Hopefully 5.5e has proper guidelines on homebrewing. Not just classes but other things like mundane weapons too.
You're never going to get more than pretty vague guidelines -- existing content was not created in all that systematic a manner, so detailed rules don't exist.
I agree with vague guidelines, but who knows. With, at this point, all classes getting their subclass and features on a set progression (3rd, 6th, 10th, 14th) in 1D&D, it's more standardized and easier to build classes/subclasses to fit that "template". It's not perfect, but even with vague guidelines, it may be easier to create a new class then currently in 5E. But DDB homebrew probably won't support it.
I gotta say I’m not a fan of the standardized subclass levels. It makes everything fell too similar.
I personally wouldn't mind being able to add homebrew classes to D&D. Not sure what I'd add, but still. One thing I wouldn't mind also including are custom Infusions, Invocations, and other such features for classes, without having to make a whole new subclass for those features. For instance, I've got this wonderful Invocation idea that lets a Talisman Warlock cast his class's spells from his allies, but I wouldn't be able to implement it into a Talisman Warlock's Invocation list, without slapping together a whole new Talisman Warlock.
I personally wouldn't mind being able to add homebrew classes to D&D. Not sure what I'd add, but still. One thing I wouldn't mind also including are custom Infusions, Invocations, and other such features for classes, without having to make a whole new subclass for those features. For instance, I've got this wonderful Invocation idea that lets a Talisman Warlock cast his class's spells from his allies, but I wouldn't be able to implement it into a Talisman Warlock's Invocation list, without slapping together a whole new Talisman Warlock.
I think it would be nice if D&D Beyond allowed me to do the following homebrewing:
Homebrew mundane items
Homebrew weapons (especially ones I can add a special property to)
Homebrew languages I can allow a character to select without being stuck with the list given to you in the character creator
Homebrew eldritch invocations
Homebrew classes would also be cool, but I don't know if I'd go through the trouble of using them personally.
Yes all of this please. Throw in some other secondary class features maybe like maneuvers as well.
You can add a Custom Language to you're character sheet and give it whatever name you would like. Just click on your characters proficiencies and it should give you the option to add new ones, add a custom language, or proficiency, and the name it. Also works for putting tool proficiencies on there.
Creativity should be encouraged. If there is an archetype not served by the WOTC classes players should be able to homebrew what they want. The random elements of control - be it schools of magic or base classes - exerted by WOTC through the platform is pushing me away from D&D.
Editing subclasses can be fun, but the classical D&D class archetypes have become archaic and constricting. WIZARDS, please let us play the game the way WE want.
92% on the poll say give us homebrew control of our classes, make it so.
Because an entirely new class comes with a lot of implications. It's a fundamental shift in the game system, because there are just so many things balanced around the 12 classes that adding another means almost everything is gonna have to be rethought, at least a little. Ignore this fact at your peril.
Now, whether the homebrew creator is actually thinking about any of this is irrelevant, at least for the purposes of this post. Why? Because, my friend, Wizards still has infrastructure to maintain. Let's see how such a tool would interact with it, specifically, how much it would have to displace in order to even be possible.
Let's assume D&D Beyond ships a new "class creator" tool. Alright, right off the bat, first question, spell lists. Most classes in D&D can cast spells. Out of the 12 in published books, do you want to know how many can't? Exactly four. If you count the Monk's Ki feature as spellcasting, which I don't, then that makes three. So, safe to say a homebrew class would very likely need to worry about spell lists. How are you going to implement a way to pick out one spell from a crowd of thousands, add it to a list somewhere buried deep in the abyssal depths of the homebrew section, and then get it to play nice with all of D&D Beyond's other tools? Not only do you need to account for that one list, as well as the heaps code under the hood that would need to be changed because it works with the assumption that D&D Beyond doesn't have this, you also need to account for the spell index, the character sheets, the homebrew equivalents to everything, hell even magic items sometimes require a specific class to attune. That's a lot of development right there, and with how big of a focus Wizards is putting on OneD&D right now, I wouldn't expect it any time soon.
Alright, so let's say you have a modular system which just hand waves that all away, which is totally not gonna be incredibly hard or even impossible to do with how much bloat and messiness has accumulated in 5e from over 40 years of development. That's great and all, but what about subclasses? How are you going to implement a way to homebrew subclasses which accounts for, oh I don't know, 100,000 main classes or more? The current system certainly wouldn't work, a dropdown menu is just not going to cut it here with the absolute magnitudes we're talking about. Maybe have a button built into the homebrew class page which allows you to? I mean, sure, but that's still one more piece of infrastructure Wizards needs to create. Not to mention one more archaic piece Wizards needs to dispose of, which also takes a lot of time and energy.
So basically, a lot of pain, and we've only barely touched on the death by a thousand cuts that is debugging the stuff you've programmed. So no, Wizards is not cheating you out of homebrewing your own classes over any sort of petty slight towards you or the community. They just recognize the colossal amount of work and effort it would take to make, and that, to avoid stretching themselves thin, they need to focus on something else for the time being.
Alright, so am I saying that homebrew classes by themselves are a bad idea? No, not at all, I'm merely talking about the practical implications of building such a seemingly innocuous system. Does that mean I think homebrew classes are a good idea? The answer: I'm not opening that can of worms right now, this post is long enough already. Maybe some other time.
Creativity should be encouraged. If there is an archetype not served by the WOTC classes players should be able to homebrew what they want. The random elements of control - be it schools of magic or base classes - exerted by WOTC through the platform is pushing me away from D&D.
Editing subclasses can be fun, but the classical D&D class archetypes have become archaic and constricting. WIZARDS, please let us play the game the way WE want.
92% on the poll say give us homebrew control of our classes, make it so.
Sounds like you might be better off looking for a new game than trying to get WotC to abandon what D&D has been about for 40+ years. There are plenty of options out there that don't use this type of class archetype system. It might be more of what you are looking for.
And players can homebrew all the new classes they want. They just can't do it on DDB. There are plenty of Homebrew classes out there that anyone can use.
I like that d&dbeyond has a nice array of customizable content; you can create all kinds of homebrew stuff.. but being unable to create custom classes just seems strange. Customizable sub-classes doesn't quite cut it. I don't know if d&dbeyond staff sees this forum.. but couldn't we just have a 'blanked out class' feature, so we can edit the details how we like? It would be a great feature... doesn't need to be fancy... the poll here speaks for itself.
I think the subclasses allow you to replace features in the classes, and add spell casting to any mundane class, so any mundane class can have a subclass added to make just about any class you can think of. The only problem is I don't know how too look at base class features to copy them.
You can only replace a base class feature with a subclass feature if you give it the exact same name, so it doesn’t really work for creating new base classes.
Who says we can't? If they don't like it, lets take our ideas and work to places that'll appreciate it. This is one area in which Roll20 could pick up the slack.
You need to be able to write your own mechanics and in order to do that you have to design things the system is just not able or maybe even meant to handle. Pen and paper you can do whatever you want, but here? You need to program.
The game mechanics for homebrew classes wouldn't really work, and it would be too hard to create something that allows us to make homebrew classes. And it would be very difficult to create everything in a homebrew class unless your really creative. And making all the subclasses would be really hard.
Got What We Need
While Blood Hunter is great, there just isn't much else to add that fits well with normal dnd. We've got what we need right now, and really, with the difficulty to add this feature, there isn't any point.
Difficulty to Add
Doing big updates on a site is a lot harder than it sounds. It would take forever to make, and there are other priorities for what to add to the site. There is no way to add this feature at the moment.
No Support
There isn't any current support for homebrew classes in DnD, since this is unusual and complicates the rules to much. Blood Hunter was an accepting, and likely involved discussion with dnd/wotc
yes, but only because i wanna see the broken garbage with a super negative rating that people make.
(i understand it's way too hard to implement this and it's probably never gonna happen i'm just thinking of the goofy things i would find if it happened)
Because there are enough classes and subclasses to cover all fantasy eventualities :-)
No sir. Just, no. In fact that are serious gaps in the core class selection that can't effectively be handled with subclasses to the fluff and lore trappings that the various class have.
Curious what gaps you believe need to be filled? I’m not disagreeing with you just wonder what classes you would want that the current ones can’t. I’ve only played D&D (1E, a few sessions of 3E, and now 5E) so I’m pretty used to it just being the core we have now
Personally I'd like to see a warlord, swordmage, summoner, and psion class.
And then something which is harder to define but like the playtest sorcerer. We've got nothing like the playtest sorcerer at all.
Not meaning to necro an old post, but I'd LOVE to add duskblade
I gotta say I’m not a fan of the standardized subclass levels. It makes everything fell too similar.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I personally wouldn't mind being able to add homebrew classes to D&D. Not sure what I'd add, but still. One thing I wouldn't mind also including are custom Infusions, Invocations, and other such features for classes, without having to make a whole new subclass for those features. For instance, I've got this wonderful Invocation idea that lets a Talisman Warlock cast his class's spells from his allies, but I wouldn't be able to implement it into a Talisman Warlock's Invocation list, without slapping together a whole new Talisman Warlock.
Yes all of this please. Throw in some other secondary class features maybe like maneuvers as well.
You can add a Custom Language to you're character sheet and give it whatever name you would like. Just click on your characters proficiencies and it should give you the option to add new ones, add a custom language, or proficiency, and the name it. Also works for putting tool proficiencies on there.
I mostly would like this so I could make custom classes based off of movies and books. Such as a Jedi or rithmatist. A Brandon Sanderson character
some sort of magic system that isn’t in the current D&D. I’d also like to have a way to use cross race breeding
Creativity should be encouraged. If there is an archetype not served by the WOTC classes players should be able to homebrew what they want. The random elements of control - be it schools of magic or base classes - exerted by WOTC through the platform is pushing me away from D&D.
Editing subclasses can be fun, but the classical D&D class archetypes have become archaic and constricting. WIZARDS, please let us play the game the way WE want.
92% on the poll say give us homebrew control of our classes, make it so.
Because an entirely new class comes with a lot of implications. It's a fundamental shift in the game system, because there are just so many things balanced around the 12 classes that adding another means almost everything is gonna have to be rethought, at least a little. Ignore this fact at your peril.
Now, whether the homebrew creator is actually thinking about any of this is irrelevant, at least for the purposes of this post. Why? Because, my friend, Wizards still has infrastructure to maintain. Let's see how such a tool would interact with it, specifically, how much it would have to displace in order to even be possible.
Let's assume D&D Beyond ships a new "class creator" tool. Alright, right off the bat, first question, spell lists. Most classes in D&D can cast spells. Out of the 12 in published books, do you want to know how many can't? Exactly four. If you count the Monk's Ki feature as spellcasting, which I don't, then that makes three. So, safe to say a homebrew class would very likely need to worry about spell lists. How are you going to implement a way to pick out one spell from a crowd of thousands, add it to a list somewhere buried deep in the abyssal depths of the homebrew section, and then get it to play nice with all of D&D Beyond's other tools? Not only do you need to account for that one list, as well as the heaps code under the hood that would need to be changed because it works with the assumption that D&D Beyond doesn't have this, you also need to account for the spell index, the character sheets, the homebrew equivalents to everything, hell even magic items sometimes require a specific class to attune. That's a lot of development right there, and with how big of a focus Wizards is putting on OneD&D right now, I wouldn't expect it any time soon.
Alright, so let's say you have a modular system which just hand waves that all away, which is totally not gonna be incredibly hard or even impossible to do with how much bloat and messiness has accumulated in 5e from over 40 years of development. That's great and all, but what about subclasses? How are you going to implement a way to homebrew subclasses which accounts for, oh I don't know, 100,000 main classes or more? The current system certainly wouldn't work, a dropdown menu is just not going to cut it here with the absolute magnitudes we're talking about. Maybe have a button built into the homebrew class page which allows you to? I mean, sure, but that's still one more piece of infrastructure Wizards needs to create. Not to mention one more archaic piece Wizards needs to dispose of, which also takes a lot of time and energy.
So basically, a lot of pain, and we've only barely touched on the death by a thousand cuts that is debugging the stuff you've programmed. So no, Wizards is not cheating you out of homebrewing your own classes over any sort of petty slight towards you or the community. They just recognize the colossal amount of work and effort it would take to make, and that, to avoid stretching themselves thin, they need to focus on something else for the time being.
Alright, so am I saying that homebrew classes by themselves are a bad idea? No, not at all, I'm merely talking about the practical implications of building such a seemingly innocuous system. Does that mean I think homebrew classes are a good idea? The answer: I'm not opening that can of worms right now, this post is long enough already. Maybe some other time.
Sounds like you might be better off looking for a new game than trying to get WotC to abandon what D&D has been about for 40+ years. There are plenty of options out there that don't use this type of class archetype system. It might be more of what you are looking for.
And players can homebrew all the new classes they want. They just can't do it on DDB. There are plenty of Homebrew classes out there that anyone can use.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Bump.
I like that d&dbeyond has a nice array of customizable content; you can create all kinds of homebrew stuff.. but being unable to create custom classes just seems strange. Customizable sub-classes doesn't quite cut it. I don't know if d&dbeyond staff sees this forum.. but couldn't we just have a 'blanked out class' feature, so we can edit the details how we like? It would be a great feature... doesn't need to be fancy... the poll here speaks for itself.
I think the subclasses allow you to replace features in the classes, and add spell casting to any mundane class, so any mundane class can have a subclass added to make just about any class you can think of. The only problem is I don't know how too look at base class features to copy them.
You can only replace a base class feature with a subclass feature if you give it the exact same name, so it doesn’t really work for creating new base classes.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Who says we can't? If they don't like it, lets take our ideas and work to places that'll appreciate it. This is one area in which Roll20 could pick up the slack.
Enjoy your slop. I'll be enjoying good products elsewhere.
Mechanics.
You need to be able to write your own mechanics and in order to do that you have to design things the system is just not able or maybe even meant to handle. Pen and paper you can do whatever you want, but here? You need to program.
Why we don't have Homebrew Classes
Complications
The game mechanics for homebrew classes wouldn't really work, and it would be too hard to create something that allows us to make homebrew classes. And it would be very difficult to create everything in a homebrew class unless your really creative. And making all the subclasses would be really hard.
Got What We Need
While Blood Hunter is great, there just isn't much else to add that fits well with normal dnd. We've got what we need right now, and really, with the difficulty to add this feature, there isn't any point.
Difficulty to Add
Doing big updates on a site is a lot harder than it sounds. It would take forever to make, and there are other priorities for what to add to the site. There is no way to add this feature at the moment.
No Support
There isn't any current support for homebrew classes in DnD, since this is unusual and complicates the rules to much. Blood Hunter was an accepting, and likely involved discussion with dnd/wotc
Upvote these 18 unique mythical weapon materials!
"Be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi
yes, but only because i wanna see the broken garbage with a super negative rating that people make.
(i understand it's way too hard to implement this and it's probably never gonna happen i'm just thinking of the goofy things i would find if it happened)
AYO, WHAT!?
Honestly, Me too
Mmmm, crunchy math rocks
Rat king, leader of the rat army
Opposed to the scorpion army
MY RP WAR THREAD
Not meaning to necro an old post, but I'd LOVE to add duskblade
Absolutely YES! I used to have a homebrewed half-elf but was also half-orc/half-dwarf, etc. Would love to see this implemented.
I thought that was what custom lineage was for?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
no but i do know it is stupid