Magic as a D&D Edition Setting

[RadiantPhoenix]

Base Class	White	Blue	Black	Red	Green
Berserker	Zealot	-	-	BattleRager	Savage
Cleric	Healer	-	Cultist	-	Supplicant
Druid	-	-	Blight Druid	Feral Animist	Treespeaker
Knight	Paladin	-	Death Knight	Blood Knight	-
Monk	Devout	Ascetic	-	-	Dervish
Rogue	-	Spy	Cutthroat	Arsonist	-
Shaman	-	Brine Shaman	-	Battle Shaman	Omen Reader
Wizard	Mystic	Sorceror	Necromancer	-	-

Revised:

Base Class	White	Blue	Black	Red	Green
Berserker	-	-	-	Berserker	Savage
Cleric	Sanctifier	-	Cultist	-	-
Druid	-	-	-	-	Druid
Knight	Paladin	Mist Knight	Death Knight	Blood Knight	-
Monk	Philosopher	-	-	-	Ascetic
Rogue	-	Spy	Assassin	Vandal	-
Shaman	-	-	-	Elemental Shaman	Life Shaman
Wizard	Auramancer	Neuromancer & Chronomancer	Necromancer	-	-

Note that blue has two kinds of wizards, to give it the same number of subclasses as the other colors.

Reasons:

• White Berserkers don't happen. (well, there's one, but that one could pretty much have been mono-red)
• Green Clerics that aren't relics of days before people thought about creature types are really rare
• Druids are basically mono-green. They show up very rarely in other colors, but you'd frankly get more support for Artificers and stuff
• Blue Knights/Soldiers are a thing
• Blue Monks are not a thing
• Blue Shamans are not a thing, because Shamans are basically, "Wizards for red and green"

Other things:

• Warriors are getting grouped with Berserkers
• Soldiers and Knights are being grouped
• "Healer" just does not cut the mustard when it comes to white Clerics. "Sanctifier" does a much better job.
• Given that there's only one Druid, we'll just call it "Druid"
• Changed Monk names to better fit my impression of what Monks do in the two colors
• Changed Rogue types to be somewhat broader ("sneaks and..." "... learns" "... kills" "... destroys"
• Changed Shaman names to something clearer (EDIT: to clarify, the green Shaman is pretty much about animal life. Plant life is more of a Druid thing)
• Changed the blue and white Wizard names to follow a clear theme, and added a second type of blue wizard

Just looking at Cleric as the base class we have the following multiclass options represented:
Cleric Shaman
Cleric Soldier
Cleric Archer
Cleric Monk
Cleric Mercenary
Cleric Druid
Cleric Knight
Cleric Wizard
I think telling a player they can't be a Knight and also a Cleric is going to fly in the face of their expectations.

Dude, most of those are only clerics because before sixth edition nobody was paying attention to creature types

Exceptions:

• Shieldmage Elder is a legit double-class creature
• Mercenary, like Rebel, is a faction modifier that goes after your class
• I don't think Archer should be a class in a tabletop game. Actually, it probably shouldn't have been a type in Magic either

[zugschef]

and if a player wants to play a black druid he can go fuck himself?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Is there a reason to use color-based names for classes rather than just the official Magic classes? I mean, there are Acolytes, Devoted, Prophets, Initiates, Champions, Priests, Redeemers, Soulgazers, etc, but they are all explicitly White Clerics.

When a character picks up new manas type and becomes a Mystic/Necromancer, and then a Mystic/Necromancer/Sorcerer, it looks like they are gaining two whole new classes, but they are actually just a White/Black/Blue Wizard, with the same core of colorless Wizard abilities.

---

and if a player wants to play a black druid he can go fuck himself?

I think it makes sense to start out with a limited selection of available class/color combinations, based on frequency and iconicity, to reduce the initial work load. The tradeoff is between having lots of classes with only a few iconic colors to start with (but having to write all of the universal powers for each of those classes) and starting with only a few classes and being able to write up powers for most or all colors.

[RadiantPhoenix]

and if a player wants to play a black druid he can go fuck himself?

If a player wants to play a black druid, he or she can either work with Mister Cavern to make such a class, or wait until we get to the Planar Chaos splatbooks or something.

[zugschef]

and if a player wants to play a black druid he can go fuck himself?

If a player wants to play a black druid, he or she can either work with Mister Cavern to make such a class, or wait until we get to the Planar Chaos splatbooks or something.

ok, so your not ruling it out by default. understood.

as for green berserkers... aren't these mostly shapeshifters and thus druids (i know that this card is 12 years old, that's why i'm asking)?

btw: i've found this homebrew attempt for a mtg ttrpg.

[Red_Rob]

You have like two examples that were printed at-all recently, and all the fucking rest were printed ages ago and got retconned into having two class names when they were re-released for Online purposes.

Still, the fact is that magic currently has a lot of cards with multiple classes, however they came about. I'm just saying that is an argument in favour of some kind of multiclassing in an RPG based on the franchise.

And the existence of some multiclasses in Magic card terms suggests more that those types are blurred definitionally in some way than actually that they are separate things that were combined.

Like the Druid and Knight, right? They're practically the same concept!

Dude, most of those are only clerics because before sixth edition nobody was paying attention to creature types

Okay, how about these more recent examples of multiclassed creatures:
Rogue Shaman
Soldier Wizard
Samurai Shaman
Druid Wizard
Rogue Warrior
Multiclassed creatures exist in Magic. So do Black Druids and Blue Assassins. Sure, they aren't common, and I'd want to make damn sure that playing a mono-red Berserker or mono-green Druid was a valid life choice in the RPG, but at this point there is plenty of evidence that multi-classed characters exist in Magic.

[Username17]

I'm not sure how you'd balance the other multicolored classes, but there are probably a lot of options.

There sure are.

For starters, there's the Knight Base Class mechanic we were talking about earlier: where the player has a certain amount of mana to spend on their action each turn and leftover mana can power one or more of their auras. A character who multiclassed into Paladin (White Knight) and Dragoon (Red Knight) would have a pile of specifically Red and White mana to play with each turn. So they could spend all their White mana on a Blaze of Glory and have their Red mana invested in their Firebreathing aura. Or they could spend their Red mana on a Shattering Blow and have their leftover White mana power their Circle of Protection aura. They gain access to a longer list of selectable abilities, but they are more restricted in what they can activate. The Paladin/Dragoon could not default to a basic strike to turtle by pumping all of their mana into their Circle of Protection - because a portion of their mana is Red and can't be used for that.

Then we got the the Shaman base class mechanic we were talking about earlier: where the character can "save up" a certain number of mana each turn in order to use larger powers on later turns. This in turn leads to a mechanic in which our Burning Tree Shaman has the option to save up Red Mana one turn in order to cast her bigger Red spells next turn, or to save up Green Mana to cast her bigger Green spells next turn. Again, she gets a larger list, at the cost of more restricted play. In this case, she has to commit to a course of action an entire turn in advance by choosing what mana to channel.

But for the characters who don't do round by round mana accounting, there are still options. The simplest system is to simply give players "mana limits" for buying their abilities. Our prospective Black/Blue Rogue is then able to qualify for abilities off the Rogue list that they can get with UB. So they can get Black Rogue abilities that require 1B, or Blue Rogue abilities that require 1U, but not Rogue abilities that require BB or UU. So the character picks up an extra list to choose off of only by shortening the list he already had.

And I think the thing where you actually shuffle a deck of mana and rider effects for the Cleric has obvious implications for going for the multi-colored options.

That's four systems that each present clear advantages and disadvantages to going for a multicolored option, and do so in a way that palpably feels different while still arising organically from the system. I'm not actually sure if you would want a fifth base class, but there are numerous options for what it could be and how it could work.

-Username17

[sabs]

In this system, when you spend Mana. Is the mana tapped, and comes back next round? OR does the land card get put back into the land deck?

If it's the later, than multi color is self-limiting. You can only draw so many cards a turn, and your pool of available increases only if you don't spend them. So having 3 colors in your land deck means that while you'll probably be able to activate any number of color less, or 1B, 1X powers, and you'll have the ability to activate BW powers. You will have a much harder time activating BB, or BBB powers.

I guess actually you could have multiple mechanics depending on classes.

A wizard, for example, could draw 1 land card a turn, but never discard them, and just tap them.
A Rogue could draw 3 cards, but discard any used land.
A Knight, could draw 5 or 6 cards, but discard all land at the beginning of his turn. (ie when his turn starts, discard all, draw new cards, spend, hold for counter-actions)

[zugschef]

But for the characters who don't do round by round mana accounting, there are still options. The simplest system is to simply give players "mana limits" for buying their abilities. Our prospective Black/Blue Rogue is then able to qualify for abilities off the Rogue list that they can get with UB. So they can get Black Rogue abilities that require 1B, or Blue Rogue abilities that require 1U, but not Rogue abilities that require BB or UU. So the character picks up an extra list to choose off of only by shortening the list he already had.

but wouldn't that be true for all classes? or would you just not have abilities which cost RR or WW, only 1R or 1W, for dragoons and paladins, respectively, because that would prevent a paladin/dragoon with one R and W mana each from using it?

[Whatever]

Knight abilities scale with mana invested, but might not do anything just for having them. So Firebreathing is "for every R you spend this round, gain bonus damage" and Wards are "for every W you spend this round, gain bonus defense" or however that's going to actually work.

So if their mana pool is RRWW, they're stuck splitting half and half (or allocating some to colorless abilities), whereas a White Knight can spend all WWWW on one ability.

If you're just buying permanent abilities (at character creation and level up, or whenever), then your abilities have the actual 1B or UU type costs, but give ongoing effects.

[zugschef]

Knight abilities scale with mana invested, but might not do anything just for having them. So Firebreathing is "for every R you spend this round, gain bonus damage" and Wards are "for every W you spend this round, gain bonus defense" or however that's going to actually work.

So if their mana pool is RRWW, they're stuck splitting half and half (or allocating some to colorless abilities), whereas a White Knight can spend all WWWW on one ability.

If you're just buying permanent abilities (at character creation and level up, or whenever), then your abilities have the actual 1B or UU type costs, but give ongoing effects.

ah thanks. i was kinda confused. nevermind.

[Prak]

Secondly, I disagree that Planeswalker overrides other class features. If anything it turbo-charges them. Garruk was a Druid and Elspeth was a Knight and that tells you more about their abilities than that they are a Planeswalker. If we include Planeswalker as the (or even just a) high level option, it is pretty clear it builds on your existing abilities rather than replacing them outright.

At this point, I'm now wondering what a Knight Planeswalker even does. Is Elspeth able to summon creatures and cast spells? Or does (s)he just wander around slaying giant monsters?

Talking of Planeswalker apotheosis, I found an interesting comment on this MTG wiki that originally you could become a Planeswalker by "incredible amounts of mana being hoarded" before this was retconned away. It strikes me that makes for a far more reasonable transition of low level > high level > Planeswalker than saying every PC has to have the Planeswalker spark and yet somehow you always end up travelling together, WHAT A COINCIDENCE!

You mean like how a bunch of luminaries coincidentally hang out together in After Sundown?

[Whatever]

It used to be that only players were Planeswalkers. Any story-characters that were planeswalkers (like Urza and Yawgmoth) did not get their own cards.

But then they had a whole shift/ret-con with the Time Spiral block and introduced planeswalker cards. Which can be attacked by creatures, and cast spells of their own.

Here's a few Elspeths:

2008:

2010:

[RadiantPhoenix]

as for green berserkers... aren't these mostly shapeshifters and thus druids (i know that this card is 12 years old, that's why i'm asking)?

Actually, I'm lumping Berserker and Warrior together. (EDIT: Also, a beasty shapeshifter-mage in Magic would probably be a Shaman, not a Druid)

Okay, how about these more recent examples of multiclassed creatures:
Rogue Shaman
Soldier Wizard
Samurai Shaman
Druid Wizard
Rogue Warrior
Multiclassed creatures exist in Magic. So do Black Druids and Blue Assassins. Sure, they aren't common, and I'd want to make damn sure that playing a mono-red Berserker or mono-green Druid was a valid life choice in the RPG, but at this point there is plenty of evidence that multi-classed characters exist in Magic.

#1, #3, and #4 are legit.

#2 is a Bird Soldier because it predates class-race and the anthropomorphic Birds were Bird Soldiers then.

#5 is actually two people.

At this point, I'm now wondering what a Knight Planeswalker even does. Is Elspeth able to summon creatures and cast spells? Or does (s)he just wander around slaying giant monsters?

The former.

[Prak]

So basically being a planeswalker just automagically makes you a caster. That's odd, but not necessarily a bad thing.

It did occur to me what the difference between Summon Monster 1-9 and a planeswalker summoning a creature "Card" is, though. In the CCG, there are no durations on anything. There are permanents, which in the RPG would have duration "Permanent" or possibly "Permanent until discharged" in some cases, and there are instants/sorceries, which would have duration "instanteous," with the real difference between them being casting time.

So a planeswalker summons a creature, and that creature sticks around until it's killed, it doesn't disappear just because it's been around too long (unless it's a creature with fading).

[Username17]

Actually, I'm lumping Berserker and Warrior together.

I have no idea why you'd do that.

To begin with, you crack open the book and have four or five "base classes" that each have five classes in them. That's twenty or twenty five classes in the basic book. Thereafter, you can put out another 15+ character classes in each supplement attached to shiny new "bases classes". This is like three times what 4e was offering, so it isn't content light.

And yes, there are some base classes (like Ninja) that only show up in two colors, and that's actually fine for an expansion class. You could seriously write up a base class that only had Black and Blue classes written up for it.

And yes, there are some base classes (like Advisor) that show up in every color, but still probably aren't worth actually writing up. You can put those off indefinitely.

But there's plenty of content to write, and there is absolutely no reason to take any of the offered base classes and combine them. Sure, Archers could be the same as Scouts, but there's no reason to do that. You can jolly well make five classes in the Scout base for one book and then make five classes in the Archer base in another.

-Username17

[Red_Rob]

Then we got the the Shaman base class mechanic we were talking about earlier: where the character can "save up" a certain number of mana each turn in order to use larger powers on later turns. This in turn leads to a mechanic in which our Burning Tree Shaman has the option to save up Red Mana one turn in order to cast her bigger Red spells next turn, or to save up Green Mana to cast her bigger Green spells next turn. Again, she gets a larger list, at the cost of more restricted play. In this case, she has to commit to a course of action an entire turn in advance by choosing what mana to channel.

But for the characters who don't do round by round mana accounting, there are still options. The simplest system is to simply give players "mana limits" for buying their abilities. Our prospective Black/Blue Rogue is then able to qualify for abilities off the Rogue list that they can get with UB. So they can get Black Rogue abilities that require 1B, or Blue Rogue abilities that require 1U, but not Rogue abilities that require BB or UU. So the character picks up an extra list to choose off of only by shortening the list he already had.

Don't both of those systems break down once you get past 3 or so mana?
Having BB1 abilities and B2 abilities is fine, but at the point you have to make BBBBBB, BBBBB1 and BBBB2 abilities to account for different mana setups things have gone to crazytown.

Knight abilities scale with mana invested, but might not do anything just for having them. So Firebreathing is "for every R you spend this round, gain bonus damage" and Wards are "for every W you spend this round, gain bonus defense" or however that's going to actually work.

So if their mana pool is RRWW, they're stuck splitting half and half (or allocating some to colorless abilities), whereas a White Knight can spend all WWWW on one ability.

It seems like that would lead to either the Red Knight getting a level appropriate Firebreath and the White Knight getting a level appropriate Ward, whilst the Red/White Knight did everything badly and failed at life, or the Red/White Knight gets basically two schticks and laughs at the losers. It would take very careful balancing to ensure the tradeoff is at the right level, and I'm not sure you can easily do it when you are talking about having 2 or 3 points of mana to throw around.

Actually, I'm lumping Berserker and Warrior together.

I have no idea why you'd do that.

Because "Warrior" doesn't really have any flavour you can hang mechanics off? I mean, we just had a 17 page "We hate Fighters!" thread about how Fighter doesn't imply anything useful about your character, Warrior seems to have pretty much the same issues.

The only good thing I can think about having a bland class in the game is it allows people to impart their own flavour, which means it can stand in for any crazy character concept. But even then I'm not sure that is worth the grief that comes with having such a limited character concept in the game.

[Red_Rob]

To begin with, you crack open the book and have four or five "base classes" that each have five classes in them.

I think people are going to see through that pretty quickly. I mean, how different can five Knight classes really be when they are sharing a base mechanic and can easily multiclass between each other? AD&D "base classes" were bland things like "Warrior" which covered Fighters, Paladins and Rangers. Having your base class be "Knight" or "Berserker" is much more restrictive.

I mean, which 5 base classes would you choose to give players enough options to pick a reasonable variety of characters? In my 8 class / 3 colour spread above there were still only Monk, Knight and Berserker base classes as melee options. There are plenty of character archetypes that aren't covered even with three bases, I hardly think 5 variations of Berserker is going to cover every melee character option your playerbase will want.

[sabs]

A Black berserker is going to look really different from a Blue one, or a Green one.

Just by the nature of being black or blue, they are going to have really different powers and abilities. Maybe the Black berserker stays "berserk" by draining the life out of his enemies as he kills them. And the Blue Berserker gets enthused with the power of Lighting .. and has all these electrical carry attacks. A lot of D&D classes ended up being flavor tweaks with a couple of interesting techniques.

There is completely room in the game for
Rogue, Scout, Detective.. even if they all use very similar mechanics.

[Prak]

Out of 380 warriors, more than half cost less than 4 mana. Most of those with CMC 4 or more seem to either be powerful creatures themselves, or are associated with them, such as giants, treefolk and allosaurus riding elves. Others are merely strong (Arctic Nishoba, a 6/6 Cat Warrior).

Generally, I would say that Warrior represents professional, formally but no more than moderately trained soldiers. The most powerful warriors you'll find either have powerful mounts, or started ahead of the curve by being big or vampires, or something. The highest cost warrior is actually a moderately powerful giant who brings two less powerful elemental warriors with him, which he can basically kill to turn them into one-turn fiery brass knuckles.
After that are

• the aforementioned elite dinosaur riding elves, who are honestly probably doing very little other than guiding the allosaurus
• a human who would probably rank as a general and is honestly over costed (a Legendary 6/5 for 7)
• another giant who basically throws around creature types to make his side unblockable
• a giant who gets stronger if he has his giant buddies around him
• a vampire who makes all your creatures into enemy seeking death bombs while he's around
• another legendary human--except this one is fast and counters everyone's ability to sneak through islands
• a giant so big his allies live on his back and he gets a power up from new creatures showing up to the fight
• another legendary human--but this one is low powered but pulls sand warriors up out of your lands which collapse when he leaves
• an overcosted vanilla legendary cat (in the early days, catfolk were kind of beefy)
• a legendary vampire who can snipe creatures then create vampires from their corpses which do not have their original powers, but do have their strength and defense
• A Vanilla Giant that's big enough to have earth and grass growing on it's back
• A vigilant, trampling Treefolk
• A wood elemental that is basically weak, but gets more powerful depending on how much damage was dished out to enemies when it showed up and can't be affected by Immediate-action spells
• A really weak (2/2) elf who shows up and passes out wurm-skin armour
  Then you have
• More giants, one which can't be enchanted, another which can strike the ground to damage everyone not in the air
• More cats, one which creates forest-skulking cat warrior mooks just by being in combat
• More big elementals
• More human generals who do big things (destroy creatures by showing up, become more powerful based on the amount of lands or lands/creatures/artifacts you have, become more powerful depending on how many creatures are on top of him,
• An ogre which explodes in negative energy when he dies
• A couple goblins, one which is strong but vulnerable and has a chance of showing up more powerful (dependent on the result of players doing a quick game of War), one which brings a couple goblins and splits into two more when he dies,
• etc.

Basically the warrior shtick is esoteric martial arts based more on being In the Army than focusing ki.

[Prak]

And the Blue Berserker gets enthused with the power of Lighting .. and has all these electrical carry attacks.

(below spoilered for size)

[Whatever]

Don't both of those systems break down once you get past 3 or so mana?
Having BB1 abilities and B2 abilities is fine, but at the point you have to make BBBBBB, BBBBB1 and BBBB2 abilities to account for different mana setups things have gone to crazytown.

The easy answer is to not let players do weird mana splits. I know there are crazy Legends from Legends that were printed in 1994 with costs like 1WUUB, but forget that. If you are Black/Blue, here are your casting costs:
-
UB
1UB
2UB
1UUBB
2UUBB
etc

If you are White/Black/Blue, here are your costs:
-
-
WUB
1WUB
2WUB
3WUB
1WWUUBB
etc.

That means you don't need powers that cost BBBB, since 1BBB is effectively mono-black only. And we certainly don't need anything that costs BBBBBB, or even 2BBBB.

[zugschef]

If you are White/Black/Blue, here are your costs:
-
-
WUB
1WUB
2WUB
3WUB
1WWUUBB
etc.

That means you don't need powers that cost BBBB, since 1BBB is effectively mono-black only. And we certainly don't need anything that costs BBBBBB, or even 2BBBB.

if you only have 10 levels, then yes.

[Whatever]

There's only a couple dozen creatures in all of magic that cost 10+ mana. I'm not sure how or why you'd take the game past that point.

[Prak]

I'm still not sure that level should directly correlate to CMC. I honestly think that CMC 1=Level 1, maybe a weak 2; CMC 2=Level 2-3, CMC 3=4-6, CMC 4=7-10, etc. Or something like that.