I've often theory-crafted with friends about running or playing in games where all of the players are the same class but different subclasses. After giving it a lot of thought I've come to realize that running something like this could be a challenge (because there are lots of things the party doesn't cover) but tons of fun as well.
If you could run a game, even a short-run for a summer or something, where all the characters were the same class, what would you like to run and why?
Clerics or paladins would be fun with the right group, but I could also see it devolving into constant bickering amongst the players.
A tribe of barbarians or a mixed circle of druids could be a lot of fun, too. Or a group of sorcerers trying to understand their collective origins, or some wizards from an academy doing their graduate work. Or a bunch of warlocks trying to break their pacts. Or a wandering troupe of bards!
Okay, I think I might steal this idea for my next campaign! The only problem is that now I can’t decide which class to pick, either… 😂
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I'd probably go with Bard. It's already designed to be an extremely adaptable class, and it has a good mix of subclasses that cover all the major playstyles... two separate martial subclasses, the rogue-like Whispers, or the classic Lore Bard to be able to customize and pull from the entire spell list early on.
Bards are also free to pick from proficiency in any skill, so you won't necessarily have the redundancy of everyone being proficient in History or Religion... if everyone collaborates on character creation, they can be certain to cover a very broad spectrum of skills and abilities.
Warlocks are in a similar vein, since the class is so deeply customizable with invocations and all, but it's perhaps not quite as versatile as Bards in the long run.
IMO, Clerics, Paladins, Druids and Bards would be by far the easiest on the players, especially Bards. They are already all classes, mostly, and picking the optimal subclass to further enhance the path would again, truly limit the "missing link" bit possible with others. Sorcerers and Warlocks, with Divine being there to make sure some solid healing is available. Rangers are pretty versatile as well and they could split up any healing duties required.
In all, I would LOVE to participate in such a campaign. I would be a little bit of a challenge, trying to fill as many roles as possible, with half being sub-optimal for sure. Would create some interesting challenges and could easily turn into a TON of RP fun. Barbarian or Rogue would be interesting to say the absolute least, with Rogue obviously more adept at filling gaps that Barbarian (or Fighter for that matter) With good players and a good DM it could be more fun than a barrel of monkeys!
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I'd probably go with Bard. It's already designed to be an extremely adaptable class, and it has a good mix of subclasses that cover all the major playstyles... two separate martial subclasses, the rogue-like Whispers, or the classic Lore Bard to be able to customize and pull from the entire spell list early on.
Bards are also free to pick from proficiency in any skill, so you won't necessarily have the redundancy of everyone being proficient in History or Religion... if everyone collaborates on character creation, they can be certain to cover a very broad spectrum of skills and abilities.
Warlocks are in a similar vein, since the class is so deeply customizable with invocations and all, but it's perhaps not quite as versatile as Bards in the long run.
Ooooh some good ideas there! I haven't run a Bard in 5e so I keep forgetting how versatile they can be!
Some great ideas being kicked around! A few I came up with earlier:
Rogues: You all start as part of a Guild but something Bad happens (city burns down...whatever) and so you have to go and do what that ONE guy has been pining for all along...Adventuring! At first, there would be one person breathing the fresh air while the rest gripe about not sleeping in a bed. Then they find their first real treasure (the crypt being cake because they cover traps and puzzles and locks SUPER WELL) and suddenly it's 'This was a GREAT idea! Let's do this again!' The party can move to the city for a little while, adventure for a little while, move around or put down roots somewhere.
Barbarian: I LOVE the idea of a tribe of Barbs working together! I can picture an animation in my head of the first time some big wizard steps out and tries to intimidate them with magic and seconds later they've hammered him to paste!
Paladins: We are noble knights seeking adventure to win our spurs (or whatever)! Hey...is that a monster to slay? (They head over, slay the monster, only to find it was actually kind and protecting the village or whatever). I can see this being serious or humorous (Monty Python anyone?)
Wizard: I think the 'students at the Wizard School' has been done to death but some new players might like it.
Artificers: I can see the DM having a tough time coming up with ways to challenge a party of mad inventor geniuses!
It would be amazing to run a group of rangers or Barbarians. Rogues or rogue -adjacent class groups are pretty easy to run and so are monks. I could also see a group of fighters being a fun group to DM for.
Fighters would be a classic, but it probably wouldn’t stray too far from the average campaign. So I’d go with Paladins: I like the idea of questing knights, like a King Arthur story.
Rogues could be fun, but at that point I’d just run Blades in the Dark instead of D&D.
I played in an all Rogue mini-campaign once. We all chose different subclasses. We began as a low level, start-up criminal guild. We then began doing jobs, and taking on higher rival gangs, gaining power and climbing the ranks of the underground. In one quest we were hired to kidnap a woman from a wealthy family, so the group could extort money from the family. We covered our faces and disguised ourselves when we did the mission.THEN we approached the family and convinced them to hire us to "find out" who is holding her and rescue her. And so, obviously knowing exactly who they are, we went in the stealth of night, took out the 'bad guys' and returned her to her family for a reward.
The campaign kind of fizzled out, but I thought it would be cool if we eventually had to face a mixed group of adventurers (say, a Paladin, wizard, etc.) who are good aligned and vow to clean up the town.
Total role reversal and WE are in a sense, the boss fight :)
I did a single class one shot once and I picked which class by rolling a d12 and whichever class came up on the die was the class that everyone had to play. It was a ton of fun and it was also a new experience for everyone!
Clerics can heal. Clerics can tank. Clerics can deal damage. Clerics can master any skill. Clerics can master any school of magic. Clerics can do anything.
I'd raise the idea with players, get a conversation going, get players to share their ideas and inject your own thoughts on possibilities on how each option might work. Maybe your players are already invested but otherwise, you have to get it. Choosing a class for a player is a form of railroading and, while this isn't necessarily bad, it could be detrimental to the involvement of some players. In some cases raising ideas long in advance may help players get into things.
Another option might be making a restriction for a character theme in relation to subclasses such as saying only nature or fire-related subclasses are allowed.
I'd raise the idea with players, get a conversation going, get players to share their ideas and inject your own thoughts on possibilities on how each option might work. Maybe your players are already invested but otherwise, you have to get it. Choosing a class for a player is a form of railroading and, while this isn't necessarily bad, it could be detrimental to the involvement of some players. In some cases raising ideas long in advance may help players get into things.
Another option might be making a restriction for a character theme in relation to subclasses such as saying only nature or fire-related subclasses are allowed.
This is the best advice of all. It should be collaborative. Simply, "Guys, what do you think about an all single-class campaign?" And then let the players sort out if they want to do one, and if so, which class. That's how our all rogue (let's be the bad guys) mini-campaign got started.
I'd raise the idea with players, get a conversation going, get players to share their ideas and inject your own thoughts on possibilities on how each option might work. Maybe your players are already invested but otherwise, you have to get it. Choosing a class for a player is a form of railroading and, while this isn't necessarily bad, it could be detrimental to the involvement of some players. In some cases raising ideas long in advance may help players get into things.
Another option might be making a restriction for a character theme in relation to subclasses such as saying only nature or fire-related subclasses are allowed.
Totally agree. In some of the cases I remember, we did it by accident. In our current game, we're all running Warforged. Different classes but all the same race. We're a mercenary unit that gets hired out to do stuff in inhospitable terrain (our base is in the desert). Several of us made up our character independent of the others and the Warforged idea came in just before we started.
It depends on what you're wanting to achieve by having only one class!
If you want the party to continue to be versatile but to all be the same class (which seems a bit of an oxymoron to me) then Bard is probably the best bet.
If you're wanting to challengt the players by them having only one class and the world continues to need diverse solutions, then I would veer away from magic users (can you imagine trying to keep track of 5 wizards?!?) and more towards combat classes - fighter, ranger, barbarian. And for me, barbarian is standing out.
A party of all barbarians could make for some hilarious role-play, as they are typically low on intelligence (dump stat) and their primary roles are A: hitting things and B: getting hit. The party might be clearing out a dungeon (hit things, danger sense for traps), or investigating a muder (intimidate everyone until they find the killer), and it would be chaotic fun. You could throw above-the-odds enemies at them in anticipation of an entire party raging! I would consider allowing multiclassing provided that they have double or more the level of barbarian to their second class, and they continue to role play as a barbarian that learned something new, not a wizard who was pretending to be a barbarian all along!
So you might get a sneaky barbarian who is barbarian 6 rogue 2, or a magic barbarian who's barb 6 wizard 2, or a ranged barbarian who's barb 6 ranger 2, and so on, to keep the campaign fresher for longer!
Alternatively, instead of ASI's, offer them 1 level in another class. They can only have 2 classes (barbarian plus another) and get free levels in it instead of ASI's, if they want!
It depends on what you're wanting to achieve by having only one class!
If you want the party to continue to be versatile but to all be the same class (which seems a bit of an oxymoron to me) then Bard is probably the best bet.
If you're wanting to challengt the players by them having only one class and the world continues to need diverse solutions, then I would veer away from magic users (can you imagine trying to keep track of 5 wizards?!?) and more towards combat classes - fighter, ranger, barbarian. And for me, barbarian is standing out.
A party of all barbarians could make for some hilarious role-play, as they are typically low on intelligence (dump stat) and their primary roles are A: hitting things and B: getting hit. The party might be clearing out a dungeon (hit things, danger sense for traps), or investigating a muder (intimidate everyone until they find the killer), and it would be chaotic fun. You could throw above-the-odds enemies at them in anticipation of an entire party raging! I would consider allowing multiclassing provided that they have double or more the level of barbarian to their second class, and they continue to role play as a barbarian that learned something new, not a wizard who was pretending to be a barbarian all along!
So you might get a sneaky barbarian who is barbarian 6 rogue 2, or a magic barbarian who's barb 6 wizard 2, or a ranged barbarian who's barb 6 ranger 2, and so on, to keep the campaign fresher for longer!
Alternatively, instead of ASI's, offer them 1 level in another class. They can only have 2 classes (barbarian plus another) and get free levels in it instead of ASI's, if they want!
I like some of these ideas and will be filing them away for later. Something else that I see on the DM Forum is the suggestion that everyone gets 1 free Feat at level 1. It breaks the 'party of V Humans' mold and encourages more racial diversity. As long as the change is fair to everyone, I'm for it to make the campaign interesting.
I really like the 'you can MC but you have to have a core class' idea.
I would love to do an all wizard party and have them be the faculty at a magic school, having to deal with student hijinks and drama, research projects and funding, teaching classes, and maybe a subplot about a chaotic Chosen One that seems constantly wreking the place in their struggles with a big bad.
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I've often theory-crafted with friends about running or playing in games where all of the players are the same class but different subclasses. After giving it a lot of thought I've come to realize that running something like this could be a challenge (because there are lots of things the party doesn't cover) but tons of fun as well.
If you could run a game, even a short-run for a summer or something, where all the characters were the same class, what would you like to run and why?
Clerics or paladins would be fun with the right group, but I could also see it devolving into constant bickering amongst the players.
A tribe of barbarians or a mixed circle of druids could be a lot of fun, too. Or a group of sorcerers trying to understand their collective origins, or some wizards from an academy doing their graduate work. Or a bunch of warlocks trying to break their pacts. Or a wandering troupe of bards!
Okay, I think I might steal this idea for my next campaign! The only problem is that now I can’t decide which class to pick, either… 😂
I live with several severe autoimmune conditions. If I don’t get back to you right away, it’s probably because I’m not feeling well.
I'd probably go with Bard. It's already designed to be an extremely adaptable class, and it has a good mix of subclasses that cover all the major playstyles... two separate martial subclasses, the rogue-like Whispers, or the classic Lore Bard to be able to customize and pull from the entire spell list early on.
Bards are also free to pick from proficiency in any skill, so you won't necessarily have the redundancy of everyone being proficient in History or Religion... if everyone collaborates on character creation, they can be certain to cover a very broad spectrum of skills and abilities.
Warlocks are in a similar vein, since the class is so deeply customizable with invocations and all, but it's perhaps not quite as versatile as Bards in the long run.
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IMO, Clerics, Paladins, Druids and Bards would be by far the easiest on the players, especially Bards. They are already all classes, mostly, and picking the optimal subclass to further enhance the path would again, truly limit the "missing link" bit possible with others. Sorcerers and Warlocks, with Divine being there to make sure some solid healing is available. Rangers are pretty versatile as well and they could split up any healing duties required.
In all, I would LOVE to participate in such a campaign. I would be a little bit of a challenge, trying to fill as many roles as possible, with half being sub-optimal for sure. Would create some interesting challenges and could easily turn into a TON of RP fun. Barbarian or Rogue would be interesting to say the absolute least, with Rogue obviously more adept at filling gaps that Barbarian (or Fighter for that matter) With good players and a good DM it could be more fun than a barrel of monkeys!
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Ooooh some good ideas there! I haven't run a Bard in 5e so I keep forgetting how versatile they can be!
Some great ideas being kicked around! A few I came up with earlier:
Rogues: You all start as part of a Guild but something Bad happens (city burns down...whatever) and so you have to go and do what that ONE guy has been pining for all along...Adventuring! At first, there would be one person breathing the fresh air while the rest gripe about not sleeping in a bed. Then they find their first real treasure (the crypt being cake because they cover traps and puzzles and locks SUPER WELL) and suddenly it's 'This was a GREAT idea! Let's do this again!' The party can move to the city for a little while, adventure for a little while, move around or put down roots somewhere.
Barbarian: I LOVE the idea of a tribe of Barbs working together! I can picture an animation in my head of the first time some big wizard steps out and tries to intimidate them with magic and seconds later they've hammered him to paste!
Paladins: We are noble knights seeking adventure to win our spurs (or whatever)! Hey...is that a monster to slay? (They head over, slay the monster, only to find it was actually kind and protecting the village or whatever). I can see this being serious or humorous (Monty Python anyone?)
Wizard: I think the 'students at the Wizard School' has been done to death but some new players might like it.
Artificers: I can see the DM having a tough time coming up with ways to challenge a party of mad inventor geniuses!
It would be amazing to run a group of rangers or Barbarians. Rogues or rogue -adjacent class groups are pretty easy to run and so are monks. I could also see a group of fighters being a fun group to DM for.
Fighters would be a classic, but it probably wouldn’t stray too far from the average campaign. So I’d go with Paladins: I like the idea of questing knights, like a King Arthur story.
Rogues could be fun, but at that point I’d just run Blades in the Dark instead of D&D.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I played in an all Rogue mini-campaign once. We all chose different subclasses. We began as a low level, start-up criminal guild. We then began doing jobs, and taking on higher rival gangs, gaining power and climbing the ranks of the underground. In one quest we were hired to kidnap a woman from a wealthy family, so the group could extort money from the family. We covered our faces and disguised ourselves when we did the mission.THEN we approached the family and convinced them to hire us to "find out" who is holding her and rescue her. And so, obviously knowing exactly who they are, we went in the stealth of night, took out the 'bad guys' and returned her to her family for a reward.
The campaign kind of fizzled out, but I thought it would be cool if we eventually had to face a mixed group of adventurers (say, a Paladin, wizard, etc.) who are good aligned and vow to clean up the town.
Total role reversal and WE are in a sense, the boss fight :)
All bard party traveling around the multiverse to compete in rap battles against creatures like: Xanathar, Asmodeus, Terrasque, Cthulhu, etc
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I did a single class one shot once and I picked which class by rolling a d12 and whichever class came up on the die was the class that everyone had to play. It was a ton of fun and it was also a new experience for everyone!
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Cleric.
Easy.
Clerics can heal. Clerics can tank. Clerics can deal damage. Clerics can master any skill. Clerics can master any school of magic. Clerics can do anything.
Clerics rock.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
I'd raise the idea with players, get a conversation going, get players to share their ideas and inject your own thoughts on possibilities on how each option might work. Maybe your players are already invested but otherwise, you have to get it. Choosing a class for a player is a form of railroading and, while this isn't necessarily bad, it could be detrimental to the involvement of some players. In some cases raising ideas long in advance may help players get into things.
Another option might be making a restriction for a character theme in relation to subclasses such as saying only nature or fire-related subclasses are allowed.
This is the best advice of all. It should be collaborative. Simply, "Guys, what do you think about an all single-class campaign?" And then let the players sort out if they want to do one, and if so, which class. That's how our all rogue (let's be the bad guys) mini-campaign got started.
Totally agree. In some of the cases I remember, we did it by accident. In our current game, we're all running Warforged. Different classes but all the same race. We're a mercenary unit that gets hired out to do stuff in inhospitable terrain (our base is in the desert). Several of us made up our character independent of the others and the Warforged idea came in just before we started.
Rangers. It's the most versatile class.
It depends on what you're wanting to achieve by having only one class!
If you want the party to continue to be versatile but to all be the same class (which seems a bit of an oxymoron to me) then Bard is probably the best bet.
If you're wanting to challengt the players by them having only one class and the world continues to need diverse solutions, then I would veer away from magic users (can you imagine trying to keep track of 5 wizards?!?) and more towards combat classes - fighter, ranger, barbarian. And for me, barbarian is standing out.
A party of all barbarians could make for some hilarious role-play, as they are typically low on intelligence (dump stat) and their primary roles are A: hitting things and B: getting hit. The party might be clearing out a dungeon (hit things, danger sense for traps), or investigating a muder (intimidate everyone until they find the killer), and it would be chaotic fun. You could throw above-the-odds enemies at them in anticipation of an entire party raging! I would consider allowing multiclassing provided that they have double or more the level of barbarian to their second class, and they continue to role play as a barbarian that learned something new, not a wizard who was pretending to be a barbarian all along!
So you might get a sneaky barbarian who is barbarian 6 rogue 2, or a magic barbarian who's barb 6 wizard 2, or a ranged barbarian who's barb 6 ranger 2, and so on, to keep the campaign fresher for longer!
Alternatively, instead of ASI's, offer them 1 level in another class. They can only have 2 classes (barbarian plus another) and get free levels in it instead of ASI's, if they want!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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I have the popcorn ready in case someone comes by and wants to start a debate with you between Rangers and Bards. Just saying...
I like some of these ideas and will be filing them away for later. Something else that I see on the DM Forum is the suggestion that everyone gets 1 free Feat at level 1. It breaks the 'party of V Humans' mold and encourages more racial diversity. As long as the change is fair to everyone, I'm for it to make the campaign interesting.
I really like the 'you can MC but you have to have a core class' idea.
I would love to do an all wizard party and have them be the faculty at a magic school, having to deal with student hijinks and drama, research projects and funding, teaching classes, and maybe a subplot about a chaotic Chosen One that seems constantly wreking the place in their struggles with a big bad.