So, having found myself with much more free time on hand, given the current state of things, I've set about marathoning through the first season of Critical Role and learned, through the pre-stream adventures summary, that the best cleric ever, Pike, used to be of the life domain before switching to the war domain after her death and subsequent resurrection.
And, this got me thinking: Is it possible for classes with specializations, i.e., rogues, warlocks, and wizards to just up and switch to another subclass? and are there any consequences?
For example, could a 10th level Assassin up and say, "I think I'm done with the stabby-stabby and wanna try my hand at being a Trickster?" Or could a warlock just up and cancel her contract with and Archdevil and start bartering with a Celestial for her power? And what would happen if a wizard was just like, "You know, Illusions aren't really doing it for me any more, so let's try some evocations!"?
Now, I could see some great roleplaying reasons for why characters/players would want to switch up their philosophies and/or play-styles (a paladin failing his oath so he has to take a new one, a warlock not wanting to put up with their patron's s%*# anymore, or a monk discovering a new monastic tradition she wishes to engage in) but how would this look mechanically?
After all, depending on the level the character decides to switch up their domain, archetype, or patron, they'd have already accrued quite the collection of features, skill, and spells unique to that specific subclass.
So, if they are able to switch, would those abilities just disappear, replaced by those of their new specialization? Or would they essentially be multi-classing and be a level 1 of their new domain, school, or patron?
Thanks for reading and I hope you're all staying safe out there!
I would require you to use a Wish or equivalent to do that kind of thing. And you would totally LOSE your old powers. And probably piss off some old friends.
Do you know what happens when an assassin tries to leave the mob? Yeah, that's you.
There’s nothing for it it RAW, so it’s all a homebrew, DM discretion kind of thing. I could see some RP reasons why it might happen. I could also see something like a new player, not fully understanding what they signed up for and asking if they could make a switch. In the RP case, I’d want there to be some significant event: a wish spell, as mog says, being raised or reincarnated as the OP mentions, spending a month in seclusion. That sort of thing. And depending on the class — warlocks, clerics and paladins in particular — there would be some in game repercussions. If a new player wants to switch, I’d let them have at it. Subclasses are just mechanics, and likely wouldn’t impact the plot, and I’m very forgiving with noobs.
In either case, also like mog says, you’d lose all the old features, It would be rebuilding the character from scratch.
With enough downtime and money I would probably see it happen. I'd say that you would need to spend at least the amount of time it took you to gain the levels of the subclass you started with and whatever monetary cost your DM thinks is appropriate. This is to show that you retrain your skills and practice new things but also stop using your old skills. Also, it's an all or nothing kind of thing. Like Xalthu said, you'd lose all the old features. You're either an Assassin or you are a Thief.
As for allowing this to happen at all? Well, it depends. If you're a 17th level Samurai but you figured out that it be much cooler if you were a Champion, probably not. If you're a new player who just reached level 4 but realized that you'd much rather be a Thief than an Arcane Trickster because you have a hard time handling spells? Sure, go ahead. In that case I might just let you do it without any special justification other than "you wake up and feel your magic gone" or something. :)
I had a new player who chose to be an Assassin, didn't like it so switched to Thief. Then he didn't like that either, so he switched to Arcane Trickster, all before level 6.
It had basically no impact on the game at all. The Arcane Trickster element was brought in alongside a cataclysmic magical event which affected him, and he slowly revealed these new powers.
I've also recently had a Profane Bloodhunter change patron, because he didn't like the roleplay angle it was taking him down (when I play a Great Old One, they are evil incarnate; you can't get away with being a kindly warlock/profane hunter in my campaign and get the benefits without serving the darkness). So his patron became a kind of wild magic angel spirit instead, which tied in with the rest of the campaign. But it took a big roleplay moment to do it.
My advice would be to always allow a player to do this. Work it into the storyline with them (it's perfectly OK to discuss upcoming story elements with individual players to create awesome moments ahead of the game) and create an encounter or suitably cool moment for their abilities to change - particularly if they are gaining magic.
Taking it one step further, in my current game I have a Wild Magic Barbarian who was finding his class very limited (useless against flying enemies, useless when he can't reach the enemy, little utility) and I noticed he had a Charisma of 12. I suggested that I just give him an additional ability point in Charisma, allowing him to multiclass into Wild Magic Sorcerer. To make it fair, I gave every player 1 additional ability point at the same time, so everyone was pretty happy. But they were more just happy to see the barbarian suddenly throw out a Firebolt and loved that the player was enjoying his character more.
I think there are two different opportunities to change your sub-class:
1. Player didn’t like or enjoy the sub-class. Even if it would cause impact in the game, I see no problems to allow these changes.
2. Big disruption in the game driven by RP, storyline and strong events.
In one of my weekly games where I’m playing a Hobgoblin Wizard, I decided to go Diviner once I reached level 2. The character was all about peace and he employed his arcane magic to avoid too much death and tried to save some lives during combat, even enemies. My group was more or less new players and some of them were going into the murderhobo route. It was not uncommon to see my character completely disabling an enemy with a spell and bringing the reflection to the group in-game: “Do we really want to kill this Orc? He is probably son, brother or even father of someone”. Well, sometimes the whole naive speech didn’t work and killing was unavoidable. At some point in the game, he got in touch with a peacemaking line of thought from the Necromancy school that basically distilled the usage of undeads instead of living people in combats, exactly with the intent to decrease unnecessary deaths. After some studies session, scroll investment and downtime practice, our DM allowed him to change from Diviner to Necromancer at level 5. Ironically, this discipline of employing undeads in combat in the place of living ones was created by the villain of the game, of course, not by a good cause, and now our entire group had suspicious under my innocent character.
This caused a deep impact in our group and gave us a more deep immersion in the game. Mechanically speaking, Divination is way superior than Necromancy, but it was good for the game. I miss Portent every session, but it made sense to the character and added a lot of value to the group in terms RPing.
Not this. As others have mentioned that others have mentioned, there’s rules in Tasha’s for changing your subclass without DM completely overruling things.
We usually just hand-wave this stuff in our campaign. If someone needs to make some tweaks to better enjoy their gaming time that will usually benefit the whole table so we don't make a big deal out of it. If they want to make a big change though we usually incorporate some role-play into the session to help explain it and usually open up a new adventure hook. Again, as long as folks are happy seems to work.
I'm glad they chose not to define making changes, to allow every group to decide what's best for them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
So, having found myself with much more free time on hand, given the current state of things, I've set about marathoning through the first season of Critical Role and learned, through the pre-stream adventures summary, that the best cleric ever, Pike, used to be of the life domain before switching to the war domain after her death and subsequent resurrection.
And, this got me thinking: Is it possible for classes with specializations, i.e., rogues, warlocks, and wizards to just up and switch to another subclass? and are there any consequences?
For example, could a 10th level Assassin up and say, "I think I'm done with the stabby-stabby and wanna try my hand at being a Trickster?" Or could a warlock just up and cancel her contract with and Archdevil and start bartering with a Celestial for her power? And what would happen if a wizard was just like, "You know, Illusions aren't really doing it for me any more, so let's try some evocations!"?
Now, I could see some great roleplaying reasons for why characters/players would want to switch up their philosophies and/or play-styles (a paladin failing his oath so he has to take a new one, a warlock not wanting to put up with their patron's s%*# anymore, or a monk discovering a new monastic tradition she wishes to engage in) but how would this look mechanically?
After all, depending on the level the character decides to switch up their domain, archetype, or patron, they'd have already accrued quite the collection of features, skill, and spells unique to that specific subclass.
So, if they are able to switch, would those abilities just disappear, replaced by those of their new specialization? Or would they essentially be multi-classing and be a level 1 of their new domain, school, or patron?
Thanks for reading and I hope you're all staying safe out there!
I would require you to use a Wish or equivalent to do that kind of thing. And you would totally LOSE your old powers. And probably piss off some old friends.
Do you know what happens when an assassin tries to leave the mob? Yeah, that's you.
There’s nothing for it it RAW, so it’s all a homebrew, DM discretion kind of thing.
I could see some RP reasons why it might happen. I could also see something like a new player, not fully understanding what they signed up for and asking if they could make a switch.
In the RP case, I’d want there to be some significant event: a wish spell, as mog says, being raised or reincarnated as the OP mentions, spending a month in seclusion. That sort of thing. And depending on the class — warlocks, clerics and paladins in particular — there would be some in game repercussions.
If a new player wants to switch, I’d let them have at it. Subclasses are just mechanics, and likely wouldn’t impact the plot, and I’m very forgiving with noobs.
In either case, also like mog says, you’d lose all the old features, It would be rebuilding the character from scratch.
RAW, there is no way to switch subclasses.
A DM can allow whatever they want, of course.
With enough downtime and money I would probably see it happen. I'd say that you would need to spend at least the amount of time it took you to gain the levels of the subclass you started with and whatever monetary cost your DM thinks is appropriate. This is to show that you retrain your skills and practice new things but also stop using your old skills. Also, it's an all or nothing kind of thing. Like Xalthu said, you'd lose all the old features. You're either an Assassin or you are a Thief.
As for allowing this to happen at all? Well, it depends. If you're a 17th level Samurai but you figured out that it be much cooler if you were a Champion, probably not. If you're a new player who just reached level 4 but realized that you'd much rather be a Thief than an Arcane Trickster because you have a hard time handling spells? Sure, go ahead. In that case I might just let you do it without any special justification other than "you wake up and feel your magic gone" or something. :)
Cheers!
This...
You just change it once you meet the criteria in-game.
As others have mentioned, yes, there is: Changing Your Subclass
Obviously it's an optional rule, and it is still very thin on the ground requiring a lot of DM input on how it will work, but it is RAW.
I had a new player who chose to be an Assassin, didn't like it so switched to Thief. Then he didn't like that either, so he switched to Arcane Trickster, all before level 6.
It had basically no impact on the game at all. The Arcane Trickster element was brought in alongside a cataclysmic magical event which affected him, and he slowly revealed these new powers.
I've also recently had a Profane Bloodhunter change patron, because he didn't like the roleplay angle it was taking him down (when I play a Great Old One, they are evil incarnate; you can't get away with being a kindly warlock/profane hunter in my campaign and get the benefits without serving the darkness). So his patron became a kind of wild magic angel spirit instead, which tied in with the rest of the campaign. But it took a big roleplay moment to do it.
My advice would be to always allow a player to do this. Work it into the storyline with them (it's perfectly OK to discuss upcoming story elements with individual players to create awesome moments ahead of the game) and create an encounter or suitably cool moment for their abilities to change - particularly if they are gaining magic.
Taking it one step further, in my current game I have a Wild Magic Barbarian who was finding his class very limited (useless against flying enemies, useless when he can't reach the enemy, little utility) and I noticed he had a Charisma of 12. I suggested that I just give him an additional ability point in Charisma, allowing him to multiclass into Wild Magic Sorcerer. To make it fair, I gave every player 1 additional ability point at the same time, so everyone was pretty happy. But they were more just happy to see the barbarian suddenly throw out a Firebolt and loved that the player was enjoying his character more.
Go easy. That statement was true when the post was made over a year ago. Old threads that get bumped by new users often have old information.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I think there are two different opportunities to change your sub-class:
1. Player didn’t like or enjoy the sub-class. Even if it would cause impact in the game, I see no problems to allow these changes.
2. Big disruption in the game driven by RP, storyline and strong events.
In one of my weekly games where I’m playing a Hobgoblin Wizard, I decided to go Diviner once I reached level 2. The character was all about peace and he employed his arcane magic to avoid too much death and tried to save some lives during combat, even enemies. My group was more or less new players and some of them were going into the murderhobo route. It was not uncommon to see my character completely disabling an enemy with a spell and bringing the reflection to the group in-game: “Do we really want to kill this Orc? He is probably son, brother or even father of someone”. Well, sometimes the whole naive speech didn’t work and killing was unavoidable. At some point in the game, he got in touch with a peacemaking line of thought from the Necromancy school that basically distilled the usage of undeads instead of living people in combats, exactly with the intent to decrease unnecessary deaths. After some studies session, scroll investment and downtime practice, our DM allowed him to change from Diviner to Necromancer at level 5. Ironically, this discipline of employing undeads in combat in the place of living ones was created by the villain of the game, of course, not by a good cause, and now our entire group had suspicious under my innocent character.
This caused a deep impact in our group and gave us a more deep immersion in the game. Mechanically speaking, Divination is way superior than Necromancy, but it was good for the game. I miss Portent every session, but it made sense to the character and added a lot of value to the group in terms RPing.
This.
Not this. As others have mentioned that others have mentioned, there’s rules in Tasha’s for changing your subclass without DM completely overruling things.
Those rules are optional and they're more suggestions for the DM than concrete instructions. The answer is still "talk to your DM."
The Forum Infestation (TM)
We usually just hand-wave this stuff in our campaign. If someone needs to make some tweaks to better enjoy their gaming time that will usually benefit the whole table so we don't make a big deal out of it. If they want to make a big change though we usually incorporate some role-play into the session to help explain it and usually open up a new adventure hook. Again, as long as folks are happy seems to work.
I'm glad they chose not to define making changes, to allow every group to decide what's best for them.