This is kinda what I want as well, though your idea is much more streamlined then what I was thinking off.
Cool. Mind sharing?
Honestly, it’s mostly just a more refined and expanded version of what 4e did. Each major race has a core set of abilities. However, you could then switch each out for another ability instead.
So for example, I’ll use a Dragonborn. My base Dragonborn would have the following abilities.
Darkvision
Breath Weapon
Resistance
Claw Attack
Now for each of these abilities, you would have different options to replace them with. For Darkvision, you could instead have proficiency with Perception. Instead of a 1/rest breath weapon, you could have a 1/rest fear aura, or a 1/rest reaction that causes a burst of elemental damage around you, or a bite attack that 1/rest can do extra elemental damage. Instead of resistance to a damage type, you can have natural armor, or wings that give you a glide ability like the Simic Hybrid, or a swim speed. Instead of a claw attack, you can get a weapon or tool proficiency, or a cantrips fitting your elemental type.
Using this you could craft a Dragonborn to be more tanky or more magical or more adaptable or whatever.
If I wanted to go even crazier with this idea I would introduce more feats and separate them into categories, racial, class, and general. Racial feats could then be used to expand upon your chosen racial traits if you wish, allowing for more unique options for your character. If you took the Breath Weapon feature, you could take a feat that allows you to instead use your breath to imbue your weapon with extra elemental damage for a short spell. You could also just take a feat to improve the breath weapon in general instead. If you chose gliding wings, a feat could allow you full flight. If you instead chose a swim speed you can take a feat to give yourself the ability to breath under water. Taking the cantrips could allow you to gain a bit more magic connected to your element choice through a feat, or if you took the claw attack you could improve it.
As you can see though, it’s much more complicated and would actually take a total revamp to balance it with everything else. It’s more of a pipe dream. I don’t expect it to ever happen, especially not in 5e. It would be cool though, at least to me.
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"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
To be fair, a 'Big Book of Feywild' would be almost as high on my list, and actually has a snowball's chance in Hell of happening. As for what I'd put into a BBoWS? That would be the work of many a moon to assemble. Off the top of my head? A few of the tamer youkai as playable statblocks, an Onmyodo wizard subclass, probably a 'Spirits Domain' cleric to try and hit the miko mark. Bunch-ass monsters and some setting information, probably DM tools/notes for running a kishotenketsu story rather than a Three Acts story. Would involve copious research to do better than Wizards has traditionally done with non-Eurofantasy junk, and frankly I like the idea of building creative riffs on these creatures that offer cool play experiences. My existing homebrew kitsune species are not Magical Foxes From Not-Japan, but are instead the descendants of powerful, capricious 'Fox Fey' cursed by ancient deities to be robbed of their power and made to live amongst the mortals they'd so delighted in tormenting. Which, at least in my brain, let me have the essence of the Fluffy Magical Trickster while still anchoring the things in a D&D world rather than trying to just import Japan straight-up into D&D.
That's the sort of thing I'd like to see. Someone with the knowledge, passion and respect necessary for the job assembling a treatise on taking the essence of these cool-ass critters and stories we love and transposing them into the game. So...not Wizards, as they do not have knowledge, passion, or respect. But ehh. Is what it is, I suppose.
I'd suggest defining a fairly specific theme or concept. "Weeb Shit" may be more clearly delineated than it seems to me, but setting books work better when there's a clear vision as the starting point. Al-Qadim wasn't perfect, but it worked because it was pretty much "Arabian Nights northern Africa desert setting, start from there", which was focused enough that developers would immediately have a good idea of scope and content and imposed a genre right away. Kara-Tur didn't work because it was probably pitched something like "mysteries of the Far East" which encompasses massively more cultures and concepts than Western Europe and offers no direction with regards to genre.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I could see the arguments for miko as druids rather than clerics, but they are "Shrine" maidens, custodians of a physical building (most of the time). That and it's incredibly difficult to make druids into anything but regular D&D druids because of ******* Wild Shape. Every last single druid subclass has to be all about the Wild Shaping because that's the druid's whole thing, its whole schtick, its raison d'etre. Which makes it VERY FREAKING DIFFICULT to turn the druid into a nature mage or an animistic spirit caller rather than Baby's First Fursuit, because even subclasses that give you another way to use Wild Shape uses aren't allowed to say "You cannot Wild Shape; instead..."
That and clerics having some degree of martial competence actually lines up with miko as well. Miko were expected to be able to fight to some extent (I believe, anyways. Been a while since I did my reading), even if the Magic Super Archer thing is an anime contrivance. It's probably easier to turn clerics into animists than it is to turn druids into not-druids, since Channel Divinity is more flexible than ******* Wild Shape.
I don't think that it would be hard to do a list of weapon equivalents, just that it would be nice to have an "official" chart/table so that it sets a standard for DM/Players to use would be nice.
I could see the arguments for miko as druids rather than clerics, but they are "Shrine" maidens, custodians of a physical building (most of the time). That and it's incredibly difficult to make druids into anything but regular D&D druids because of ****ing Wild Shape. Every last single druid subclass has to be all about the Wild Shaping because that's the druid's whole thing, its whole schtick, its raison d'etre. Which makes it VERY FREAKING DIFFICULT to turn the druid into a nature mage or an animistic spirit caller rather than Baby's First Fursuit, because even subclasses that give you another way to use Wild Shape uses aren't allowed to say "You cannot Wild Shape; instead..."
That and clerics having some degree of martial competence actually lines up with miko as well. Miko were expected to be able to fight to some extent (I believe, anyways. Been a while since I did my reading), even if the Magic Super Archer thing is an anime contrivance. It's probably easier to turn clerics into animists than it is to turn druids into not-druids, since Channel Divinity is more flexible than ****ing Wild Shape.
I have to admit that Druid has disappointed me sometimes conceptually for the same reason. Any form of nature-based spellcaster will feel a bit odd if it also has wild shape tacked on. In a different direction, there are sometimes ideas that would be great if they had access to wildshape, but feel awkward when attaching the rest of Druid trappings to them.
Imagine if druids simply had a 'Primal Invocation' feature similar to Channel Divinity, with a default use or two (OTHER than ******* Wild Shape) that each subclass could then do its own cool thing with. Nature mages could invoke natural miracles or cause the surrounding terrain to aid them in some way, Moon druids could get Wild Shape by ******* opting in, prospective mikos could use Primal Invocations to summon a kami spirit - all that good shit that happens when your base feature is "You can occasionally invoke power greater than your own" as opposed to "You can turn into a Combat Wombat, and/or transform into a fuzzy kitten to impress your love interest."
So similar to pathfinder 2e in a way? Where you can really lean into your racial choice and pick up unique feats for it which build on each other.
I'm not really at versed in Pathfinder 2e (or 1e) and have only heard of its lineage/legacy(?) system. What I'm seeing is "yeah" but maybe not as rich in the basic model, allowing more thematic variants (and further book sales) that can be indexed into a lineage creator here on DDB.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I could see the arguments for miko as druids rather than clerics, but they are "Shrine" maidens, custodians of a physical building (most of the time). That and it's incredibly difficult to make druids into anything but regular D&D druids because of ****ing Wild Shape. Every last single druid subclass has to be all about the Wild Shaping because that's the druid's whole thing, its whole schtick, its raison d'etre. Which makes it VERY FREAKING DIFFICULT to turn the druid into a nature mage or an animistic spirit caller rather than Baby's First Fursuit, because even subclasses that give you another way to use Wild Shape uses aren't allowed to say "You cannot Wild Shape; instead..."
That and clerics having some degree of martial competence actually lines up with miko as well. Miko were expected to be able to fight to some extent (I believe, anyways. Been a while since I did my reading), even if the Magic Super Archer thing is an anime contrivance. It's probably easier to turn clerics into animists than it is to turn druids into not-druids, since Channel Divinity is more flexible than ****ing Wild Shape.
I have to admit that Druid has disappointed me sometimes conceptually for the same reason. Any form of nature-based spellcaster will feel a bit odd if it also has wild shape tacked on. In a different direction, there are sometimes ideas that would be great if they had access to wildshape, but feel awkward when attaching the rest of Druid trappings to them.
Yeah, I am not sold on Druid either. Cleric would work better imho.
Eh.... I'm just going to say that druid subclasses offer alternatives to using animal forms for wild shape, so it comes with just as much flexibility as Channel Divinity. So, for any particular concept, it becomes a question if you hate animal shifting more than always being able to destroy undead. Anti-undead power is as much a raison d'etre for clerics as animal forms are for druids.
And, with that, I'll drop the subject. We can talk more over PM or a different thread if you're interested, or not, as you will.
Mephista made me wonder when the Wild Shape became integral to druids in D&D. I don't remember the Wild Shape being a thing in AD&D or 2e. Frankly Wildshape is one of those class features I'd love to be able to see swappable into something like Ranger and Rogue and Barbarian. I mean some Wild Shapes seem to be robbing the Ranger of the Beastmaster's companion feature "just call them "cooler companion than Ranger".
What I'm saying is I like the idea of Wild Shape, I'm not particularly happy it's "the thing" associated with Druids, and also not happy it's anchored on Druids.
Heh. We're now getting back to the "the classes themes are too restrictive" thing again, which has been brought up in multiple threads with quite a lot of the same people. The monk has this problem more than the rest of the classes, IMO, but it applies to most (if not all) of the other classes. It makes no sense for Death Clerics (which are very poorly named, IMO) to have Destroy Undead, as their whole thing is being able to summon and control undead, not kill/turn them. A person that channels their nature magic from 'shrooms in order to create high zombies with fungus all over them should not have the innate ability to turn into a little fluffy bunny twice a day for multiple hours each. A freaking Oathbreaker Paladin should have the option to Divine Smite with NECROTIC damage instead of radiant. Nothing says "holy warrior" more than serving a lich and being surrounded in an army of your skeletal followers, am I right?
Anyway, I digress. This is a topic for another thread (probably several other threads, as it's such a vast problem). IMO, expanding the base of the classes would fix most of the problems that people who feel starved of content in 5e complain about (which includes me). If a monk was a bit less of "definitely-not-crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon,look-we-have-avatars-too!" and more of a general expert of using their own body and not "typical" weapons/armor in combat, it would feel a bit less secluded in a forgotten corner of the PHB and more like it actually has a spot in this hobby (another plus, this would allow for puglist-type characters that break the bones of their enemies with brass-knuckles and folding chairs).
Opening up the theme of the classes would make a lot of them less automatically-eurocentric and be a good way of not only allowing and encouraging other themes inside the hobby, but also making everyone's characters feel a bit more different, even of the same class.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Heh. We're now getting back to the "the classes themes are too restrictive" thing again, which has been brought up in multiple threads with quite a lot of the same people. The monk has this problem more than the rest of the classes, IMO, but it applies to most (if not all) of the other classes. It makes no sense for Death Clerics (which are very poorly named, IMO) to have Destroy Undead, as their whole thing is being able to summon and control undead, not kill/turn them. A person that channels their nature magic from 'shrooms in order to create high zombies with fungus all over them should not have the innate ability to turn into a little fluffy bunny twice a day for multiple hours each. A freaking Oathbreaker Paladin should have the option to Divine Smite with NECROTIC damage instead of radiant. Nothing says "holy warrior" more than serving a lich and being surrounded in an army of your skeletal followers, am I right?
Anyway, I digress. This is a topic for another thread (probably several other threads, as it's such a vast problem). IMO, expanding the base of the classes would fix most of the problems that people who feel starved of content in 5e complain about (which includes me). If a monk was a bit less of "definitely-not-crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon,look-we-have-avatars-too!" and more of a general expert of using their own body and not "typical" weapons/armor in combat, it would feel a bit less secluded in a forgotten corner of the PHB and more like it actually has a spot in this hobby (another plus, this would allow for puglist-type characters that break the bones of their enemies with brass-knuckles and folding chairs).
Opening up the theme of the classes would make a lot of them less automatically-eurocentric and be a good way of not only allowing and encouraging other themes inside the hobby, but also making everyone's characters feel a bit more different, even of the same class.
People then claim that's ruining the class fantasy.
"An arcane gish class would be nice"
"Just reflavor paladin"
"Ok can I reflavor paladin to be an arcane warrior without the oaths and an elemental smite instead?"
"No a paladin has to be a holy divine based warrior who has oaths and serves gods. Reflavoring it ruins the class fantasy"
I don't know if I'd say the classes are too restrictive, imho. Rather, the problem is a design decision.
Like... the death clerics. Turning undead is unthematic for them, I think we can all agree on that. But... this isn't really restricting the dark cleric in anyway.... they can still do all the different death-cleric-y things. But the mere fact that they have the ability to turn undead at all is causing a bit of issue with a number of people. Its unneeded, unused... but you have thematic alternatives for your Channel Divinity uses anyways. Its the mere fact that Turn Undead is on your sheet in the first place.
5e designs things so that subclasses are always adding on top of the existing class chasis, instead of directly altering the class chasis in the first place. Evil paladins smite using radiant damage as a result instead of necrotic. No subclass will ever directly say "you can no longer deal radiant smite damage" Instead, they always offer you a choice - "you may choose to deal necrotic damage when you smite instead of radiant."
This will sometimes create an odd dissonance, where you're granted abilities that aren't really a thematic fit for your subclass concept. This is highlighting a small issue with 5e - it does not handle replacing stuff well. You see it with spellcasters swapping out spells, you see it with retraining classes, you see it with the whole drama over dhampir/risen/changeling lineage changes.
Tasha's alternative class features is probably the first time they offered swapping out things, and even then, the overwhelming majority of these alternative features are actually add ons. Only a very few are actively swapping out features.
There should’ve been a least a UA about wuxia campaigns, anime-styled characters, or some sorta Hong Kong cinema-type deal, and I am partial to both sides as a weeb and a fan of the type of campy late 70’s Kung fu movies I enjoyed many a time, but these pleas are goin‘ unheard by WOTC, but idk, I’m just saying playing a magical girl or a maneuver-based martial artist WOULD BE PRETTY COOL
Honestly, it’s mostly just a more refined and expanded version of what 4e did. Each major race has a core set of abilities. However, you could then switch each out for another ability instead.
So for example, I’ll use a Dragonborn. My base Dragonborn would have the following abilities.
Now for each of these abilities, you would have different options to replace them with. For Darkvision, you could instead have proficiency with Perception. Instead of a 1/rest breath weapon, you could have a 1/rest fear aura, or a 1/rest reaction that causes a burst of elemental damage around you, or a bite attack that 1/rest can do extra elemental damage. Instead of resistance to a damage type, you can have natural armor, or wings that give you a glide ability like the Simic Hybrid, or a swim speed. Instead of a claw attack, you can get a weapon or tool proficiency, or a cantrips fitting your elemental type.
Using this you could craft a Dragonborn to be more tanky or more magical or more adaptable or whatever.
If I wanted to go even crazier with this idea I would introduce more feats and separate them into categories, racial, class, and general. Racial feats could then be used to expand upon your chosen racial traits if you wish, allowing for more unique options for your character. If you took the Breath Weapon feature, you could take a feat that allows you to instead use your breath to imbue your weapon with extra elemental damage for a short spell. You could also just take a feat to improve the breath weapon in general instead. If you chose gliding wings, a feat could allow you full flight. If you instead chose a swim speed you can take a feat to give yourself the ability to breath under water. Taking the cantrips could allow you to gain a bit more magic connected to your element choice through a feat, or if you took the claw attack you could improve it.
As you can see though, it’s much more complicated and would actually take a total revamp to balance it with everything else. It’s more of a pipe dream. I don’t expect it to ever happen, especially not in 5e. It would be cool though, at least to me.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Characters for Tenebris Sine Fine
RoughCoronet's Greater Wills
I'd suggest defining a fairly specific theme or concept. "Weeb Shit" may be more clearly delineated than it seems to me, but setting books work better when there's a clear vision as the starting point. Al-Qadim wasn't perfect, but it worked because it was pretty much "Arabian Nights northern Africa desert setting, start from there", which was focused enough that developers would immediately have a good idea of scope and content and imposed a genre right away. Kara-Tur didn't work because it was probably pitched something like "mysteries of the Far East" which encompasses massively more cultures and concepts than Western Europe and offers no direction with regards to genre.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I could see the arguments for miko as druids rather than clerics, but they are "Shrine" maidens, custodians of a physical building (most of the time). That and it's incredibly difficult to make druids into anything but regular D&D druids because of ******* Wild Shape. Every last single druid subclass has to be all about the Wild Shaping because that's the druid's whole thing, its whole schtick, its raison d'etre. Which makes it VERY FREAKING DIFFICULT to turn the druid into a nature mage or an animistic spirit caller rather than Baby's First Fursuit, because even subclasses that give you another way to use Wild Shape uses aren't allowed to say "You cannot Wild Shape; instead..."
That and clerics having some degree of martial competence actually lines up with miko as well. Miko were expected to be able to fight to some extent (I believe, anyways. Been a while since I did my reading), even if the Magic Super Archer thing is an anime contrivance. It's probably easier to turn clerics into animists than it is to turn druids into not-druids, since Channel Divinity is more flexible than ******* Wild Shape.
Please do not contact or message me.
I don't think that it would be hard to do a list of weapon equivalents, just that it would be nice to have an "official" chart/table so that it sets a standard for DM/Players to use would be nice.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I have to admit that Druid has disappointed me sometimes conceptually for the same reason. Any form of nature-based spellcaster will feel a bit odd if it also has wild shape tacked on. In a different direction, there are sometimes ideas that would be great if they had access to wildshape, but feel awkward when attaching the rest of Druid trappings to them.
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So similar to pathfinder 2e in a way? Where you can really lean into your racial choice and pick up unique feats for it which build on each other.
Seriously!
Imagine if druids simply had a 'Primal Invocation' feature similar to Channel Divinity, with a default use or two (OTHER than ******* Wild Shape) that each subclass could then do its own cool thing with. Nature mages could invoke natural miracles or cause the surrounding terrain to aid them in some way, Moon druids could get Wild Shape by ******* opting in, prospective mikos could use Primal Invocations to summon a kami spirit - all that good shit that happens when your base feature is "You can occasionally invoke power greater than your own" as opposed to "You can turn into a Combat Wombat, and/or transform into a fuzzy kitten to impress your love interest."
Please do not contact or message me.
I'm not really at versed in Pathfinder 2e (or 1e) and have only heard of its lineage/legacy(?) system. What I'm seeing is "yeah" but maybe not as rich in the basic model, allowing more thematic variants (and further book sales) that can be indexed into a lineage creator here on DDB.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yeah, I am not sold on Druid either. Cleric would work better imho.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I suppose so. I’m not as familiar with Pathfinder myself, though one of my friends I play D&D has mentioned that I’d probably like the system.
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Characters for Tenebris Sine Fine
RoughCoronet's Greater Wills
Eh.... I'm just going to say that druid subclasses offer alternatives to using animal forms for wild shape, so it comes with just as much flexibility as Channel Divinity. So, for any particular concept, it becomes a question if you hate animal shifting more than always being able to destroy undead. Anti-undead power is as much a raison d'etre for clerics as animal forms are for druids.
And, with that, I'll drop the subject. We can talk more over PM or a different thread if you're interested, or not, as you will.
This is why I am for creating new classes as opposed to all subclasses. Too much baggage in the current design.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Mephista made me wonder when the Wild Shape became integral to druids in D&D. I don't remember the Wild Shape being a thing in AD&D or 2e. Frankly Wildshape is one of those class features I'd love to be able to see swappable into something like Ranger and Rogue and Barbarian. I mean some Wild Shapes seem to be robbing the Ranger of the Beastmaster's companion feature "just call them "cooler companion than Ranger".
What I'm saying is I like the idea of Wild Shape, I'm not particularly happy it's "the thing" associated with Druids, and also not happy it's anchored on Druids.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Heh. We're now getting back to the "the classes themes are too restrictive" thing again, which has been brought up in multiple threads with quite a lot of the same people. The monk has this problem more than the rest of the classes, IMO, but it applies to most (if not all) of the other classes. It makes no sense for Death Clerics (which are very poorly named, IMO) to have Destroy Undead, as their whole thing is being able to summon and control undead, not kill/turn them. A person that channels their nature magic from 'shrooms in order to create high zombies with fungus all over them should not have the innate ability to turn into a little fluffy bunny twice a day for multiple hours each. A freaking Oathbreaker Paladin should have the option to Divine Smite with NECROTIC damage instead of radiant. Nothing says "holy warrior" more than serving a lich and being surrounded in an army of your skeletal followers, am I right?
Anyway, I digress. This is a topic for another thread (probably several other threads, as it's such a vast problem). IMO, expanding the base of the classes would fix most of the problems that people who feel starved of content in 5e complain about (which includes me). If a monk was a bit less of "definitely-not-crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon,look-we-have-avatars-too!" and more of a general expert of using their own body and not "typical" weapons/armor in combat, it would feel a bit less secluded in a forgotten corner of the PHB and more like it actually has a spot in this hobby (another plus, this would allow for puglist-type characters that break the bones of their enemies with brass-knuckles and folding chairs).
Opening up the theme of the classes would make a lot of them less automatically-eurocentric and be a good way of not only allowing and encouraging other themes inside the hobby, but also making everyone's characters feel a bit more different, even of the same class.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
People then claim that's ruining the class fantasy.
"An arcane gish class would be nice"
"Just reflavor paladin"
"Ok can I reflavor paladin to be an arcane warrior without the oaths and an elemental smite instead?"
"No a paladin has to be a holy divine based warrior who has oaths and serves gods. Reflavoring it ruins the class fantasy"
I don't know if I'd say the classes are too restrictive, imho. Rather, the problem is a design decision.
Like... the death clerics. Turning undead is unthematic for them, I think we can all agree on that. But... this isn't really restricting the dark cleric in anyway.... they can still do all the different death-cleric-y things. But the mere fact that they have the ability to turn undead at all is causing a bit of issue with a number of people. Its unneeded, unused... but you have thematic alternatives for your Channel Divinity uses anyways. Its the mere fact that Turn Undead is on your sheet in the first place.
5e designs things so that subclasses are always adding on top of the existing class chasis, instead of directly altering the class chasis in the first place. Evil paladins smite using radiant damage as a result instead of necrotic. No subclass will ever directly say "you can no longer deal radiant smite damage" Instead, they always offer you a choice - "you may choose to deal necrotic damage when you smite instead of radiant."
This will sometimes create an odd dissonance, where you're granted abilities that aren't really a thematic fit for your subclass concept. This is highlighting a small issue with 5e - it does not handle replacing stuff well. You see it with spellcasters swapping out spells, you see it with retraining classes, you see it with the whole drama over dhampir/risen/changeling lineage changes.
Tasha's alternative class features is probably the first time they offered swapping out things, and even then, the overwhelming majority of these alternative features are actually add ons. Only a very few are actively swapping out features.
There should’ve been a least a UA about wuxia campaigns, anime-styled characters, or some sorta Hong Kong cinema-type deal, and I am partial to both sides as a weeb and a fan of the type of campy late 70’s Kung fu movies I enjoyed many a time, but these pleas are goin‘ unheard by WOTC, but idk, I’m just saying playing a magical girl or a maneuver-based martial artist WOULD BE PRETTY COOL
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.
Would you like to be a magical girl? I have just the deal for you.....
XD
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.
KILL IT. KILL IT NOW.
Please do not contact or message me.