Trying to get my thoughts straight on the core fantasy of each dnd class
Trying to get my thoughts straight on the core fantasy of each dnd class
Edit: It seems I never spelled out what my issue with 5e was. My grievance is that as a player the game doesn't empower me to do what I feel is the core fantasy of most classes. I can't fault the DMs for forgetting to include spell scrolls as loot or not do overland travel or whatever, they are small easy-to-forget things. It just gets frustrating when I ask the DM to give out a certain kind of loot or let me interact with other druids to do Druid things and then they (understandably) forget.
A while back, I got into a heated argument with a friend about 5e; I wanted to play a new system becuase I was getting tired of how generic 5e is, but my friend insisted that i could hombrew 5e to create any style of play i wanted. This was back in 2017 and we have not been friends for a while now, but I've been pondering how to homebrew 5e into a shape that encourages a specific style of play.
My main issue with 5e after all this time is that I don't feel like the classes actually encourage you to behave like your class. Druid is personally my favorite class because it's the exception (i liek da aminals) but every other class is at best somewhat samey and at worst actively frustrating (looking at you, PHB ranger).
Here's my thoughts about what I think the core fantasy of each class SHOULD be. Lmk what you think. I want to know if I am really off-base with these.
Bard: I think you play a Bard to be a drama queen and an artist.
Barbarian: s t r o n k
Cleric: The main appeal of being a cleric, for me, is promoting a god, proselytizing, doing outreach, building a temple, and most importantly asking the DM very specific questions about their setting and making them very happy. It's all about that faith babyyyy.
Druid: i liek da aminals. (fr, the actual appeal for me is similar to cleric but with Druid stuff)
Fighter: the only reason for me to play Fighter is the Battlemaster Archetype, so I can play 5e like the wargame it sometimes seems like it wants to be. I also like the Champion for the expanded crit range, but if you like being stronk like bull you could just play barbarian? (Starting to think that Barbarian should have been a Fighter subclass).
Monk: wuxia/xianxia. Kinda out of place, but I can dig it. They should have leaned more into that.
Paladin: The only class that I think was incredibly damaged by WotC's decision to make alignment not matter mechanically. IMHO, the concept of Oaths should have been more fleshed out, and there should have been consequences for breaking your oath included in the rules.
Ranger: the one time I played a ranger, I worked with the dm to homebrew some cool stuff for traveling so I could be the ultimate master of the wilderness. (We then went into a dungeon and spent the rest of the mini-campaign there.) I think a better ranger would have more cool stuff for traveling, and maybe let you make more animal friends.
Rogue: Stabby glass cannon skill monkey. 5e's rogue knows what it wants to be and it is very good at being its best self. I have never played a rogue, but I totally get the appeal. IMHO, best class in the game. I think the only way to improve the rogue would be to make skills better.
Sorceror: I have mixed feelings about the Sorceror. I like sorcery points, and I like being able to do more with a limited spell list. That said, if I want to play as a magical boy who casts spells as easily as breathing, I think there should be a way to slam together a spell-like effect on the spot with nothing but your Wits.
Warlock: My favorite misfit child. As a DM, I love how I can use this class to yank a player around my cool setting under the threat of [REDACTED]. However, I have noticed multiple players seem thrown off by this. As a player, I love using my Warlock pact to exploit the hell out of the setting for my own game, but the way it's spellcasting works runs completely counter to how every other class works. Ultimately, could be a better power fantasy, all things considered.
Wizard: I have a bone to pick with this class. Yes, this class offers a path to ultimate power. However, the main way you do this is by shoving spell scrolls into your spellbook like a kid on Halloween grabbing fistfuls of candy from a bowl labeled "Please Take 1". This means going into dungeons to find them, and hopefully also the gold to copy them into your spellbook. However, every DM I have played with seems to forget that spell scrolls, especially Cantrip spell scrolls, are a thing that exist and can be found as loot. More importantly, we rarely even go into the dungeons that these scrolls are in! In my opinion, the best way to make wizards playable is to make 2 changes to all or most of the other classes:
- Give the other classes abilities that similarly depend on the Dungeon. Maybe give them stuff to spend copious amounts of money on?
- Give some of the other spellcasters spellbooks so more people are hungry for scrolls. (Bard could definitely use a spellbook, since they are kinda like music wizards.) Then, all you would need to do is give the wizard some tiny boons to their spellbook usage to make it slightly more efficient than the other classes.
Artificer: Inventing stuff is cool! I just wish that WotC wasn't so scared of giving players the freedom to customize stuff. Maybe in another timeline we could have gotten an Artificer that functions like the PF1 Summoner. Also, guns. Not sure why they are so afraid of guns. Any table that bans Artificer is also going to ban guns, and any table that really wants guns will also really want Artificer. The venn diagram of Artificer enthusiasts and people who want guns in D&D is a circle.
Here's my thoughts on what I would need to do to make 5e conform to a style of play I like:
- Cull the redundant classes so my work is a bit easier. Barbarian and Paladin become Fighter subclasses. Druid becomes a Cleric subclass. Eliminate Sorceror, Monk, Warlock, and Artificer until I know what to do with them. This leaves Bard, Cleric, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, and Wizard.
- Rework the lower levels to incentivise the core fantasy of each class.
- At higher levels, give each class ludicrously expensive stuff to buy so they still want to go into the dungeons and get loot. Move the currency system to be based around copper pieces so I can more easily deploy the overcomplicated currency systems that make me happy.
- Make skills a little more fun to work with. For example, maybe whenever you use a skill successfully yoh can increase your proficiency with that skill by 1?
- Circle back to Sorceror, Warlock, Monk, and Artificer. Make new classes to replace them. Artificer gets a whole framework for fully custom inventions. Monk gets proper cultivation genre mechanics, diving deep into eastern alchemy on top of the standard martial arts flair. Sorceror has spellcasting, but also gets a toolkit for slapping together spell effects on the fly. Warlock gets a full point-buy system with their pact boons. I do not think this is very doable, though.
Lmk if I am completely off-base.
The mechanics in d&d are mostly about combat and skill checks because as a player you get to decide how you behave and the mechanics are there to have a framework for that. If players aren't acting like you want them to as a DM and you feel like it's a good idea to enforce your desires through changing the mechanics, you're going to disappoint yourself and frustrate your players. If you want a certain style of role playing, that's something you can discuss with players, but it's ultimately collaborative as opposed to enforceable.
I feel like you read a different thing than I thought I wrote. Maybe I could have been clearer. This is about me not wanting to be a player in 5e because the game does not encourage the dm to do stuff. I could have dwelled more on moments where I asked a dm to do something that would help me play my class (spell scrolls in the loot, give me opportunities to interact with other druids in my circle, overland travel, let me make use of my knightly title) and then they just forgot to do that. As a DM, I get it, a lot of these requests were very small things that just get lost in the shuffle, and its not pleasant to tell a player "hey, we wont be doing overland travel, if travel is what makes ranger appeal to you maybe dont play a ranger this game". It would be easier if they game empowered the players to be active in the world and make class-informed choices that the DM can react to.
Ah, typically it's DMs that alter mechanics and approve homebrew. If I were running a campaign, and I had a player saying "I want to change the rules so you have to run the game a certain way," it would be a huge red flag.
If a player wants to play in a certain way, it's not usually the mechanics that prevents them. Your example where you picked a ranger that didn't fit what was going on in the campaign, that seems like a failure of communication. The DM allowed you to think wearing a snorkel in the desert was a good idea. I don't think having a class with snorkel AND fins would have helped in the desert and I don't think the fins would have forced the DM to put a river in to suit the diver class. I don't think it's unreasonable or unpleasant for the DM to say: this is a dessert campaign, you're not going to want a 60 pound tank on your back for this even though it's very helpful in a situation where you're trying not to drown.
I don't think restricting what can be done or changing mechanics would make that DM any better or make communication any less necessary or force the DM to make changes to the campaign.
Again, it's best when collaborative and avoiding unpleasant conversations leads to just as many problems in d&d as it does in any relationship. Rules aren't going to help if there's not communication.
No idea why you're getting downvoted. This is an interesting subject.
Personally I believe that class and roleplay aren't that tightly coupled, and when I have been a player, the other players at the table have said I have a reputation for playing characters that are very unique for their class.
A couple examples of this:
- I played a Water Genasi 4 elements monk who had 0 eastern flavour. She was just a spear-wielding, half-drunken sailor with waterbending powers and a Newfie accent.
- I also played a half orc cleric of Grummsh, who I basically RP'd exactly like most people RP a Barbarian; tribal, short tempered, physically strong.
- I didn't get to play him very much, but I later played a Beast Barbarian who I RP'd like a cleric. The idea was that he was a mild mannered acolyte, but had a curse that caused him to turn into a monster when he was in a stressful situation.
A class is just a package of mechanics. You can hang whatever skin you want on top of those mechanics as long as you can justify them within the flavour of your character. Look at the stuff the rules say your character gets, and go from there. Don't read the big block of flavour text where WOTC tells you what your class should look like.
Thanks for the non-adversarial read. And I do agree that class and roleplay are not closely coupled and should not be (although I do think breaking this design philosophy for Paladins would make me want to play one.) Tbh, the most fun I've had at the table was playing a Champion Fighter at adventurer's league. I liked big stronk man, everyone else liked big stronk man, DM was mildly confused by big stronk man. We had fun. I think the difference was that I knew the DM was playing a module, so I didn't ask for much other than some flavor stuff.
wizard ... However, every DM I have played with seems to forget that spell scrolls, especially Cantrip spell scrolls, are a thing that exist and can be found as loot.
The DM has a tonne of crap to manage. Most modern modules don't do a very good job of providing dungeons or other places to grind loot.
Talk to the DM and tell them your wizard goals. Hopefully they'll help you down that path. I was playing an Evoker, and I wanted to up my Int, so my DM and I worked out some purchases and loot to make that happen.
I do agree that the main problem is with current published adventures and that most campaigns (even homebrew ones) don't usually have places to grind loot. But it's even more frustrating when we do have a dungeon-crawling campaign and there is maybe 3 spell scrolls in the entire campaign because thats what the loot tables rolled.
That's definitely a problem with your DM, not the game. I have never played with rolled loot, nor even thought about needing to grind anything. Talk to your DM about why you are frustrated.
Ye, I am also a DM so I totally get it. I can't really be mad. It is, however, frustrating when I have this conversation with a DM and they either only think they understand what I want, or when they just forget because there is no support for what I want within the DM's tables and charts.
What's the system you wanted to try?
Don't remember. We did end up playing Traveller after this, but I know that wasn't what we were talking about. This convo happened back in 2017
That all sounds like way too much work. You're basically re-designing the entire game at this point.
IMO, your time would be better spent finding a system that already does all that. They do exist!
I would suggest maybe taking a look at 13th age, or some of the renaissance games like WWN and the like.
Ooh, what is 13th age? Tbh, the main reason I still like 5e is all the crunchy rules, but for some reason I haven't seen many crunchy dungeon-crawlers. I've also been pitched Mork Borg but the visual design was an immediate turn off for prioritizing COOLNESS over being actually readable.
13th age is a D&D-style TTRPG written by some of the developers who made 4th edition. So it's very, very D&D like with a much more solid core system backing it up. They just finished a kickstarter for their 2nd edition a little while ago too.
The point of 5e is to be flexible. If you want to play to your class's lore, you can do that! Druids very early get spells like speaking with animals and plants, for example. It's your choice to play that way or not.
But as for working stuff into the plot and story, that's up to the DM. You might just need to drop reminders ("I wonder if they know anything about my lost brother" or whatever). But if they really just want to run their story as written, you'll probably just need to find a different DM.
The point of 5e is to sell as many books as possible with nothing in them while convincing the customer that they're game designers.
I'll be honest: I have very little patience for "you can homebrew this game that does't do what you want, so you should never play something else" folks; it is probably the thing I hate most about 5e stans. This is the equivalant of telling someone not to give up on a show they don't like because "you can always write fan fiction!"
Why should I recreate the game when I just spent $150 on it? Isn't that what I just paid for? For people who actually know game design to supply me with a game that meets my needs? Instead of someome who doesn't know game design and also paid for the experience?
There are so many games out there that could do what people want, but everyone's way too invested in WotC maintaining a monopoly on people's tables.
Not to mention, 5e is actually really bad for Homebrew. Without some kind of strong foundation to build off of its really hard to make something balanced (doesn't apply to just combat) and you can't escape 5e's bad mechanics without a whole new system.
Side note, I'm pretty sure wotc's predatory pricing is part of the reason people don't move to other systems. They think every game needs a bare minimum 3 books for $50 each to get started, when $40 for a complete book with all the base rules is actually a little pricey for ttrpgs.
Simply ignoring the way your class is meant to play doesn't make 5e flexible, if anything it feels like a consequence of the system not being flexible.
Before i mention class fantasy, i highly recommend you find a better system. Ikik everyone who plays a better system tells people to do that, but it really does seem like dnd in general (not even just 5e) won't appeal to your tastes. Have you tried mage the ascension? It's literally about coming up with your fantasy of who you want to be, with more freedom in how you build and use your character. I'm playing a modern witch in my current game, communing with spirits and influencing fates, meanwhile we've had a hypertech engineer and wuxia martial artist in the same group with no incongruities (we do think the other people's ways of doing 'magic' is weird and wrong, but that's how it's supposed to work in setting).
As for 5e; magic classes don't really differentiate themselves well enough. wizards and sorcerer cannot coexist as truly distinct things without actual vancian casting (which the game would be better off entirely without imo), as it stands sorceror is just worse wizard. Clerics have the same mechanical problems, they are just better wizards and their flavor falls short when DMs are reluctant to use the flavor text of religion to force a player's hand or remove their spells, which is crucial for the class to fulfill it's fantasy imo. Warlocks are mechanically distinct, but share cleric's reliance on the dm to be distinct narratively, and again it seems like the 5e community is against things like that.
The lack of rules or the enforcement of them hurts classes as well. Without a working economy wizards don't have a reliable method of learning magic and martials don't have access to magic weapons to support the 'guy with a stick' fantasy so they get weirder and weirder subclasses, that ruin the fantasy, to make up for it. The slow combat discourages dangerous travel, which means ranger's big thing (being the guy who travels real good) is thrown out the window too.
Side note: A big issue I've seen online is that people think mechanics are arbitrary, generic, and cannot support narrative. It feels like wotc buys into this line of thought and i don't think 6th edition will fix any of the issues here because of that.