just not as refined as it once was. [ yet here we are.?])
Just saying, allowing homebrew class creation, even as someone who would find the feature useful, would be a not so great of an idea for reasons stated, and that alone should cause some pause of thought.
core classes are balanced, the subclasses though have some work left to be done.
And that’s the point. If the official core classes still require some reasonable measure of refinement, just imagine how much refinement homebrew classes and subclasses would take.
Better to just not give yourself that headache by simply denying it from the get go.
( official core classes, D&D based classes, are based on a core framework that has been around since the beginning. Fighter, Rouge, Cleric or Priests, and Magic-User. Every class thereafter has been nothing more than a variation of those core four classes. Subclasses are the multi-classed versions of those variations. Over 40 years of tweaking, and some part of the core framework still exists, just not as refined as it once was. [ yet here we are.?])
Just saying, allowing homebrew class creation, even as someone who would find the feature useful, would be a not so great of an idea for reasons stated, and that alone should cause some pause of thought.
The core classes have never been balanced in any edition, certainly not 5th. You’re going to be hard pressed to find anyone who believes a 20th level Wizard is no more powerful than a 20th level Ranger, regardless of their respective subclasses.
core classes are balanced, the subclasses though have some work left to be done.
And that’s the point. If the official core classes still require some reasonable measure of refinement, just imagine how much refinement homebrew classes and subclasses would take.
Better to just not give yourself that headache by simply denying it from the get go.
( official core classes, D&D based classes, are based on a core framework that has been around since the beginning. Fighter, Rouge, Cleric or Priests, and Magic-User. Every class thereafter has been nothing more than a variation of those core four classes. Subclasses are the multi-classed versions of those variations. Over 40 years of tweaking, and some part of the core framework still exists, just not as refined as it once was. [ yet here we are.?])
Just saying, allowing homebrew class creation, even as someone who would find the feature useful, would be a not so great of an idea for reasons stated, and that alone should cause some pause of thought.
core classes are balanced, the subclasses though have some work left to be done.
And that’s the point. If the official core classes still require some reasonable measure of refinement, just imagine how much refinement homebrew classes and subclasses would take.
Better to just not give yourself that headache by simply denying it from the get go.
( official core classes, D&D based classes, are based on a core framework that has been around since the beginning. Fighter, Rouge, Cleric or Priests, and Magic-User. Every class thereafter has been nothing more than a variation of those core four classes. Subclasses are the multi-classed versions of those variations. Over 40 years of tweaking, and some part of the core framework still exists, just not as refined as it once was. [ yet here we are.?])
Just saying, allowing homebrew class creation, even as someone who would find the feature useful, would be a not so great of an idea for reasons stated, and that alone should cause some pause of thought.
The core classes have never been balanced in any edition, certainly not 5th. You’re going to be hard pressed to find anyone who believes a 20th level Wizard is no more powerful than a 20th level Ranger, regardless of their respective subclasses.
Do you allow Wish to do anything?
But yeah, people should be allowed to HB classes. My problem is that people will use such to modify a few words from an existing 1st or 3rd-party class and present their work as original.
There is SO much material that whomever's in charge of Homebrew isn't catching as 3rd-party material(Including stuff I want but will never be added to Beyond formally, like the rest of Keith Baker's Eberron work on the DMG).
For every Dewdrop Starshine and Anime Swordsman Fighter, there's a Darth Vader and Bone Knight.
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DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
The core classes have never been balanced in any edition, certainly not 5th. You’re going to be hard pressed to find anyone who believes a 20th level Wizard is no more powerful than a 20th level Ranger, regardless of their respective subclasses.
Balance should not be about power alone. But based on the abilities that the class possesses that can be improved.
Classes are difficult/annoying to make, so usually only dedicated Homebrewers would make one. On top of that, classes are already broken; you'd be hard-pressed to make an overpowered class unless you were trying. People already copy 3rd party content and copy them into homebrew, so that wouldn't really change much. Also, I believe that they wouldn't make homebrew classes official, excluding highly popular ones maybe (Blood Hunter). I feel that homebrew classes would add a much needed creativity base to Dndbeyond, and would attract many more homebrewers.
I would like to have the ability to create custom classes, myself. The current system is wholly structured to enable pretty only western european based (or stereotypes of ) sub-classes, and those are not usable everywhere.
Create a world where the baseline is not western European -- or even derived from something other than the underlying basis that defines the "D&D ethos" -- and none of the default classes are usable not only without significant homebrew (making the rest of the site useless), but without betraying the core archetypes that they are supposed to be built around.
Look at how the public at large sees the Ranger class -- it has lost cohesion for a lot of folks because they want it to be their version of something that no one agrees on anymore (i mean, how many people know that the ranger wasn't based off Aragorn?).
So the ability to create classes would be fine. However, don't delude yourself -- there is no way in hell that any homebrew class would ever become "official", unless it was so incredibly popular that it outshone every single 3rd party class out there right now.
Popular 3rd party items get into the site now because Hasbro wants to improve the product mix and draw more people to the site -- so they are picking the best stuff and making deals with other companies for popular content.
The Blood Hunter wasn't them -- that was the previous owners of the site. But since it is there, and they have an agreement with that maker, then things will go on. Personally, I tik it sucks, but that's a matter of taste.
Not fond of the illrigger, either, for the same reason. But that kind of thing is popular, and people will buy popular and that's what Hasbro wants.
But putting a ew Class in is more than just adding a new subclass. New Classes may require all kinds of changes to character sheets, to spells, to Feats, to portions of the site that they may have plans to improve down the road but right now aren't there.
People, by and large, would love to have the ability to make classes. It is a frequently asked for feature -- so if it is going to happen, be assured that it will. And if it doesn't, then they have a reason for it we don't know.
But in the interim, remember that Hasbro has a large interest in DMs guild, and there are indeed a LOT of classes available there. It is why there is a forum here for that site, specifically -- and no others.
This is the home of D&D on the internet -- and it is about all the stuff that is done by the folks who make the game, so each and every 3rd party creator is something special, something worth seeing here, in their opinion.
not ours. No matter how big a fan of the game we are.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Balance doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The relative powers of the classes depend on what sort of campaign is being run. A jungle exploration is going to be different from a political kingmaker and both will be different from a gladiatorial melodrama.
Balance is up to the GM’s style, there’s just no two ways about it.
Balance doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The relative powers of the classes depend on what sort of campaign is being run. A jungle exploration is going to be different from a political kingmaker and both will be different from a gladiatorial melodrama.
Balance is up to the GM’s style, there’s just no two ways about it.
I think that applies to a lot of the third party subclasses and classes people complain about being broken. Stick them in Lost Mines of Phandelver and they possibly are but most third party publishers are creating classes and subclasses (and monsters) to use in their own settings which are often much tougher to survive than WotC's usual settings so their player options are similarly more powerful
To be fair, six of these “new” classes are just reworked existing class features to fit into Middle-earth. The Illmater feels like the only real new class we currently have.
I’m hoping Blood Hunter gets an update into 5.24e.
While I love the idea of new classes, I don’t think or know if homebrew classes would be a good idea. As others have said, I think the systems behind base classes are difficult to adjust. Theres a reason Illmater was released still under 5.14e. It would’ve been too much to rework before the intended release date.
And balance is another topic brought up that I agree with. Subclasses are tough enough to balance, base classes would be insane to try to balance.
The addition of LotR classes is nice but I don’t think they are meant to play alongside D&D classes. So yes they are new classes but meant for a distinct setting without 5E classes. But I may be wrong, I haven’t looked into them that much.
Classes are difficult/annoying to make, so usually only dedicated Homebrewers would make one. On top of that, classes are already broken; you'd be hard-pressed to make an overpowered class unless you were trying. People already copy 3rd party content and copy them into homebrew, so that wouldn't really change much. Also, I believe that they wouldn't make homebrew classes official, excluding highly popular ones maybe (Blood Hunter). I feel that homebrew classes would add a much needed creativity base to Dndbeyond, and would attract many more homebrewers.
And that is just it, if the power to create custom classes where possible, how many do you seriously believe wouldn’t be overpowered, masters of all?
At best 1% created would come close enough to off the shelf ready, everything between that and say 30% would have to be playtested exhaustively to refine and reflect game mechanics, everything else would have to be gauged in some fair manner. ( see how the headaches start to build, better to just deny the ability from the beginning and save resources for better use.)
As a DM, you could always say that custom classes weren't permitted. And I think the homebrew classes would be just as homebrew subclasses; none actually become official. I don't expect Dndbeyond to start publishing our homebrew classes because that would be absurd.
I feel like the seven- yes, seven- new classes they've released have really been leading up to one thing:
HOMEBREW CLASSES!
I really hope this is the case. Who else thinks this should happen?
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Homebrew Races: HERE Homebrew Spells: HERE Homebrew Monsters: HERE
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I actually made a homebrew class recently, named the Puppeteer. I could use a homebrew class builder to put it on dnd beyond if your getting at a home rew class maker is what your getting at.
If your eyes tell you what your seeing how do you know there not lying?
I hope more people respond to this poll. I'm quite interested to know what others think.
Roll for Initiative: [roll]1d20+7[/roll]
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Homebrew Races: HERE Homebrew Spells: HERE Homebrew Monsters: HERE
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I’m curious about these purported seven new classes the OP mentioned. They made a point of calling them “new classes” rather than rewrites of old classes. I don’t know what new classes they are referring to and would like to learn.
Illrigger -MCDM-
Champion, Captain, Messenger, Scholar, Warden, Treasure Hunter -Free League- (Technically, these only have 10 levels, but still.)
It's worth noting that they're also both unofficial sources, perhaps leading into the future addition of homebrew classes. Or maybe that's just wistful thinking.
Roll for Initiative: [roll]1d20+7[/roll]
Proud member of the EVIL JEFF CULT! PRAISE JEFF!
Homebrew Races: HERE Homebrew Spells: HERE Homebrew Monsters: HERE
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I feel slightly sad that so little people believe in the future of "homebrew subclasses." Although, I am intrigued to know-
Why don't you think there should be homebrew classes? Something of a balance issue?
Roll for Initiative: [roll]1d20+7[/roll]
Proud member of the EVIL JEFF CULT! PRAISE JEFF!
Homebrew Races: HERE Homebrew Spells: HERE Homebrew Monsters: HERE
MORE OF ME! (And platypodes/platypi/platypuses) (Extended signature)
"Should" doesn't enter into it. Homebrew classes are vastly more complicated for them to support than everything else.
The homebrew tools are supposedly pretty close to the tools they use to enter content. The lack of a homebrew tool for classes suggests they don't have one on the back end, and somebody has to do programming for each class. Even if it's not a lot of programming, that's 100% not something they can let the users do.
And even if there is a backend tool that can just add classes without any programming, there are likely to be scaling issues that would be real problems if there were thousands of classes instead of dozens. Exactly what those might be depend on how things are stored on the backend, and we can mostly only speculate on the details. But for one likely example: from homebrew, it appears that class spell lists are assembled by each spell getting a tag for each class with access. If there had to be a tag for every single homebrew class, it would likely get pretty slow to do these lookups. (It's not unlikely that the tagging is just for homebrew spells, and base class/sublcass lists are represented differently, but the tags still have to exist. (Well, OK, I can think of ways to finesse that one, but it's just an example of the sort of problems there likely are.))
And DDB is very obviously rather brittle and hard to modify. Look at all the things that are broken or wonky with official content.
The precedent is that Beyond hasn't done so yet.
The general pessimism is a bonus.
Also, people upload third-party content to Homebrew a lot, so there's liability issues.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
My current group played a short game with me using the new Illrigger class. Sort of a quick one-shot to see how we liked the class. It was a blast. But don't use it unless you are ready to deal with group politics .... "good group" and "evil illrigger".... Its easy when you are playing a "Find the evil, kill the evil" game as the Illrigger's patron simply wants a competitor off the board. But more thought-invoking, sleuth type games could be more challenging to exp[lain why the illrigger is there.
Balance really isn’t the problem. After all, official core classes aren’t balanced.
The core classes have never been balanced in any edition, certainly not 5th. You’re going to be hard pressed to find anyone who believes a 20th level Wizard is no more powerful than a 20th level Ranger, regardless of their respective subclasses.
Do you allow Wish to do anything?
But yeah, people should be allowed to HB classes. My problem is that people will use such to modify a few words from an existing 1st or 3rd-party class and present their work as original.
There is SO much material that whomever's in charge of Homebrew isn't catching as 3rd-party material(Including stuff I want but will never be added to Beyond formally, like the rest of Keith Baker's Eberron work on the DMG).
For every Dewdrop Starshine and Anime Swordsman Fighter, there's a Darth Vader and Bone Knight.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Okay, but that doesn’t change my statement.
I see. Here's my perspective on it:
Classes are difficult/annoying to make, so usually only dedicated Homebrewers would make one. On top of that, classes are already broken; you'd be hard-pressed to make an overpowered class unless you were trying. People already copy 3rd party content and copy them into homebrew, so that wouldn't really change much. Also, I believe that they wouldn't make homebrew classes official, excluding highly popular ones maybe (Blood Hunter). I feel that homebrew classes would add a much needed creativity base to Dndbeyond, and would attract many more homebrewers.
Roll for Initiative: [roll]1d20+7[/roll]
Proud member of the EVIL JEFF CULT! PRAISE JEFF!
Homebrew Races: HERE Homebrew Spells: HERE Homebrew Monsters: HERE
MORE OF ME! (And platypodes/platypi/platypuses) (Extended signature)
I would like to have the ability to create custom classes, myself. The current system is wholly structured to enable pretty only western european based (or stereotypes of ) sub-classes, and those are not usable everywhere.
Create a world where the baseline is not western European -- or even derived from something other than the underlying basis that defines the "D&D ethos" -- and none of the default classes are usable not only without significant homebrew (making the rest of the site useless), but without betraying the core archetypes that they are supposed to be built around.
Look at how the public at large sees the Ranger class -- it has lost cohesion for a lot of folks because they want it to be their version of something that no one agrees on anymore (i mean, how many people know that the ranger wasn't based off Aragorn?).
So the ability to create classes would be fine. However, don't delude yourself -- there is no way in hell that any homebrew class would ever become "official", unless it was so incredibly popular that it outshone every single 3rd party class out there right now.
Popular 3rd party items get into the site now because Hasbro wants to improve the product mix and draw more people to the site -- so they are picking the best stuff and making deals with other companies for popular content.
The Blood Hunter wasn't them -- that was the previous owners of the site. But since it is there, and they have an agreement with that maker, then things will go on. Personally, I tik it sucks, but that's a matter of taste.
Not fond of the illrigger, either, for the same reason. But that kind of thing is popular, and people will buy popular and that's what Hasbro wants.
But putting a ew Class in is more than just adding a new subclass. New Classes may require all kinds of changes to character sheets, to spells, to Feats, to portions of the site that they may have plans to improve down the road but right now aren't there.
People, by and large, would love to have the ability to make classes. It is a frequently asked for feature -- so if it is going to happen, be assured that it will. And if it doesn't, then they have a reason for it we don't know.
But in the interim, remember that Hasbro has a large interest in DMs guild, and there are indeed a LOT of classes available there. It is why there is a forum here for that site, specifically -- and no others.
This is the home of D&D on the internet -- and it is about all the stuff that is done by the folks who make the game, so each and every 3rd party creator is something special, something worth seeing here, in their opinion.
not ours. No matter how big a fan of the game we are.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Here’s my take on it.
Balance doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The relative powers of the classes depend on what sort of campaign is being run. A jungle exploration is going to be different from a political kingmaker and both will be different from a gladiatorial melodrama.
Balance is up to the GM’s style, there’s just no two ways about it.
I think that applies to a lot of the third party subclasses and classes people complain about being broken. Stick them in Lost Mines of Phandelver and they possibly are but most third party publishers are creating classes and subclasses (and monsters) to use in their own settings which are often much tougher to survive than WotC's usual settings so their player options are similarly more powerful
To be fair, six of these “new” classes are just reworked existing class features to fit into Middle-earth. The Illmater feels like the only real new class we currently have.
I’m hoping Blood Hunter gets an update into 5.24e.
While I love the idea of new classes, I don’t think or know if homebrew classes would be a good idea. As others have said, I think the systems behind base classes are difficult to adjust. Theres a reason Illmater was released still under 5.14e. It would’ve been too much to rework before the intended release date.
And balance is another topic brought up that I agree with. Subclasses are tough enough to balance, base classes would be insane to try to balance.
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The addition of LotR classes is nice but I don’t think they are meant to play alongside D&D classes. So yes they are new classes but meant for a distinct setting without 5E classes. But I may be wrong, I haven’t looked into them that much.
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As a DM, you could always say that custom classes weren't permitted. And I think the homebrew classes would be just as homebrew subclasses; none actually become official. I don't expect Dndbeyond to start publishing our homebrew classes because that would be absurd.
Roll for Initiative: [roll]1d20+7[/roll]
Proud member of the EVIL JEFF CULT! PRAISE JEFF!
Homebrew Races: HERE Homebrew Spells: HERE Homebrew Monsters: HERE
MORE OF ME! (And platypodes/platypi/platypuses) (Extended signature)