Do you think we'll ever see a unified "fifth class" thats on the level of the big four shown in this image? Or is the design space filled and every class that isn't one of these is just a hybrid or alternate version of these four?
Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
Nope. It's those 4 forever, not for any reason other than because D&D did it and decided all of fantasy and video game culture for the rest of time.
Rightfully so, OD&D is fun as frick. But there's no going back now.
The only real 5th option is having an “adventurer” class that kinda acts outside the rules of the other ones.
even splitting mage and priest into separate categories and warrior and rogue into separate categories is kind of a stretch
the real different classes would be ones thatthat more seriously focuses on various kinds of crafting and other downtime activities, and also ones that more seriously focuses on various forms of social interaction, which we already have in plenty of other systems, but >dnd doesn't give a shit about those because it's a dungeon wargame and not a comprehensive rpg so everyone has to be useful in a fight first before anything else
those are already rogue and bard and the like
Not really:
> Martial Prowess
> Skill
> Arcane Bullshit
> Divine Bullshit
> [Insert Magic Source] Bullshit
It depends on what you mean. In a way, the cleric is just an alternate version of the wizard.
> But a different energy source a significant distinction
Then you've got Psion and Shaman
> But a different core stat to rely on and casting mechanic is necessary
Sorcerer and Warlock.
> What about Battlefield roles?
You'd have to clearly define then because the Fighter/Warrior go from damage sponge to melee brute and Wizard go from AoE to Crowd Control to summoner to debuffer.
Which, by the way, is the main complaint against wizards in a lot of fantasy settings: They're able to do anything. Make Buffs & Support the Cleric's niche, make the Wizard an Aoe monster and battlefield controller and you have room for a class that disarm other magics, an Abjurer and Debuffer. Plus, it could comfortably hog "Charisma as a primary stat".
Same with Constitution and the warrior class by the way. Give pure martial prowess to the warrior, and discourage the use of heavy armor by encouraging mobility. Then you can have a brute class that works with fear, dominates, grapples and otherwise keeps foes busy.
> The problem tho
When it comes to TTRPGs at least, 4 players is a really nice group size to have.
That's thief/bard retrrdb, though really it should be the Adventurer column that also integrates Party Face philosophers/sages/rule lawyers. Good social and skill overspercialization
It should be something like Artificer or Engineer, since it fits into the same philosophy of "historical and common to many different cultures." It also fills a crafting niche as well as being one of the strongest contenders for the main "pet class" aside from Ranger. Finally, depending on the system and edition, their gadgets/inventions/"spells" often serve utility functions that often aren't as damaging or healing as any of the presented casters but serve their own role for crowd control and influencing the environment.
Also, funny how Monk is absent from that page even though they were a staple since AD&D.
Monk is just a bald Warrior wearing orange
>Doesn't play his Monks as fat, jolly, drinking, brewing, friar Tuck style Benedictine monks
Weak
>jolly
>Benedictine
No anon, no.
You’re thinking of Franciscans
I really don't know my Monks anon. I would actually like to learn about them. Point is, fat, jolly, brewer. Probably uses a stick or a club to fight.
Big three are Bendictines (work and pray, doibg shit like wine and cheese), Dominicans (intelectuals, literal inquisition), and Franciscans (poor but wise, fever of divine love). There are many others, each with a niche and flavor.
Pic related
Friars are not monks.
>Also, funny how Monk is absent from that page even though they were a staple since AD&D.
Monks weren't in core 2e. There were "fighting monk" kits in the PHBR books, but no monk class until we got a spellcasting monk in PO: Spells & Magic and a proper monk in Greyhawk: The Scarlet Brotherhood (still placed in the priest group though). The class groups evolved as the editions changed:
>0e
Fighting man (paladin, ranger)
Cleric (druid, monk)
Magic-user (illusionist)
Thief (assassin)
Bard
>1e
Fighter (ranger, barbarian, bushi, kensai) (*paladin until it got moved to cavalier)
Cavalier (paladin, samurai)
Magic-user (illusionist, wu jen)
Cleric (druid, shukenja, sohei)
Thief (assassin, thief-acrobat, yakuza, ninja)
Monk
Bard
>2e
Warrior (fighter, paladin, ranger, barbarian fighter)
Wizard (mage, specialist wizard, elemental mage, sha'ir sorcerer)
Priest (cleric, druid, monk, shaman, crusader, mythos priest)
Rogue (thief, bard, ninja, assassin)
Psionicist
>but no monk class until we got a spellcasting monk in PO: Spells & Magic
not quite. oriental adventures printed the 2e monk class, and it was the proper 2e version of the original monk class.
Oriental Adventures came out in 1985. It was a 1e book. There was never a full 2e update of it. (Just parts, in The Complete Ninja's Handbook.) Though it is true that when 2e (or the Rules Cylcopedia for that matter) deigned to mention the 1e monk class, they generally pointed readers to the 1e OA version (rather than the PHB or Dragon version).
Artificer is just another kind of wizard.
>It should be something like Artificer or Engineer, since it fits into the same philosophy of "historical and common to many different cultures."
When I run a D&D based game, I like to use seven basic classes: fighter, thief, cleric, mage, artificer, psionic/monk, and gish/JoAT.
If I'm playing a similar game with a more parsimonious lineup? No need for anything beyond fighter, spellcaster, and fighting–spellcaster.
It'll be this.
>magicer
>god magicer
>science magicer
Kinda reminds me of how DCUO seperated the origins; people with genetic based powers led by superman, tech based powers led by batman, and magic based powers led by wonder woman.
>Also, funny how Monk is absent from that page even though they were a staple since AD&D.
I guess it's hard to say whether they count as priest or rogue
Present monk doesn't really have support capabilities, so they're mostly just a rogue with less damage potential but high armor, maneuverability and specialization in inflicting status ailments
>be something like Artificer or Engineer
Wizard (Other)
it's possible
tolkien gave us warrior, mage, thief
cleric was added by D&D
another equally influential game could add something
No. All of those are D&D inspired by other lit.
Fighting Man is derived from a lot of different ones and owes more to Conan than it does to LOTR.
Magic-User is Jack Vance.
Thief is distinctly Leiber and to a lesser extent Vance.
Cleric is Van Helsing from the first Hammer Horror Dracula.
Ranger, Halflings, Balrogs, Ents (le Treants) and a subset of Elves are very LOTR tho.
Funny of you to leave out Paladin (Poul Anderson).
I prefer the true classic party lineup:
Dracula
Wolf Man
Frankenstein
Mummy
Invisible Man
Opera Phantom
Opera Phantoms are freakshit.
Im playing an amusing homebrewed evil campaign where we have a Wolfman, Creature From the Black Lagoon, a Zombie, A Necromancer, and a Killer Doll as PCs
Sounds cringe as frick. Kinda want to try it.
Is Gandalf a Dracula or more of an Opera Phantom? What about Aragorn? Help this is urgent.
Gandalf - Mummy
Aragorn - Frankenstein
Gimli - Wolfman
Legolas - Dracula
Boromir - Wolfman
Sam - Phantom
Merry - Phantom
Pipin - Phantom
Frodo - Invisible Man
I love the World of Darkness!
invisible man OP swap in Black Lagoon Goon
>he uses the grossly outdated Hammer lineup even though they've been proven to only fit in a very specific gametype
For a real all-bases-all-cases universal party lineup, you gotta go with:
Jason
Freddy
Sadako
Pinhead
Xenomorph
And either Ash Williams or Herbert West, according to tone and setting
>2nd edition
The fifth class is psionicist
You should already know this
Sounds like a wizard to me
By that logic, a cleric is just a wizard by another name too. But:
>wizard
>d4 hit die, THAC0 improves 1 point per 3 levels, shitty/few weapons, no armor
>psionicist
>d6 hit die, THAC0 improves 1 point per 2 levels, some simple weapons and light armor
>cleric
>d8 hit die, THAC0 improves 2 points per 3 levels, decent weapons, all armor
>By that logic, a cleric is just a wizard by another name too
Because it's true.
Cleric is a self buffing warrior aka fighter mage.
Intersting how it panned out that way, but honestly I don't think the 3e designers saw it that way, they were like "o.k. the cleric is going to be the healb***h so we should give them lots of extra power so that they're fun anyway". And then clerics could buff themselves to be better than fighters and still have slots left over to heal themselves.
I think that was inevitable when they made some of the best cleric buffs self-only
>By that logic, a cleric is just a wizard by another name too
Yes, that's correct. The trinity is Fighter, Mage, Thief
And you would be wrong
>But they are functionally interchangeable with wizards.
>Yes, it's a distinct "kind of supernatural effect," no, it's not functionally distinct from "magic user." In a rules sense, they're the same thing.
>But it's just flavour. If you made psychers more like fighters or thieves with supernatural powers, then you just have a derivative optional class, like paladin.
They used their own experience progression that was otherwise closest to Rangers & Paladins, had Wis and Con as prime requisites, used the Rogue THAC0 progression, Rogue HD, their own saving throw progression, and their own nonweapon proficiency category.
In 2e, that's a separate class category.
That doesn't apply to anything but 2e, but what you were replying to was someone saying it was the fifth published superclass in 2e specifically (Which is coincidentally the edition OP's image is from, but that's neither here nor there).
A wizard by another name.
You're pissing off the "psyonics and magic aren't the same" people. Even though they interacted and could be dispelled by the same spells since 1e.
Saying that psions are an arguable fifth pillar in the class system is problematic. Yes, they are functionally interchangeable with wizards/sorcerers, but yes, they "don't use magic." It's a non-magic class feature that functions in the capacity of regular old magic.
The reason their inclusion as a fifth major class is problematic is that the role is already fulfilled by wizards. You could just as easily argue that true-namers are a distinct fifth class because they don't use "magic." But they are functionally interchangeable with wizards. The GM is at liberty to flavour the magic user class as any kind of supernatural effect wielding class. Could by psionics, could be true names, could be JO crystals, whatever else. Yes, it's a distinct "kind of supernatural effect," no, it's not functionally distinct from "magic user." In a rules sense, they're the same thing.
>N-no they're not, they're completely different. Psychers and true-namers don't have spell failure and this or that or some other obscure point.
Yeah sure. But it's just flavour. If you made psychers more like fighters or thieves with supernatural powers, then you just have a derivative optional class, like paladin. If you make them full magic user but minus the drawbacks of casting plus the advantages of psionics, like power points, then you've just rejiggered the magic user class. Go any farther and all players will just be psions because they'll be broken over-powered characters.
tl;dr
yeah they're not wizards but they function in the rules as wizards so if you want psychers you change the name and reflavour the class. it's a core class because it's foundational to other classes and you can flavour them however you want.
Psion/wizard is different flavor and completely different mechanics but same mechanical archetype. I can't speak to older D&D, but in 3e and later the psion was designed to fill the same space as other spellcasters, to do the same things but in different ways. The most significant difference in their mechanical archetypes was that 3e psions can go nova and spend all their power in one fight (a big benefit), whereas a wizard can operate at peak performance for several fights and generally get better value with his spell slots (I'm not saying it was perfectly balanced but I can at least see how it could be).
Conversely, you can do something like a bladesinger, where the flavor is arcane and the spell slots are vancian but the mechanical archetype is quite different (mobile flexible warrior in most cases but it depends).
Or something like rogue vs scout, the mechanics are different enough to be fun and it can do some things that a rogue can't, but it's basically the same archetype with the same flavor. Or paladin vs ranger, where they look kind of copy/past mechanically, but their strengths are a bit different and their flavor is completely different.
Bards now that they've become there own thing and not just a type of rogue.
>a cleric is just a wizard by another name
Yes
5th class: Woman
>Haha, my WIFE!
What is that?
I suggest Puppeteer: Summoner, Necromancer or Commander. Someone who invests into lesser units under his control.
A miserable pile of secrets
Psion
I think the problem is in defining any noteable archetype that does anything different from those classes and goes on adventures. Take marvel for example, we have a bunch of warriors, 1 wizard, and rogue. Only character that doesn't totally fit the mold is IronMan and I think that is where we need to focus. A "gearhead" archetype. Psychically can't do a ton, but carries powerful tools that are capable of great feats and...I'm just describing a wizard with extra steps.
Tales of the Lance tried to introduce a Normal class group. It had commoners and a gnome-only tinkerer class.
Commoner:
>Prime requisite depends on what your character's in-world job is
>Reduce all your ability scores by 1
>Except for your prime requisite, which goes up by 4
Tinkerer
>Max WIS is 12
>Gets a NWP every second level
>Commoner:
>Prime requisite depends on what your character's in-world job is
>Reduce all your ability scores by 1
>Except for your prime requisite, which goes up by 4
I'm surprised /tg/eddit doesn't go wild for that, it's the logical way to oneup the Badass Normal worship applied to Human Male Fighter types. Normalier than thou.
Priest is not on the level of warrior/mage/thief. It's a hybrid/alternate of the big three and it sucks.
It already does kind of exist
>Warrior
>Wizard
>Priest
>Rogue
>NICHE/Gimmick
Thief is already a gimmick.
Thieves have always been useless. You don't need an entire character dedicated to opening fricking boxes. Clerics are just mages with slightly different spells, so they're redundant too.
>opening boxes
Sneaking, and hiding, and talking, and finding secrets, and dealing high conditional damage with relatively weak defenses, and also opening boxes. If there were only going to be two classes it would be a fighter-type and a thief-type, the thief-type is Fafrd and Legolas and Aladin and a lot of 'swashbuckling' heroes, it has to do with skill-over-power and indirect or dishonerable solutions but it really boils down to dex/int/cha hero vs str/con hero.
>Sneaking, and hiding
These are the same thing, and it doesn't work unless the entire party is thieves, and in fact it doesn't work even in that case most of the time. Fighting is inevitable and often times desirable.
>talking, and finding secrets, and dealing high conditional damage with relatively weak defenses
Everybody does this regardless of class.
>Everybody does this regardless of class.
And everyone uses magic, and everyone uses weapons.
>Sneaking and hiding are the same thing
No, but it's fine if they use the same modifier.
>and it doesn't work unless the entire party is thieves
That's a more interesting point. The usefulness of stealth varies widely based on the adventure adn the game, but that's true for a lot of interesting abilities. It's not just about using stealth to avoid fights, it's about using stealth to choose how and when you fight. Scouting is powerful, especially when the rest of your party is noisy, the problem is that it gets phased out by magic (along with everything else that D&D thieves are supposed to do).
>It's not just about using stealth to avoid fights, it's about using stealth to choose how and when you fight. Scouting is powerful, especially when the rest of your party is noisy
It's always a terrible idea to split the party. And if the rogue fails their roll while out ahead on their own then they're fricked. And worse yet, since they're most likely going to retreat towards their unprepared party, they're going to frick them too. It's always better to walk around at full force.
Legolas is a fighter class though, it's the hobbits that are thieves.
no, the hobbits are classless thats the whole point of them being there among warriors equipped with nothing but their bravery
you are however correct that legolas is a fighter class, the big angry brute, the wise careful fighter and the agile anime memer with double daggers are all fighters.
>no, the hobbits are classless thats the whole point of them being there among warriors equipped with nothing but their bravery
Pippin almost certainly had at least one level in bard though.
youre joking but it perfectly illustrates the issue this thread is arguing about. the idea that you need a specific class to be able to pick a lock or hide in shadows or to be a criminal is just as ridiculous as needing one to be able to learn to sing
And yet people complain about the skill system making most of these things, in some form, available to anyone.
If the big three are Fighter, Rogue, and Magic User, what exactly does the Magic User do, though? By merging Wizard and Cleric you get a guy that does everything, because he has offensive, defensive, control, support, and healing options.
Really we just need warriors and wizards. And the occasional wizard-warrior, but not too often.
Do you think it's brain-damage from being bombarded by clickbait? Or do you think it's just a phase in your life and you will grow out of shitposting inane argument starters about games you don't even play?
Class based games are for kids. Same as alignment. Meant to simplify complex ideas for underdeveloped brains.
I started with AD&D 2e at age 7.
It did take me until adulthood to wrap my head around the idea that alignment has a cosmic aspect to it (Not important for most campaigns, but for things like Planescape or a classic Good vs Evil campaign it is).
Ah yes. The lore reasons are fine I guess. But you have to admit 95% have no idea about the lore.
Really there's only two, a hybrid, and Rogue/Thief sucking the competency out of other non-spellcasters.
Games that aren't D&D have long since established more pillars of play than "Get to dungeon, explore dungeon, and murder/manipulate the monsters."
Martial
Primal
Arcane
Divine
Psionic
Those are power sources, not Roles, dummy. The 4e Roles were literally Defender (Fighter), Striker (Rogue), Controller (Wizard), and Leader (Cleric). Every class was one of those four.
If 4e was organized so that power source had the same design importance as 2e class groups it would have been a better game.
Leader, Striker, Controller Defender was a pretty good paradigm, and I hope 6e pushes back in that direction. Power sources were flavor that was sometimes supported by a minor gimmick, and it's hard for them to be more, because at that point you've built a kind of 20-box alignment grid where each power/role intersection needs its own distinct identity.
Create your own containment thread, 4rrie.
Now I see why I have to endure so many moronic misconceptions ITT. 4rries breached in.
>Leader, Striker, Controller Defender was a pretty good paradigm
I've always thought it's a terribly boring paradigm. I'm not especially compelled by player-level knowledge of a balanced party composition. I honestly don't care about that.
Frankly the most fun I've had with fantasy RPGs, 4e included, have been with lopsided parties. Having every base covered means more situations get solved as a matter of course, which means you're just as likely to end up with one or more hours of bean counting per session instead of anything compelling happening.
Warrior
Priest
Wizard
Elf
Vampire
Melee fighting guy, sneaky stabby guy, and walking nuke man. Cleric is support. That is basically all you'll ever see, ever. Any more nuance to this is breaking it down to different kinds of support and making walking nuke man not have his utility belt anymore so now you have utility man.
Divine/Arcane might as well be the same thing with differently flavored spells or class abilities. Warrior/Rogue is just a choice between tank/dps.
The categorisation and differentiation is just autism pandering.
>Warrior
>Wizard
You don't need anything else. A rogue is just a naked warrior. A cleric is just a gay wizard.
The only possible variation is Skill-based classes, so you might as well take away the bard's magic and the rogue's backstab if it's 100 imperative to have a third category. Just put rogue under warrior and bard under wizard otherwise.
>A cleric is just a gay wizard.
based
Clerics are just wizards with a different spell list and slightly better martial capabilities. Essentially a holy gish that leans slightly more toward magic, while a paladin would be the same thing but leaning more toward fitting.
There are only three primary archetypes, that apply to all games, not just D&D:
Strong Guy (fighters, not specifically the fighter class, but anyone that is good at fighting primarily)
Skilled Guy (skill monkeys like rogues. when they fight, they do so with speed and deception rather than brute force)
Smart Guy (wizards, clerics, artificers, engineers etc. they fight through unorthodox means that non-smart guy's can't do (magic, technology etc.))
Many typical classes are a mix of these, like bards are a mix of Smart and Skilled Guy, rangers are a mix of Strong and Skilled Guy, etc.
Skilled guys are unnecessary and should be melded into the fighters and wizards.
Yes, there are only 2 classes - fighter and mage. Being able to open a lock or move silently isn't a class it's a skill belonging to either. There is no distinction between arcane and divine magic - mages can cure wounds/disease etc.
Lumping in wizards with artificers is stupid. Wizards are basically projectile throwers with random handwave utility. Craftsmanship is about making permanent things.
You easily can. But not if you confine yourself to the style created by d&d.
wrong, those only apply to wargames, if you have a comprehensive rpg instead there are also crafters and social manipulators as their entirely own niches at the very least
Ideally we would have 6 main classes
Strong guy
Tough guy
Fast guy
Smart guy
Wise guy
Charismatic guy
'Strong and tough' are not a meaningful distinction.
Neither is 'smart and wise'.
>m-m-muh d&d staterinos
D&D stats are moronic
>'Strong and tough' are not a meaningful distinction.
Yes it is, many bodybuilders are physically strong but have a glass jaw.
>D&D stats are moronic
True.
>Yes it is, many bodybuilders are physically strong but have a glass jaw.
Classic cope.
So, D20 Modern
Seems so, and I don't see how that is ideal. Removing Charisma as a stat and grouping up Strength and Constitution seems to me a much better decision.
> Group of 4 players is more manageable than 6.
> People can play as charismatic or not as they like.
> Battlefield roles get way better defined.
> 18 Strength / 3 Con never made any sense anyways.
Maybe, there's not as much as you might think standing in the way. From a character concept perspective, there's plenty of columns to add because there's plenty of protagonist cliches to grab and break into subclasses. From a game design perspective, these four columns are here because they represent different jobs. Another game could just as easily rename them tank, dps, healer, and controller if they wanted to. DnD is a little more complex than that, Bard and Rogue supposedly share an archetype while one is a full caster with infinite options and the other is so poorly implemented in 5e that Wizards hasn't even managed to give it a subclass that isn't a bolt on undead sub that everyone got or cribbed from another class. In an ideal world, however, the four archetypes exist because they perform different jobs. Others have mentioned crafters as a new archetype, which is a decent enough idea but not happening in dnd because nothing is as important as combat to the game. If you want more archetypes, the game needs more jobs. Another important style of combat, more chores to perform in dungeons, monsters that need to be weakened/defeated with new abilities for the new Archetype to have. You're not seeing the game grow new archetypes (just classes within them that don't change the game beyond letting the player realize a specific character concept or referencing new settings and lore) because these archetypes already interact with every mechanic in the game, they perform every task required by the challenges the game itself can offer players.
>Do you think we'll ever see a unified "fifth class" thats on the level of the big four shown in this image?
in-between those four are three spaces i could see towing the line and presenting unique playstyles all their own
The only class based game that I can think of that actually has a meaningful difference between magic user and cleric is DCC. In any other game, it is functionally the same class with different window dressing, or a combo of fighter and mage.
I think the current crop of Sine Nomine games has it right: you have a fight class, a skill class, and a powers class. Basically, there are three subsystems the pcs with interact with, and there is a class dedicated to each sunsyatem, with an option to mix and match between two of the three.
Are there other games that offer a meaningful distinction between magic user and cleric, beyond spell list, hit die, and turn undead?
Not magic user and cleric per se, but early editions of Shadowrun had fairly distinct rulesets for shamans vis a vis hermetics.
Making a distinction between magic systems such as arcane or divine or nature/multiple ways of doing magic is pretty dumb. It's a false distinction used to create fake classes for player "diversity" and leads to the idiotic 40 classes/subclasses you now see in 5th ed.
You need only 1 magic class. A person is born with the ability or not. How they do spells is what makes them different i.e. a shaman with bones and runes vs a Wizard with books and alchemy tools, but they all have the same kind of effect. They can all heal, curse, buff, damage and you can create skills a player can select for them to specialise if needed, i.e. a wizard who get a buff to their healing spells or a witch who gets bonuses to curses/debuffs etc.
conversely a fighter can select skills to get bonuses for ranged weapons and and act more like a ranger, or gets bonuses to armor/defence and become a tank/paladin.
Both fighter and mage would get access to a general skill list for things like sneaking around, wilderness survival, investigation, detect/disarm traps etc.
2 classes, fighter and mage, is all that is needed and makes a more balanced game and easier to run with smaller groups.
Players will select skills to make their class specialised if needed.
Honest question, not trying to be shitty: at the point, why not just go classesless with a menu of features to choose from?
I think there must be a difference between martial and magic. Magic users are like psykers in warhammer 40k - they are born that way and their lives are dominated by it thus they would have a lack of other things.
Meanwhile everyone else is pretty mundane and just trains with weapons and don't have an abiloity for magic, so I would rule out a multi class MU/Fighter etc.
That's fair, and I'm not entirely against it. I have seen at least one OSR game that does what you're talking about.
I still like the simplicity of the sine nomine tripart system, though, and I think DCC does enough to make the 4 classes unique and flavorful. So I guess it just depends on how much though the developers put into it. I would rather have a well thought out system with the two classes as you're describing than a system that has a fighting man, cleric, magic user and thief because "those are the 4 classes and you have to have them," which is what it seems like a lot of retroclones do. It's especially annoying in something like an osr sci fi game, where the developers feel the need to twist things in a weird way to fill those archetypes.
It's only a false distinction if it doesn't offer a meaningful play style difference. Guy who gets magic from study and infernal pacts vs. guy who gets magic from worship is thematically different enough that they can have a different niche. That's why i offered up DCC as an example of a game that does it right, in my opinion; clerics aren't just wizards with different fluff. Their magic system works in a totally different way than the wizard does, and the subsystem, which models gaining disfavor from your deity, is actually a good engine for generating plots and player goals.
I agree with you to some degree, in that most games don't execute the difference meaningfully, but I don't think that's the same as saying there isn't ever, and doesn't ever, need to be a meaningful difference.
>fighter
>mage
And Specialist, a class that incorporates Rogues but also engineers, semi-magic artificers, financiers and other 'adventurable' classes. It's something the LotFP seems to get right. Those three classes cover everything.
No. Other classes frankly should not exist. Every class you can think of is a variant of Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric or Thief, and even Thief is a little redundant. Instead of more classes that can do only a few things we need just these four that between them can do everything.
I feel like Theif is only redundant in the context of dungeon delving and grave robbing. If your game goes outside of the dungeon, sneaky specialist is a pretty valid baseline archetype. Of the old school d&d 4, cleric is far more redundant.
The core idea of fighter > thief > mage > fighter replaced terrain based matchups of cavalry and infantry. Cleric became a push to any of them (command/ hold person v fighter, magic saves and dispel magic v wizard, healthru and armor vs thief). Anything stepping outside (psionics) looks like a gimmick that the DM will ban, anything setting itself up as an alternate push against all three (monk) will be inferior to the cleric as we know it.
>The core idea of fighter > thief > mage > fighter
This kind of theorycrafting is interesting but ultimately useless, D&D isn't usually a game of PC class vs PC class, and where it is (charop arenas or just games with villian parties) you'll find that there's no real rock/paper/scizors dynamic. As far as I know, this is true in every edition (even 4e), but correct me if I'm wrong.
>removes priest
aah perfection
Well in a dnd sense you are dividing into strenght, dexterity, wisdom and intelligence.
Missing are constitution and charisma.
In Dnd the pure charisma classes are paladin and sorcerer (bards are secondary charisma classes).
For Costitution it is secondarly Barabrian.
If you want to have a fifth classes I would either go charisma focus or costution focused.
Constitution would be either a blood mage or tattooed monster.
Its not about using strenght or skill in arms, dexterity, the common sense of a wise man or a intelligent approach.
So I would offer:
Abominations
Covering
Tattooed Warrior
Beserker
Fleshwarper
Dark Knight
Gameplaywise he would cover more those adventurer who have powerful ability but can only use it on cost of their health/insanity/madness.
He would be a physical character but instead of experienced/training (strenght) or skillful (dexterity) he would use natural ability or his own body.
Characterwise he is one of those grim/edgy character who struggle with themselves
yeah; "Monster"
I'd argue that you could simplify it further. There shouldn't be a split between a mundane guy who goes around in light armor backstabbing people who is highly skilled and a mundane guy who can use whatever weapons and armor he wants very well.
Similarly, a priest is just a mixture between a typical mage but with extra armor and weapons, and the fact that mages are locked off from healing magic.
There is no fifth
Ok, I'll bite:
Where the frick is this from?
The book is King Warrior Magician Lover, and it's one of those books from around the era of Jungian movie books like George Lucas's oft cited Hero With a Thousand Faces.
The audiobook is on youtube and the PDF is easily found if you're interested. I'm not normally into that stuff at all but I found it easy to digest
Sounds super rad. Even if it's mostly outdated now, these kind of theories are a great source of inspiration when trying to root a fiction into something deeper
Jungian schizobabble.
Priest is just a type of wizard.
The platonic ideal character classes are
>Tank
>Glass canon
>Healer
>Buffer
>Debuffer/zone control
Characters with stealth, like rogues, fits in the category
>>>/vg/
For me it's Scissor, the best gladiator.
What's the difference between a Trax, Murmillo, and Secutor? They all seem like relatively heavily armed dudes with a shield and short sword. The Trax's sword is kind of curved and the helmets are all a little different but they seem basically the same.
IIRC the Murmillo and Secutor represent different legionnaires, the Trax is a stereotyped Thracian fighting with similar kit. In the ring, the gladiators conducted stylized, ritualized combat in these different roles.
If you have 6 stats it stands to reason you should have 6 classes, each one specializing in that stat.
STR - figthah
DEX - rogue, thief, acrobat
CON - ranger (think wilderness survivalist) or circus freak
INT - wizard, oracle
WIS - priest, cleric,
CHA - bard, politician
This of course falls apart because STR and CON are closely related, as are INT+WIS. But Gygax decreed they would be separate and separate they shall remain until the end of time. Amen.
You mean like the Sovereign from Etrian Odyssey? She's capable of buffing like a bard, healing like a cleric, is a capable fighter, and has some offensive magic up her sleeve.
Sovereign is literally 4e Warlord
I dunno what EO game I missed but in the ones I've played soverign was basically just a cleric. mostly healing and buffing, armor and weapon ok to help beat up trash but otherwise useless, attack spells are fine but too situational to actually be worth the time over healing and buffing and healing via buffing
I honestly just see everything as a single thing: it's just people with different sets of skills, if I had to separate those, it would be in these 3 big categories (with huge overlaps):
>hands-on professional (examples: soldier, wizard, priest)
>academic professional (examples: wizard, priest, general, officer)
>way of life (examples: hunter-gatherer, sailor, mercenary, village shaman, witch doctor)
The fifth class is the Artificer.
That's just a 4 way split of the other 4.
>Small healing
>Small skill boosts
>Small magic
>Small fighting
Big disappointment
if you think wizard and cleric should be the same class then you're either moronic or want a game with archetypes so all encompassing they stop being classes at all and become a point buy system with starting templates
the two are wildly different
They're the same archetype. Multiple classes can belong to the same archetype (though I still don't think the cleric is a very good class). Try harder please.
Honestly 4e should have just had defenders, strikers and magicboys. I appreciate the distinction between laying debuffs and laying buffs, but debuff was a narrow piece of the pie so wizards got area attacks, but then other ("controller-leaning") classes started getting area attacks and it became clear that controller just wasn't a strong archetype.
Also, leaders and defenders got better debuffs.
>They're the same archetype.
not mechanically (attack vs defend, glass canon vs passable fighter) or in terms of aesthetic (wizard magic is a talent being cultivated, priest magic is a gift from a higher power. desire for self improvement vs desire to help others) are the two classes the same. even if we go back to the literal boomer days of fantasy where you had stuff where you had "good" wizards healing people and "bad" ones throwing lightning bolts you had tons of fantasy and mythology with this divide between magic users with a religious background and those with a more esoteric one, especially in a lot of asian cultures
the only thing I'll give you is that a lot of versions of D&D could do more to make them more distinct, but too many people got mad that they had to actually follow the whims of their god, had to be part of a church, and all these other requirements just to use healing spells so they got softened over time much like paladins
>not mechanically (attack vs defend, glass canon vs passable fighter) or in terms of aesthetic (wizard magic is a talent being cultivated, priest magic is a gift from a higher power. desire for self improvement vs desire to help others)
Dou you think that a ranger is the same, mechanically or aesthetically, as a paladin? Do you not recognize the fundamental similarity between vancian casters and vancian casters, which would be true even if their spell lists didn't mostly overlap? Cleric is a fighter/mage hybrid, which has nothing to do with religion, it's a weak class with weak flavor and that weak flavor went on to pollute every setting.
>you had tons of fantasy and mythology with this divide between magic users with a religious background and those with a more esoteric one, especially in a lot of asian cultures
No, not really.
Asian magic men have various (way more interesting than D&D) explanations for their powers, all of which are based on knowledge and all of which are inherently spiritual, you're just arbitrarily imposing English words when you decide that one is a wizard and the other is a priest.
In fantasy you will find that any class (including and especially wizard) can be a priest. D&D clerics are shit.
conan spends most of the movie sneaking around and yet nobody says warrior and thief should be the same archetype
NTA, but lots of grognards who started with the LBB (pre Thief class) say exactly that using Conan as the main example.
It's also been said several times in this thread, lol.
I shouldn't be surprised, no one reads the thread, Ganker is a chatroom for advanced shitposters.
They are thematically different, but in very few games are they mechanically different. If your cleric is still basically a guy who has a different spell list at the end of the day, its just magic user with another name.
either a merchant that exists to make everything bewteen the moment to moment action/problem scenes the other 4 have options for more convenient, or some kind of non humanoid character. either way you need someone who is totally at odds with the first 4
>Fighting Man
>Offense Man (ie. fireball wizard)
>Controlling Man (ie. illusion wizard)
>Supporting Man (ie. cleric, 4e warlord)
>Scouting/Sneaking/Intel Man (ie. rogue)
>Equipment Man (ie. artificer/smith class, arguably incarnum classes, etc)
In 1e the "fifth class" was Monk, it was just way rarer to qualify for compared to the others. 1e added Cavalier as a "sixth class" in UA.
2e made Psionicist it's "fifth class" in it's supplemental books.
Those classes are terrible. They worked for early dnd because the game was simple and pretty abstracted. But for modern dnd with all the character options and whatnot it's awful.
Fighter, Wizard, Priest, and Rogue already cover basically everything you will do in the game. They are too broad.
The fighter is the epitome of all fighting, the wizard has all the magic, the priest does all the deity shit, and the rogue has all the skill monkeying. You need to reduce their focus more. Of course in the case of the fighter you run into the issue that dnd's combat system is just attack roll after attack roll and there isn't much mechanics for the fighter and rogue to play with. Moreover the rogue kinda hogs all the skillshit (except maybe knowledge) which is also a problem.
Also the cleric is literally just a member of the clergy while the other classes basically have no meaning in the fiction of the game.
You could just as easily claim that the modern classes are too specific. I don't think that broadness or specificness is good or bad, it's probably more correct to say that they both come from wildly different ideas about game design. I gotta say, I much prefer the oldschool, broad class archetypes as opposed to tue newer school, many hyper specific class and subclass archtypes.
the five classes should be Human, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit, and Gnome
There aren't even FOUR proper classes, and you're talking about a fifth. A cleric is just a warrior/wizard hybrid.
Huh? I just see the big three and the worst mistake ever printed in that image
Cleric's aren't that bad.
What's their niche that isn't just a reflavored repackaging of what the other classes already do?
Cleric is one of the big three tho
The fifth class is diplomat and I refuse to explain further.
rogues as criminals/thieves/stealthy people are a garbage archetype that shouldnt exist and i dont respect anyone who thinks otherwise
the three good archetypes that cover everything are
physically engaged person
magic from personal skill person
magic from an outside source person
Unless they actually function differently in a meaningful way, the two different magic people are the same fricking thing with different drapes.
of course they fricking do. there is a massive conceptual difference between learning to do something yourself and someone else who is much more skilled and powerful doing things that benefit you, both in your own control over what is being done and the limitations of the things being done
if anything it is the fighting person that is the odd duck because in a way its just a non magical version of the personal skill trope
the actual two anchor tropes are personal skill and loaned power
Okay. Can you point to a game that models those two things differently, other than different spell lists? I agree that they are conceptually/thematically different, but if they are both Vancian casters with fire and forget spells that reset after the adventure/a night of concentration or prayer/a long rest, then all the other shit is just window dressing, and they are the same class.
I've pointed out a game that does this well; DCC Clerics and Wizards work in a fundamentally different way. I'm unaware of any other class based d&dish system that does a good job of this though.
name an existing system? none i am personally aware of. it is however a significant distinction i have in the system/world i am building
well if you really want a loaned power martial you have he-man as an example but its such small category conceptually it can be easily absorbed by the others making he-man and similar characters just loaned power casters with muscle magic
however working with just the core tropes and mixing martial with either types of magic source tropes you can get spellswords and paladins and everything in between
But this poses a new question:
What is the “loaned power” counterpart of martial?
Because this is interesting. The 4 quadrants of basic classes are now:
>personal skill caster
>loaned power caster
>personal skill martial
>loaned power martial
>What is the “loaned power” counterpart of martial?
>he-man
Based.
This is a really common anime and video game concept though - think of all the Shōnen anime and stuff. For more Western examples you can look at paladins, Captain Planet, a shit ton of super heroes, etc.
You can be a rogue and not be a criminal, though you wouldn’t be wrong for acknowledging that there’s a lot of overlap there.
Well, the issue there, as per usual for D&D, is that it tries to do too much and be everything to everyone instead of having fundamental differences between class.
Faith-based adventurers are a common fantasy trope.
>Faith-based adventurers are a common fantasy trope.
that's a flavor, not a function
>Well, the issue there, as per usual for D&D, is that it tries to do too much and be everything to everyone instead of having fundamental differences between class.
Okay, but that doesn't change the point that the cleric is just a wizard with a different spell list. Do you have an argument other than "they ought to be different because they are thematically different!"
Let me put it another way:
If we're speaking to collapsing the classes down their broadest archtypes, then a fighter who hits stuff hand to hand, a fighter who uses sword and board, a fighter who berserks with a big axe, and a fighter who uses a giant ass compound bow are all still fighters. If you go by the specialist route, where the rogue is the "skills guy," it's even broader: and inventer, an alchemist, an assassin and a second story guy, and also your face man, are all specialists. With both of these, you're boiling it down to the essence
One is a guy who fights, one is a guy who uses skills. Everything else is flavor.
That is the metric we're talking about here, and several people in the thread are saying that even the thief/rogue/specialist/ is extra, and every character should be able to do that stuff.
So it doesn't matter thematically. At the end of the day, your powers guy is a powers guy. At its most basic, you can just go "they get x spells know, cast x spells a day," and if the player wants to be a cleric, they say "i get my powers from a god" and maybe the get a different spell list, and if they are a wizard they say "I get my spells from books." Ultimately that is just *flavor* and has no real bearing on most games.
So you can say "no, it is different," but I can literally only think of one game where it actually is appreciably different, and if you were making a game that for some reason wanted to boil everything down to the platonic concept of classes, a cleric isn't on that list.
I'll throw out Fantasy Craft as another system that makes a distinction between traditional casting and divine casting.
Mages use the spellcasting skill which requires to roll a skill check for casting and can fail to cast spells and choose their spells.
Priests follow a path based on their alignment (not necessarily good/evil could also be strictly a god, religion, or philosophy). Their path gives them a set of spells and abilities but they do not have to roll a check to cast spells and cannot fail albeit they're significantly more limited in what they can do.
Although all that said I'm still team Cleric and Magic User are the same thing because really you have to go aggressively out of your way to give them a distinction and often it feels arbitrary or one side feels actively gimped.
That’s an issue with design. For the most part, systems don’t do the wizard/priest distinction well unless it’s a generic system that allows you to build characters from the ground up.
Rogue shouldn't exist, warriors and wizards should be allowed to check for traps and attempt to pick locks.
Priest shouldn't exists, magic is just magic and in a setting where the gods exist and actively interact, all characters should be religious.
Like normal people know lockpicking
motherfricker how many "normal people" know magic? if you are capable of learning how to manipulate the very fabric of existence you can spend 3 minutes to learn how to pick a lock
>D&D adventurers are normal people
A normal man is a level 0 character. Having a level at all is being exceptional.
Even normies played Elder Scrolls so yes? And who doesn't know the credit card trick for traditional low security locks
The one where you post a pic of the back of a credit card and it unlocks special services on it?
Not in dnd, but if you look at l5r you have a more "social class" as it's a bigger part of the game, so you end up with: a courtier (social class), bushi (fighter), shugenja (wizard/cleric), (shinobi (rogue), and a monk that doesn't quite fit the others, depending on the school it might be closer to one of them, but still somewhat a mix).
Not in the context of a DnD derived systerm where there are fights, skills, and spells as three distinct categories. Only thing I could think of is a commander type to cover the NPC, or a banker type to cover inventory. But, I don't know how they would be fun for the rest of a group, and both, especially commander archetype, seems to go against the idea of an adventuring party.
In the campaign I'm working on, the financier is a Specialist class with it's own skills. The financier that hired the party is played by the whole party when in town, and otherwise leads their trade caravan.
For a commander type, they might have a Tactics skill and a Strategy skill to provide buffs at different levels of combat.
I would say that the modern view of "martial, caster and half-caster" is way better, you can call them fighter, wizard and cleric instead but the modern names are even more open
freakshit
The real answer is to scale down, not up. There should only be three basic classes
>fightman- warrior, monk, warlord, etc
>skill monkey- thief, engineer, getaway driver, etc
>smart guy- scholar, priest (non-magical), doctor, etc
Magic is something any of them can spec into if they put work into it, not existing as its own class but a prestige option.
this both somehow misses that skill is tied to intelligence and implies being good at fighting somehow makes you stupid despite the fact you need to be smart to be a successful fighter
at absolute most you can divide martial into big and strong and small and quick but the whole "skill monkey" trope is absolute dogshit
on a related note having any mechanics or classes tied to intelligence/wisdom/charisma is trash tier and cancerous for roleplaying, this is the reason one dimensional moronic barbarians are a thing
That list is funny considering Bards are basically wizards now. Also rogues themselves are basically warrior types with some skills nowadays. I played a dex fighter who basically did all the rogue shit once.
>big four
It's actually big two. Mundane character and Magic user. The rest are derivations.
...In case anyone's wondering, this implies the most likely "Fifth Class" would at its heart be a Rogue/Wizard or Rogue/Fighter inferior in each's "home field", but having a valuable orthogonal utility like the Cleric "archetype" holding a near-monopoly on healing magic.
The problem with this, and many other "Fifth Class" concepts, is that the Wizard's design-by-landfill tendency and sheer time has ended up devouring most of the remaining space. Of course, the Wizard deserves having chunks ripped out of it for its crimes against game design.
Ironically, Psionicist and Monk can easily be rendered as these "Missing Links", the issue is properly defining what their novel value SHOULD be.
Their novel value can be lack of dependence upon equipment. Fighters need weapons and armor, rogues need tools, wizards need components. A monk can show up naked as the day they were born and kick a troll to death.
That's more of a reasoning to have more actual limitations to what a wizard can specialize in.
If you're talking about dividing up classes so they're more fair, then you'd want to take the 3.5 route where you have classes like Beguiler or Warmage or Dread Necromancer rather than a generic magic user.
Or you could get the same effect by having a generic magic user class, but dividing that class up by limitations and spell selection.
But more broadly, there isn't a purpose behind having a weird mix of warrior and magic user that gives up certain spells for some other unique spells.
Especially when you consider that nothing about the Fighter is required to be frontline, as Fighters have always been highly functional ranged attackers. But that's a whole other matter.
>But more broadly, there isn't a purpose behind having a weird mix of warrior and magic user that gives up certain spells for some other unique spells.
There is when you're talking about the Big Four class-grouping space of party roles. As noted by the person commenting that 4e is nearly rebrands of the Big Four. One front-liner with decent bulk struggles to hold in quite a lot of situations. Fighter being able to do reliable ranged damage makes this WORSE.
Cleric exists to LOCK DOWN party function, the entire reason for classes in the first place. If you're a Thief you WILL have the skills, if you're a Fighter you WILL have the THACO and HP, and if you're a Cleric you WILL have melee function and healing. And the level system supports this by saying these WILL scale at a certain rate relative to eachother.
>Another problem easily solved by not playing D&D
This misses the entire point of the thread topic, as it's very specifically about the originating "tropes" of character archetypes in RPGs, tabletop or otherwise, from D&D itself. Everything about the thread topic is very expressly the D&Dism of character classes with clearly defined roles in the adventure.
the original question may have been about dnd but the topic developed to discuss character tropes in general which predates dnd arguably by thousands of years
To put it another way, this thread is about a theoretically 5th class to add to those four, and you can see how a lot of suggestions usually end up not being fitting due to simply being a blend of the others.
My point is moreso that there isn't going to be a satisfactory answer to OP's question, because existing aspects of the big four are already arbitrary.
Another problem easily solved by not playing D&D, or being a mass-reply gay.
I always saw it as the non CON stats.
So you have fighter and the subs, who represent strength
Ranger/thief and the subs, that represent Dex
Cleric and the Subs, that represent Wisdom
Wizard and the the subs, that represent intelligence.
So naturally the 5th class would be Charisma, which would be bard.
So your average party is a Fighter, a Thief/Ranger, A cleric, a Wizard and a Bard.
also to be clear, a crafter can easily be the 5th character trope, be it alchemist artificer or whatever other flavor, the problem is its a shit trope for people with bad taste that probably like rogues too
D&D has two classes:
Martial
and Caster
That's because D&D is a combat game focused on gridlocked, turn-based gameplay.
Contenders for a 5th IMO:
- Assassin/Monk: 'Nova' martial, or martial that requires set up and planning to inflict some devastating condition on the enemy, but doesn't specialize in consistent damage
- Bard/Prince/Scholar: Social focused class, possibly able to talk to plants or animals or inanimate objects, possibly buff party members in addition to providing knowledge
-Bard/Dancer/Strategist: actual party buffing class, possibly able to mess with turn order or positions
- Tank/Berserker: Damage mitigating class, draw enemies or aggro
- Summoner/Beastmaster: Themselves weak, but able to summon creatures that fulfill other class roles, possibly defeated foes too a la necromancer
-Artificer/Shaman: sets up spells or gadgets in advance, or alters the floorplan or field of combat, thus turning the wizard into the 'spontaneous caster' and the artificer into the 'planned caster'
Furthermore, martial could be divided into warrior and archer, like how sorcerer is divided into wizard and cleric
>Having healing magic be under the same roof creates a TOTALLY incoherent blob of a class
>having healing magic be under the Magic User roof makes the class incoherent
Hmm...
Because having "does ALL magic" as a top level archetype means you've surrendered the notion of specialization at the 1st-level decision point, unless you throw out the purpose of the archetypes by having party role fulfillment subdivided within the class. At which point, the Cleric is one of the most natural examples of such and its niche of spellcasting one of the most vital, so you're not actually being rid of the Cleric, just arbitrarily saying the healing-focused character every party needs is still a "Magic User" despite having a fundamentally separate party role.
...the dependencies for touch-ranged healing being a sane decision are so completely alien to the Wizard that forcing it under the some roof for the sake of the bullshit catchall of the "Magic User" which has severely fricked with every edition of D&D is nonsense.
The Cleric has a good mechanical niche. Just because it casts spells, does not make it a subset of the Wizard, because the Wizard has more defining it than "casts spells", and shelving ALL spells under one roof makes game balance impossible. How many caster supremacy threads do I need to beat you lot over the head with to get the point across?
You are not understand the conversation that is being had here, bud. I don't understand why you're being willfully obstinate and ignoring what people are saying, but it can't be good you for.
"the Cleric is usually just a Wizard with a different spell list, or a hybrid Wizard/Fighter" is a statement that it has no sensible distinction because... Wizard=Magic User? ALL spellcasting MUST come back to one class?
I'm fairly certain I understand the argument being made. I'm the opposition to said argument saying that this is psychotic overgeneralization completely useless to game design, which is the entire goddamn reason for having classes.
Fundamentally, the Cleric exists to facilitate close-quarters magic. Healing to keep the front line going, recovering from conditions much more detrimental to close-quarters combatants, the ability to use magic while armored for it to be sane to be in the front line.
It's not SIMPLY a Wizard/Fighter because the "Fighter part" readily enables a selection of spells that would be functionally suicidal for a Wizard to use, and the original Magic User had an obvious gap that fit well for this.
The assumptions the classes came from were that magic WAS a fairly rare thing, being the reason for crawling through dungeons and fighting dragons. PC parties being exceptional had a lot to do with having Wizards and Clerics on a regular basis.
Also, it's not at all contradictory to reject the "Magic User" as an archetype unto itself while still keeping archetypal class design. Just means adding utility cantrips as an assumption and doing stuff like PF1e's Item Mastery feats for serious space for end-users.
>doing stuff like PF1e's Item Mastery feats
>Okay GM, I pick up the shard of broken glass from the cracked mirror and use it to reflect the light of the sun into the monster's eyes!
>No, you need to take the feat to do that
Nah.
They're shit like "this item has high-level Transmutation SLA? I jailbreak it into Fly and Telekinesis". Very much good Feat space, it's quite drastically separate from what the things are REMOTELY supposed to be doing.
Did you literally ever try to explain what it was, or are you just being an obtuse jackass for the sake of being an obtuse jackass?
Different spell list that requires different "chassis" functions is in fact a valid space for a different class, yes. Can you pull your heads out of your contrarian asses for five seconds to think about the ACTUAL FRICKING GAME this shit is for?
This is not a sandbox. This is all comes back to defined party roles for dungeon-diving so that absolute normies who have zero knowledge of TTRPGs from the things LITERALLY NOT EXISTING a few years ago can be able to play.
Shoving ALL magic into a single "Magic User" and having ALL combination functions be actual direct combinations thoroughly invalidates there being classes at all.
I'm specifically referencing a real, actual feat that exists in the game. https://www.d20pfsrd.com/FEATS/COMBAT-FEATS/EQUIPMENT-TRICK-COMBAT/#Mirror_Tricks
Okay, I'm going to go ahead and remind you what this fricking thread is about
>Do you think we'll ever see a unified "fifth class" thats on the level of the big four shown in this image? Or is the design space filled and every class that isn't one of these is just a hybrid or alternate version of these four?
OP is asking if there could be a "fifth class" that isn't just a hybrid or alternate version of the main four classes.
This entire premise is faulty, because it implies that a class being a hybrid of others is somehow a lesser design space. This is best demonstrated by the fact that Cleric is a hybrid between Fighter and Mage.
Yes, the Cleric has a niche, but it's still a hybrid. The "Big Four" has always been an arbitrary lie, which is a problem that ultimately stems from the fact that Wizard as a class is far too broad and covers way too many character archetypes.
There isn't some grand elegant overarching design at play where the class with Shocking Grasp gets no armor and the class with Cure Wounds gets heavy armor for a well-thought-out reason.
You also seem to be under the impression that giving Wizards healing magic and making Cleric a mor explicit hybrid would somehow remove the Cleric's niche. If it's as you say where casting healing spells is dangerous for an unarmored wizard, then wouldn't the archetype of a Cleric arise very naturally?
The Paladin manages to justify itself as a class with unique features like smites, but if you ask most people they'll point to it as being a hybrid of the Fighter and Cleric. Does that somehow diminish the Paladin? I suppose if you care about something being the "Big Four" it is, but I think that places far too much focus on weird sacred cows regarding what should be considered a basic class, rather than actually making sure those classes function.
Being one of those core party roles didn't help Fighters be a competitive option in 3.5, because unique design space and power aren't the same
I have broken down my point several times, my dude.
Okay, so you don't understand the conversation that is taking place. I'll stop talking past you, then.
>the Cleric is usually just a Wizard with a different spell list, or a hybrid Wizard/Fighter
>"Nooooo you're totally wrong! The cleric is totally different because [stuff stemming from then having a different spell list] and also [stuff that they can do because they are a wizard/fighter hybrid]
>It's not SIMPLY a Wizard/Fighter because the "Fighter part" readily enables a selection of spells that would be functionally suicidal for a Wizard to use, and the original Magic User had an obvious gap that fit well for this.
A Wizard/Fighter who could wear heavy armor while still being able to cast Burning Hands would also qualify as that. A class being greater than the sum of its parts doesn't make it stop being a hybrid.
>you've surrendered the notion of specialization at the 1st-level decision point, unless you throw out the purpose of the archetypes by having party role fulfillment subdivided within the class.
Better yet
>you reject the notion of archetypal classes (including subclasses), because in a game setting where magic is potent and commonplace enough where any given adventurer could use magic, every adventurer should be able to use at least a little bit of magic; there's no reason why Joe Fighter shouldn't be able to learn a basic fire spell to light a candle.
Or
>you throw out "does ALL magic" entirely and relegate magic users to exclusively buff or debuff spells, with damage only able to be done by weapon users
Yes, it is healthier for the game that Wizards are arbitrarily locked out of certain types of magic. If anything, it would be even more healthy for the game if healing magic wasn't the only thing they were largely locked out of, and if they were subdivided further.
But that doesn't make such a division any less arbitrary.
Keep in mind that Cleric is often just as guilty of caster supremacy as the Wizard, because not only does the Cleric still get pretty good access to a variety of spells beyond just healing, but often lacks the same weaknesses that people ascribe to wizards such as low hitpoints or lacking armor. CoDzilla in 3.5 was a thing for a reason, and Clerics are still top tier in 5e.
Of course, the balance of the matter doesn't change the fact that at a fundamental level, Cleric is a hybrid of magic-user and warrior. Less spells, less weapons, but gets healing as a unique gimmick to make up for it. Just like how Bard is a blend of magic-user and thief. The "Big Four" as they exist are largely a matter of happenstance.
>Less spells, less weapons
>same number of spell slots
>learn all their spells instantly on level-up, never have to go scroll hunting
>having less weapons doesn't matter because a quarterstaff with PAM is mathematically equivalent to or better than a greatsword with GWM at any of the levels where a full caster would want to be using a weapon anyway
Yes, as I said, Cleric is a very powerful class. That doesn't change the fact that it's a hybrid class. Cleric has a smaller spell list than a Wizard. Cleric doesn't get the same weapon specialization as Fighters.
The fact that Clerics excel in spite of all of this doesn't change that the class is a hybrid.
Fighter - faces enemies head on
Magic user - defeats/outsmarts adversity through supernatural means
Cleric - supports the party through supernatural means
Thief - defeats/outsmarts adversity through natural means
Diplomat - supports the party through natural means
Nobody wants to play a normal guy with plot armor that doesn't even swing a sword but it would be the 5th class
I like how the "Diplomat" description you give is covered in Hero's Journey by what's basically "Play Samwise Gamgee".
You can enhance allies and defend them physically, while also wielding weapons to wack enemies if you need.
In the context of the other 4, the main issue is "what happens if one fails?", and this class is the answer to that.
You are the Chad that jumps to protect the injured Figther or the MU that an enemy sneaker too.
A diplomat class would be very weak combat wise but would have social powers/abilities/feats/whatever that excel beyond the other classes. They would also have, for lack of a better term, plot armor granted to them by the DM that would allow them to completely circumvent hostile situations because of their 'diplomatic imunity'.
Diplomatic immunity could be fluffed as bardic fame, royal status, folk hero notoriety and so on.
The social aspects of game is something that the main 4 classes are all effected by but none of them have special powers and game abilities that can shape it besides a few spells.
You're looking for an Honor or Sway stat for diplomats, bards and merchants. Going back to a Specialist class, all of these would be types of charisma specialists.
Serious answer:
>Foreman
It's the guy who doesn't fight himself but has a bunch of minions to do it for him.
May or may not have spells to buff his minions and maybe also the team.
Variations: Beastmaster, Summoner, Necromancer.
Very often the character class of the big bad.
I am absolutely shocked at how many people ITT are saying that cleric and wizard are the same. Its like everyone is forgetting that the cleric's healing spells are mainly touch based, and not range based. This is why the cleric is able to wear armor, because he has to be able to get up close to the people that he heals and be close to the action. Whereas the wizard usually stays far in the back, launching spells from afar. Healing by hands/touch is a major part of the class distinction for the cleric and leads to a very different style of play for the two.
Lol, an entire character class can be irrelevanticized by healing potions.
>gets killed
>gets ability score drained
>gets level drained
>gets cursed
>gets attacked by an evil creature
>lmao just use a healing potion
Do not play with this man, he does not play games
the wizard can also be made irrelevant by items that cause stunning/disabling effects
Anon, I'm sorry that no one told you, but healing mid-combat is for morons. Enemies deal damage faster than you can heal it.
I know, I know, the rules give you the wrong impression at multiple points, but you're supposed to figure it out eventually.
Only true for 3e and its successors.
Congratulations, you outed yourself as a Dunning-Kruhger cretins that repeats memes.
In actual gameplay, is completely situational. Yes, even 3e.
If for some reason a character goes down, you WILL need to intervene with a cure even just to stabilize. Cure spells that are cast as immediate action also exist for this reason.
The "le no cure in combat" meme is due to no making it a priority or a pigeonholing, and about use, and sometimes abuse, of healing wands.
For the record, any change to wands, houserule or just 5ed, makes your moronic misconception even more moronic.
Occasionally it's also due to morons with a very forgiving gamestyle.
Now go, learn to play, and stop parroting shit you have no clue about.
>For the record, any change to wands, houserule or just 5ed, makes your moronic misconception even more moronic.
Any change or accessibility.
But the morons that push LE NO HEAL IN COMBAT NEVER EVER are the same type of morons that completely misconstrue WBL or item accessibility by settlement size.
What the frick are you babbling about, moron?
Hi, welcome.
You see those >> followed by a number and a # ?
You can click on them or just put your cursor on. It allows you to follow the posts and their answer.
Have fun, subhuman-kun.
You're missing the point. I'm not saying axe the cleric. I'm saying that in nearly all games, the cleric is just a wizard with some different flavor. If there is a thesis, beyond "what are the ' ur-classes'," it is that it would be better if the cleric was more than a magic user with a different spell list, or in some cases just a better magic user, or a hybrid magic user fighter. Also, "You need to have a cleric, othetwise the magic user does too much," is an irrelevant or at best orthogonal point to the discussion we're having. Again, in this discussion, people seem totally find with a PC focusing on ranged bow combat, a PC focusing on getting close and tanking hits, a pc who uses a sword and shield and a PC that wields a whip and a net all ass fighters, so "the wizard shouldn't be able to do so much!" seems like a nonsense argument to me.
I'm not talking about my ideal game design, or something that should be aspired to; I'm talking about taking down the classes to their most basic forms, which seems to me to be: guy who fights good, guy who skills good, and guy who powers good. There are some in the thread who are would take it step further to: guy who knows magic, and guy who doesnt know magic. No one, to my knowledge, is advocating "axing" anything. We're just having an ontalogical discussion here, Dogg People seem to be ignoring me when I keep bringing up a game that actually does this well.
That's still something that could basically be covered by flavor. It's still just "magic user that heals at touch range." That's more of a spell by spell basis thing, and not really fundamentally different.
r8 my classes
>knight
>brigand
>yeoman
>saint
>witch
>shaman
I dont understand why the cleric deserves to be singled out in particular. Could you not axe the thief, and give skills to one of the other classes? Could you not axe the wizard, and give his spells to the cleric. Could you not axe the fighter, and give tankier properties to the cleric or give the wizard some defense spells? It all seems pretty arbitrary to me. I think people just have a bias against support roles in general, even if there are some people who really enjoy playing them.
I’m in favor of a more priestly class. Clerics are warrior priests. Speciality Priests tailored to the religions of your game world is probably the best way to go if you favor a more detailed approach. Many religions wouldn’t have a military arm that produces clerics. If you are just gonna play notta-medieval Christianianity then clerics are fine.
Because the cleric is usually eithet just a wizard with a different spell list, or a hybrid wizard fighter. A spellcaster is a distinct thing. A fighting man is a distinct thing. And, depending on who you ask, a skills guy/specialist/theif is a distinct thing, although a lot of digital ink has been spilled in favor of the idea that the thief is also unnessicary.
Plenty of people have also said that axing the thief would be a fitting option.
The reason it boils down to warrior and magic user in my eyes is because one is a purely mundane character that can use all the armor or weapons they want while being highly durable, and a mage doesn't get any good armor or weapons and has much lower hitpoints, and is an expert in all things magical.
That makes plenty of sense as a basic dichotomy, and it's very clear to see how the other classes are branches of that. Thief keeps some of the weapons but gets a lot more skills. Cleric sacrifices a lot of the spellcasting but gains some of that armor and durability.
>It all seems pretty arbitrary to me
It's all incredibly arbitrary. There's another world out there where people are justifying Ranger as a fourth class because obviously using a bow and long-rang healing spells gives it a perfect niche between the Barbarian's raw martial power and the Illusionist's wider variety of magical effects.
There's nothing so special about the idea of a warrior with worse weapons being the source of healing spells in the party.
Rainbow pyramid time boys
offensive magic and healing magic are just inherently different. even in games or settings that dont have an INT/WIS split and just let you cast any spells, like elder scrolls, you notice that usually you pick between offensive mage, or someone who uses restoration to aid their other abilities, usually melee.
mana is a resource, and for offensive mages, using that resource on healing magic is just a waste. when you play elder scrolls you'll notice that restoration does not pair well at all with other schools like destruction. you kind of have to choose one. at most, offensive mages will use shields or wards to mitigate damage (abjuration), but not heal.
yes i know elder scrolls is not d&d, but i think its interesting that even when you have the ability to do damage and healing magic, it doesnt really make sense to use both. and i think the same thing would happen in d&d if the classes were combined. people would naturally either trend toward a damage mage or a support
>when you play elder scrolls you'll notice that restoration does not pair well at all with other schools like destruction. you kind of have to choose one. at most, offensive mages will use shields or wards to mitigate damage (abjuration)
But Ward spells are Restoration spells in Skyrim and tons of npc mages cast ward with one hand while casting destruction magic in the other??
I'd recategorize the classes along their thematic source of power (function/role be damned, it's not a fricking video game)
-Self (Monk, Barbarian)
-Equipment (Warrior, Rogue)
-Arcane (Wizard, Sorcerer)
-Divine (Cleric, Paladin)
-Nature (Druid, Ranger)
Even if you think the Cleric doesnt belong, it doesnt change the fact that most adventuring parties will want a dedicated healer, or at least someone who can heal a lot. If you just merge Clerics into Wizards, it doesnt mean that a single Wizard will be able to fill that role. In that case most parties would want two wizards to focus on different things. A single wizard doesnt have enough spell slots to fill both roles of offensive/crowd control and also healing
This is why the Big Four became quintessential. Even with just three classes you would still have four characters anyway...
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
Yes, if Fighter and Wizards were the only classes in the game, you wouldn't have as many classes even in a party of four. If skills got folded into a Fighter and healing got folded into a Wizard, the classes themselves would be more flexible, and then the various archetypes you could point to would be a middle-ground.
What the roles would be would vary from table to table. Some people might think the crucial roles for the game is having a hybrid that focuses on skills and utility spells, another that focuses on ranged damage with a bow and blasting spells, and both of those free up the main wizard to properly focus on buffing, healing, and crowd control. The analysis grows even more complex if you factor in tables that might have a number of players other than four.
There's nothing "quintessential" about the fact that D&D has four classes. It's merely post-hoc rationalization to act as though the way things turned out was somehow inevitable or obvious, with the evidence being that things turned out that way. It's a cyclical sort of logic that doesn't actually recognize anything about what is being said.
You're still talking about "merging the cleric and the wizard." That was never what the conversation was about. You STILL aren't getting this, my dude.
There are three pillar classes: a fight man, a skill man, and a power man. EVERYTHING ELSE IS FLUFF. I don't know how to say it more simply for you.
Gygax, circa the 1st D&D handbook ever made -
>There are three pillar classes: a fight man, a holy man and a magic man. EVERYTHING ELSE IS FLUFF. I don't know how to say it more simply for you. You STLL aren't getting this, my dude.
>no! The piller classes are a fighter, a spell caster, and another spell caster!
imagine being so devoid of imagination and intelligence that you think "fighting good" and the unlimited potential of MAGIC are equivalently sized categories
as was established by multiple people in the thread, the trio is fighting man holy man and scholar man.
skill man is an inherently moronic trope and even the buttholes who like it cant agree if it refers to skill monkeys or burst damage characters
>cant agree if it refers to skill monkeys or burst damage characters
Link or post a screencap of a single time when people argued about that. The rogue is high conditional damage, which is good because it gives him a distinct role in combat, and also because it's such a distinct heroic role (backstabber who is afraid of an honest fight), but other skillmonkeys can do other things in combat and that's fine. As opposed to the cleric, which has nothing to do with the holy men of myths or stories, and which also happens to be a badly designed gish.
read the god damn thread there is at least six posts for burst dps, skill specialist, an agile fighter, none of you agree what the trope represents
Rogue (or, more properly, Thief) is a dedicated scout in an environment where scouting is no longer socially acceptable (thanks largely to decades of the “don’t split the party” meme.
There are posts saying that clerics wear armor, and there are posts saying that clerics cast spells, what's your point?
PROTIP: Your opponents disagreeing never makes you less wrong.
PROTIP: Your opponents in this case don't disagree about anything.
PROTIP: Cleric fans in this thread are extra butthurt.
lol, I bet this pompous twit doesn't play games, but if he does I bet he's been in a preventable TPK and didn't realize it.
that is the most moronic thing ive read in this thread. nobody defines cleric as characters who wears armor and only the dumbfricks who think its the same as the wizard define it based on its spellcasting, which is the entire reason they are clueless dumbfricks
You're kind of an NPC huh?
Okay, and what does the power man do, exactly?
The fighting man fights, the skill man does things that aren't fighting, why's there a third pillar?
I think you mean a fourth, that's unified like the big three.
Would alchemist and artificer also be categorized as rogues? Or mages?
>This thread is still going
Fighter and Mage. That's it. A skill list replaces thief/ranger and magic is arcane + divine, replacing cleric. Simples.
and why not give fighters the ability to cast magic, too, replacing the mage?
You *still* aren't getting this.
and what is there to get, exactly? if you can give skills to the fighter, why cant you give the fighter magic too?
You still thinking in terms of "giving" things from one class to another. That isn't the conversation that is being had.
but this is exactly what you said
>a skill list replaces thief/ranger
so yes in fact you are talking about "giving" things from one class to another, in this case giving the other classes the skills of the thief
Nta, buddy. There is more than one person in the thread. And that anon isn't saying "give the fighter thiefs skills," they are of the camp that everyone should be doing thiefy shit, so the class is redundant. I disagree, but I understand the point. You would understand that if you'd read the thread.
There should be one class for each of the 5 stats:
Strength = warrior
Dexterity = rogue
Intellect = Wizard
Wisdom = Cleric
Charisma = something like diplomat or merchant, usually non-fighting classes mostly used by DM.
Constitution = Monk
Charisma = Bard
Con is gay and should be rolled into Strength as a default.
I wonder, what if you wanted to keep the sneaky cunning opportunistic character as a pillar but completely disassociate it from its traditional role as a criminal/assassin/thief/edgydipshit/rogue role, what other, more neutral, name would you use for the pillar?
Specialist
Tbh the problem with people not being able to ken to rogues is an issue with branding. Ironically, Japanese media is great at portraying the rogue archetype. It shows up a lot in other eastern media too.
this makes 0 sense, the other pillars are also specialists of their categories, specialist means literally nothing
Dilettante
The Brute - fighter, warrior, barbarian
The Wiseman - magic user, artificer, alchemist
The Faithful - cleric, warlock, druid
The Deft - thief, assassin, monk
The Charmer - the theoretical 5th class that doesn't really exist in d&d because the social aspects of the games are not codified anywhere as much as the real purpose of the game, dungeon exploration and combat. Anyway as others have said in the thread the 5th class is diplomat, merchant or aristocrat.
>the social aspects of the games are not codified anywhere as much as the real purpose of the game, dungeon exploration and combat
Social aspects are a real purpose of the game and you've missed why rules are lax with them. They can be accurately modeled by players at the table.
You can't say the same for combat or exploration, which is why there are rules to specify how to model them.
>Social aspects are a real purpose of the game and you've missed why rules are lax with them.
Neither out of game social interaction and rules free roleplay are the same as in game Social mechanics. Several games actually do have well designed social mechanics and social encounter systems, but DnD doesn't due to it starting out as a wargame game/dungeon exploration system.
>Neither out of game social interaction and rules free roleplay are the same as in game Social mechanics.
I never said social interaction was a game mechanic and I never said anything about freeform roleplay. I said social interaction is central to roleplaying games and that replacing social interaction with game mechanics undermines a roleplaying game.
>that replacing social interaction with game mechanics undermines a roleplaying game.
No, it does not. The Diplomacy shit in your screenshot is responsible for characters who have no justifiable ability to be social to be masters of it completely due to the player's own social ability. That free form stuff is what undermines structured roleplaying games much more than the existence of social mechanics.
My apologies. It took me until this point in the argument to realize you weren't a real person. That was insensitive and I'm sorry.
I guess your head is so far up your ass that you cannot connect the idea that what you are capable of doing or not doing socially is not the same as what your character is capable or not capable of doing.
Just because you can bluff your GM does not mean that you character is able to bluff the guard. You are the exact type of player that leads to the stories of barbarian PCs trying to mix up gunpowder just because the player is a chem major and the GM mentioned the smell of rotten eggs, saltpeter and charcoal.
A glib player can act out an inarticulate character same as a smart player can a dumb character.
Mad because bad.
But that is not what tends to happen when social mechanics are lacking. You tend to have glib players min/maxing with Cha as a dump stat and then trying to act like they have a high Charisma is social settings. Those players are not acting out an inarticulate character, they are trying to cheat by building socially inept characters and then playing them as social butterflies. They are quite literally failing to properly roleplay because they have nothing preventing them.
But not the other way around, which is a problem that good mechanics can somewhat mitigate.
Yes they can be modeled at the table but /what if/ there were some sort of special rules for certain player classes that somehow changed how that model is enacted.
The class would not excel at fighting, not have special exploration abilities, not cast spells at not have a connection with god(s).
What would make that class special is something in the social realm like fame. An example player class would be 'prince'. The prince class can command underlings from their his realm and would never be killed by intelligent monsters because of the potential ransom.
Or maybe I'm the setting their is age old accord among the races to never harm the special diplomats so the diplomat class can remain pacifists. I've sort of lost the will to finish this post so I'll just leave it at that. P.s. i don't think this would be a fun class to play really but i do think it answers the original question of what the game design space would be for a hypothetical 5th
The idea of the rogue archetype covering skills in general makes more sense if you consider a broader scope than whether people are useful in an adventuring party. A lot of NPCs would fall under that umbrella, basically anyone with a craft or trade - stonemasons, tailors, blacksmiths, cooks, even farmers. Having said that, there are four archetypes:
>fighter - anyone focused on combat
>caster - includes wizards and clerics, which are just variations on the same core theme
>skilled - rogues, crafters, tradesmen
>social - bards, politicians, spies, merchants, lawyers
Lots of things are just specialisms within those, or hybrids of one sort or another.
This is honestly a better division for D&D classes than I've seen from most people in this thread. It's rarely given equal weight, but the idea of combat challenges, social challenges, and environmental challenges (which includes things like traps or locked doors) is a pretty clean way to divide the mechanical portions of a fantasy adventure.
And past those three, spellcasting is something that can contribute to a variety of categories in a supernatural way, balanced out in theory by being a more limited resource.
>balanced out in theory by being a more limited resource
Also by the limits of specialisation. The Swiss-army availability of a spell for every situation is perhaps too broad in typical D&D magic, casters should be forced to make choices about specialisation as they level up, having to choose between improving their destructive, illusion, or healing spells, for example, in the same way that a combat class would need to decide whether to put XP into swords, longbows, or unarmed combat.
You need to find a major mechanic or hole that isn't answered by one of those four or a subset of them. Hell nearly all of the non-big four D&D classes can be turned into subclasses.
moron, most aren't saying axe cleric, they're saying that Cleric and Wizard are both a branch of the Magic-User class in the trinity of Warrior, Magic-User and Rogue.
It doesnt really make any sense to always put the Cleric under magic-user. In other kinds of settings, the healer might heal by other means, like medicine or potions, etc. The point is that healing is actually distinct from the role that the wizard usually plays
For one, the OP's own picture shows a distinct "Priest" class-category as recognized fact of the game's design so it is in fact a suggestion of REMOVAL.
For another, the Magic-User never had the Cleric's healing magic, because the Cleric was the very first class added beyond the original rulebook.
They've always been separate spaces. Just because they share the mechanic called "spells" does not mean you HAVE TO crowbar them into a homogenous mass.
If your party niche comes after choosing a class, then there's no point in having classes, because the SOLE PURPOSE of a class system is locking in party niches.
You're *still* not getting it. Read the thread, or stop posting. This is sad, dude.
What the frick is the actual gameplay ROLE overlapped between the Wizard and Cleric that makes it ESSENTIAL for the two to be melted together into absolute unification of all spellcasting no matter how different the applications and thus purpose within the party?
"a cleric is just a wizard by another name"
"Divine/Arcane might as well be the same thing"
"Warrior+Wizard, you don't need anything else"
"even splitting make and preist into separate categories ... is kind of a stretch"
How are these not a call for the Cleric to not exist? Am I incorrect in noting the Cleric was introduced in Original D&D, with its spells NEVER being added to the Magic User clearly indicating that magic was not meant to be that unified by the very earliest design?
I don't think you can be
as
exists. Same for
because
exists. The remaining arguments seem to be "Cleric is bad because splitting spells bad" or "Cleric is bad because mixing mechanics is bad". Is my interpretation that the counter-argument is essentially that classes MUST be mechanical monopolies incorrect?
Which post was your counter-argument that I "didn't get"? Where is the reason that there MUST be a singular monopolistic Magic-User class or that this level of distinction MUST NOT have "hybrid" concepts? Am I wrong to say that the point of classes is task-resolution niches within a party, and if so how?
You're still somehow thinking that someone, somewhere in the thread said that clerics are bad, or that clerics need to be gotten rid of. No one said that. Seriously dude. Just stop. You are getting heated over an ontological discussion that is happening past you. The conversation going on in your head isnt the one happening out here, in the thread.
>You're still somehow thinking that someone, somewhere in the thread said that clerics are bad, or that clerics need to be gotten rid of.
Really?
>"a cleric is just a wizard by another name"
>"Divine/Arcane might as well be the same thing"
>"Warrior+Wizard, you don't need anything else"
>"even splitting make and preist into separate categories ... is kind of a stretch"
>A cleric is just a gay wizard
>Clerics are just wizards with a different spell list
>Yes, there are only 2 classes - fighter and mage
>Making a distinction between magic systems ... is pretty dumb
>2 classes, fighter and mage, is all that is needed
>*removes priest* ahh perfection
>Similarly, a priest is just ... the fact that mages are locked off from healing magic
>By that logic, a cleric is just a wizard by another name too
>(Wizards and Clerics) are the same archetype
>Cleric is a self buffing warrior aka fighter mage
>Do you not not recognize the fundamental similarity between vancian casters and cancian casters
>The trinity is Fighter, Mage, Thief
>(to "Clerics aren't that bad) What's their niche that isn't just a reflavored repackaging of what other classes already do?
>Priest shouldn't exists, magic is just magic
>Unless they actually function differently ... the two different magic people are the same fricking thing
>if they are both Vancian casters with fire and forget spells .... they are the same class
ALL of that was posted in this thread. My initial post here,
was complaining of a pile of posts that were in fact calling for Cleric to be removed, subsumed into Wizard, to create a completely homogenized Magic User just to have a homogenous magic class.
NTA, but I'm going to point you back to my post that you didn't ever reply to
Which is mostly to reiterate that you seem to have forgotten what the thread is about.
OP started with the premise of "the big four" while suggesting that every class outside of "the big four" is just a hybrid or alternate version.
Plenty of the statements you've quoted are disagreeing with OP, pointing to the fact that Cleric could easily be considered a hybrid of Fighter/Wizard or an alternate version of the Wizard.
This isn't saying Cleric is bad or should be removed any more than they're saying that Paladin or Bard is bad and should be removed. Merely that Cleric isn't some sort of essential fundamental constant through which all forms of game design are derived.
And it certainly isn't saying that it's essential to meld Cleric with Wizard, at least not any more than you could chalk up to opinion or personal preference.
>"Priests shouldn't exist," and, "*removes priest* ahh perfection," doesn't mean people think priests shouldn't exist or should be removed because the people you're arguing with are definitely speaking with the thread topic in mind and not just spewing their shit on Ganker.
Yeah, that's why I said "plenty of the statements" not "all of the statements"
And yes, some of those statements might think otherwise. Or like you said, they could be spewing random bullshit unrelated to the topic. Or maybe they're just trolling.
What would be autistic would be continuing to try and argue with people who clearly aren't even here because you're simply that upset some random person saying
>A cleric is just a gay wizard
The "Holy Trinity" of MMOs
Isn't the same thing as the big four. And WoW features cloth-wearing Clerics that use ranged attacks rather than heavily armored melee priests.
Thank you for perfectly demonstrating how Cleric isn't a fundamental constant.
>The "Holy Trinity" of MMOs
>Isn't the same thing as the big four.
...It's the EXACT equivalent in a different genre that is incredibly bluntly a descendent of TTRPGs at large, with the enormous bulk of them being very inarguable D&D descendants by just following the franchises back.
Sure, Final Fantasy has become a thing independent of Dungeons and Dragons, but that doesn't change the fact the original had prepared spellcasting and a party-role class system just like D&D before it fleshed itself out.
>And WoW features cloth-wearing Clerics that use ranged attacks rather than heavily armored melee priests.
Meanwhile, it took to Mists of Pandaria to get a healer that was not EXPLICITLY religious use of magic. Your statement was "derived", my counter-argument was that it is in fact "derived" because that's just "has a clear causal connection", not "exact carry-over".
That the Priest drops the serious armor does not negate the fact they're a bluntly-labeled church, continuing the separation of Divine and Arcane magic with the former monopolizing healing. It took 18 years to have a debatable divergence from the Cleric's alignment of theme-magic-role very much sufficient to call a derivative.
Bit of an addition, the Warcraft RPG a sizable chunk of the WoW lore originated in was a d20 game, and the Paladins were extremely explicitly Divine magic added on to exceptional warriors.
There is A LOT of surprisingly blunt D&Disms in Warcraft to this day. It's become its own "flavor" of Western fantasy, but has not wandered nearly so far from D&D as Final Fantasy did.
>Merely that Cleric isn't some sort of essential fundamental constant through which all forms of game design are derived.
The "Holy Trinity" of MMOs breaks down to "Fighter 1, Fighter 2/Wizard, and Cleric", healing magic is almost completely inescapably tied to religious themes, and the Cleric was the very first class to be ADDED to D&D after it was made.
Clerics very much are something nearly every RPG with healing as something to specialize in have derived from, because they were the original specialize-in-healing option.
And insisting that the Cleric be recongized as a true hybrid rather than its own thing is unavoidably a demand that all spellcasting be inseparable from a monolithic "Magic User", a mentality that has lead to campaign issues in LITERALLY every edition of D&D.
>hurr durr if i just respond to every post with "you're not getting it" then i win the argument
dude just stop
Inventory class: Alchemist, Smith, Banker
NPC class: Leader, Beastmaster, Summoner
There you go. That's how you add another pillar while staying within the confines of the rules of DnD. You find another mechanic to reduce to its barest fundamentals and go from there. The only other option would be feats or statuses.
Well there is the Money Guy, I don't remember seeing it that much in fantasy games but in anything modern you soon get either social or technical guy who runs on buying shit.
That should be relegated to NPCs.
>Fighter
>Cleric
>Rogue
>Wizard
>Snowflake
fighter and rogue are the only classes that actually matter
Summoner class. Artificier could also be represented under it