Since DnD2024 is releasing soon and there's not much point in working on 5e classes anymore, I'm releasing everything I've created in the past few months, even if it's not finished.
The Highlander is my revision of the Barbarian. The revision aims at improving both the performance of the class (which, as most people know, was pretty much dead weight after lv~8) and the feeling during play (which means, having things to do other than raging and smashing stuff), while also keeping the core mechanics as close to the original source as possible, and without adding unnecessary complexity.
The class was meant to be played alongside my other homebrew classes, of which I've already released the Heroic Warrior (revamped Fighter). As you can clearly see, this homebrew is not finished: the class itself is functional, but there is only one subclass. I was planning on going back and adding new subclasses after I played a campaign as a Barbarian to get a general feel of how it plays, but I never got the chance and, with DnD2024 approaching, there's not much point anyway, as I don't think that people will play 5e classes anymore.
Having said that, I hope that you'll enjoy it. Feedback are always welcome, and I'm always curious to hear others' opinions on my design choices. Maybe one day I'll finish working on it!
The release of a new edition hasn't kept old editions from being played, and there's even money made on them (though not as much).
The only edition that isn't played widely still is 4e, and it still gets played.
Considering that the new edition could flop horribly, and that there's at least as much 5e extras around as there are 3.x being used, and being created, it seems to me that quitting work on older stuff just because there's a new edition is kinda weird.
Which, it's fine! Nobody has to work on anything they don't want to, and for any reason. It's just not something that follows as inevitable due to a new version.
As I said in my other post, I don't plan on moving to 2024 anytime soon, because I really don't like it: I think it's clunkier than 5e, but at the same time fails at fixing any of the shortcomings of the original game, and I have serious doubts about its balance. I will check on it after the Monster Manual is released, but I'm not holding my breath that WotC's monster design will somehow make it more balanced.
That being said, if my group decides to make the move either to 2024 or to a different system altogether, there's little reason for me to work on 5e content still.
Even if the above doesn't happen, I may work on stuff for personal use to play with my friends, but there's little reason for me to publish it because it will get even less traction that it already does - which is, almost zero. I don't know where people is publishing DnD homebrew stuff nowadays, but all the channels I know of (c/DnDHomebrew on Lemmy, r/UnearthedArcana on Reddit and the Discord of Many Things) are all pretty much dead.
Afaik, most of the home brew stuff that isn't on beyond is more or less being passed around like you said, with more of a player-to-player kind of underground being where you run into the less polished stuff than what you're putting out. And that's the bulk of home brew, that low polish stuff that's the equivalent of a Xeroxed and stapled pamphlet like we would use back in the eighties lol.
I'm in agreement with what I've seen of the new stuff. It seems poorly thought out as more of an excuse to publish something new than to make the game better. I'm far from eager to do anything with it so far, as a DM or player.
I'm kinda surprised your stuff doesn't get traction, it's really well put together, and you've definitely got it balanced out well imo.