If you were designing 5E...

[Josh_Kablack]

The idea would be to have "classes" ,.... where they determine what hat you are wearing.

And 5e totally needs to sell those hats at cons.

[Winnah]

The idea reminds me a little of Exalted, though to use a simple analogy, your caste would be determined by your abilities, rather than the other way around.

[Dominicius]

If I was designing 5E... I'd probably outsource it to somebody else.

I really have no interest in designing D&D as I doubt that I will be able to provide the amount of complexity people want a D&D game to have.

[NineInchNall]

Well, if you're really taking the opposite direction of "classes determine what your ability set is", you could seriously go with "your ability set determines what your class is", the way that a bunch of pc games do it. (EYE: Divine Cybermancy, for instance.)

Of course, it accomplishes the same goal in the end, which makes me go, "Meh, why bother changing it?"

[Psychic Robot]

5e should go back to wizard, cleric, thief, fighter to start. start from the basics and then worry about building the rest on top of them later

[Chamomile]

In that case, classes are just a title, really. Which can be fun in a computer game, because the computer calculates it for you, but seems like a waste of developer and player effort for tabletop.

Unless you unlock class abilities by having the right class, as determined by your base stats? That might work, but I'd favor a point-buy system where certain abilities just have attribute requirements.

[Username17]

Well, if you're really taking the opposite direction of "classes determine what your ability set is", you could seriously go with "your ability set determines what your class is", the way that a bunch of pc games do it. (EYE: Divine Cybermancy, for instance.)

Of course, it accomplishes the same goal in the end, which makes me go, "Meh, why bother changing it?"

Because players get what hey want:

• The ability to play a knight with a little bit of fire magic without falling behind.
• The ability to tell other players something meaningful about what they can do and what they bring to the table by telling them what class they are.
• The ability to define themselves by a prestige class.
• The ability to change what class a character is without having to undo large amounts of the character.

When you change from being an assassin to being an illusionist, you keep your sneak attack maneuver, you just trade in your fixed Assassin abilities for a fized set of Illusion abilities. And when you get to high level you can unlock Prestige or Epic classes like Mage King and Fire Lord that you can swap in.

-Username17

[MGuy]

*Fullmetal Alchemist/Avatar power level

*All beings are "supernatural". How much power you have depends entirely on how bad ass you are. This is idea will be used as an explanation for many oddities or inconsistencies in the game world some people might find harder to swallow.

*Everyone has their place. There'd be different tiers of people from your commoner tier to your Hero tier. PCs would start in the hero tier while NPCs would range anywhere from commoner to "boss" (ala 4e)

*Rituals yes

*No item dependence. Magical item acquiring would happen rarely and going christmas tree would require the sacrifice of other abilities. Magic items would not in anyway make a person "better" than a person who decided to go without. Characters should be based on personal power not getting personal power from some random item someone left behind. This should also destroy the need for wealth by level.

*Class provides flavor and effects fighting style but do not necessarily determine what you do. Class would provide flavor as well as potency but would not be the end all decision made with a character. Classes don't have a set progression (as D20 Modern and Star Wars Saga ed) players can choose what class abilities they get as they progress.

*Completely revamp skills. Skills = superpowers (This is going to be unpopular but I'm going with it). Spells will not replace skills they will either supplement them or require actually having the skill to be of any use. Everyone gets the same number of skills. BAB, defenses, HP, and martial and spell casting proficiency are now in the same pool as skills.

*Everyone can access spells. Spells do nothing permanent (that's where rituals come into play) and are all always temporary lasting only a round or as long as the character spends Mana on them.

*Mana point system. Mana points will be used for most of the abilities (be they skills, feats, class, natural, or spell abilities)

*Skills scale with level at varying rates depending on mastery level.

*Bonuses are controlled. You can only benefit from 3 bonuses at a time (attribute included). All penalties stack.

*Keeping the 6 attributes.

*No Fucking Prestige Classes! Anything that would be in a prestige class is a class ability.

*Very few prereqs. Most abilities don't have prereqs. Skill abilities are unlocked via rank which is tied to level(so no amount of number fiddling will make a character get a skill superpower any earlier than what I set) and higher level spells (which require combinations of lower level spells to cast)

*Rituals... Yes

*Same level of complexity as 3e. I want to scale back complexity in some areas while making others a bit more complex.

*No empty levels. Every level provides some amount of customizing opportunities.

*No alignment. Would go with something similar to White Wolf's Vices/Virtues.

*hard limit on summoning/cohorts. Make summons permanent (semi-permanent) and attach a strict limit to how many sidekicks can tag along (1 for most people unless their character is focused on having minions in which case have a few more) These cohorts will all be on a tier below the PCs (and thus not nearly as powerful)

*No save or dies. Going with something similar to CAN. You can one shot small fry but anything on or above your level will have things take longer.

*Double digit hit points. Not planning on things going too far above 50 or so and that's for creatures with a shit tonne of HP.

*Armor is DR. DR is split into PDR and MDR (physical and metaphysical damage resistance)

*Taking 4e's defense set up, 4e's rituals (improving on this), 4e's weapon qualities (expanding on this heavily), 4e's interrupts (basing them all on Opportunity Attacks)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. These are all the ideas I'e been using in my personal project.

[OgreBattle]

4e Clarity
3e Customization
2e/AD&D Flavor
is my mantra. I think those are the best, most memorable components of each edition. This is how I would go about doing 5e:


Keep the class based system, it is Iconic to the D&D identity and the expectations a person has of what his character can do.
But there are now only a set number of classes, based around their 'power source'.

Fighting Man (The Fighty half of Martial)
Rogue (the Sneaky half of Martial)
Magic User (Arcane)
Priest (divine)
Savage (primal)

Every subset of those classes is now built by Feats (but will call it something else so people still write "Ranger" on their character sheet), such as a weapon mastery line for Fighter/Kensai types, a raging line to create the Barbarian, animal companion path for Ranger/Druid/Paladin's four legged friends.
Each school of magic will be its own Feat.

So it would be something like:

Fighting Man- Weapon Mastery, Combat Styles, War Leader
Rogue- Tool Use, Sneaking, Mobility, skill tricks
Priest- various domains
Magic User- various schools
Savage- spirit possession/Supernatural Berserking, druidism

Instead of releasing new classes, you release new Feats.
Some iconic D&D classes will now be Feats requiring multiclassing
-Smiting like a Paladin would require Fighting Man/Priest.
-Armored casters with magic blasting through their blades would be Fighting Man/Magic User
-Beguiler would be Rogue/Magic User (with illusion school)
-Swashbuckler= Fighting Man/Rogue
etc.

The question now though is how to go about giving LEVEL appropriate abilities between multiclassed characters, branching feat characters, and mono focused characters.

I am a fan of Fighting games and I use that as my guidance for balance as they have many different flavors of characters with various blends all balanced to battle against one another.
Say with Street Fighter, you have versatile fighters like Ryu who can do about everything, grappling specialists such as Zangief, and even strange powers of teleportation with Dhalsim. It all works out to some level of balance.
Games like Blaz Blue go even further with every character using their own unique special ability, sometimes even subsystems.
... the flaw in this though is these Fighting games aren't "build your own character", while D&D is about picking everything of your own choice. Guile doesn't have Ryu fireballs works because the choice isn't there. Hmm

How to actually implement this though, I'm still unsure. Even those Fighting Games still have balance issues at high level play. It's something fun to ponder though and I've been working on the skeleton of the system, I update my Tumblr whenever progress is made.

[Username17]

Keep the class based system, it is Iconic to the D&D identity and the expectations a person has of what his character can do.
But there are now only a set number of classes, based around their 'power source'.

Fighting Man (The Fighty half of Martial)
Rogue (the Sneaky half of Martial)
Magic User (Arcane)
Priest (divine)
Savage (primal)

Every subset of those classes is now built by Feats, such as a weapon mastery line for Fighter/Kensai types, a raging line to create the Barbarian, animal companion path for Ranger/Druid/Paladin's four legged friends.

Wow. So your response to the fact that people were viscerally offended by 4e dropping the base classes down to 8 to the point where they refused to even try the game until the PHB 2 had come out and doubled the number of classes... is to drop the number down to 5? Because obviously people got angry at the reduced class number, so the only thing that will placate them is an even more reduced class number.

Note: they totally tried that with Essentials: dropping the class number down again for an initial release, and people avoided it like it was dick cancer.

There are a certain number of people who claim to love generic classes from UA or True 20 or some shit, but no one plays those variants. Generic classes followed by a pile of feats combines all the disadvantages of point based chargen and classes. It's a fucking stupid idea.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

Here's my set of classes:


These classes should all come with a single default (non-sucky) path that people can pick up and play right out of the box.

The Ascended Extras:
* Rogue: Guile hero, thief.
* Knight: Fighter; at a certain point it requires you to choose an advanced knight type, such as Dragon Rider or Planar Champion.
* Monk: User of mystic martial traditions.

The Clergy:
* Warrior Priest: Martial cleric. Focuses on single target spells
* Holy Figure: Cloth wearing cleric. Focuses on whole-group spells

The Druids:
* Nature Mage (Spellcasting Druid)
* Shapeshifter: Turns itself into other things to do stuff (Wild Shape Druid)
* Beastmaster: Has pets to do stuff. (Ranger)

The Four Paths of Arcane Magic:
* Necromancer: covers the classic schools of Necromancy and Divination.
* Deciever: covers the classic schools of Illusion and Enchantment.
* Transmuter: covers the classic schools of Transmutation and Abjuration.
* Caller: covers the classic schools of Conjuration and Evocation.

Iconic Classes: These classes represent more specific character concepts
* Bard: Guile, Enchantment, and Illusion; all with an artistic theme
* Paladin: A Knight with some Holy Figure powers

The Barbarian becomes a kit for the monk, with the mystic tradition of RAGE!

The PHB should come with a large set of tweaks for each class, and the DMG should contain some sample kits like 'Assassin' and 'Witch'

Tweaks are alternate class features,such as different level n spells, which can be taken in a cornucopia of combinations. Kits are almost like a whole different class, and you can only take one. Some kits may preclude some tweaks; there should be a table on the website, and each book should have the latest version of that table at its date of publishing.

New classes should be added in setting books, kits should be added in what in books and adventure paths, and tweaks can come in any product.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Frank, will every ability set permutation result in people being able to be a class or the same number of classes as everyone else?

I can see a situation forming where someone's set only lets them qualify for 'Soldier' while someone else of the same level gets to be 'Assassin OR Archmage if not both'. This leads to all sorts of problems: the latter being more interesting, more versatile, more powerful, etc.. The only way you'd really be able to avert that is by banning/forcing certain combinations of sets--and at that point, why not just have a traditional class and level system?

When you change from being an assassin to being an illusionist, you keep your sneak attack maneuver, you just trade in your fixed Assassin abilities for a fized set of Illusion abilities.

Assuming that Illusionist and Assassin are of the same 'tier' (and Illusionist is not an upgrade of Assassin) I think you're estimating how much you think people want to totally change their schtick.

Oh sure, people like being able to jump from an schtick it turns out they didn't like into one that does. People also like trading sucky schticks for new ones. People also like adding new schticks atop of old ones. But trading a schtick that they liked for one of equal utility? I'm not feeling it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Lago's blanket list of common criticisms to people's suggestion:

1.) To some extent you need stacking and situational modifiers. Otherwise the tactical minigame becomes very shallow. 3E's '+1 to attack for being on higher ground', fiddly as it was, was brilliant because it encouraged people to fight on stairs, climb up trees, etc..

2.) Rerolling more than once per resolution scheme is stupid. That shit takes time and people can get confused as to what reroll they're on. Moreover they're a really poor substitute for the kind of power inflation that D&D engages in. Rerolling also makes probabilities very hard to calculate and at a table people will have no clue what the fuck is going on.

3.) I agree with people that feats should not give bonuses. However, feats should also not add shit to powers, or at the very least add to them asymmetrically. We can see this in 4E D&D where certain builds (like the Thunderglaive Swordmage, but there are a lot more) will get a pile of feats and push it onto one power.

I'm fact I'm leery about feats being able to add anything substantial to powers (like pushing) in the first place because not all powers benefit equally from the same effect. Push + Immobilize is worth a lot more than Push + Diseased. That kind of thing leads to ability spam.

4.) Get Vancian casting out of the game. It has failed us on almost all counts. Again, you don't have to go WoF (I highly recommend it, though I can offer some suggestions), but you can't stick with Vancian Casting. It's better than warmup/cooldown times and mana points, but that's still not saying much. It still chews orc pubes.

5.) Unless you're doing Rage Meter or Winds of Fate, get rid of setup powers. Seriously. All it does is encourage scripting within and between players.

[Winnah]

I think certain class names should be avoided. In particular, the adjective-noun word combination classes that only an insider would recognise. Hexblade, battlemind, duskblade and so on.

Names like fire mage are ok, as even a novice gamer will pick up on the fact they are some kind of pyro wizard. Though archetypes are more important than power sources, I think.

As for actual class suggestions:

Holy Warrior (militant cleric/paladin type)
Assassin (murder specialist as opposed to combat specialist)
Soldier
Noble (leader/dilattante)
Witch/Warlock (primitive spellcaster, perhaps a nature or spirit focus)
Sorcerer/Occultist (generalised magical scholar)
Priest (standard religious MC, with magic)
Berserker/Maruader (undisciplined warrior type)
Scoundrel (generalist criminal type)

All I could come up with off the top of my head. Obviously missing a Monk-style martial artist and ranger/wilderness guy. Some of the base spellcasting classes could be expanded by focusing on different 'types' of magic, but I would hope the difference would be more profound than fire mage/frost mage.

[Username17]

Frank, will every ability set permutation result in people being able to be a class or the same number of classes as everyone else?

My thought would be that you'd have your lists, and every list would have a class whose requirement is that you have three things off that list. You also have a couple of classes whose requirement is that you have abilities off of 3 or more lists. Then you give people 6 starting maneuver choices. So every single character by definition qualifies for at least one class and probably much more than that. It's really no skin off your ass if there are enough pieces of overlap that every character definitionally qualifies for 2. You can even make things more bizarre and have classes that require a number of choices from amongst a couple of lists.

Imagine for the moment that you have Five "Power Sources", and each source comes with two lists. We could call those power sources "Martial, Arcane, Divine, Primal, and Shadow", but for the moment let's just call them White, Blue, Black, Red and Green. So you have some simple lists in the basic book:

• White
  • Light (Cleric)
    Chivalry (Knight)
• Blue
  • Stealth (Rogue)
    Illusion (Illusionist)
• Black
  • Death (Necromancer)
    Treachery (Assassin)
• Red
  • Fire (Warlock)
    War (Warlord)
• Green
  • Nature (Druid)
    Primal (Berserker)

OK. That leaves the Monk, Bard, Paladin, Ranger, Thief, Sorcerer, Wizard unaccounted for off of old class lists, and the Soldier, Artificer, Warrior, Scout, and Shaman from magic cards. So you can throw down some really simple ones like the Warrior who requires you to have four abilities off of italicized lists and the Wizard who requires you to have four abilities off of non-italicized lists. then you can throw down some classes where you need to have abilities off of three different lists but at least two of them have to have the same power source. So the Thief requires three lists and at least 2 Black; the Scout requires three lists and at least two Green, the Monk three lists and at least two White, the Soldier three lists and at least two Red, and the Artificer three lists and at least two Blue.

That leaves five, so I'd suggest doing something silly like give people a requirement to have one thing from an italicized or non-italicized list, and three from the other type. So for example: the Ranger requires at least one Nature ability, but three abilities from italicized lists, the Paladin requires one Light ability and three abilities off italicized lists, the Shaman requires one Fire ability and three italicized lists, the Bard requires one Illusion and three off of italicized lists, and the Sorcerer bucks trends by requiring one Treachery and three off of non-italicized lists.

So the absolute minimum you could possibly qualify for is two classes. Even if you put all your abilities into Primal, you could still be a Berserker or a Warrior. Similarly if you put everything into Nature, you could be a Druid or a Wizard. Even if you split things as evenly as possible and consciously avoided each of the ability lists that trigger a half-caster option (such as Light for Paladin), you'd still have two in a single power source and you'd have four italicized options and qualify for Warrior.

And while you can qualify for more than that, a starting character can't qualify for a lot more than that - 3 War, 2 Stealth, 1 Light lets you pick from Warrior, Warlord, Paladin, Artificer, and Soldier - and I think that's the most you can do as a starting character. And you still only have one at a time in any case.

-Username17

[NineInchNall]

Lago's blanket list of common criticisms to people's suggestion:

1.) To some extent you need stacking and situational modifiers. Otherwise the tactical minigame becomes very shallow. 3E's '+1 to attack for being on higher ground', fiddly as it was, was brilliant because it encouraged people to fight on stairs, climb up trees, etc..

I ... DISAGREE! Muwa ha ha ha!

It was a +1 bonus, which meant that people didn't give a shit about except when they'd already attempted a roll, failed, and were trying to find every fiddly fuckin' way to fenagle the failure into a success. That's crappy.

Say a character has his stats, and knows that he rolls 1d20 + 5 (from a +5 BAB) + 2 (from a +2 technique/power/weapon). If non-stacking situational modifiers go on top of that, then we're cool. We keep terrain and other concerns part of the tactical minigame, but not in a fiddly, game-retarding way.

[Saxony]

"Nature" or "Primal" are not informative titles at all, so they shouldn't be used. Abilities that can't be classified well is just a bunch of random shit and shouldn't be in the same class.

On the same note, a title like "Cold" really doesn't mean shit. Other than lowering the temperature (whatever that does), I have no idea what that will actually do.

Titles like "Close Quarters Combat", "Survival", and "Magical Artillery" are broad enough to be a classification of 5+ abilities, and actually clue you into what "I have 3 Magical Artillery abilities, but no "Survival" might mean ("Oh, you're a glass cannon").

To that end, stuff like "Shadow" or "Mind Magic" are really too specific. Perhaps they should piggyback on the more broad classes as a double classification. IE: Assassin requires 2 "Shadow" and 2 "Close Quarters Combat". 4 "Close Quarters Combat" just makes you a "Warrior".

We will need to fill the PHB with 15 classes as you said. And people get excited when they see something called "Assassin" or "Kung Fu Monk". We should probably capitalize on that.

Also, I agree with Lago. People should not need to trade their shit around to get new classes. Why not just let them call themselves multiple things? If they have enough abilities to be called an Illusionist and an Assassin, let them write that on their character sheet.

I'm wondering how to handle the inevitable splatbooks filled with random shit like "+5 Cold Resistance". What class does that go in? Does it go classless? Etc. etc.

An aside: Diablo 2 didn't have 15 classes when it came out. However, it did have 5 classes, each with 3 types of abilities which could be combined within each class. And the expansion added two more classes. I'm pretty sure you're on to something with giving out at least 10+ types of abilities.

[MfA]

Tome Knight is a tank, with rules uniformity. You can easily have AoOs and readied attacks cause movement out of a square to fail, or include a feat which makes that happen and still be uniform. Fighters could count as occupying multiple squares.

I don't know which of these is actually best, but they're all tanking abilities, and none of them are mind control.

There is more to life than melee ... short range battlefield control and interrupts do nothing to stop ranged characters from attacking the wizard.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Occupying multiple squares lets you provide cover from more angles.

[fectin]

Tome Knight is a tank, with rules uniformity. You can easily have AoOs and readied attacks cause movement out of a square to fail, or include a feat which makes that happen and still be uniform. Fighters could count as occupying multiple squares.

I don't know which of these is actually best, but they're all tanking abilities, and none of them are mind control.

There is more to life than melee ... short range battlefield control and interrupts do nothing to stop ranged characters from attacking the wizard.

Very true, but removing melee sure helps (and it's a lot easier to deal with ranged via concealment).

[shadzar]

Lago's blanket list of common criticisms to people's suggestion:

1.) To some extent you need stacking and situational modifiers. Otherwise the tactical minigame becomes very shallow. 3E's '+1 to attack for being on higher ground', fiddly as it was, was brilliant

oops wrong emoticon...

Table 51:
Combat Modifiers


Attack Roll
Situation Modifier
Attacker on higher ground +1

Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.

Table 35:
Combat Modifiers


Situation Attack Roll Modifier
Attacker on higher ground +1

Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.

[Username17]

"Nature" or "Primal" are not informative titles at all, so they shouldn't be used. Abilities that can't be classified well is just a bunch of random shit and shouldn't be in the same class.

Actually shit like "Nature" is exactly what ability lists should be. Because you want characters to be able to be tactically deep and doing a bunch of stuff while thematically being in the same class. You should be able to do the whole Druid thing, from having a bear to becoming a bear to growing plants to covering people with dirt all off the same list. And most importantly of all: we want characters like the Knight and Warlord to be just as deep.

Titles like "Close Quarters Combat", "Survival", and "Magical Artillery" are broad enough to be a classification of 5+ abilities, and actually clue you into what "I have 3 Magical Artillery abilities, but no "Survival" might mean ("Oh, you're a glass cannon").

That is fucking terribad. No. Ability lists like "Close Quarters Combat" are no good at all, because they lack tactical or thematic depth. While the actual schools in the book of nine swords were nothing like balanced, the concept was right on the money: each school should have a very vague theme and a wide range of tools available to it. Otherwise you end up with one-note characters. Especially when you write multiple specific melee combat schools - at least you can do a lot of things with "Death Magic".

To that end, stuff like "Shadow" or "Mind Magic" are really too specific.

There's your problem right there. The fucking school of Mind is one tenth of the entire game of Mage, and that game's spell list is longer than most RPGs. And yet, you think that is "too limited" while "stabbing people" is not? That's a recipe for dumb melee fighters to suck right there.

Mind Magic is a huge category that can do everything from buffing people with enhanced precision to vanishing from view to mind controlling minions to making heads explode. It has attacks, it has buffs, it has debuffs, it has pets, it has non-combat utility. It's really big. You really have to work to make the non-"spell" disciplines even nearly as interesting or useful. That is why you name them vague shit like "War" and "Chivalry" rather than "Archery".

That said, I don't actually care what the categories are, and don't really like the name "Primal" for the Berserker set. That was just a proof of concept that you could get all the base classes that have ever been offered in any edition of D&D or Magic the Gathering in one PHB and have that be OK. And that by extension: you should. You'd still have room for expansion, because you'd have access to all the expansion classes from every edition ever. Ninja, Samurai, Cavalier, Hexblade, Tinker, Amazon, Conjurer, Warmage, Beguiler, Hero, Buccaneer, Swashbuckler, Totemist... go nuts. When you're in expansion territory, you can have unlimited classes. War Minds, Heretics, Gunners, the sky is the limit.

You could add whole ability lists, although I would suggest not adding more power sources. However the big thing you'd want to do in later books is to add Paragon and Epic classes and abilities. The basic book can focus on the Heroic and Civilian tier. Experience has shown that the playtesting just isn't going to bother working out the kinks in Paragon play. Your playtesters won't have time to figure out what the heck high level characters are supposed to do or how to make them effectively or what kinds of self- and party-synergy they have. So they won't be able to tell you whether a Paragon encounter is firing on all cylinders or not in pre-release, so don't fucking write any. Put in a couple of low-Paragon monsters for use as "boss monsters" for high-Heroic Tier player characters, and design the rest of your Paragon material around how actual players in the world report those encounters going. Chances are extremely high that you'll end up having to throw a bone to one or more groups to keep them relevant against whatever Death Knight or Demon General you put in the Monster Manual.

-Username17

[Saxony]

"Nature" or "Primal" are not informative titles at all, so they shouldn't be used. Abilities that can't be classified well is just a bunch of random shit and shouldn't be in the same class.

Actually shit like "Nature" is exactly what ability lists should be. Because you want characters to be able to be tactically deep and doing a bunch of stuff while thematically being in the same class. You should be able to do the whole Druid thing, from having a bear to becoming a bear to growing plants to covering people with dirt all off the same list.

When you say "I have five nature abilities", I have no idea what the fuck that means. The name is not informative.

Furthermore, if you want classes to have lots of random shit put together... I don't know what to tell you. Turning into a bear while having a bear while turning people into plants is extremely niche and it doesn't deserve a name. I think you're wedded to the idea of druids, and in general wedded to the idea of repeating "traditions" for the sake of tradition. Perhaps the market is also but you're wanking here.

Perhaps if DnD is going to expand outside of repeat customers, we'll need names for abilities that actually make sense so newcomers don't need to read every fucking class to understand just what "I'm have 5 Holy Man abilities" means and someone can join up, read one class, and everyone else around the table goes "I'm good at destruction magic, I'm good at melee combat", etc. Then again, DnD isn't going any where without pandering to repeat customers... Middle ground, I guess.

Titles like "Close Quarters Combat", "Survival", and "Magical Artillery" are broad enough to be a classification of 5+ abilities, and actually clue you into what "I have 3 Magical Artillery abilities, but no "Survival" might mean ("Oh, you're a glass cannon").

That is fucking terribad. No. Ability lists like "Close Quarters Combat" are no good at all, because they lack tactical or thematic depth. While the actual schools in the book of nine swords were nothing like balanced, the concept was right on the money: each school should have a very vague theme and a wide range of tools available to it. Otherwise you end up with one-note characters. Especially when you write multiple specific melee combat schools - at least you can do a lot of things with "Death Magic".

Close Quarters Combat has a lot of tactical depth. You're a dumbass if you don't think all the ways you can kill someone in close quarters has enough tactical depth. Definitely not thematic depth, but the market has proven over and over how many people just want to play "Tough Guy With Sword" or slight variations. Examples: Fighter, Barbarian, Knight, Warblade, Duelist, the clone Prestige Classes and all the gish "Tough Guy With Sword plus XYZ" classes and prestige classes, which are just about as numerous as straight "Tough Guy With Sword". So it's thematically deep enough to satisfy customers while not seeming deep. It'd just be one class, any way.

To that end, stuff like "Shadow" or "Mind Magic" are really too specific.

There's your problem right there. The fucking school of Mind is one tenth of the entire game of Mage, and that game's spell list is longer than most RPGs. And yet, you think that is "too limited" while "stabbing people" is not? That's a recipe for dumb melee fighters to suck right there.

Mind Magic is a huge category that can do everything from buffing people with enhanced precision to vanishing from view to mind controlling minions to making heads explode. It has attacks, it has buffs, it has debuffs, it has pets, it has non-combat utility. It's really big. You really have to work to make the non-"spell" disciplines even nearly as interesting or useful. That is why you name them vague shit like "War" and "Chivalry" rather than "Archery".

You can push the name "Shadow" or "Mind Magic" onto a lot of abilities, but I feel the name wouldn't really mean much (Mind Magic is better than Shadow, . I'd be happy if the titles were really descriptive, but now that I think about it, a very descriptive title like "Mental Influencing Long Range Evasion" sounds like a fucking terrible title, and something broad like "Close Quarters Combat" is a lot better. It doesn't really sound swords and sorcery enough, but you get the idea. Middle ground again, I guess.

I'd like something a bit more narrow than just "Shadow" or "Mind Magic" so it would describe things better. "Shadow XYZ", "Mind Something Other Than Magic".

[Username17]

Perhaps if DnD is going to expand outside of repeat customers, we'll need names for abilities that actually make sense so newcomers don't need to read every fucking class to understand just what "I'm have 5 Holy Man abilities" means and someone can join up, read one class, and everyone else around the table goes "I'm good at destruction magic, I'm good at melee combat", etc. Then again, DnD isn't going any where without pandering to repeat customers... Middle ground, I guess.

Absolutely not. King's Bounty has three categories of magic: Order, Chaos, and Distortion. Summoning a giant flaming bird is "Order", but summoning a giant flaming bone dragon is "Chaos". That works fine. Magic the Gathering has schools of magic that are "Red, White, Green, Blue, and Black" - that works fine too. Heroes of Might and Magic has things arbitrarily lumped into four "elements" where "Raise Dead" is earth and "Blind" is fire. People have absolutely no problems figuring out what completely arbitrary collections of magical powers are about. You're writing the fucking magic system, whatever you say goes. If healing is Water, it's in Water. If healing is in Earth or Fire or Air instead, so be it.

Trying to get people to tell the other players that you were playing a Defender was a complete failure. That information is not fucking interesting. even if it was tactically helpful to know (which it turns out it isn't, because the ways you tactically assist a Striker vary tremendously depending upon all kinds of stuff), it still isn't interesting or evocative to talk about. Or to put it another way, you have an Assassin, a Berserker, a Knight, and a Paladin at the table. Do you really want them all to tell the other players "I'm good at melee combat"? What the fuck use is that?

The Assassin sets up multi-round combos where he ultra-kills enemies. It's nominally in melee, but he doesn't hang out in melee very much. He synergizes with distractions and crowd control. The Berserker does overwhelming damage and doesn't wear armor. He wants enemies to be funneled into small areas because he can murder them faster that way. He is going to have a huge healing bill at the end of the battle and hopefully one of the other characters can pick that up. The Knight takes very little damage from things and channels enemy attacks to himself. The Knight synergizes with other players providing heavy offense. The Paladin provides healing and decent defenses and is helped most by the battle being slowed down - the less enemies he has to fight at once the bigger the regeneration looks.

So the Assassin and the Paladin want a long fight with as many enemies lost in the fog as possible on any particular turn. The Berserker and the Knight want short fights with as many enemies in one place as possible. Do you really think it's in any way helpful for them to tell the rest of the players that they are "good at melee combat"? Of course not! Not only is it not interesting, it isn't even tactically useful.

Much better for the Knight to tell the other players that he is a Knight and has a bunch of combat abilities from the Chivalry List.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

What I previously described as 'feats' can be called Class, while what I'm currently calling Class can be called 'Archetypes'.
Like how AD&D had that chart that said "Rogue: Thief, Bard" and "Fighting (or was it Man at Arms?) Fighter, Ranger, etc."

Each "character option package I'm calling Class but you sorta pick like feats" would be something like your Tome Feats.

The presentation is what's important. If people just want to be a Ranger then they can simply keep on going down the Ranger Class line of abilities. Some (maybe a lot) people are just happy with seeing "Ranger" on the top of their character sheet. As long as it's called Class, people will treat it like classic D&D Class, even if 'in reality' it's something else.

Who exactly are we trying to reach with this 5? Do we want popularity or do we want something The Gaming Den would play.
Are we trying to unify Pathfinder and 4e players? What's the criteria of judgement.