And again, this is the only example that you are using. Why not play a ranger then, if it's a good gish ? It's not even divine: "you have learned to use the magical essence of nature to cast spells" Or even a paladin, if lay on hands does not suit you, just do not use it, or use it only on yourself claiming that it's like second wind, just you recuperating as a fighter does. Divine sense is not even divine, it just detects powerful creatures anyway. And as for the smite, I'm pretty sure that if you asked a DM to convert radiant to fire they would accept it, I know I would. And do not take a divinity, take an oath of conquest or of vengeance. And don't come to me speaking about spells, most of the spells in particular for the latter come from the wizard and not the cleric.
Ok the ranger still has the thematic baggage, though admittedly a lot less than paladins.
Mostly it's missing a good selection of elemental spells to use. As I've mentioned, ranger with more strike/smite spells, or giving sorcerer access to strike/smite spells would make me happy for a good arcane gish. There was even a UA sorcerer with a few smite spells, and WotC killed the thing alongside all other elemental sorcerers except storm.
It's why I want them to build on the class variant features. Differently themed variant features would allow existing classes to function in a different way both thematically and mechanically. Tasha's is a good start, but is mostly aimed at fixing features which made ranger and sorcerer unsatisfying to use in a typical game.
Example variant class features to make paladin more like a swordmage I came up with in 10 seconds. No they're probably not balanced, it's more the concept than the actual specifics.
It depends on the baggage. Ranger is easier to change the theme of, as it's not really tied to anything too strongly apart from being loosely an explorer and primal based.
Paladin and Warlock are extremely change resistant. Almost all dm's will rule you have to have an oath/patron. There is no getting around that part of the theme. It's part of the class no matter what you do.
A good solution to more classes could be certain balanced and well received homebrew classes getting officially reviewed and a 'WotC stamp of approval' on them. This would be an easy way of showing DM's that these classes or subclasses are not likely to break the game or be abusable.
However there would also be a disclaimer pointing out that they are still homebrew, and therefore still not officially supported or part of AL.
It depends on the baggage. Ranger is easier to change the theme of, as it's not really tied to anything too strongly apart from being loosely an explorer and primal based.
Paladin and Warlock are extremely change resistant. Almost all dm's will rule you have to have an oath/patron. There is no getting around that part of the theme. It's part of the class no matter what you do.
But in that case, nothing, absolutely nothing prevents you from:
Taking an Oath/Patron that is about arcane magic and fighting and therefore fits your character very well, or,
Taking an Oath/Patron that gives you power and never ever mention it again because you have a completely different roleplaying story that is rich enough so that the oath/patron can totally be forgotten.
This is just roleplaying, the DM will certainly support this as there is no homebrew whatsoever.
You can't just say that. I agree it is likely, but it depends on the DM
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“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
It depends on the baggage. Ranger is easier to change the theme of, as it's not really tied to anything too strongly apart from being loosely an explorer and primal based.
Paladin and Warlock are extremely change resistant. Almost all dm's will rule you have to have an oath/patron. There is no getting around that part of the theme. It's part of the class no matter what you do.
But in that case, nothing, absolutely nothing prevents you from:
Taking an Oath/Patron that is about arcane magic and fighting and therefore fits your character very well, or,
Taking an Oath/Patron that gives you power and never ever mention it again because you have a completely different roleplaying story that is rich enough so that the oath/patron can totally be forgotten.
This is just roleplaying, the DM will certainly support this as there is no homebrew whatsoever.
But then your mechanics do not support the flavour. Sure you can say that you just forget about your patron, but what about pact boon? And eldritch master?
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
Reading it through the eyes of a 2020 context I can understand how you can extrapolate and make the connection to modern role-playing but it was a very different thing and the OSR is literally about trying to preserve that alternative method and meaning of role-playing.
I'm not sure what the OSR is, to be honest. And I still don't understand what you mean by "modern" roleplaying.
The OSR is a movement, the Old School Revival, that wants to return to the playstyles popular in older editions of D&D.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
It depends on the baggage. Ranger is easier to change the theme of, as it's not really tied to anything too strongly apart from being loosely an explorer and primal based.
Paladin and Warlock are extremely change resistant. Almost all dm's will rule you have to have an oath/patron. There is no getting around that part of the theme. It's part of the class no matter what you do.
But in that case, nothing, absolutely nothing prevents you from:
Taking an Oath/Patron that is about arcane magic and fighting and therefore fits your character very well, or,
Taking an Oath/Patron that gives you power and never ever mention it again because you have a completely different roleplaying story that is rich enough so that the oath/patron can totally be forgotten.
This is just roleplaying, the DM will certainly support this as there is no homebrew whatsoever.
But then your mechanics do not support the flavour.
Huh ? I thought the paladin's mechanics were perfect for a gish ?
Sure you can say that you just forget about your patron, but what about pact boon? And eldritch master?
You are perfectly free to give any roleplaying reasons for your pact, maybe with an arcane sect, and your "patron" is the master of your order of Arcane Knight. Or Maybe it's just Boccob himself, the unknowable god of magic. RAW, the game does not mandate anything particular, and your characters does not know the name of his powers, so he can call it any way he wants. If ou want to relabel "Divine Sense" something like "Mystic Eye", who will complain ?
I guess I didn't clarify in my post. I was mainly talking about warlock, and how if you chose to ignore the patron aspect of it some of the abilities don't make sense. And paladins do have great mechanics, but they only really work with divine gishes.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
I guess I didn't clarify in my post. I was mainly talking about warlock, and how if you chose to ignore the patron aspect of it some of the abilities don't make sense.
Give me an example, I'm pretty sure that we can find something.
For example, how do you get your pact boon? If it is given to you by someone else, even if they are not a supernatural entity, they are still your patron. I think it is possible to make a warlock that ignores having a patron, and if you give me a good example I won't argue against you. I just don't know exaclty how you could ignore your patron, which is the most important part of being a warlock.
Again, why ? Oath of Conquest or Oath of Vengeance have absolutely nothing divine about them, most of the bonus spells are actually arcane...
You still have divine sense, and lay on hands and Divine Smite. All of these abilities are divine in flavor, and it encourages you to have a god to worship.
I guess I didn't clarify in my post. I was mainly talking about warlock, and how if you chose to ignore the patron aspect of it some of the abilities don't make sense.
Give me an example, I'm pretty sure that we can find something.
And paladins do have great mechanics, but they only really work with divine gishes.
Again, why ? Oath of Conquest or Oath of Vengeance have absolutely nothing divine about them, most of the bonus spells are actually arcane...
Ares (or pretty much any war god) for Conquest and although deities of vengeance are less well known, they also exist.
However, in 5e, the power officially comes from the oath rather than from any outside power. That could even be argued a form of psionics....
I agree with the idea that a Paladins power comes from faith and conviction rather than a god. I actually find them much more interesting than Clerics for this reason.
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
It depends on the baggage. Ranger is easier to change the theme of, as it's not really tied to anything too strongly apart from being loosely an explorer and primal based.
Paladin and Warlock are extremely change resistant. Almost all dm's will rule you have to have an oath/patron. There is no getting around that part of the theme. It's part of the class no matter what you do.
But in that case, nothing, absolutely nothing prevents you from:
Taking an Oath/Patron that is about arcane magic and fighting and therefore fits your character very well, or,
Taking an Oath/Patron that gives you power and never ever mention it again because you have a completely different roleplaying story that is rich enough so that the oath/patron can totally be forgotten.
This is just roleplaying, the DM will certainly support this as there is no homebrew whatsoever.
So I've taken reskinned my 'oath' as arcane, despite not wanting an oath at all.
Cool is my lay on hands and detect good and evil abilities able to be reskinned as turning my sword to lightning yet?
Arcane magic isn't just a one word descriptor. Neither is divine or primal magic. Spell lists have different sets of spells depending on their source. Divine spell lists have spells like bless, ceremony, and cure wounds. Arcane lists have things like shocking grasp, ice knife, and featherfall. Primal lists have spells such as goodberry, speak with animals, and spike growth. There is list overlap, but different power sources have an overwhelming bias towards certain spells.
The most simple option would be to give sorcerer a set of smite/strike spells in its spell list. Doesn't need a new class, and provides an arcane class which can enchant its own weapons. Sorcerer is a class many people are unhappy with already, and doing that would make it more different to wizard. They're not even spells which are open to twin/quicken metamagic abuse either. Hell, the playtest sorcerer was a full martial with heavy armour, all weapons, and half casting anyway, so giving the current sorcerer these spells isn't even out of theme of the first concept.
I can hear that in your responses. The OSR is a kind of movement of keeping alive essentially the old school style of gaming I'm describing that I experienced in the 80's. There is even a logo available for games that want to self identify as OSR games. Just looking at top selling titles on Drive Thru RPG I can point you to a few. Warhammer Fantasy RPG , Alien RPG, Stars without Numbers, Trinity Continuum, Cyberpunk, Index Card RPG, Blades in the Dark, Old School Essentials and Dungeon Worlds just to pick out a few random ones.
OSR designers were also key to the design of 5e, there were more OSR consultants on the design team then Wizards of the Coasts designers.
Now I understand this may seem a bit off topic, but here is the thing. Denying how the game was designed, what the roots of the games were is a pretty common modern discussion about D&D. Many D&D players today just outright reject the idea that D&D wasn't the narrative, collaborative storytelling game from the get go. That it was never a game about just fighting monsters and finding treasure, but it was, its deeply rooted in the game and in the communities even today even though their is a kind of shaming of that concept of D&D as was already displayed just a minute ago by Kotath who said "Sorry to hear that yours sound not quite so pleasant...", as if playing by that method is something to be embarrassed about or feel sorry for those who had to endure it.
This common attitude in particular on this forum is really part of the problem because believe it or not, this concept of D&D as a simple fantasy adventure game about fighting monsters and taking their stuff is how the overwhelming majority of people play and have played D&D for the last 40 years. This concept of it being this deeply narrative, collaborative RPG where we do voices and cry at the table, this is a kind of elitism in the community, a type of gate-keeping to try to establish firmly that anyone who doesn't take this game "seriously" needs to be shamed and ridiculed, or at the least felt sorry for.
This discussion about more classes is just that old school element of D&D boiling to the surface because at the end of the day for the overwhelming majority of people D&D is a simple fantasy adventure about going into dungeons, fight monsters and finding treasure and what they want is new interesting classes to do that with. Its really that simple, but it only makes sense if you can connect the dots.
Is it though? I reject this version of D&D even though it started as such. Sometimes along the years, not two years ago and not five but much more, D&D started evolving from that type of gameplay and I think people liked that.
Planescape Torment war released 20 years ago to enormous success and even today remains one of THE benchmarks on how "old timers" want a proper RPG to look like, in contrast to the "action RPG" way we see now. Maybe D&D started as the simple excercise in "beating the dungeon" but people have been excited at the prospect of more depth in the narrative in role playing games for at least two decades now.
Is it though? I reject this version of D&D even though it started as such. Sometimes along the years, not two years ago and not five but much more, D&D started evolving from that type of gameplay and I think people liked that.
Planescape Torment war released 20 years ago to enormous success and even today remains one of THE benchmarks on how "old timers" want a proper RPG to look like, in contrast to the "action RPG" way we see now. Maybe D&D started as the simple excercise in "beating the dungeon" but people have been excited at the prospect of more depth in the narrative in role playing games for at least two decades now.
Role-playing, the narrative of story and the concept of collaborative storytelling has nothing to do with combat rules or really mechanics in general. If D&D becoming a deeper role-playing experience is the goal we wouldn't be having this discussion about classes and the intricate balancing, whether smite is optimal, or if Y build is better then X build.
You can reject the premise, believe me your not the first or the last to do so, but no matter how frustrating it may be for the "storyteller's" in our community, most people lean into the skid of D&D, a game about exploring and fighting.
This is the second time you've mention it as if you had some statistical data. Can I read about it somewhere?
And I reject the premise of D&D being the way it was (in your words, "go inside dungeon, kill monster, get treasure, job well done") because it evolved for a reason. I do believe people like deeper storytelling more even if their comfort level with roleplaying a character may be varying.
There must be literally dozens of us who like both the combat and the narrative side!
Ok the ranger still has the thematic baggage, though admittedly a lot less than paladins.
Mostly it's missing a good selection of elemental spells to use. As I've mentioned, ranger with more strike/smite spells, or giving sorcerer access to strike/smite spells would make me happy for a good arcane gish. There was even a UA sorcerer with a few smite spells, and WotC killed the thing alongside all other elemental sorcerers except storm.
It's why I want them to build on the class variant features. Differently themed variant features would allow existing classes to function in a different way both thematically and mechanically. Tasha's is a good start, but is mostly aimed at fixing features which made ranger and sorcerer unsatisfying to use in a typical game.
https://i.imgur.com/NzNC5XL.png
Example variant class features to make paladin more like a swordmage I came up with in 10 seconds. No they're probably not balanced, it's more the concept than the actual specifics.
It depends on the baggage. Ranger is easier to change the theme of, as it's not really tied to anything too strongly apart from being loosely an explorer and primal based.
Paladin and Warlock are extremely change resistant. Almost all dm's will rule you have to have an oath/patron. There is no getting around that part of the theme. It's part of the class no matter what you do.
A good solution to more classes could be certain balanced and well received homebrew classes getting officially reviewed and a 'WotC stamp of approval' on them. This would be an easy way of showing DM's that these classes or subclasses are not likely to break the game or be abusable.
However there would also be a disclaimer pointing out that they are still homebrew, and therefore still not officially supported or part of AL.
You can't just say that. I agree it is likely, but it depends on the DM
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
But then your mechanics do not support the flavour. Sure you can say that you just forget about your patron, but what about pact boon? And eldritch master?
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
The OSR is a movement, the Old School Revival, that wants to return to the playstyles popular in older editions of D&D.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
I guess I didn't clarify in my post. I was mainly talking about warlock, and how if you chose to ignore the patron aspect of it some of the abilities don't make sense. And paladins do have great mechanics, but they only really work with divine gishes.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
For example, how do you get your pact boon? If it is given to you by someone else, even if they are not a supernatural entity, they are still your patron. I think it is possible to make a warlock that ignores having a patron, and if you give me a good example I won't argue against you. I just don't know exaclty how you could ignore your patron, which is the most important part of being a warlock.
You still have divine sense, and lay on hands and Divine Smite. All of these abilities are divine in flavor, and it encourages you to have a god to worship.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
I agree with the idea that a Paladins power comes from faith and conviction rather than a god. I actually find them much more interesting than Clerics for this reason.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
So I've taken reskinned my 'oath' as arcane, despite not wanting an oath at all.
Cool is my lay on hands and detect good and evil abilities able to be reskinned as turning my sword to lightning yet?
Arcane magic isn't just a one word descriptor. Neither is divine or primal magic. Spell lists have different sets of spells depending on their source. Divine spell lists have spells like bless, ceremony, and cure wounds. Arcane lists have things like shocking grasp, ice knife, and featherfall. Primal lists have spells such as goodberry, speak with animals, and spike growth. There is list overlap, but different power sources have an overwhelming bias towards certain spells.
The most simple option would be to give sorcerer a set of smite/strike spells in its spell list. Doesn't need a new class, and provides an arcane class which can enchant its own weapons. Sorcerer is a class many people are unhappy with already, and doing that would make it more different to wizard. They're not even spells which are open to twin/quicken metamagic abuse either. Hell, the playtest sorcerer was a full martial with heavy armour, all weapons, and half casting anyway, so giving the current sorcerer these spells isn't even out of theme of the first concept.
In fact can anyone with more rules knowledge double check that?
Would adding spells like searing smite and ensnaring strike to the sorcerer spell list break anything?
I don't think that it would break anything at all. It actually sounds like talking smites would be very suboptimal.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
5-11 levels of fighter + sorcerer with smite/strike spell access = perfect arcane gish imo.
Is it though? I reject this version of D&D even though it started as such. Sometimes along the years, not two years ago and not five but much more, D&D started evolving from that type of gameplay and I think people liked that.
Planescape Torment war released 20 years ago to enormous success and even today remains one of THE benchmarks on how "old timers" want a proper RPG to look like, in contrast to the "action RPG" way we see now. Maybe D&D started as the simple excercise in "beating the dungeon" but people have been excited at the prospect of more depth in the narrative in role playing games for at least two decades now.
If wizards would just make a melee sorcerer origin...
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
They did, then scrapped it!
;-;
Tasha's is coming up, we still have (minimal, but it's there) hope!
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
This is the second time you've mention it as if you had some statistical data. Can I read about it somewhere?
And I reject the premise of D&D being the way it was (in your words, "go inside dungeon, kill monster, get treasure, job well done") because it evolved for a reason. I do believe people like deeper storytelling more even if their comfort level with roleplaying a character may be varying.