D&D 5E What I Don't Like About Subclasses, and Potential Solutions.

[J-H]

Except casters somehow...

As of level 8...
The sorcerer has swapped out 1 cantrip.
The cleric has changed a prepared spell twice, and otherwise just added something on top of his existing list.
The Arcane Trickster has changed out one cantrip, finally, for Booming Blade.

All they're doing at levelup is picking (typically) one additional spell to know/prepare, and leaving it at that.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I think the way Shadow of the Demon Lord handles it is the best way to handle things, mix matching a base class with an ancestry class, an advanced class and a master class that gives that arent class locked nor have pre requesites.

Wanna play a goblin rogue-berserker-hydromancer? Go for it! It'll be as good as a specialized dwarf fighter-guardian-shieldmaster!

 

[Reynard]

I think the way Shadow of the Demon Lord handles it is the best way to handle things, mix matching a base class with an ancestry class, an advanced class and a master class that gives that arent class locked nor have pre requesites.

Wanna play a goblin rogue-berserker-hydromancer? Go for it! It'll be as good as a specialized dwarf fighter-guardian-shieldmaster!

Interesting. How does the system balance that?

 

[Horwath]

Ideally, D&D would have 4 classes

1. Martial, d12, no spellcasting

2. Gish, d10, half-caster

3. Adept, d8, 2/3rd caster

4. Mage, d6, full caster

then just add number of feat slots to each class depending on spell casting and amount of extra attack(s).

 

[aco175]

Did the new Dragonlance (DL) book have 1st level feats that gateway into the sub-class? I seem to recall that PCs will be starting with a feat now since DL came out with it in order to play something like Knight of Solamnia or tested wizard or whatever. Some might have been in with background as well.

Would making new 1st level feats be able to start the sub-class at 1st level? It would be something that separates you from the other generic fighters waiting for 3rd level.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Personally I dislike the multiclassing mechanics and would rather see them replaced with some other system actually designed for gaining cross-class abilities but that’s me, my actual point is how would you intend for these ‘novice levels’ to interact with multiclassing if everyone starts at 3rd level?

People don't start at 3rd level. They start at 1st level. "1st level" just gives you the things a current 3rd-level character would have.

I don't really care that much about the multiclassing thing (if it's not balanced, that's because the classes aren't well-designed and should be redesigned, IMO.) But if that is a concern for you: Make players go through novice levels before they can "fully" take advantage of their new class's stuff. They can still gain levels in their original class, and they get HD and HP based on whatever class they've MC'd to. But they only get doled out the new benefits of their new class slowly, perhaps once a session or the like. E.g. you just picked up Cleric? Congratulations, you get ONLY your domain benefit, or ONLY spell access, or ONLY the additional slots, etc. Next session, you can get one more benefit. Session after, you get another benefit. Until you finally catch up.

Because that's effectively what the current system does, isn't it? It forces a slowdown of the thing, not a prevention thereof. Yes, this will probably still be faster. My response is...shrug. That's not really something I consider a problem in the first place. If you dislike MC as much as you've described here, maybe the best thing is to just tell your players not to. If that's a dealbreaker for them, maybe you need to have a conversation with them about differing expectations and how to bridge that gap.

 

[Reynard]

Ideally, D&D would have 4 classes

1. Martial, d12, no spellcasting

2. Gish, d10, half-caster

3. Adept, d8, 2/3rd caster

4. Mage, d6, full caster

then just add number of feat slots to each class depending on spell casting and amount of extra attack(s).

I don't think 3/4 of potential character options being casters is ideal at all.

 

[Horwath]

I don't think 3/4 of potential character options being casters is ideal at all.

And now it's 9/13, just shy of 3/4th

 

[Reynard]

And now it's 9/13, just shy of 3/4th

And it is far from ideal.

 

[Horwath]

And it is far from ideal.

that is because we cannot have feats to choose from, but class features, which are just in general a n00b guide to picking a series of feats so we need to have Bard, Cleric, Druid, Warlock, Sorcerer and Wizards instead of just Mage class with feat slots.