The avenger is really just an offensive paladin. The shaman is really a spirit-centric druid. The invoker is really a crowd-controlling cleric. The sorcerer is really a book-less wizard. The ardent is really a leader psion.
The cleric is just a leader wizard The rogue is just a stealthy fighter
by this excessively reductionist logic, there are only two classes: magicians and muggles.
Or heck, gishes are a thing in D&D, so there's just one class, the Gish, and fighters are just gishes that mostly take weapon abilities while wizards are just gishes that mostly take spell abilities.
And sure, that works on a level, although I'd argue that classless systems like GURPs generally provide for less fundamental character diverstity rather than more. If you want to have a targeted mechanical framework capable of supporting something like (just to pick one concept out of thin air) a pet class without it gumming up the game, and without it either being useless or broken due to being tacked onto an existing framework that was already supposed to work fine without it, then you need to build those mechanical frameworks into the fundamentals of how a class functions from the ground up.
IE, a make a new class.
So, imo, there should be exactly as many base classes as there are concepts distinct enough to warrant unique mechanical frameworks.
The avenger is really just an offensive paladin. The shaman is really a spirit-centric druid. The invoker is really a crowd-controlling cleric. The sorcerer is really a book-less wizard. The ardent is really a leader psion.
The cleric is just a leader wizard The rogue is just a stealthy fighter
by this excessively reductionist logic, there are only two classes: magicians and muggles.
Or heck, gishes are a thing in D&D, so there's just one class, the Gish, and fighters are just gishes that mostly take weapon abilities while wizards are just gishes that mostly take spell abilities.
And sure, that works on a level, although I'd argue that classless systems like GURPs generally provide for less fundamental character diverstity rather than more. If you want to have a targeted mechanical framework capable of supporting something like (just to pick one concept out of thin air) a pet class without it gumming up the game, and without it either being useless or broken due to being tacked onto an existing framework that was already supposed to work fine without it, then you need to build those mechanical frameworks into the fundamentals of how a class functions from the ground up.
IE, a make a new class.
So, imo, there should be exactly as many base classes as there are concepts distinct enough to warrant unique mechanical frameworks.
This.
More sex and gender equality and racial equality shouldn't even be an argument--it should simply be an assumption for any RPG that wants to stay relevant in the 21st century.
"So, imo, there should be exactly as many base classes as there are concepts distinct enough to warrant unique mechanical frameworks."
I agree, but feel that this statement is just as much about responsible editing as inclusion.
I like the Avenger and the Shaman as seperate groups, (Avengers wear no armor, Paladins are all about the armor, Shaman is the village healer who seeks guidance from spirits, Druid belongs to a cabal of shapeshifters that live deep in the woods that have their own political motivations) but Battleminds and Ardent's fell flat and seemed to be there for symmetry. Psychic warrior who can lean towards healer or defender would wrap them both up nicely.
Runepriest and Seeker had awesome fluff, but didn't have much support, Themes for clerics and rangers would have given the fluff without the feeling of abandonment.
The avenger is really just an offensive paladin. The shaman is really a spirit-centric druid. The invoker is really a crowd-controlling cleric. The sorcerer is really a book-less wizard. The ardent is really a leader psion.
The cleric is just a leader wizard The rogue is just a stealthy fighter
by this excessively reductionist logic, there are only two classes: magicians and muggles.
Or heck, gishes are a thing in D&D, so there's just one class, the Gish, and fighters are just gishes that mostly take weapon abilities while wizards are just gishes that mostly take spell abilities.
And sure, that works on a level, although I'd argue that classless systems like GURPs generally provide for less fundamental character diverstity rather than more. If you want to have a targeted mechanical framework capable of supporting something like (just to pick one concept out of thin air) a pet class without it gumming up the game, and without it either being useless or broken due to being tacked onto an existing framework that was already supposed to work fine without it, then you need to build those mechanical frameworks into the fundamentals of how a class functions from the ground up.
IE, a make a new class.
So, imo, there should be exactly as many base classes as there are concepts distinct enough to warrant unique mechanical frameworks.
Except what's the limit of a "unique mechanical framework"? Is it a single mechanic? Does the avenger deserve to exist because of it's oath/reroll mechanic? Does the seeker because of its bond?
There NEEDS to be a marriage of mechanic and fluff, and both need to exist and have some uniqueness. If something cannot work as an existing class (say, the runepriest) then maybe there needs to be a new class.
Classes died in the chance from 3e to 4e. We lost the scout and in doing so the ranger became better. Pretty much every non-core 3e class never got updated, with the exception of the marshall, the spirit shaman and what became the ardent. Why are 4e classes different? Why should the battlemind get a free pass when the psychic warrior didn't?
I'm not advocating stripping things down to bare bones, the big three (fighter, rogue, and spell-caster). Anything that's been around for two or more editions should be "in" (warlock is safe). But anything that was introduced in 4e had better justify its existance, just as anything that was only in 2e or 3e had darn well better be something special to warrant inclusion. Both mechanically and flavourfully.
This is a benefit to the game. There is only so much space in sourcebooks for new material. 3e suffered from a complete lack of support for every non-core class, and 4e tried to fix that by saying "everything is core" but forgot as the number of classes increased there'd eventually not be enough space for everything. If a book has to make a choice between content for the wizard or content for the ardent, it's going to go to the wizard every time. If you limit the number of classes and instead work on making the classes flexible through builds (or archetypes, or paths/prestige classes) then it benefits the game and the players.
Before posting, ask yourself WWWS: What Would Wrecan Say?
As much as I hate the concept of rolling a bunch of things up into one canopy, I have to agree. There have been some instances of new classes where there shouldn't have been. Not every mechanical concept is so radical that it needs to rewrite the game from the ground up, and sometimes it's better for it. Bunching some classes into offshoot concepts of existing classes not only improves the well of support for those classes, but prevents incidents like the Runepriest and the Seeker, in which lack of support makes other options, both similar and different, that have had a wealth of material to their name more long standing, and thusly more supported in general due to the continued play of such options.
To this though, I do wonder what really defines a mechanic or concept as being worth of its own class? What seperates a Wizard, a Sorcerer, and a Warlock from one another other than flavor? What is required to create a unique feel both in fluff and crunch to justify a whole new class instead of a varied take on an existing class? I think the answer is more difficult to find than the solution to the problem or lack thereof of class bloat...
As for the Warlord's class name, I don't personally see anything wrong with the name Warlord. The idea that a class can incite his allies and spur them into martial battle, but also have the charisma and tactical genius to play political and strategic fields fits the concept of a Warlord to me. Perhaps I'm missing something?...
The problem that I feel exists is that there's overlap between a mechanical term and a setting term. If a supplement or adventure writer wants to describe an area as ruled over by petty orc warlords he or she then has to make clear that they don't mean that they all have Commander's Strike-type powers. Most class names are either fairly specific to D&D (fighter) or sufficiently specialised or fantasy-oriented that they can be defined by the D&D mechanics that implement them (wizard, ranger, paladin, druid). Barbarian has the same problem as warlord (I'd rather they'd called the class the berserker to begin with). I suppose someone could argue that rogue has the same problem, although it doesn't feel that way.
I think for the warlord, something like centurion or strategos might work.
Jester: I'm not necessarily arguing for the continued existance of any particular class as such, though in the case of avengers, they're at least as distinct from paladins as rogues are from fighters, and likewise are at least as distinct from rogues as paladins are from fighters. Arguably moreso, on both counts. So, apart from 'paladin', 'rogue', and 'fighter' having more legacy value, I don't see any more reason to collapse avenger into rogue or paladin than there is to collapse rogue or paladin into fighter.
Of course, legacy itself has a value, I'm certainly not arguing that we get rid of paladin or rogue. What I'm mostly saying is that avenger is distinct enough that removing it wouldn't be a matter of 'folding it into' another class so much as dropping it outright. Maybe it isn't popular or iconic enough a concept to warrant continuing, but a paladin equally adept at being a cluncky, heavy armored, shield weilding protector type as a stealthy, light armored, great weapon using, go it alone mobile striker type would, imo, be too broad to function as a class. Classes are defined as much by what they don't do at all as by what they do well. A class without boundries lacks definition.
I'm wary of shoving too many archetypes under the hat of a single class. Classes that are too broad have to much room to either not do anything especially well (the 3e fighter) or to do too much too well (the big three in 3e). Or they might do some of the things they're supposed to cover well, but not everything, leaving a bunch of development space wasted by a bloated class that has no business covering half of the archetypes ascribed to it. Reference how poorly the 4e wizard functions as a necromancer, and yet no other official necromancer will ever exist because the concept was ineptly shoved under the wizards hat, and you can't fix the wizard necromancer - mostly just not at all, since it's concept isn't worked into its class features, but also because even trying would just heap more options onto a class that really doesn't need any more. Is completely wasting an archetype in that manner really better than having it covered with an undersupported class? Is having a couple 'orphaned classes twisting in the wind' really worse than having sprawling, bloated classes that don't know what they want to do, with so many options that nobody, not even the game designers can manage them, inevitably leading to trap choices and broken choices?
I agree that there were some classes published in 4e that either should never have been published in the first place (lacking sufficient conceptual space to justify a separate class) or that simply were not sufficiently developed at the time they were released. Again, I'm not necessarily asking for the continued existance of any particular class. What I am arguing for is a design philosophy that says in general, more classes that are more specifically defined is a better way to go than fewer classes that are meant to do everything.
As for the warlord in particular, I do feel there's enough distinction from fighter in terms of conceptual space and intended play style to justify a separate class, whether we call it warlord, marshal, captain, tactician, or commander.
Jester: I'm not necessarily arguing for the continued existance of any particular class as such, though in the case of avengers, they're at least as distinct from paladins as rogues are from fighters, and likewise are at least as distinct from rogues as paladins are from fighters. Arguably moreso, on both counts. So, apart from 'paladin', 'rogue', and 'fighter' having more legacy value, I don't see any more reason to collapse avenger into rogue or paladin than there is to collapse rogue or paladin into fighter.
The hook of the avenger is that they're holy assassins, the righteous arm of the church. Which isn't a class so much as a background, a role in the game. Adding a little offense to paladins helps define them and seperate them from clerics. The lightly armoured aspect of avengers isn't enough to seperate them from paladins. That's not a class, that's a character.
Still, the holy rogue is not unqiue to 4e. We had avengers in 3e: they were paladin rogue multiclassed characters, possibly with a prestige class that synergized them. Pathfinder has its Inquisitor class that fills much of the same role; I think it's flavour for that class is a little stronger than the avenger, but still unnecassary.
But if 5e does have flexible multiclassing like 3e then the avenger is unnecassary. Just play a cleric rogue or a paladin rogue.
Before posting, ask yourself WWWS: What Would Wrecan Say?
And those paladin rogues were clunky and worked poorly - their key stats never lined up and none of their abilities worked correctly with the equipment that the other half of their abilities assumed they'd be using, and if a prestige class existed to synergize them it only did so after playing half a dozen levels of a schitzophrenic mess of two unrelated classes, neither of which had the gameplay you wanted to begin with. Like comparing beguilers to wizard/rogue/arcane tricksters. One's a sneaky, subtle spellcaster, and one's a wizard who delays access to magic jar so he can deal sneak attack with scorching ray. Multiclassing for theme when the mechanics don't mesh is clunky and likely never results in the character you wanted to play in the first place, especially not from the start of your career.
Again, I'm not arguing specifically in favor of the avenger. Maybe something like it will appear in 5e and maybe not. The avenger's play style is pretty closely linked to the mechanics of 4e, there's nothing to say there would be a place for such a class in 5e, or that it would be popular enough to warrant that spot.
But I really, really don't think you're going to succesfully build anything like the variety of character archetypes available in 3e or 4e with a system that only has four classes, and tries to cover everything else with either multiclassing or bolted on themes.
I"m actually quite fond of Warlord - I don't get the negative connotation that others get apparently, it might seem a bit strong at low levels, but I think it fits the character. Marshall works for me as well.
Captain doesn't work for me though - I keep thinking Captain as in some type of vessel - captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Piccard, Captain Crunch.
Squad leader makes more sense to me than captain, but that sounds too modern.
So I will have to say I'd prefer to stick with Warlord.
Perhaps classes can have a "AKA" section to give you some optional names to call the class.
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