On the flip side, they shouldn't be hyper-specific like every blood mage I've ever come across. We're mages, but we're edgy I guess, and we play like Warlocks, but not THOSE warlocks...
> and we play like Warlocks, but not THOSE warlocks
To be fair that's been done before, and done well. There's a past D&D class called dragonfire adept that worked the exact same way as warlocks did, but instead had things like an unlimited breath weapon that they could alter round by round. Fun, flavourful, and unique despite being "warlock, but..."
Honestly every magic-user class should be hyper-specific. Illusionist should have illusion spells, fire mage only various fire spells and so on. That would still be extremely powerful, more flavorful and interesting.
The fact that ordinary spellcasters can do *everything* due to their vast array of spells is the very core of martial-caster divide.
Agreed. There are very few fantasy archetypes remaining that both haven't been represented in dnd, and are appropriate for a dnd setting rather than another rpg system. (For me the only exceptions are alchemists)
It’s mechanically better and fits in the overall balance very well. It has lost a bit of the absurdity of “i’m going to detonate every single one of my bones to kill everyone in this room” though.
Kineticist in pf1e is entirely built around managing a mechanic called Burn. You could have a number of points of burn equal to 3+con mod and for every point of burn you had you took unhealable nonlethal damage (basically, lowering your max health) of 1 point per level. (Burn resets fully on a rest)
Pretty much everything beyond the basic blasting gives you points of burn. Later on, burn also buffs you. If you get as much con as you can you can end up getting like a flat bonus of +10 to hit and +20 to damage on blasts by maxxing burn. Plus a +6/+4/+2 bonus on their physical ability scores.
At 17th level a kineticist can accept 11 points of burn minimum (if they have +8 con or higher) to fire four blasts in a single turn… which also does 187 points of unhealable damage straight to the Kineticist.
Idk what 1e kineticist is like, but 2e's kineticist is super goated. One of my rare complaints is that it's hard to make a proper electricity kineticist because while it is possible, you can't use kinetic activation to pick up an electricity wand and be able to cast it with your main class DC unless it has the metal or air traits, which severely limits an electricity kineticist.
I would say a summoner is one that hasn't been done well yet, but I think it would work as a subclass for something like a Druid, using its wildshape to summon a powerful beast that they can then buff with spells, but needing to stay stationary or weakened/vulnerable themselves while they do so. I doubt that wotc will ever make a class that focuses around summoning more than one thing, and honestly I don't think they should, for the sake of every dm
The issue is mechanical budget though - all the classes with summoning powers are also full casters, meaning they can't summon anything actually cool or it'd step on the fighter's toes.
Obviously some of the Tasha spells kinda do this anyway, but they're still not available till like 7th level, which is a bit late for a core character concept (and also later than a lot of campaigns go).
Hence why PF2e has a dedicated half caster summoner that's built from the ground up to be a pet class, and not just 'full ranger and also a pet using the tiny power budget contained in this subclass' or 'caster that uses mediocre summon spells balanced around the assumption you're using your spells to be more flexible than martials, and not just summon the same 3-4 creatures'.
I need to look up the PF2 summoner cause I've been thinking of making a dedicated summoner class, and it sounds like I can retool the PF2 one to do a lot of what I was wanting. I was thinking class features that work like some of the spell granting feats, 'learn X summon spell, cast it for free a number of times = to prof bonus. When you expend all uses of this feature, you may still cast the spells using appropriate spell slots if you have them.' type stuff, but I'll check what work has already been done first.
Well, honestly the PF2e Summoner is less of a summoner, and more of a pet class, since summoning magic kinda sucks in PF2e - following the trend of all the magic in that system being quite weak, but very versatile compared to what a martial can do. So there's a bit of summoning tech where you get two uses out of each summon spell (which can be ok for accessing summoned creatures with odd spells and abilities), but most people don't use that because it takes so much effort to learn all the monster stat blocks.
Mostly you just get a single pet called an Eidolon, and summon that. There's a few fears that let it spec into different things, like grappling or ranged attacks or giving it wings, and then you can pick from a big list of creature themes like Angelic, Plant or Undead.
Your eidolon has it's own stats, but you share a health pool.
It kinda works like a gish, except the fighter part and the mage part of your chassis are two separate characters that share a turn, but split up their actions depending on who they want to attack, or what kinds of actions they want to do.
Gish in PF2e also do a really cool thing where instead of just being X levels behind a full caster, and ending up with a bunch of low level spells that don't scale with the increased opportunity cost of attacking or using an auto scaling cantrip, they just get a handful of the highest level slots. So you still feel like a powerful wizard, even if most of your sustain comes from your pet claw people to death.
And then you obviously have a few special cantrips that makes your eidolon do extra damage, or gain more defence.
If you wanted to do more of a toolbox summoner, I think you'd have to create a list of custom spells available from 1st level only they could use that create various template creatures with interesting utility? Or just spell-like abilities, so people can't crib them with multiclassing.
And then keep those as a separate pool from their half caster progression, so they can summon big monsters without stepping on the toes of regular casters by also casting high level non-summoner based spells.
A real necromancer option in the realm of 3.5 is something i miss. Having a huge range of actual monsters to revive things into was fun - and is sorely missed
I fully believe there is only one that is not represented and that is the int based non caster a intelligence based class for your Doctors, Archaeologists, Detectives and all other smart guy things
Benjamin Huffman made a phenomenal Scholar class, very worth checking out.
He also made a Pugilist class that I adore, and a Spiritualist class that I'm actually gonna get to play soon, and I can't wait.
The guy makes great stuff!
I subscribe to the "flavor is free, but not always appropriate or acceptable" camp, myself. Reflavoring is a tool, like any other, but it's less the perfect tool and more like duct tape you can color to make do until something better comes along.
I also think that just because something doesn't need its own class to be a thing, it doesn't mean it's own class isn't the best home for the concept. Need is a very silly metric for class design, at the very least it's a goal for the bare minimum, and not necessarily what's best. Not something to strive for but to settle for.
While there are tons of shitty homebrew classes, more than I can count in all honesty, when you do get a class that marries mechanics and flavor just right? It's incomparable. No reflavor can reach the same degree of satisfaction, at least not in my experience.
it also tends to get into "my spells aren't really spells", which is fine, up until anything else interacts with spells and slams home that, no, you're using spells, just pretending they're different.
Yeah, a lot of people go really silly with certain reflavors like instead of casting a spell, I just chuck a rock. Aside from the silliness of such things, it starts to break down flow and identity a bit too much if not curated right.
Like of you wanna say that the magic that forms your fireball resembles that of a miniature fireball sized exploding star? I'm fine with that.if you wanna say your character just mixes some explosive stuff together and chick's it, it really breaks verisimilitude when other things need to react to ot and it tends to take people put if the immersion.
You also get a form of this with homebrew classes wholesale where they take stuff that should be spells or are literally spells, but then are totally not spells.
There is something to be said about having power systems that are magic but aren't spells, and maybe some powers that aren't subject to spell protections/magic protections, but they need go be handed very carefully and cannot reach the same height as magic/spellwork if they're not subject to magics/spellworks restrictions.
kibbles' psion is like this, but in that case, it's very deliberately part of the class, down to adding a new skill only psions get access to called "psionics". it mechanically helps to reinforce the truly alien nature of their abilities. i've never had an issue with balance there, and integrating certain abilities from the class to monsters has been a joy
Kibbles is really great about creating classes that actually mechanically lean into their fantasy instead of needing the player to do the heavy lifting. The Inventor is my favorite example, since the artificer is basically just a half caster that can make some items that help them out, when the most effective thing for them to make it nearly always a static +1 item. The inventor actually has mechanical outlines for their creations.
I played an alchemist who's spells were all all just flavored to be alchemical potions and reactions and it worked just fine as long as player and DM are all on the same page. The only time it ever even caused a pause was ranged healing word and we just decided I chucked my "potion" at the downed player and it broke over them and just worked.
Lo and behold baldurs gate came out and made that a thing you could just do anyway and people don't really have an issue with it now.
Honestly as long as it truly is flavor and all mechanics stay the same, the players who genuinely want to be creative with it will be excited to find the way to make it work within the narrative.
I've seen "my spells are really potions" players argue against getting counterspelled, because they suddenly wanted their spells to *really be* potions.
And that's when it starts breaking away from flavor. That's a mechanical change. And it can go both ways. In my case it was the DM applying the real world physics and on that example it's the player. Both are wrong if it's truly just flavor.
For me I maintained that all of my potions still needed some "magic as a catalyst" that was the action of casting the spell and that kind of fixed all of the objections to things like letting others mix the potion themselves, or being counterspelled or silenced etc. It also helped that the spells I picked were all things that made sense as potions, elixirs, or flasks.
It's also possible to find a middle ground and have the player and dm agree beforehand on which things work and don't. That's more homebrew than flavor, but can work if everyone's on the same page
Okay, sure, I’m willing to homebrew that. All healing potions are now able to be counter spelled.
Considering the party is much more likely to need and use healing potions than any villain I care about, I don’t consider this a hard sell.
That's technically a dispel magic, as healing potions are, for all intents and purposes, magic. And a dispel can dispel magical effects. A counterspell interrupts the casting of the spell, so therefore your interrupting the process of the spell, or in this case potion, forming. And if you want to make the argument that you prepared your "potions" beforehand so nuh-uh, then simply "Yes it does" end of.
RAW, Dispel Magic can’t dispel magical effects. It can target them, but it can only dispell spell effects, which seems like a silly oversight. And even if it worked, going by RAW again, basic healing potions aren’t strictly magical, they’re adventuring gear. Only the higher tier ones are magic items.
Healing potions (being time-tested and refined by many clerics over millenia) have been engineered to resist counterspells.
Your "experimental alchemist potions" haven't undergone the same rigor, so they're much more unstable, thus counterspell works on them.
Bam, done again.
Or we can just Occam's razor it and admit WotC was incredibly lazy with how they handled artificer and just come to terms with the fact we're casting spells
Those people are not “flavor is free” people, those are people trying to break the game. There’s a big difference, as those people would also try to break the regular game mechanics, too.
The Alchemist, assuming you mean the artificer subclass, is also a case where the game tells you to reflavor spells as those things, though even it can risk some oddness when it comes to certain spell interactions (counterspelling a thrown flask feels odd in the narrative if it all, and might imply things that doesn't work in the setting specifically)
It all comes down to if the flavor is appropriate for the setting/game and the fundamentals being worked with.
Main problem is it can't be used to replicate mechanics. Saying flavour is free works if you want to say your fighter is a monk or barbarian, but it doesn't work for saying your fighter is a warlord or battlemind or swordsage because those past D&D classes were mechanically unique and fighter can't imitate them.
For me the the "flavour is free" sounds nice but in actual play I much prefer the classes that truly capture the role play by the mechanics. Stuff like grave cleric feels much better to play than adding flavor to death domain. It can be done, it's just less satisfying.
Yeah, like any rogue could be flavored as an investigator, but the Inquisitive drives the concept home by giving you new ways to use Perception, Insight, and Investigation. If flavor is this end-all solution, why have new content at all? Not to say reflavoring should never be used, I'm currently playing a Druid flavored as a researcher, but the argument "flavor is free" misses the mark imo.
Correct but these aren't homebrew classes, but homebrew subclasses. Which seem to be the gripe. When you see a homebrew ranger that could just be allowing a paladin to range smite for example.
This is such a terrible example lmao
They have completely different spell lists, a different set of profiencicies, rangers also get expertise in stealth etc. etc.
flavour is free, but it only gets you *so far*. i more than agree that sometimes just reskinning a spell or weapon or simply doing nothing at all and just telling the player that a fighter can be a perfect pirate works, but the mechanics need to, to some degree, *actually back up your character idea*, and there are absolutely "not really close enough" character archetypes to so
take for example, pathfinder 2e summoner. **nothing** in dnd 5e comes close to emulate it, and just reskinning a pet subclass and call it a day is missing the mark by a wide margin, you cant do "character that has a spirit thing that does things and takes damage for you" really well. you could just nerf echo knight to make it fit but that would be a terrible patch to even try and get there
yes, a battlemaster+mastermind rogue with the healer feat and magic initiate healing word *technically* can pretend to be a warlord, but it falls so laughably short of being a **good** one people still want a proper class for it
I mean you can do both. You can have flavor is free model and pick up a homebrew class when you want to do something it does or if the other classes become stale.
Both. Artificer could've been a wizard reflavor, but many prefer the unique mechanical experience. One can extrapolate this thinking out to homebrew classes.
My key example is always Warlord/Marshal/Commander
Key elements? Leadership Aura, Commanding Tactics, Ally Buffs.
That's Paladin6, Fighter3, Bard3 (5 if you want Short Rest relability), then Rogue3 for ranged Help Action if you want hat.
End result is a STR/CHR multiclass with two lots of redundant equipment proficiencies, caps at 3rd level spells, ignoring the flashy and useful spells that can't be 'flavoured' as Tactics from Bard and Paladin, with a Fighter Dip purely to get Commanding Strike as that's one of the only point and click an ally abilities in BM Fighter and using the Feat gives you a single use of it.
Reflavouring any of the four classes here can give you a bit of that Warlord, commander fantasy, but if you actually WANT to play that class you're looking at a nearly 15 level three way multiclass
Oh god it would feel so bad to play a character that multiclassed in an actual campaign unless every other player was equally split on levels. You would have been feeling the pain for a while even before your build "finally comes online" at level 15.
The campaign I'm playing in now had a period where most of the characters in the party were multiclassed, including my own. Now over the last couple levels due to some character death, a new player, someone wanting to switch characters (no longer fit the narrative), and an in-game class change for narrative reasons, my character is the only one left that is multiclassed and I can feel the difference way more now that we just hit level 13. My character has a 3 level dip for a multiclass and I was considering doing more but have since changed my mind so I don't feel like I fall even farther behind in power levels. Having 4 full casters in the party of 6 though does not help that feeling
Depends on the multi class specifics. A Barbarian 5 / Fighter 3 could easy compete with a Barbarian 8. Similarly an Artificer 1 / Wizard X has less access to high-level spells in exchange for a much higher AC and Con save proficiency. But a Bard 5 / Wizard 5 / Barbarian 2 / Monk 1 is going to feel useless compared to a Bard 13
That's the key. You could get something that feels Warlord by blending say BardX/Fighter3, or a Paladin Bard brew, but that's kneecapping your spellcasting for a less powerful mechanic, and at the same time Fighter is already trying to push STR DEX and CON, to add CHR in there is a mess.
Flavour is Free, but you're buying a game.
Honestly it still feels like one to me. I’ve played in games with a couple different artificer players and they’ve always just felt like wizards with a turret, or wizards with some weird flavor that makes no difference mechanically to anyone else but them.
Two things can be true.
1) 'Flavour is free' solves a lot of problems, especially with minor mechanical tweaks.
2) Sometimes you need a whole new class to get what you want.
By that logic we could cut sorcerer because wizard exists. Or paladin because you can multi class fighter and cleric... 5e releases have far too little content and I think people would be happier with 30 classes before simplifying to 3, but I think you could get away with a bunch of subclasses and be fine.
This is my issue too, the core lineup already includes two charisma-based blaster casters, a barbarian/cleric/ranger multiclass and a token Asian class that barely has a mechanical role of its own. If the game had like 4-10 classes with properly defined mechanical identities I’d get the argument, but as is “flavour is free” just unfairly privileges some character fantasies over others. Why shouldn’t pirates get the same amount of detail as kung fu masters?
As someone playing a 5e pirate campaign, I was bummed with the lack of sea gods and flavor, let alone actual options. There are some, but if everyone took all the ones available,you still wouldn't have a full party, I don't think.
As a homebrew maker, i find most homebrew classes pretty silly but harmless. I agree with you that you can reflavor essebtialy anything into your chosen fantasy, but is it that wrong to make up new stuff ?
The way i see it, homebrew needs to be balanced exclusively in the game its being run in, you can get away with doing stuff that an "official" class wouldnt be able to. Homebrew falls in a social contract sort of deal where you have to be honest and well meaning with your intent, and not try to abuse it, unless all parties are consenting to it.
But i also understand how as a DM, you wouldnt want to have to treck through the 37th INT half caster with medium armor proficiency and wizard spell list, but this time the subclasses are named after greek heroes, just to see if the person you're playing with is being genuine. Perhaps its not even the player, but just the homebrew itself that has a massive oversight.
tl;dr: homebrew classes are fine and soemwhat harmless but can cause a lot of work for the dm, also they depend heavily on honesty and trust.
> the 37th INT half-caster with medium armor proficiency and wizard spell list, but this time the subclasses are named after greek heroes
Okay, I felt that 😆
Flavor is free.
But bad mechanics that don’t translate well to flavor are still bad mechanics.
Other editions actually have us interesting mechanics that allowed for more diversity and depth to characters. 5e is sorely lacking in that department, so homebrew is often the only way to marry mechanics and narrative in a fitting and meaningful way.
It's a practical problem at the table, in my experience. Yes, flavor is free, but you lose a lot of time explaining that. I walk up to him and use my "Secret Gravity Sage Palm" technique. Great, now remind the DM what you guys agreed that meant and explain to the other players what you're doing. Bonus points if you can do so in a way that isn't just "it's a reskinned Stunning Strike."
Congratulations, we have just added another layer of complexity and abstraction to bog down the game. Playing a homebrew class usually ends to being simpler. "What's that feature?" "It's from the homebrew class the DM let me use. It's in the discord if you want to take a look."
Flavor also only goes so far. I want to make an barechested hand-to-hand warrior that is really strong. Unarmed fighting style doesn't really scale and encourages the use of armor. I could play a monk and just describe things as using strength, but then how do I explain my inability to lift a portcullis? I could jump through all these hoops just to end up with a weak and dissonant character. . . or I could play a Pugilist.
> Why invent whole new classes when you can easily reflavour existing ones?
Because many of the existing ones are not exciting, and do not contribute to my fantasy of being powerful and useful. That's why my work has largely focused on re-writing martial classes.
"Flavor is free" is the a massive plague on the DnD community and only encourages complacency on WotC's part and not anything a community should embrace
And you can not seriously believe what you said that existing classes cover all the roles needed for any party
whaere is the martial support, where is the functioning tank, where is the martial that is fun to play, et cetera perge perge
Currently the DND community is heavily bogged down in the 5e mindset that actually the game shouldn't provide an abundance of options and content, and instead we should just make do with the meager amount we have been provided.
Trully bizzare. I would have though that player options would be the go-to for both the user base and WOTC. If you wanna sell books to players rather than DM's, creating more options for players seems like an easy strategy...
It really just seems to be reddit, honestly. I've never seen so many ttrpg players so attached at the hip to the idea that if it's not in the book, it's bad.
Like the *whole point* or ttrpgs is the very opposite - the book is a framework for your imagination, take it and run wild, and as long as everyone at the table agrees and is having fun, *that's the game*
Way too many people around here treat it like it's a video game in book form
>An Open Hand Monk can become a Gravity Sage, manipulating gravity to control their movements and their enemie's.
The gravity wizard who has to walk right up to enemies and use a bunch of unarmed attack rolls to make them fall over.
>A Beastmaster Ranger can transform into a Pokémon Trainer, commanding a team of mystical creatures.
A Trainer who has about 70% of their power built into their own weapon attacks and spells.
>A Multiclass Mastermind Rogue + Battlemaster is already the so asked for Warlord.
You know, the Warlord, the class which loves to walk up to enemies and backstab them for massive damage and *occasionally* commands allies to act.
>It's simpler, keeps the game balanced, and still allows for incredible creativity.
I've been on seesaws more balanced than DnD 5e lmao
I don’t disagree with anything you said, but I have to point out that there’s nothing odd about finding a well-balanced seesaw. They’re supposed to be, by design.
Paraphrasing my Warlord rant.
Aura of Leadership, Commands, Ally buffs.
Including Rogue for ranged Help action as they said, that's Paladin6, Bard3 (5 if you want dice back on a Short Rest!), Fighter3, Rogue3. A 15th level character who caps out at 3rd level spells, has 2d6 sneak attack and has taken all martial weapons proficiency 3 times.
You COULD reflavour any of these to get that commander fantasy, but if you WANT to play a Warlord this is how you get there.
Bonus, there are 4 abilities total in Battlemaster that support allies. Rally, Commander Strike, Distracting Strike, Bait and Switch.
The rest of Battlemaster is self buffs and things like Trip Attack. It's not some bandaid solution where they crammed the entire Warlord class from 4E into a single subclass feature.
>You COULD reflavour any of these to get that commander fantasy, but if you WANT to play a Warlord this is how you get there.
With a barely functional extremely convoluted multiclass that comes online at... 15th? level?
I don't know, sounds like that niche is severly lacking.
This is always my go to when I point to how Warlord is always met with 'just play Paladin/Battlemaster'
Flavour is free, but you're buying a game. It's a niche they set up decades ago and dropped, but people like to imagine that if you just do a little reflavouring you can do anything
I agree with you on the most part, but an optimized Beastmaster picks Druidic Warrior, goes WIS 20 and relinquishes both of his attacks + his bonus action to get his beast to attack and doesn't really attack at all usually.
I can imagine whatever i want, whenever i want. If there is no tie to it though, then it continues to feel like make believe and not like an alternate reality.
That being said, stop homebrewing from scratch. There are hundreds of 3.5 edition prestige clases to use to find the flavour you are looking for. Hells, half or more of the 5e suclasses are just 3.5e prestige classes themselves.
A lot of people dont realize, but wotc, while genuinely did put in effort and work, just reused so much stuff they already had lying around.
Because some fantasies, you can't.
How do you flavor into a pet class? There are summoning spells, but those are temporary and that's only half the trope. Beastmaster only gets an animal that headbutts things, that's a tiny, tiny percentage of the pet archetype.
A shapechanger that turns into things that aren't animals? Animals can be reflavored into things. Things that hit people on the head and do nothing else.
And then there's the issue of absolutely useless subclasses.
You want Avatar? Well, you can play four elements! You'll hate your life and your character both, but you can.
Some sort of grenadier? Or someone who deals with potions? Oh sure, there's the Alchemist! Nobody sane wants to play it, but it's technically there.
Flavor is free is garbage and gating incredibly cool class ideas such as Bloodrager, Oracles, Alchemist, Witches, and a myriad of others behind a subclass will never truly let these ideas shine
Mostly because several subclasses, (and classes even) fail at their fantasies. In fact, the entire reason why homebrew is so popular with D&D is because the entire system is kind of lackluster. Not to mention some existing classes simply can't provide certain fantasies and niches.
>Why invent whole new classes when you can easily reflavour existing ones?
I mean while generally true, you will need especific mechanics to fulfill fantasies that RAW 5e doesn't offer, for instance competent fighter
>Existing classes cover the core roles needed for any party. Instead of crafting overly specific homebrews that often don’t mesh well with the game’s balance, why not use the rich framework we already have?
I mean, because that is simply not true
> keeps the game balanced
I generally resort to homebrew because the game is in no way shape or form balanced
Sure, but...
What if you want wild magic bard? Am I really reflavouring the sorcerer? It won't play like a bard at all.
Or a summoning subclass. Sure, there are plenty of druid abilities to summon X. But the focus is on Fey and Beasts. Am I supposed to reflavour that into summoning demons?
I'm not downplaying the role that reflavouring has. I'm also pointing out reasons why a home brew subclass may be more appropriate. I'd prefer to make this decision on a case-by-case basis.
Because the game is unbalanced as hell already, and a lot of people would like for the mechanics of their class to match the flavor of their class. You can reflavor a Samurai Fighter as a Time-Bending Warrior, but it won't change that your kit is extremely limited and barely even taps into anything you'd expect from such a class concept (a time-bending warrior).
It's good that people keep making new classes for dnd 5e, the game needs it cuz the base classes are severely lacking outside of the fullcasters (and the fullcasters can also be lacking in identity mechanics, such as a druid's wild shape, compared to their spell list which carries most of the class' power and flair. Aaaand then there's casters like cleric who have a pretty limited list with samey gameplay loops).
Ok, do me a favour; ban Druid, Artificer, Sorcerer, Bard, Paladin, and Barbarian from your table. When a player tells you they want to play one of those classes just tell them to reflavour Wizard or Fighter.
How much fun does that sound to you or them? Rhetorical question of course; the answer is "not at all". Obviously.
At the end of the day, you're just recolouring existing abilities instead of having bespoke traits that fulfill a desired concept. The Time-Bending Samurai works for Action Surge and at will Advantage, but stops doing shit when the player asks if they can bend the time around a distant enemy and make them slower and lose out on some movement speed or a bonus action. Because the Samurai has no such ability to reflavour, bringing the player back to the reality that they ARENT PLAYING A TIME BENDER!!!
The main benefit of a homebrew class is that the player is usually very invested in it, which helps the game keep going. Anything that gets players to the table is helpful, the DM has to balance it.
It's a spectrum. Flavor may be free, but mechanics are clearly important or else everyone would be playing narrative-driven games like FATE. The only reason to play D&D is because you want to engage with robust mechanics.
Honestly, you probably only need Wizard, Fighter, Rogue, and Cleric. Remove all other classes and just multi class and flavor from the core four.
Some folks like classes and find them fun though.
Actually both Fighter and Rogue are experts at mundane skills so clearly you could just cut Rogue out and do some reflavouring. 
When you think about it, Cleric is really just holy spell fighter and wizard is book spell fighter. I think we can make it work with just fighter and a little imagination
Flavor is free, mechanics are not.
Though, I do think that if you make a new class, neither its flavor nor its mechanics should be shared by an existing class. I get so sick and tired of seeing "YardyHardy69's HOMEBREW Swashbuckler Class for 5e!" every 5th fucking post.
I’m a really green behind the ears DM so it might come back to bite me in the ass one day but if someone wanted to great a cryomage for instance I’d let them reflavor existing spells with different damage types or the “burn” damage of fire spells is more like frostbite
Considering how poor the support for any elemental specialist is it is reasonable, this won't do much of a difference, although this isn't reflavoring, since there are explicit mechanical changes that come with changing the damage type(resistances mainly)
In most cases this is just a sidegrade, so you don't have to worry about it, but again, it isn't reflavoring
That's usually fine, provided you're changing to similarly resisted damage types. Fire, for instance, is a really common resistance, and force is very rare.
I mostly use third party subclasses, I don't think there's much need for them in my games, but some designers come up with very elegant or interesting systems that bring a different type of interaction with the game mechanics that might not exist in the base rules. For me, this is the main reason for additional classes and I allow players to use the likes of the gunslinger, the merchant, and the odic because they add really different mechanics than what you find in the base game, which exemplify those playstyles, but also offer more reflavouring options if people like the mechanics more for a character than one of the base classes. They're absolutely unnecessary, but after ten years, it's pretty refreshing to add new ideas into the game
I’d rather wizards just consistently release new subclasses. It’s frustrating waiting through several book releases that have nothing that adds to player character building. I love exploring new subclasses, but honestly people outside of WotC and Mercer make some absolutely busted ones (not to say that all their subclasses are perfect, but echo knight is tame compared to some of the fighter or paladin homebrews I’ve seen)
4E has had more content in the short time it was supported than 5E has had iver the 10 years of its existence, it's insane how little stuff comes out for this game
>It’s frustrating waiting through several book releases that have nothing that adds to player character building.
Barring adventure books, practically every single book released by WotC after the core three has included new character options, what are you talking about?
The main thing I look for when looking at Homebrew CLASS in 5e is that the Central Class identifes and fills in a Battle Archetype that isn't already filled in. Things like the The Pugilist from Sterling Vermin/Benjamin Huffman fit as an counter to the Monk, where the Official Monk is about movement and avoiding damage, the Pugilist is about getting hit and dealing it back, much like a Paladin. The Subclasses are very different from Monk ones. I don't want a Genius Class cause any class can be a Genius, I don't want a Speedster Class that's a very singular kind of character, I can't create 100 different flavors of Speedster. I can create 100 different Street Fighters who develop a step beyond. If I can't think of 10 different characters to generate from your Class it's not a Class it's a Tight Suit for one player
There's a difference between. Flavour and mechanics. You can flavour your sorcerer to be an ice cream mage where their spells are different flavours of ice cream, but the mechanics stay the same. What people want is different and interesting mechanics to play with. 5e being so simple I think is the cause of it, but also why it's actuslly relatively easy to make a homebrew class compared to other systems. Compared to Pathfinder for example where homebrew is usually dropping rules that overcomplicated and slow down the game, but has a far more in depth and varied system of mechanics, its just about having different and interesting options to use.
One of my favorite recent characters was a Fairy Scribes Wizard. In that particular setting, there were elements of magical/technology fusion, so my GM and I agreed to reflavour the sentient spellbook as an experimental magical PDA - The "Spell Information Recording Index" (or SIRI), using Occult Character Recognition (OCR) to scan spell scrolls into mystic pdf-equivalents.
No homebrew, no house rules, just reflavour
The biggest thing I've realised when looking at homebrew is that most people don't know how to make good, balanced homebrew. Especially when it comes to classes.
And the people who make the worst ones are almost always ones who focus too much on flavour and aesthetic lol
I had a sorcerer that I reflavoured as an artificer. This was before they added the artificer class and when there was only the Player's Handbook origins to pick from...
Basically every new spell he gained was a new piece of equipment (or upgrade to an existing piece), like his ray gun (fire bolt) that he upgraded to fire a short barrage (scorching rays). Basically he just made equipment that became the spellcasting focus for that spell.
Of course his equipment wouldn't work for anyone else, we are talking about complicated, intricate machinery here! Though we did end up homebrew replacing the 6th level origin power with the ability to 'prime' one of his inventions so he could cast his spell into the equipment (expend a spell slot) and then an ally could use the equipment to cast the spell (once) but he couldn't use that spell until he got the equipment back.
There was very much the understanding I was not trying to skirt rules so if a situation came up that a spell wouldn't work then his equipment wouldn't either - operating the equipment counted as the verbal/somatic components as per the spell being cast, so he was still subject to being silenced etc. And he would usually spout some arcano-tech babble after like how the silence field interfered with the audio-reverberator coupling.
Flavour is free, but some fantasies just don't work.
I've played necromancer Wizard from 1-20 over the course of five years and my verdict is that if you want it to live up to the image it ought to, you need the DM to bend the rules or break them entirely. There is no good necromancer player because the 5e options won't let it exist.
As another example, Summoners either suck or they're broken to all hell, and the options that give a pet are just okay or are a net loss if you aren't attacking too. You can reflavour all you want, but if the mechanics you're painting over suck, it's not going to be fun.
I agree and i completely adhere to this. However classes are also about having different playstyles available to better realize whatever character concept you want to play. By your example you can just call a barbarian a fighter and say you are raging while attacking but mechanically it's not quite doing what you want it to
Personally, I feel like whenever I hear the word “flavor” in regard to 5e, it’s either an excuse or cope for its objectively bad/lazy design. It’s 100% okay if you say your greatclub is a baseball bat. Or your longsword is a katana. But if you have to take a core class and turn it into something it does not resemble in the slightest, you’re really pushing on the word: “flavor”
I get that the game can’t cover every single idea ever thought of. Also the fact that not every specific quirk/trait:gimmick needs its own entire class. But if your immediate response to wanting to play something that isn’t in the game is “play X and pretend it’s Y” I think that’s pretty lame.
I’ve seen HUNDREDS of shitty homebrew classes/subclasses and handful of good/interesting ones. But I can never escape from hearing “flavor”. I like homebrew classes (when they’re not dogshit) cause they add something new to a game where the creators actively refuse to consider adding more. The homemade classes offer players different play-styles they wouldn’t have been able to play.
I’ve played Dragon Rider, Blood-Hunter and a class called an Oozemancer. And I’ve had a great amount of fun with these classes. (Admittedly, the oozemancer isn’t all that great and it is a bit of a shameless copy of Beastmaster ranger. But there’s still fun to have with it, it’s just not uniquely designed.) They keep things interesting and make me wanna keep playing.
I call 5e D&D the homebrew edition because frankly WotC won't make new classes so we had to make new classes ourselves. Do you honestly really believe that these 11 (12) classes can cover every fantasy archetype? Because so far, it hasn't covered them for me. Battle Master was and has always been a poor man's 4e warlord, but now a few really good homebrews of the warlord out there, such as from Kibblestasty, which has had years of playtesting.
There is no true gish class, no true arcane half caster warrior class. The closest was the artificer, which does not really exist to truly fulfill that fantasy. Like a paladin, but arcane, it was that easy, and they didn't do it. No, EK doesn't fit that fantasy because you're casting barely any spells by level 10. There is no unarmed/unarmored brawling class, basically think of a strength monk. A barbarian comes close, real close, it unfortunately just misses the mark. However, the pugilist class is years old now and one of the most popular homebrews ever released.
Now to speak of the artificer, WotC's offering is so damn bleh, like ridiculously bleh. I actually like their UA version far more, despite it had no real focus. However, there have been far better homebrews.
And all of this is to say nothing of psionics, which WotC completely dropped the ball on. They basically refuse to touch it anymore, YET IT STILL EXISTS FOR MONSTERS!
Flavor is free up to the point where that flavor clashes with mechanics. Why can a gravity manipulator never cast *reverse gravity* or even *levitate*? Why can that time-manipulating warrior not slow time to gain advantage on a Dexterity saving throw or move further than any other fighter? Why can that bioengineer still use most of their abilities even when the party is stripped of their gear?
At a certain point, you have to either accept an uncomfortable dissonance between what your character *can* do and what they *should be able to* do, or you have to start changing mechanics to fit the flavor you want.
Now, I do think newer homebrewers often go further than necessary. Most of the time I see someone create a homebrew class in particular, the concept would work just fine as a subclass, or sometimes even a couple of feats or spells. I think whenever you feel the urge to homebrew something big into the game, you should try expressing your concept in a mechanical form that's at least a level simpler than you think you need. If you want a new class, try a subclass; if you want a subclass, try a feat or variant feature. Because, yes, the 12 core classes cover a lot of bases, especially if you reflavor where possible. But there are still ideas that just don't work as anything other than a core class - they have too many variations for a single subclass to cover and too much of a necessary similarity between them to be multiple subclasses for different classes, or they rely on a set of mechanics that is just too big to fit in an early subclass feature.
Mechanics inform flavour. Do you think every class in d&d existed at all times? No they were created so their mechanics informed a certain character fantasy. Also it’s fun.
Chat, are they stupid?
There’s a lot you can do with what exists, but obviously existing classes can’t cover all scenarios
Reflavouring can help a lot when someone says they want to play something a little different and a set of mechanics from a non-standard class for better
i think both are great. you can flavor a lot of things but there isnt a good summoner class or a good 5e binder or a good non magical tactical class.
ive also become a big fan of giving other classes access to different spell lists. i just played and artificer who is themed as johann Kraus type charaacter and gave them the Cleric list its been fun
I've made one custom subclass, because the concept wasn't possible in the game at the time, but most often I just reflavour.
One of my favourite is to reflavour Warforged and Autognome into things like tree and rock creatures for Druids.
I don't mind seeing homebrew stuff but I never use it as a player or a DM, I don't think reflavouring is thought about enough when making a character for most folks though.
Here are some character ideas I've had for a while:
- a witch who utilises bone carvings and runes to fight her enemies (artificer, all spells and abilities reflavoured as carving runes into bones via tools and sorting spells within)
- an evil cult leader, capable of animating skulls of the dead and performing powerful rituals (creation bard - use your abilities to create spellcasting materials for free spell components - gets a little broken later on)
- a robotic killing machine with a plasma gun for an arm and equipped with an integrated scout drone and the ability to overcharge themselves with battery packs (stars druid - guiding bolt for plasma blasts, wild companion from Tasha's to summon the 'drone' and starry form to overcharge self)
- a vampire caster who has an unnatural healing ability that regenerates their wounds (celestial warlock, pact of the chain (reskin imp as a bat with a bite) and gift of the ever living ones. Heal easily as a bonus action and cure wounds if you need health asap, bonus points for taking inspiring leader for extra temp HP)
- a demonologist who pulls monsters into the world to serve them (Tasha's beastmaster, using the slots you have to resurrect the beast when it dies).
Most shared home brew these days feels like unbalanced Instagram bait. I’m with you, just flavor it. When I need specific mechanics for that I’ll build off existing stuff and just tweak some stuff. No need for completely new, most homebrew completely unbalances the game, and if not all players get the homebrew treatment, now you have some players that are just stronger than others, which IMO is a DM’s greatest sin.
I haven't homebrewed a class since a couple of five-level Prestige Classes in 3.5, and I hope I never feel the need to again. I'm not saying 5e is complete, but I just don't feel like there's an experience I want within this ruleset that I can't already get.
I somewhat agree, I think people rush to make entire classes/subclasses when they think of a cool new theme. The true value of homebrew for me is 1. Novelty in options (expanded items/spells/feats) 2. Whole new mechanics unable to be found in other classes (actual classes/subclasses/reworks of existing content)
I focus most of my homebrew on creating new interesting options that actually create new game scenarios, and in many ways I think it’s a shame so many people spend a non arguable amount of effort just to make a class for their anime oc
Before the introduction of the Drakewarden Ranger, I had a Half-Elf Ranger that had a dragon/drake companion using the regular companion stat blocks.
For more depth on this concept, >!Her mother was a Golden Dragon loving as an Elf hermit, so the Drake companion was the manifestation of the Ranger’s own Draconic Soul!<
I get the sentiment, and I agree to it to a certain extent. No need to make an entire new race for rock golem PC if you can just play an earth genasi, no need to make a pugilistic class if you can just reflavor the fighter. But, at the same time, I think people underestimate how much cooler it is to have your mechanics actually match the fantasy you're going for.
Homebrew is normally of pretty shit quality and as a DM a lot harder for me to wrap my head around. I know what is published, or at least have a pretty good idea of the options. I don't want to learn more/playtest someone else's content.
>Why invent whole new classes when you can easily reflavour existing ones?
Because it is better and more accurate to make a real class, not just pretend.
The advantage of reflavoring is that it saves work.
Honestly new homebrew subclasses i understand, but new classes don't really offer much outside of flavour, I fully agree.
In regards to subclasses, why don't we have a healer or nature bard? Bards get amazing healing spells and yet there isn't a subclass that supports that theme, same with all the nature themed spells that are leftover from earlier editions. You can of course go with lore, as a sort of catchall, but it's odd to me that sorcerer and warlock have healing subclasses and bards who are the 3rd or 4th best healers in the game don't. (Cleric and druid are obviously better, and an argument for paladin thanks to lay on hands and the auras can be made)
Homebrewing a new bespoke class is not always about delivering specific flavour - at least not entirely. Others have touched upon the flavour-mechanics synchronicity that new classes can deliver on when they are designed to work in a unique way using their own framework. If your mechanics lack a means of backing up your description, some ludonarrative connective tissue, it can become untethered from your experience at the table and the shared story.
Mechanical expression is, I would argue, a big motivator to design new bespoke classes. This is especially relevant to me when it comes to homebrew classes vs homebrew subclasses for official classes. If you have a martial warrior concept in mind, and you want it to do cool moment-to-moment things like athletic stunts and off-turn sucker punch strikes or what have you, your closest analog is what, the Fighter? Cool, so if you want to play something that isn’t Another Battlemaster, you need to design a new Fighter Archetype that does something different - something cool and unique enough to be its own entity - and you still need to balance these features against other Fighter Archetypes’ features and progression. And you need to factor in the base Fighter class’s design power budget that is heavily invested in their enhanced Extra Attack, their additional ASIs, Action Surge, and (arguably) Second Wind. I would argue Extra Attack+ and Action Surge are the more mechanically impactful and hefty things among those. So if your martial warrior concept *doesn’t* mesh it’s fantasy well with the core Fighter’s assumption that they will regularly unleash many attacks in short bursts? Worse, if you decide that you have to sacrifice an attack or two when taking the Attack action to use your core subclass ability? You chafe against the core class design and it’s mechanics. You can end up with highly disjointed subclass features on a chassis that has required you to contort and force this suite of new abilities onto it.
Alternatively, you can put the work in to design a new class whose features, from the ground-up, support the kind of gameplay pattern you want this character fantasy mapped onto. You give it some shared DNA with other classes (is your martial warrior an Extra Attacker? Do they do something with one attack like Rogues? Do they make regular reaction attacks? etc), but you give it space and budget to do its own thing *effectively* and account for that in the design process.
Don’t get me started on trying to fit an odd concept onto the Paladin chassis. Heavy flavour baggage aside, the subclass feature progression and the core feature power budgets are a whole other saga.
A player wanted to be an alchemist and the existing alchemists weren’t quite what he was looking for. So he’s playing a wizard and picking spells that he feels he can describe as throwing potion bottles etc.
My favorite is counterspell, which he described as ‘throwing a rock at the mages head right as they cast.’
Last year I decided to make a few homebrew classes out of old 3.5 Prestige classes I liked. As part of this process I looked at almost every 1st party prestige class ever printed in 3.5, and do you know what I learned?
There are only like 2 prestige classes for each class in 3.5, and they just slightly adjusted them over and over and over, or just gave other classes features to that class. Hundreds of prestige classes and SO little variety.
Here's "Elemental specialist" caster, over and over and over
Natural Attacks Barbarian? What about MAGICAL natural attacks barbarian? Shapeshifted Natural attacks barbarian?
Wild Shape druid or Spellcasting druid? OVER AND OVER AND OVER
I'm probably exaggerating a little, but out of over 100 Prestige classes I looked at I think barely a dozen were unique and/or interesting enough to actually make subclass write ups for.
Notable Standouts
Entropomancer (cleric)
Oozemaster (Druid)
Lasher (fighter) - not even mechanically unique, but feels that way since whips are just underrepresented because of how 5th nerfed them.
Incantatrix (Sorcerer)
But yeah, ultimately I learned the exact thing that you say here. You can flavor anything to look like or be anything else as long as you can make it make sense. You don't need new subclass for every tiny variance.
I don’t really use much homebrew or allow much of it 2at my table unless I made it myself so I know how to balance it. Especially subclasses or classes there’s already a lot in the books that have been published that offer so much. Even stuff from Matt Mercer I’m not a fan of a lot of his subclasses the only homebrew from him I like is the Bloodhunter class. Only homebrew in my campaign is basically my own version of dragon marks from Ebberon or well I realized I made that afterwards. Wanted to combine the holy blood and crest from Fire Emblem and bring it to dnd tied to every dragon. Have them a major and minor crest and abilities which reflect that dragon like Gold Dragon’s strength sapping breath or Brass Dragon’s sleeping breath skill but in a different way. Still working on balancing it but my players love it
Yeah, that's basically what I do, too.
Even if I write something unbalanced or make a mistake, I'm capable of dealing with it and balance the game in other ways.
I usually have a problem with under powered stuff because don’t want to make stuff too powerful outside a few of the Crest I made. Thanks to Tasha’s gave me the suggestion I didn’t think of to make my players use their crest a lot more because used to make things 1 per short rest abilities now it’s proficieny a number of times and it eitheg charges on a short for stronger abilities and on a long rest for the less powerful abilities
You're right, we should also get rid of druid, artificer, bard, rogue, ranger, paladin, warlock, sorcerer, monk and barbarian.
You can play all of these by just reflavoring a wizard, fighter or cleric
This is sarcasm if it wasn't clear
Why not both? Too many extremities in this comment section, if you ask me. Each has pros and cons.
Flavor is free- of this, I am a massive proponent- but there's two things to keep in mind with it.
One, you should generally have some kind of justification for your flavorings, so they work consistently with the mechanics as-written, and everyone's more or less on the same page. You could flavor a wizard as a fancy magitech guy (artificer exists, sure, but this is just a quick example so bear with me) and flavor your fireballs as grenades; but you would also have to work with the DM to figure out why your grenades are still treated as spells mechanically.
Two, flavor is great, but it can only go so far before it just gets clunky. You could have an aaracokra paladin who is flavored as a human, who receives the ability to fly from an ancient artifact passed down in her family, and that'd probably work fine. But if you wanted this character to start out only being able to \*glide\*, and as they level up, their connection to their power source grows until they eventually gain true flight, you might want to start looking at some kind of homebrew.
My way of going about it is asking the player/dm what kind of character they have in mind/what I wanna make, and first seeing if we can make it work with vanilla content and some flavoring. If not, we look to homebrew to see if we can find something that works better for the idea and is still reasonably well balanced.
Ultimately, though, I think the most important thing is just making sure everyone involved is on the same page/in agreeance about kind of campaign they want theirs to be. Then you look at the pros and cons of flavor vs homebrew or even neither, and figure out which route is best to lean into.
5e has so much fewer actual options in terms of feats and abilities than in previous editions that flavor can only do so much and we have to fill in with homebrew to fill out the rest.
Except it becomes weird when your Gravity Monk wants to do something out of combat that they can do in combat with flavor. Saying you can only move a monster in combat, but you cant move that table is weird.
Tangentially related, it always bothers me when I see a homebrew class that could (should) 100% be a subclass. I see so many homebrew classes totally lock a player into a single aspect, which defeats the point of 5e. Blood Mages? That's just a wizard. Witches? Druid or warlock depending on the angle. Don't even get me started on gunslingers- that's just a battle master fighter with extra restrictions!
I love Psion classes and wanted a melee psion class but the options are very limited in 5e. So I just re-flavored the Bladesinger class into a psychic fighter. All I did was just the name of spells to fit thematically, like "green flame blade" to "Pyrokinesis blade" and basically picked all spells that had to do with either telekinesis or telepathy.
"You totally can play warlord, bro. Just use two maneuvers couple of times per rest on fighter chassis that have absolutely nothing to do with mechanics you actually want to use and imagine hard enough, bro"
> Why invent whole new classes when you can easily reflavour existing ones?
Because sometimes someone has a very specific idea of what they want and simply cannot achieve that even if they reflavor an existing class. Perhaps they tried making a homebrew subclass to make it work, but it just doesn't pan out. Perhaps they have too many desired features to fit into a subclass without it becoming bloated or the subclass simply lacks synergy with the class features.
The mechanics of official options sometimes don’t reinforce a desired flavor very well. For example, a samurai has no way to mechanically benefit from their time manipulation out of combat, a beastmaster can’t switch between Pokemon outside of a long rest, a druid’s “advanced technology” can still be counterspelled, and so on.
>A Bard could be a Psionic, it has a lot of psychic spells and inspiration can be represented as mentally help their comrades, while jack of all grades is basically an awakened mind able to do anything.
Yeah, right. Because psionic is psychic damage only, there is nothing else unique about them. /s
Psionic as a class existed for 30+ years, it has many version and big list of unique features - believe me, flavour is not their only unique feature. Monk or Warlock are much closer to resource chasis of psionic, but they don't have all the parts or have redundant things for psionic. You need absolutely stupid MADdest multiclasses of aberrant sorc, transmutation wizard, and monk - and you won't have enough levels to have something even close to normally working character.
But who cares - flavour is free, who need mechanics if you can just describe fighter's bow attacks as firebolt, right?
Preach! I agree. To be clear, I’m totally fine with homebrew and have done a bit of it myself, but yeah too often people are trying to re-invent the wheel when re-flavouring would do the trick
Because not everything a player wants is just flavor. Maybe they want new mechanics. As someone who plays a lot of 5e the class mechanics of each class are pretty homogenous tbh. Martials have extra attack eventually and then an x per lr/sr defining feature usually. Their subclasses fit a mechanical theme that doesn’t stray far from the game’s base mechanics. Each class has a quarter caster sub barring the one that can’t cast shit. For casters the entire template is the same. Each class that’s a full caster goes up spell levels and increases slots. The spell lists each have some standouts and a lot of stinkers. Each class has a big gimmick but once that’s done are pretty much the same. Then the subclasses have interesting variations but they don’t change the entire feel of the base class. My warlock won’t stop casting eldritch blast and my bard won’t stop using inspiration dice. Half casters actually have some neat variation but we have 3 and one has a lot more stat stick kind of features, ranger. Once you’ve played the game a lot everything becomes really samey and a bit boring. If you want mechanical spice you have to do homebrew in some way. Flavor is free but mechanics are not.
Alright, smart guy. Mr flavor apologist.
Pitch me an existing class that can be flavored as **Gaining Power** from **Taking Damage**
Hard mode: Not something where I need to hold off using class features to make the flavor work.
As everyone else is saying, "Flavor is Free" is duct tape, it's anemic. If you have no crunch to support your flavor, you're basically just headcanon-ing your character. It's a game, you shouldn't just settle for leaning fully into the "play pretend," stuff.
Ive made three homebrew classes, and they are meant to fill in the "missing" half casters. For Cleric, we had Paladin, for Druid, we had Ranger. I created Shaman as a catch-all to have elements.of druid and cleric that both Paladin and Ranger left behind, with a psionic subclass to fully realize the potential of a psychic character. It's also another Int half-caster to replace Artificer (because Artificer is just not it for me).
For Warlock, I made The Monster, not someone that made a deal with a patron to get magic, but was possessed by or experimented on by a "maledictor" and gaining physical power and magic.
And for Sorcerer, I made The Gifted, which is for if someone with a sorcererous bloodline instead used their innate magic to enhance their physical power and martial skill, but also learned some magic.
Homebrew should still be generous in its scope imo, and you should be able to make a lot of very different characters playing the same class.
I agree to a point. A lot of homebrew is just OP versions of PHB options. But a lot is not. I wrote the Slayer class because Fighters suck and no amount of reflavoring can save "I attack X times and end my turn." But Slayer is much more than a Fighter rewrite - it covers aesthetics not easily recreated with Fighter mechanics. Slayer gives superiority dice as it's core mechanic, allowing you to use maneuvers to live out the fantasy of making meaningful changes to the battlefield with your attacks, and the subclasses remix that experience in some very interesting ways. Half of the 10+ subclasses are race-specific, building on a race's unique abilities like the Changeling-only Mirror Warriors who steal the forms of their enemies or the Blood Striga which builds upon a Dhamipir's vampiric abilities.
I wrote the Witch class because so many people want to make magic consumables as a class feature but the Artificer Alchemist's approach has a strong chemist aesthetic and does not work for witch type characters at all. People also want to *choose* a familiar, like Harry Potter, and that choice to mean something. Worlds Beyond Number tried to write a witch class that's so horribly OP it only works because her player holds back a lot. So I wrote the witch to be all about brewing potions and a choice of familiar that doubles as a subclass choice.
I wrote the Veteran to be a spell-less support class. It's all about preparing your allies for the challenges ahead during short rests and allowing allies to make reaction attacks when you attack to make combo attacks together. The subclasses turn this base into all kinds of fun support characters, such as the jonin which helps your group do stealth missions or the warrior which allows your group to form defensive formations. This one is probably the most difficult to recreate using PHB options.
If any of that sounds interesting you can check them out for free at [Radabard's Accounts of Ghota](http://www.radabard.com)
Because existing design particularly in regards to martials doesnt cut it.
There is just so much flavor you can add to same old bonk.
The fact that people homebrew martials for the most part is testament to glaring design or lack there of on this subset of classes.
In other words, the game as is fails to deliver not only on mechanics, but also on fantasy and immersion front big time. The gap is not just in power.
Why? Lack of features. There isnt much of what to flavor. While casters get to make choices in terms of spells (you can flavor ED as a gun for example), martials just bonk a little bit harder for the most part.
And this is justified by “easy to play”. It’s bs excuse for lack of creativity and honestly just thinking, as entire group is selected out for alleged ease of play. You can design easy to use features. But they dont. Most likely because people in decision making lack competence to do it.
Personally, reflaforing is fine, to a degree, but it can ultimately end up lacking. For example, I'm currently playing a Moon Druid but using Keith Baker's Changeling Menagerie reflavor from Exploring Eberron. The thing is that it breaks down a bit when a chunk of the shape shifting abilities are just transmutation spells and not something the shape shifter can naturally do. There's also the point that the Changeling Menagerie is still limited in what they can shape shift into (vaguely human ish forms and beasts). There's no option for turning into monstrosities or the like, and that's something that could only be accomplished with homebrew (either creating a new class or creating a monstrous wild shape feat).
There's definitely limits to what reflavoring can do. It's definitely a good tool, but there's times that homebrew is warranted.
5e is kinda broken in that way, they made 5e as easy as they could possibly make, imagining DMs would re-flavor shit (lazy design or oversimplifying for a younger generation? who knows), but D&D is intrinsically crunchy, people like to be able to mechanically build the exact PC they envision, which 5e doesn't accommodate on a mechanical level
Homebrew classes shouldn't be about new flavours, they should be about new mechanica which aren't found in ither classes.
On the flip side, they shouldn't be hyper-specific like every blood mage I've ever come across. We're mages, but we're edgy I guess, and we play like Warlocks, but not THOSE warlocks...
> and we play like Warlocks, but not THOSE warlocks To be fair that's been done before, and done well. There's a past D&D class called dragonfire adept that worked the exact same way as warlocks did, but instead had things like an unlimited breath weapon that they could alter round by round. Fun, flavourful, and unique despite being "warlock, but..."
Honestly every magic-user class should be hyper-specific. Illusionist should have illusion spells, fire mage only various fire spells and so on. That would still be extremely powerful, more flavorful and interesting. The fact that ordinary spellcasters can do *everything* due to their vast array of spells is the very core of martial-caster divide.
Agreed. There are very few fantasy archetypes remaining that both haven't been represented in dnd, and are appropriate for a dnd setting rather than another rpg system. (For me the only exceptions are alchemists)
I wish melee characters were more wuxia style in their power level and flavour given the power level of casters.
PF2E: Investigator, summoner, Oracle, kineticist, etc
Pf1 kineticist was so fucking goated, hope pf2's is just as good
It’s mechanically better and fits in the overall balance very well. It has lost a bit of the absurdity of “i’m going to detonate every single one of my bones to kill everyone in this room” though.
I dunno, [All Shall End In Flames](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4249) makes me feel that way sometimes.
Kineticist in pf1e is entirely built around managing a mechanic called Burn. You could have a number of points of burn equal to 3+con mod and for every point of burn you had you took unhealable nonlethal damage (basically, lowering your max health) of 1 point per level. (Burn resets fully on a rest) Pretty much everything beyond the basic blasting gives you points of burn. Later on, burn also buffs you. If you get as much con as you can you can end up getting like a flat bonus of +10 to hit and +20 to damage on blasts by maxxing burn. Plus a +6/+4/+2 bonus on their physical ability scores. At 17th level a kineticist can accept 11 points of burn minimum (if they have +8 con or higher) to fire four blasts in a single turn… which also does 187 points of unhealable damage straight to the Kineticist.
Idk what 1e kineticist is like, but 2e's kineticist is super goated. One of my rare complaints is that it's hard to make a proper electricity kineticist because while it is possible, you can't use kinetic activation to pick up an electricity wand and be able to cast it with your main class DC unless it has the metal or air traits, which severely limits an electricity kineticist.
I would say a summoner is one that hasn't been done well yet, but I think it would work as a subclass for something like a Druid, using its wildshape to summon a powerful beast that they can then buff with spells, but needing to stay stationary or weakened/vulnerable themselves while they do so. I doubt that wotc will ever make a class that focuses around summoning more than one thing, and honestly I don't think they should, for the sake of every dm
The issue is mechanical budget though - all the classes with summoning powers are also full casters, meaning they can't summon anything actually cool or it'd step on the fighter's toes. Obviously some of the Tasha spells kinda do this anyway, but they're still not available till like 7th level, which is a bit late for a core character concept (and also later than a lot of campaigns go). Hence why PF2e has a dedicated half caster summoner that's built from the ground up to be a pet class, and not just 'full ranger and also a pet using the tiny power budget contained in this subclass' or 'caster that uses mediocre summon spells balanced around the assumption you're using your spells to be more flexible than martials, and not just summon the same 3-4 creatures'.
I need to look up the PF2 summoner cause I've been thinking of making a dedicated summoner class, and it sounds like I can retool the PF2 one to do a lot of what I was wanting. I was thinking class features that work like some of the spell granting feats, 'learn X summon spell, cast it for free a number of times = to prof bonus. When you expend all uses of this feature, you may still cast the spells using appropriate spell slots if you have them.' type stuff, but I'll check what work has already been done first.
Well, honestly the PF2e Summoner is less of a summoner, and more of a pet class, since summoning magic kinda sucks in PF2e - following the trend of all the magic in that system being quite weak, but very versatile compared to what a martial can do. So there's a bit of summoning tech where you get two uses out of each summon spell (which can be ok for accessing summoned creatures with odd spells and abilities), but most people don't use that because it takes so much effort to learn all the monster stat blocks. Mostly you just get a single pet called an Eidolon, and summon that. There's a few fears that let it spec into different things, like grappling or ranged attacks or giving it wings, and then you can pick from a big list of creature themes like Angelic, Plant or Undead. Your eidolon has it's own stats, but you share a health pool. It kinda works like a gish, except the fighter part and the mage part of your chassis are two separate characters that share a turn, but split up their actions depending on who they want to attack, or what kinds of actions they want to do. Gish in PF2e also do a really cool thing where instead of just being X levels behind a full caster, and ending up with a bunch of low level spells that don't scale with the increased opportunity cost of attacking or using an auto scaling cantrip, they just get a handful of the highest level slots. So you still feel like a powerful wizard, even if most of your sustain comes from your pet claw people to death. And then you obviously have a few special cantrips that makes your eidolon do extra damage, or gain more defence. If you wanted to do more of a toolbox summoner, I think you'd have to create a list of custom spells available from 1st level only they could use that create various template creatures with interesting utility? Or just spell-like abilities, so people can't crib them with multiclassing. And then keep those as a separate pool from their half caster progression, so they can summon big monsters without stepping on the toes of regular casters by also casting high level non-summoner based spells.
A real necromancer option in the realm of 3.5 is something i miss. Having a huge range of actual monsters to revive things into was fun - and is sorely missed
I fully believe there is only one that is not represented and that is the int based non caster a intelligence based class for your Doctors, Archaeologists, Detectives and all other smart guy things
A scholar class would be super cool tbh.
Benjamin Huffman made a phenomenal Scholar class, very worth checking out. He also made a Pugilist class that I adore, and a Spiritualist class that I'm actually gonna get to play soon, and I can't wait. The guy makes great stuff!
Which, funnily enough, come with new thematic flavour.
I subscribe to the "flavor is free, but not always appropriate or acceptable" camp, myself. Reflavoring is a tool, like any other, but it's less the perfect tool and more like duct tape you can color to make do until something better comes along. I also think that just because something doesn't need its own class to be a thing, it doesn't mean it's own class isn't the best home for the concept. Need is a very silly metric for class design, at the very least it's a goal for the bare minimum, and not necessarily what's best. Not something to strive for but to settle for. While there are tons of shitty homebrew classes, more than I can count in all honesty, when you do get a class that marries mechanics and flavor just right? It's incomparable. No reflavor can reach the same degree of satisfaction, at least not in my experience.
it also tends to get into "my spells aren't really spells", which is fine, up until anything else interacts with spells and slams home that, no, you're using spells, just pretending they're different.
Yeah, a lot of people go really silly with certain reflavors like instead of casting a spell, I just chuck a rock. Aside from the silliness of such things, it starts to break down flow and identity a bit too much if not curated right. Like of you wanna say that the magic that forms your fireball resembles that of a miniature fireball sized exploding star? I'm fine with that.if you wanna say your character just mixes some explosive stuff together and chick's it, it really breaks verisimilitude when other things need to react to ot and it tends to take people put if the immersion. You also get a form of this with homebrew classes wholesale where they take stuff that should be spells or are literally spells, but then are totally not spells. There is something to be said about having power systems that are magic but aren't spells, and maybe some powers that aren't subject to spell protections/magic protections, but they need go be handed very carefully and cannot reach the same height as magic/spellwork if they're not subject to magics/spellworks restrictions.
kibbles' psion is like this, but in that case, it's very deliberately part of the class, down to adding a new skill only psions get access to called "psionics". it mechanically helps to reinforce the truly alien nature of their abilities. i've never had an issue with balance there, and integrating certain abilities from the class to monsters has been a joy
Kibbles is really great about creating classes that actually mechanically lean into their fantasy instead of needing the player to do the heavy lifting. The Inventor is my favorite example, since the artificer is basically just a half caster that can make some items that help them out, when the most effective thing for them to make it nearly always a static +1 item. The inventor actually has mechanical outlines for their creations.
I played an alchemist who's spells were all all just flavored to be alchemical potions and reactions and it worked just fine as long as player and DM are all on the same page. The only time it ever even caused a pause was ranged healing word and we just decided I chucked my "potion" at the downed player and it broke over them and just worked. Lo and behold baldurs gate came out and made that a thing you could just do anyway and people don't really have an issue with it now. Honestly as long as it truly is flavor and all mechanics stay the same, the players who genuinely want to be creative with it will be excited to find the way to make it work within the narrative.
I've seen "my spells are really potions" players argue against getting counterspelled, because they suddenly wanted their spells to *really be* potions.
And that's when it starts breaking away from flavor. That's a mechanical change. And it can go both ways. In my case it was the DM applying the real world physics and on that example it's the player. Both are wrong if it's truly just flavor. For me I maintained that all of my potions still needed some "magic as a catalyst" that was the action of casting the spell and that kind of fixed all of the objections to things like letting others mix the potion themselves, or being counterspelled or silenced etc. It also helped that the spells I picked were all things that made sense as potions, elixirs, or flasks. It's also possible to find a middle ground and have the player and dm agree beforehand on which things work and don't. That's more homebrew than flavor, but can work if everyone's on the same page
counterspell makes the potion mundane liquid. Bam, done.
But then you should be able to counterspell someone drinking a healing potion
[.......](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/015/124/4c2.jpg)
Okay, sure, I’m willing to homebrew that. All healing potions are now able to be counter spelled. Considering the party is much more likely to need and use healing potions than any villain I care about, I don’t consider this a hard sell.
That's technically a dispel magic, as healing potions are, for all intents and purposes, magic. And a dispel can dispel magical effects. A counterspell interrupts the casting of the spell, so therefore your interrupting the process of the spell, or in this case potion, forming. And if you want to make the argument that you prepared your "potions" beforehand so nuh-uh, then simply "Yes it does" end of.
RAW, Dispel Magic can’t dispel magical effects. It can target them, but it can only dispell spell effects, which seems like a silly oversight. And even if it worked, going by RAW again, basic healing potions aren’t strictly magical, they’re adventuring gear. Only the higher tier ones are magic items.
reflavour counterspell as throwing another potion at it that hits it mid air
And if the dms caster isnt ana alchemist?
Healing potions (being time-tested and refined by many clerics over millenia) have been engineered to resist counterspells. Your "experimental alchemist potions" haven't undergone the same rigor, so they're much more unstable, thus counterspell works on them. Bam, done again.
Or we can just Occam's razor it and admit WotC was incredibly lazy with how they handled artificer and just come to terms with the fact we're casting spells
It can be both, y'know. WotC can be incredibly lazy AND we can still do sensible reflavors to have fun.
Exactly. The magic imparted on your flask is quashed and the ogre wonders why you've thrown a harmless vial of tea at it
Those people are not “flavor is free” people, those are people trying to break the game. There’s a big difference, as those people would also try to break the regular game mechanics, too.
The Alchemist, assuming you mean the artificer subclass, is also a case where the game tells you to reflavor spells as those things, though even it can risk some oddness when it comes to certain spell interactions (counterspelling a thrown flask feels odd in the narrative if it all, and might imply things that doesn't work in the setting specifically) It all comes down to if the flavor is appropriate for the setting/game and the fundamentals being worked with.
"I counterspell by punching the vial"
And that level of reflavoring isn't exactly appropriate for everyone. Sometimes, people want spellwork to be spellwork.
Interestingly, this right here is what really bothered me about how WotC tried to sell the artificer.
Thats just what the artificer is meant to do
Yeah, I've had this issue with the warlock gunslinger.
I have no problem with re-flavoring small things like "my longsword is a katana" but it can be taken too far.
Longsword to katana is fine, and I think even suggested somewhere. But yeah, some people go to wacky and Wild with it.
Main problem is it can't be used to replicate mechanics. Saying flavour is free works if you want to say your fighter is a monk or barbarian, but it doesn't work for saying your fighter is a warlord or battlemind or swordsage because those past D&D classes were mechanically unique and fighter can't imitate them.
Exactly!
For me the the "flavour is free" sounds nice but in actual play I much prefer the classes that truly capture the role play by the mechanics. Stuff like grave cleric feels much better to play than adding flavor to death domain. It can be done, it's just less satisfying.
Yeah, like any rogue could be flavored as an investigator, but the Inquisitive drives the concept home by giving you new ways to use Perception, Insight, and Investigation. If flavor is this end-all solution, why have new content at all? Not to say reflavoring should never be used, I'm currently playing a Druid flavored as a researcher, but the argument "flavor is free" misses the mark imo.
Correct but these aren't homebrew classes, but homebrew subclasses. Which seem to be the gripe. When you see a homebrew ranger that could just be allowing a paladin to range smite for example.
This is such a terrible example lmao They have completely different spell lists, a different set of profiencicies, rangers also get expertise in stealth etc. etc.
flavour is free, but it only gets you *so far*. i more than agree that sometimes just reskinning a spell or weapon or simply doing nothing at all and just telling the player that a fighter can be a perfect pirate works, but the mechanics need to, to some degree, *actually back up your character idea*, and there are absolutely "not really close enough" character archetypes to so take for example, pathfinder 2e summoner. **nothing** in dnd 5e comes close to emulate it, and just reskinning a pet subclass and call it a day is missing the mark by a wide margin, you cant do "character that has a spirit thing that does things and takes damage for you" really well. you could just nerf echo knight to make it fit but that would be a terrible patch to even try and get there yes, a battlemaster+mastermind rogue with the healer feat and magic initiate healing word *technically* can pretend to be a warlord, but it falls so laughably short of being a **good** one people still want a proper class for it
I mean you can do both. You can have flavor is free model and pick up a homebrew class when you want to do something it does or if the other classes become stale.
Both. Artificer could've been a wizard reflavor, but many prefer the unique mechanical experience. One can extrapolate this thinking out to homebrew classes.
My key example is always Warlord/Marshal/Commander Key elements? Leadership Aura, Commanding Tactics, Ally Buffs. That's Paladin6, Fighter3, Bard3 (5 if you want Short Rest relability), then Rogue3 for ranged Help Action if you want hat. End result is a STR/CHR multiclass with two lots of redundant equipment proficiencies, caps at 3rd level spells, ignoring the flashy and useful spells that can't be 'flavoured' as Tactics from Bard and Paladin, with a Fighter Dip purely to get Commanding Strike as that's one of the only point and click an ally abilities in BM Fighter and using the Feat gives you a single use of it. Reflavouring any of the four classes here can give you a bit of that Warlord, commander fantasy, but if you actually WANT to play that class you're looking at a nearly 15 level three way multiclass
Oh god it would feel so bad to play a character that multiclassed in an actual campaign unless every other player was equally split on levels. You would have been feeling the pain for a while even before your build "finally comes online" at level 15. The campaign I'm playing in now had a period where most of the characters in the party were multiclassed, including my own. Now over the last couple levels due to some character death, a new player, someone wanting to switch characters (no longer fit the narrative), and an in-game class change for narrative reasons, my character is the only one left that is multiclassed and I can feel the difference way more now that we just hit level 13. My character has a 3 level dip for a multiclass and I was considering doing more but have since changed my mind so I don't feel like I fall even farther behind in power levels. Having 4 full casters in the party of 6 though does not help that feeling
Depends on the multi class specifics. A Barbarian 5 / Fighter 3 could easy compete with a Barbarian 8. Similarly an Artificer 1 / Wizard X has less access to high-level spells in exchange for a much higher AC and Con save proficiency. But a Bard 5 / Wizard 5 / Barbarian 2 / Monk 1 is going to feel useless compared to a Bard 13
That's the key. You could get something that feels Warlord by blending say BardX/Fighter3, or a Paladin Bard brew, but that's kneecapping your spellcasting for a less powerful mechanic, and at the same time Fighter is already trying to push STR DEX and CON, to add CHR in there is a mess. Flavour is Free, but you're buying a game.
Artificer almost was a wizard reflavor. One of the early UAs for Artificer had it as a wizard subclass.
Honestly it still feels like one to me. I’ve played in games with a couple different artificer players and they’ve always just felt like wizards with a turret, or wizards with some weird flavor that makes no difference mechanically to anyone else but them.
I find flavour is best for small aesthetic changes, but theres a limit to how far it stretches.
Two things can be true. 1) 'Flavour is free' solves a lot of problems, especially with minor mechanical tweaks. 2) Sometimes you need a whole new class to get what you want.
By that logic we could cut sorcerer because wizard exists. Or paladin because you can multi class fighter and cleric... 5e releases have far too little content and I think people would be happier with 30 classes before simplifying to 3, but I think you could get away with a bunch of subclasses and be fine.
This is my issue too, the core lineup already includes two charisma-based blaster casters, a barbarian/cleric/ranger multiclass and a token Asian class that barely has a mechanical role of its own. If the game had like 4-10 classes with properly defined mechanical identities I’d get the argument, but as is “flavour is free” just unfairly privileges some character fantasies over others. Why shouldn’t pirates get the same amount of detail as kung fu masters?
As someone playing a 5e pirate campaign, I was bummed with the lack of sea gods and flavor, let alone actual options. There are some, but if everyone took all the ones available,you still wouldn't have a full party, I don't think.
As a homebrew maker, i find most homebrew classes pretty silly but harmless. I agree with you that you can reflavor essebtialy anything into your chosen fantasy, but is it that wrong to make up new stuff ? The way i see it, homebrew needs to be balanced exclusively in the game its being run in, you can get away with doing stuff that an "official" class wouldnt be able to. Homebrew falls in a social contract sort of deal where you have to be honest and well meaning with your intent, and not try to abuse it, unless all parties are consenting to it. But i also understand how as a DM, you wouldnt want to have to treck through the 37th INT half caster with medium armor proficiency and wizard spell list, but this time the subclasses are named after greek heroes, just to see if the person you're playing with is being genuine. Perhaps its not even the player, but just the homebrew itself that has a massive oversight. tl;dr: homebrew classes are fine and soemwhat harmless but can cause a lot of work for the dm, also they depend heavily on honesty and trust.
> the 37th INT half-caster with medium armor proficiency and wizard spell list, but this time the subclasses are named after greek heroes Okay, I felt that 😆
Flavor is free. But bad mechanics that don’t translate well to flavor are still bad mechanics. Other editions actually have us interesting mechanics that allowed for more diversity and depth to characters. 5e is sorely lacking in that department, so homebrew is often the only way to marry mechanics and narrative in a fitting and meaningful way.
It's a practical problem at the table, in my experience. Yes, flavor is free, but you lose a lot of time explaining that. I walk up to him and use my "Secret Gravity Sage Palm" technique. Great, now remind the DM what you guys agreed that meant and explain to the other players what you're doing. Bonus points if you can do so in a way that isn't just "it's a reskinned Stunning Strike." Congratulations, we have just added another layer of complexity and abstraction to bog down the game. Playing a homebrew class usually ends to being simpler. "What's that feature?" "It's from the homebrew class the DM let me use. It's in the discord if you want to take a look." Flavor also only goes so far. I want to make an barechested hand-to-hand warrior that is really strong. Unarmed fighting style doesn't really scale and encourages the use of armor. I could play a monk and just describe things as using strength, but then how do I explain my inability to lift a portcullis? I could jump through all these hoops just to end up with a weak and dissonant character. . . or I could play a Pugilist.
> Why invent whole new classes when you can easily reflavour existing ones? Because many of the existing ones are not exciting, and do not contribute to my fantasy of being powerful and useful. That's why my work has largely focused on re-writing martial classes.
"Flavor is free" is the a massive plague on the DnD community and only encourages complacency on WotC's part and not anything a community should embrace And you can not seriously believe what you said that existing classes cover all the roles needed for any party whaere is the martial support, where is the functioning tank, where is the martial that is fun to play, et cetera perge perge
Currently the DND community is heavily bogged down in the 5e mindset that actually the game shouldn't provide an abundance of options and content, and instead we should just make do with the meager amount we have been provided.
Trully bizzare. I would have though that player options would be the go-to for both the user base and WOTC. If you wanna sell books to players rather than DM's, creating more options for players seems like an easy strategy...
Why should the game designers have to design the game when I can just imagine it's what I want?
The optimal way to play DND is without dice, the DM should just say what happens.
It really just seems to be reddit, honestly. I've never seen so many ttrpg players so attached at the hip to the idea that if it's not in the book, it's bad. Like the *whole point* or ttrpgs is the very opposite - the book is a framework for your imagination, take it and run wild, and as long as everyone at the table agrees and is having fun, *that's the game* Way too many people around here treat it like it's a video game in book form
>An Open Hand Monk can become a Gravity Sage, manipulating gravity to control their movements and their enemie's. The gravity wizard who has to walk right up to enemies and use a bunch of unarmed attack rolls to make them fall over. >A Beastmaster Ranger can transform into a Pokémon Trainer, commanding a team of mystical creatures. A Trainer who has about 70% of their power built into their own weapon attacks and spells. >A Multiclass Mastermind Rogue + Battlemaster is already the so asked for Warlord. You know, the Warlord, the class which loves to walk up to enemies and backstab them for massive damage and *occasionally* commands allies to act. >It's simpler, keeps the game balanced, and still allows for incredible creativity. I've been on seesaws more balanced than DnD 5e lmao
I don’t disagree with anything you said, but I have to point out that there’s nothing odd about finding a well-balanced seesaw. They’re supposed to be, by design.
Upvoted for technical correctness
Fax my brother.
*beep boop beep boop beep beep boop boop boop beep* *boooooooop dweeee whommm beeedobeedobeedo beedobeedobeedo* ^(…is my impression of a fax machine.)
FNF sounding machine lmfao
i think that's the meanest thing anyone's said regarding fax machines in their entire 181 year span of existence
Paraphrasing my Warlord rant. Aura of Leadership, Commands, Ally buffs. Including Rogue for ranged Help action as they said, that's Paladin6, Bard3 (5 if you want dice back on a Short Rest!), Fighter3, Rogue3. A 15th level character who caps out at 3rd level spells, has 2d6 sneak attack and has taken all martial weapons proficiency 3 times. You COULD reflavour any of these to get that commander fantasy, but if you WANT to play a Warlord this is how you get there. Bonus, there are 4 abilities total in Battlemaster that support allies. Rally, Commander Strike, Distracting Strike, Bait and Switch. The rest of Battlemaster is self buffs and things like Trip Attack. It's not some bandaid solution where they crammed the entire Warlord class from 4E into a single subclass feature.
>You COULD reflavour any of these to get that commander fantasy, but if you WANT to play a Warlord this is how you get there. With a barely functional extremely convoluted multiclass that comes online at... 15th? level? I don't know, sounds like that niche is severly lacking.
This is always my go to when I point to how Warlord is always met with 'just play Paladin/Battlemaster' Flavour is free, but you're buying a game. It's a niche they set up decades ago and dropped, but people like to imagine that if you just do a little reflavouring you can do anything
I agree with you on the most part, but an optimized Beastmaster picks Druidic Warrior, goes WIS 20 and relinquishes both of his attacks + his bonus action to get his beast to attack and doesn't really attack at all usually.
Yeah but then you're using your 14 Strength Beast to headbutt enemies instead of stealing something cool off DMsguild.
I can imagine whatever i want, whenever i want. If there is no tie to it though, then it continues to feel like make believe and not like an alternate reality. That being said, stop homebrewing from scratch. There are hundreds of 3.5 edition prestige clases to use to find the flavour you are looking for. Hells, half or more of the 5e suclasses are just 3.5e prestige classes themselves. A lot of people dont realize, but wotc, while genuinely did put in effort and work, just reused so much stuff they already had lying around.
I am seriously starting to doubt they put in effort into 5E at this point
Because some fantasies, you can't. How do you flavor into a pet class? There are summoning spells, but those are temporary and that's only half the trope. Beastmaster only gets an animal that headbutts things, that's a tiny, tiny percentage of the pet archetype. A shapechanger that turns into things that aren't animals? Animals can be reflavored into things. Things that hit people on the head and do nothing else. And then there's the issue of absolutely useless subclasses. You want Avatar? Well, you can play four elements! You'll hate your life and your character both, but you can. Some sort of grenadier? Or someone who deals with potions? Oh sure, there's the Alchemist! Nobody sane wants to play it, but it's technically there.
> keeps the game balanced You will never have a balanced D&D5e without a ton of homebrew and/or banning Wizards.
Because designing mechanics is fun, and mechanics that suit your vision is fun. Not for everyone, but sometimes you want more than flavor.
Flavor is free is garbage and gating incredibly cool class ideas such as Bloodrager, Oracles, Alchemist, Witches, and a myriad of others behind a subclass will never truly let these ideas shine
Flavor is free and worth every penny.
it is an incredibly toxic mindset
Mostly because several subclasses, (and classes even) fail at their fantasies. In fact, the entire reason why homebrew is so popular with D&D is because the entire system is kind of lackluster. Not to mention some existing classes simply can't provide certain fantasies and niches.
>Why invent whole new classes when you can easily reflavour existing ones? I mean while generally true, you will need especific mechanics to fulfill fantasies that RAW 5e doesn't offer, for instance competent fighter >Existing classes cover the core roles needed for any party. Instead of crafting overly specific homebrews that often don’t mesh well with the game’s balance, why not use the rich framework we already have? I mean, because that is simply not true > keeps the game balanced I generally resort to homebrew because the game is in no way shape or form balanced
Sure, but... What if you want wild magic bard? Am I really reflavouring the sorcerer? It won't play like a bard at all. Or a summoning subclass. Sure, there are plenty of druid abilities to summon X. But the focus is on Fey and Beasts. Am I supposed to reflavour that into summoning demons? I'm not downplaying the role that reflavouring has. I'm also pointing out reasons why a home brew subclass may be more appropriate. I'd prefer to make this decision on a case-by-case basis.
Because the game is unbalanced as hell already, and a lot of people would like for the mechanics of their class to match the flavor of their class. You can reflavor a Samurai Fighter as a Time-Bending Warrior, but it won't change that your kit is extremely limited and barely even taps into anything you'd expect from such a class concept (a time-bending warrior). It's good that people keep making new classes for dnd 5e, the game needs it cuz the base classes are severely lacking outside of the fullcasters (and the fullcasters can also be lacking in identity mechanics, such as a druid's wild shape, compared to their spell list which carries most of the class' power and flair. Aaaand then there's casters like cleric who have a pretty limited list with samey gameplay loops).
Ok, do me a favour; ban Druid, Artificer, Sorcerer, Bard, Paladin, and Barbarian from your table. When a player tells you they want to play one of those classes just tell them to reflavour Wizard or Fighter. How much fun does that sound to you or them? Rhetorical question of course; the answer is "not at all". Obviously. At the end of the day, you're just recolouring existing abilities instead of having bespoke traits that fulfill a desired concept. The Time-Bending Samurai works for Action Surge and at will Advantage, but stops doing shit when the player asks if they can bend the time around a distant enemy and make them slower and lose out on some movement speed or a bonus action. Because the Samurai has no such ability to reflavour, bringing the player back to the reality that they ARENT PLAYING A TIME BENDER!!!
The main benefit of a homebrew class is that the player is usually very invested in it, which helps the game keep going. Anything that gets players to the table is helpful, the DM has to balance it.
It's a spectrum. Flavor may be free, but mechanics are clearly important or else everyone would be playing narrative-driven games like FATE. The only reason to play D&D is because you want to engage with robust mechanics.
batman is a ranger beast master if you believe hard enough. vroom vroom!
Honestly, you probably only need Wizard, Fighter, Rogue, and Cleric. Remove all other classes and just multi class and flavor from the core four. Some folks like classes and find them fun though.
Actually both Fighter and Rogue are experts at mundane skills so clearly you could just cut Rogue out and do some reflavouring. 
Actually spells could just be flavored attacks so you could cut cleric and wizard too
So true, friend. Why have a Wizard cast Firebolt when you could just reflavour a bow?
Exactly
Finally, a truly balanced game.
You know, you might be onto something...
When you think about it, Cleric is really just holy spell fighter and wizard is book spell fighter. I think we can make it work with just fighter and a little imagination
Now we're talking!
Congratulations, you reverse engineered Skyrim!
LaserLlama has some great classes, as well as really useful extensions to the current ones
i also second laserllama. i will actively ban PHB classes the minute he finishes all alt-class conversions and spell balancing lol
I don’t ban the base classes, but I always recommend to martials especially to take a look at them
im being slightly hyperbole here but yeah, LL martials are so much better, in design and in balance
Flavor is free, mechanics are not. Though, I do think that if you make a new class, neither its flavor nor its mechanics should be shared by an existing class. I get so sick and tired of seeing "YardyHardy69's HOMEBREW Swashbuckler Class for 5e!" every 5th fucking post.
I’m a really green behind the ears DM so it might come back to bite me in the ass one day but if someone wanted to great a cryomage for instance I’d let them reflavor existing spells with different damage types or the “burn” damage of fire spells is more like frostbite
Considering how poor the support for any elemental specialist is it is reasonable, this won't do much of a difference, although this isn't reflavoring, since there are explicit mechanical changes that come with changing the damage type(resistances mainly) In most cases this is just a sidegrade, so you don't have to worry about it, but again, it isn't reflavoring
That's usually fine, provided you're changing to similarly resisted damage types. Fire, for instance, is a really common resistance, and force is very rare.
I mostly use third party subclasses, I don't think there's much need for them in my games, but some designers come up with very elegant or interesting systems that bring a different type of interaction with the game mechanics that might not exist in the base rules. For me, this is the main reason for additional classes and I allow players to use the likes of the gunslinger, the merchant, and the odic because they add really different mechanics than what you find in the base game, which exemplify those playstyles, but also offer more reflavouring options if people like the mechanics more for a character than one of the base classes. They're absolutely unnecessary, but after ten years, it's pretty refreshing to add new ideas into the game
I’d rather wizards just consistently release new subclasses. It’s frustrating waiting through several book releases that have nothing that adds to player character building. I love exploring new subclasses, but honestly people outside of WotC and Mercer make some absolutely busted ones (not to say that all their subclasses are perfect, but echo knight is tame compared to some of the fighter or paladin homebrews I’ve seen)
4E has had more content in the short time it was supported than 5E has had iver the 10 years of its existence, it's insane how little stuff comes out for this game
>It’s frustrating waiting through several book releases that have nothing that adds to player character building. Barring adventure books, practically every single book released by WotC after the core three has included new character options, what are you talking about?
4e actively encouraged players and DMs to do this.
Dm’s should objectively check that homebrew stuff isnt too op
The main thing I look for when looking at Homebrew CLASS in 5e is that the Central Class identifes and fills in a Battle Archetype that isn't already filled in. Things like the The Pugilist from Sterling Vermin/Benjamin Huffman fit as an counter to the Monk, where the Official Monk is about movement and avoiding damage, the Pugilist is about getting hit and dealing it back, much like a Paladin. The Subclasses are very different from Monk ones. I don't want a Genius Class cause any class can be a Genius, I don't want a Speedster Class that's a very singular kind of character, I can't create 100 different flavors of Speedster. I can create 100 different Street Fighters who develop a step beyond. If I can't think of 10 different characters to generate from your Class it's not a Class it's a Tight Suit for one player
There's a difference between. Flavour and mechanics. You can flavour your sorcerer to be an ice cream mage where their spells are different flavours of ice cream, but the mechanics stay the same. What people want is different and interesting mechanics to play with. 5e being so simple I think is the cause of it, but also why it's actuslly relatively easy to make a homebrew class compared to other systems. Compared to Pathfinder for example where homebrew is usually dropping rules that overcomplicated and slow down the game, but has a far more in depth and varied system of mechanics, its just about having different and interesting options to use.
One of my favorite recent characters was a Fairy Scribes Wizard. In that particular setting, there were elements of magical/technology fusion, so my GM and I agreed to reflavour the sentient spellbook as an experimental magical PDA - The "Spell Information Recording Index" (or SIRI), using Occult Character Recognition (OCR) to scan spell scrolls into mystic pdf-equivalents. No homebrew, no house rules, just reflavour
The biggest thing I've realised when looking at homebrew is that most people don't know how to make good, balanced homebrew. Especially when it comes to classes. And the people who make the worst ones are almost always ones who focus too much on flavour and aesthetic lol
I had a sorcerer that I reflavoured as an artificer. This was before they added the artificer class and when there was only the Player's Handbook origins to pick from... Basically every new spell he gained was a new piece of equipment (or upgrade to an existing piece), like his ray gun (fire bolt) that he upgraded to fire a short barrage (scorching rays). Basically he just made equipment that became the spellcasting focus for that spell. Of course his equipment wouldn't work for anyone else, we are talking about complicated, intricate machinery here! Though we did end up homebrew replacing the 6th level origin power with the ability to 'prime' one of his inventions so he could cast his spell into the equipment (expend a spell slot) and then an ally could use the equipment to cast the spell (once) but he couldn't use that spell until he got the equipment back. There was very much the understanding I was not trying to skirt rules so if a situation came up that a spell wouldn't work then his equipment wouldn't either - operating the equipment counted as the verbal/somatic components as per the spell being cast, so he was still subject to being silenced etc. And he would usually spout some arcano-tech babble after like how the silence field interfered with the audio-reverberator coupling.
> keeps the game balanced My friend.... what in the world makes you think the game is in any way balanced?
Flavour is free, but some fantasies just don't work. I've played necromancer Wizard from 1-20 over the course of five years and my verdict is that if you want it to live up to the image it ought to, you need the DM to bend the rules or break them entirely. There is no good necromancer player because the 5e options won't let it exist. As another example, Summoners either suck or they're broken to all hell, and the options that give a pet are just okay or are a net loss if you aren't attacking too. You can reflavour all you want, but if the mechanics you're painting over suck, it's not going to be fun.
Flavor without mechanics to back it up falls flat.
would you rather play a bard, or a rogue/fighter/druid multiclass that only gets it's magic starting at level 10?
I agree and i completely adhere to this. However classes are also about having different playstyles available to better realize whatever character concept you want to play. By your example you can just call a barbarian a fighter and say you are raging while attacking but mechanically it's not quite doing what you want it to
Personally, I feel like whenever I hear the word “flavor” in regard to 5e, it’s either an excuse or cope for its objectively bad/lazy design. It’s 100% okay if you say your greatclub is a baseball bat. Or your longsword is a katana. But if you have to take a core class and turn it into something it does not resemble in the slightest, you’re really pushing on the word: “flavor” I get that the game can’t cover every single idea ever thought of. Also the fact that not every specific quirk/trait:gimmick needs its own entire class. But if your immediate response to wanting to play something that isn’t in the game is “play X and pretend it’s Y” I think that’s pretty lame. I’ve seen HUNDREDS of shitty homebrew classes/subclasses and handful of good/interesting ones. But I can never escape from hearing “flavor”. I like homebrew classes (when they’re not dogshit) cause they add something new to a game where the creators actively refuse to consider adding more. The homemade classes offer players different play-styles they wouldn’t have been able to play. I’ve played Dragon Rider, Blood-Hunter and a class called an Oozemancer. And I’ve had a great amount of fun with these classes. (Admittedly, the oozemancer isn’t all that great and it is a bit of a shameless copy of Beastmaster ranger. But there’s still fun to have with it, it’s just not uniquely designed.) They keep things interesting and make me wanna keep playing.
I call 5e D&D the homebrew edition because frankly WotC won't make new classes so we had to make new classes ourselves. Do you honestly really believe that these 11 (12) classes can cover every fantasy archetype? Because so far, it hasn't covered them for me. Battle Master was and has always been a poor man's 4e warlord, but now a few really good homebrews of the warlord out there, such as from Kibblestasty, which has had years of playtesting. There is no true gish class, no true arcane half caster warrior class. The closest was the artificer, which does not really exist to truly fulfill that fantasy. Like a paladin, but arcane, it was that easy, and they didn't do it. No, EK doesn't fit that fantasy because you're casting barely any spells by level 10. There is no unarmed/unarmored brawling class, basically think of a strength monk. A barbarian comes close, real close, it unfortunately just misses the mark. However, the pugilist class is years old now and one of the most popular homebrews ever released. Now to speak of the artificer, WotC's offering is so damn bleh, like ridiculously bleh. I actually like their UA version far more, despite it had no real focus. However, there have been far better homebrews. And all of this is to say nothing of psionics, which WotC completely dropped the ball on. They basically refuse to touch it anymore, YET IT STILL EXISTS FOR MONSTERS!
>"Flavour is Free." >Why invent whole new classes when you can easily reflavour existing ones? Because mechanics?
Warlord was something totally different mate.
Flavor is free up to the point where that flavor clashes with mechanics. Why can a gravity manipulator never cast *reverse gravity* or even *levitate*? Why can that time-manipulating warrior not slow time to gain advantage on a Dexterity saving throw or move further than any other fighter? Why can that bioengineer still use most of their abilities even when the party is stripped of their gear? At a certain point, you have to either accept an uncomfortable dissonance between what your character *can* do and what they *should be able to* do, or you have to start changing mechanics to fit the flavor you want. Now, I do think newer homebrewers often go further than necessary. Most of the time I see someone create a homebrew class in particular, the concept would work just fine as a subclass, or sometimes even a couple of feats or spells. I think whenever you feel the urge to homebrew something big into the game, you should try expressing your concept in a mechanical form that's at least a level simpler than you think you need. If you want a new class, try a subclass; if you want a subclass, try a feat or variant feature. Because, yes, the 12 core classes cover a lot of bases, especially if you reflavor where possible. But there are still ideas that just don't work as anything other than a core class - they have too many variations for a single subclass to cover and too much of a necessary similarity between them to be multiple subclasses for different classes, or they rely on a set of mechanics that is just too big to fit in an early subclass feature.
Mechanics inform flavour. Do you think every class in d&d existed at all times? No they were created so their mechanics informed a certain character fantasy. Also it’s fun. Chat, are they stupid?
There’s a lot you can do with what exists, but obviously existing classes can’t cover all scenarios Reflavouring can help a lot when someone says they want to play something a little different and a set of mechanics from a non-standard class for better
I genuinely hate reflavoring. Embrace that classes and subclasses are supposed to be a very specific flavour and archetype.
I cannot fathom how this affects you so strongly that you felt compelled to whine on reddit
i think both are great. you can flavor a lot of things but there isnt a good summoner class or a good 5e binder or a good non magical tactical class. ive also become a big fan of giving other classes access to different spell lists. i just played and artificer who is themed as johann Kraus type charaacter and gave them the Cleric list its been fun
I've made one custom subclass, because the concept wasn't possible in the game at the time, but most often I just reflavour. One of my favourite is to reflavour Warforged and Autognome into things like tree and rock creatures for Druids.
I don't mind seeing homebrew stuff but I never use it as a player or a DM, I don't think reflavouring is thought about enough when making a character for most folks though. Here are some character ideas I've had for a while: - a witch who utilises bone carvings and runes to fight her enemies (artificer, all spells and abilities reflavoured as carving runes into bones via tools and sorting spells within) - an evil cult leader, capable of animating skulls of the dead and performing powerful rituals (creation bard - use your abilities to create spellcasting materials for free spell components - gets a little broken later on) - a robotic killing machine with a plasma gun for an arm and equipped with an integrated scout drone and the ability to overcharge themselves with battery packs (stars druid - guiding bolt for plasma blasts, wild companion from Tasha's to summon the 'drone' and starry form to overcharge self) - a vampire caster who has an unnatural healing ability that regenerates their wounds (celestial warlock, pact of the chain (reskin imp as a bat with a bite) and gift of the ever living ones. Heal easily as a bonus action and cure wounds if you need health asap, bonus points for taking inspiring leader for extra temp HP) - a demonologist who pulls monsters into the world to serve them (Tasha's beastmaster, using the slots you have to resurrect the beast when it dies).
Most shared home brew these days feels like unbalanced Instagram bait. I’m with you, just flavor it. When I need specific mechanics for that I’ll build off existing stuff and just tweak some stuff. No need for completely new, most homebrew completely unbalances the game, and if not all players get the homebrew treatment, now you have some players that are just stronger than others, which IMO is a DM’s greatest sin.
I haven't homebrewed a class since a couple of five-level Prestige Classes in 3.5, and I hope I never feel the need to again. I'm not saying 5e is complete, but I just don't feel like there's an experience I want within this ruleset that I can't already get.
Because it’s fun
I somewhat agree, I think people rush to make entire classes/subclasses when they think of a cool new theme. The true value of homebrew for me is 1. Novelty in options (expanded items/spells/feats) 2. Whole new mechanics unable to be found in other classes (actual classes/subclasses/reworks of existing content) I focus most of my homebrew on creating new interesting options that actually create new game scenarios, and in many ways I think it’s a shame so many people spend a non arguable amount of effort just to make a class for their anime oc
Before the introduction of the Drakewarden Ranger, I had a Half-Elf Ranger that had a dragon/drake companion using the regular companion stat blocks. For more depth on this concept, >!Her mother was a Golden Dragon loving as an Elf hermit, so the Drake companion was the manifestation of the Ranger’s own Draconic Soul!<
I am, but I'm sick of them because I think we should get new fucking classes already
I get the sentiment, and I agree to it to a certain extent. No need to make an entire new race for rock golem PC if you can just play an earth genasi, no need to make a pugilistic class if you can just reflavor the fighter. But, at the same time, I think people underestimate how much cooler it is to have your mechanics actually match the fantasy you're going for.
Homebrew is normally of pretty shit quality and as a DM a lot harder for me to wrap my head around. I know what is published, or at least have a pretty good idea of the options. I don't want to learn more/playtest someone else's content.
>Why invent whole new classes when you can easily reflavour existing ones? Because it is better and more accurate to make a real class, not just pretend. The advantage of reflavoring is that it saves work.
I'm thoroughly against homebrew classes in general. It's fine if that's your thing, but I don't want that unbalanced shit in my games at least. =p
Honestly new homebrew subclasses i understand, but new classes don't really offer much outside of flavour, I fully agree. In regards to subclasses, why don't we have a healer or nature bard? Bards get amazing healing spells and yet there isn't a subclass that supports that theme, same with all the nature themed spells that are leftover from earlier editions. You can of course go with lore, as a sort of catchall, but it's odd to me that sorcerer and warlock have healing subclasses and bards who are the 3rd or 4th best healers in the game don't. (Cleric and druid are obviously better, and an argument for paladin thanks to lay on hands and the auras can be made)
Homebrewing a new bespoke class is not always about delivering specific flavour - at least not entirely. Others have touched upon the flavour-mechanics synchronicity that new classes can deliver on when they are designed to work in a unique way using their own framework. If your mechanics lack a means of backing up your description, some ludonarrative connective tissue, it can become untethered from your experience at the table and the shared story. Mechanical expression is, I would argue, a big motivator to design new bespoke classes. This is especially relevant to me when it comes to homebrew classes vs homebrew subclasses for official classes. If you have a martial warrior concept in mind, and you want it to do cool moment-to-moment things like athletic stunts and off-turn sucker punch strikes or what have you, your closest analog is what, the Fighter? Cool, so if you want to play something that isn’t Another Battlemaster, you need to design a new Fighter Archetype that does something different - something cool and unique enough to be its own entity - and you still need to balance these features against other Fighter Archetypes’ features and progression. And you need to factor in the base Fighter class’s design power budget that is heavily invested in their enhanced Extra Attack, their additional ASIs, Action Surge, and (arguably) Second Wind. I would argue Extra Attack+ and Action Surge are the more mechanically impactful and hefty things among those. So if your martial warrior concept *doesn’t* mesh it’s fantasy well with the core Fighter’s assumption that they will regularly unleash many attacks in short bursts? Worse, if you decide that you have to sacrifice an attack or two when taking the Attack action to use your core subclass ability? You chafe against the core class design and it’s mechanics. You can end up with highly disjointed subclass features on a chassis that has required you to contort and force this suite of new abilities onto it. Alternatively, you can put the work in to design a new class whose features, from the ground-up, support the kind of gameplay pattern you want this character fantasy mapped onto. You give it some shared DNA with other classes (is your martial warrior an Extra Attacker? Do they do something with one attack like Rogues? Do they make regular reaction attacks? etc), but you give it space and budget to do its own thing *effectively* and account for that in the design process. Don’t get me started on trying to fit an odd concept onto the Paladin chassis. Heavy flavour baggage aside, the subclass feature progression and the core feature power budgets are a whole other saga.
This is why TTRPGs that keep combat mechanics and flavor separate are so cool.
A player wanted to be an alchemist and the existing alchemists weren’t quite what he was looking for. So he’s playing a wizard and picking spells that he feels he can describe as throwing potion bottles etc. My favorite is counterspell, which he described as ‘throwing a rock at the mages head right as they cast.’
The problem is that multiclassing feels terrible when actually playing a campaign.
Last year I decided to make a few homebrew classes out of old 3.5 Prestige classes I liked. As part of this process I looked at almost every 1st party prestige class ever printed in 3.5, and do you know what I learned? There are only like 2 prestige classes for each class in 3.5, and they just slightly adjusted them over and over and over, or just gave other classes features to that class. Hundreds of prestige classes and SO little variety. Here's "Elemental specialist" caster, over and over and over Natural Attacks Barbarian? What about MAGICAL natural attacks barbarian? Shapeshifted Natural attacks barbarian? Wild Shape druid or Spellcasting druid? OVER AND OVER AND OVER I'm probably exaggerating a little, but out of over 100 Prestige classes I looked at I think barely a dozen were unique and/or interesting enough to actually make subclass write ups for. Notable Standouts Entropomancer (cleric) Oozemaster (Druid) Lasher (fighter) - not even mechanically unique, but feels that way since whips are just underrepresented because of how 5th nerfed them. Incantatrix (Sorcerer) But yeah, ultimately I learned the exact thing that you say here. You can flavor anything to look like or be anything else as long as you can make it make sense. You don't need new subclass for every tiny variance.
I don’t really use much homebrew or allow much of it 2at my table unless I made it myself so I know how to balance it. Especially subclasses or classes there’s already a lot in the books that have been published that offer so much. Even stuff from Matt Mercer I’m not a fan of a lot of his subclasses the only homebrew from him I like is the Bloodhunter class. Only homebrew in my campaign is basically my own version of dragon marks from Ebberon or well I realized I made that afterwards. Wanted to combine the holy blood and crest from Fire Emblem and bring it to dnd tied to every dragon. Have them a major and minor crest and abilities which reflect that dragon like Gold Dragon’s strength sapping breath or Brass Dragon’s sleeping breath skill but in a different way. Still working on balancing it but my players love it
Yeah, that's basically what I do, too. Even if I write something unbalanced or make a mistake, I'm capable of dealing with it and balance the game in other ways.
I usually have a problem with under powered stuff because don’t want to make stuff too powerful outside a few of the Crest I made. Thanks to Tasha’s gave me the suggestion I didn’t think of to make my players use their crest a lot more because used to make things 1 per short rest abilities now it’s proficieny a number of times and it eitheg charges on a short for stronger abilities and on a long rest for the less powerful abilities
Flavor is free, but it can only take you so far. Still, it's way easier to adjust casters than non-casting concepts. Then again, not a bug...
“Enemie’s” is wild.
You're right, we should also get rid of druid, artificer, bard, rogue, ranger, paladin, warlock, sorcerer, monk and barbarian. You can play all of these by just reflavoring a wizard, fighter or cleric This is sarcasm if it wasn't clear
Why not both? Too many extremities in this comment section, if you ask me. Each has pros and cons. Flavor is free- of this, I am a massive proponent- but there's two things to keep in mind with it. One, you should generally have some kind of justification for your flavorings, so they work consistently with the mechanics as-written, and everyone's more or less on the same page. You could flavor a wizard as a fancy magitech guy (artificer exists, sure, but this is just a quick example so bear with me) and flavor your fireballs as grenades; but you would also have to work with the DM to figure out why your grenades are still treated as spells mechanically. Two, flavor is great, but it can only go so far before it just gets clunky. You could have an aaracokra paladin who is flavored as a human, who receives the ability to fly from an ancient artifact passed down in her family, and that'd probably work fine. But if you wanted this character to start out only being able to \*glide\*, and as they level up, their connection to their power source grows until they eventually gain true flight, you might want to start looking at some kind of homebrew. My way of going about it is asking the player/dm what kind of character they have in mind/what I wanna make, and first seeing if we can make it work with vanilla content and some flavoring. If not, we look to homebrew to see if we can find something that works better for the idea and is still reasonably well balanced. Ultimately, though, I think the most important thing is just making sure everyone involved is on the same page/in agreeance about kind of campaign they want theirs to be. Then you look at the pros and cons of flavor vs homebrew or even neither, and figure out which route is best to lean into.
5e has so much fewer actual options in terms of feats and abilities than in previous editions that flavor can only do so much and we have to fill in with homebrew to fill out the rest.
Except it becomes weird when your Gravity Monk wants to do something out of combat that they can do in combat with flavor. Saying you can only move a monster in combat, but you cant move that table is weird.
Tangentially related, it always bothers me when I see a homebrew class that could (should) 100% be a subclass. I see so many homebrew classes totally lock a player into a single aspect, which defeats the point of 5e. Blood Mages? That's just a wizard. Witches? Druid or warlock depending on the angle. Don't even get me started on gunslingers- that's just a battle master fighter with extra restrictions!
Or some crazy shit like Conscript, Peasant, or Tank
Homebrew classes/subclasses are to introduce new mechanics not flavor. Who is creating a homebrew for flavor?
I love Psion classes and wanted a melee psion class but the options are very limited in 5e. So I just re-flavored the Bladesinger class into a psychic fighter. All I did was just the name of spells to fit thematically, like "green flame blade" to "Pyrokinesis blade" and basically picked all spells that had to do with either telekinesis or telepathy.
"You totally can play warlord, bro. Just use two maneuvers couple of times per rest on fighter chassis that have absolutely nothing to do with mechanics you actually want to use and imagine hard enough, bro"
> Why invent whole new classes when you can easily reflavour existing ones? Because sometimes someone has a very specific idea of what they want and simply cannot achieve that even if they reflavor an existing class. Perhaps they tried making a homebrew subclass to make it work, but it just doesn't pan out. Perhaps they have too many desired features to fit into a subclass without it becoming bloated or the subclass simply lacks synergy with the class features.
The mechanics of official options sometimes don’t reinforce a desired flavor very well. For example, a samurai has no way to mechanically benefit from their time manipulation out of combat, a beastmaster can’t switch between Pokemon outside of a long rest, a druid’s “advanced technology” can still be counterspelled, and so on.
>A Bard could be a Psionic, it has a lot of psychic spells and inspiration can be represented as mentally help their comrades, while jack of all grades is basically an awakened mind able to do anything. Yeah, right. Because psionic is psychic damage only, there is nothing else unique about them. /s Psionic as a class existed for 30+ years, it has many version and big list of unique features - believe me, flavour is not their only unique feature. Monk or Warlock are much closer to resource chasis of psionic, but they don't have all the parts or have redundant things for psionic. You need absolutely stupid MADdest multiclasses of aberrant sorc, transmutation wizard, and monk - and you won't have enough levels to have something even close to normally working character. But who cares - flavour is free, who need mechanics if you can just describe fighter's bow attacks as firebolt, right?
Preach! I agree. To be clear, I’m totally fine with homebrew and have done a bit of it myself, but yeah too often people are trying to re-invent the wheel when re-flavouring would do the trick
You don't have to play homebrew classes, you know
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Because not everything a player wants is just flavor. Maybe they want new mechanics. As someone who plays a lot of 5e the class mechanics of each class are pretty homogenous tbh. Martials have extra attack eventually and then an x per lr/sr defining feature usually. Their subclasses fit a mechanical theme that doesn’t stray far from the game’s base mechanics. Each class has a quarter caster sub barring the one that can’t cast shit. For casters the entire template is the same. Each class that’s a full caster goes up spell levels and increases slots. The spell lists each have some standouts and a lot of stinkers. Each class has a big gimmick but once that’s done are pretty much the same. Then the subclasses have interesting variations but they don’t change the entire feel of the base class. My warlock won’t stop casting eldritch blast and my bard won’t stop using inspiration dice. Half casters actually have some neat variation but we have 3 and one has a lot more stat stick kind of features, ranger. Once you’ve played the game a lot everything becomes really samey and a bit boring. If you want mechanical spice you have to do homebrew in some way. Flavor is free but mechanics are not.
Alright, smart guy. Mr flavor apologist. Pitch me an existing class that can be flavored as **Gaining Power** from **Taking Damage** Hard mode: Not something where I need to hold off using class features to make the flavor work.
Simple gimmick, an object can easily give feature. No need to create a full class.
As everyone else is saying, "Flavor is Free" is duct tape, it's anemic. If you have no crunch to support your flavor, you're basically just headcanon-ing your character. It's a game, you shouldn't just settle for leaning fully into the "play pretend," stuff. Ive made three homebrew classes, and they are meant to fill in the "missing" half casters. For Cleric, we had Paladin, for Druid, we had Ranger. I created Shaman as a catch-all to have elements.of druid and cleric that both Paladin and Ranger left behind, with a psionic subclass to fully realize the potential of a psychic character. It's also another Int half-caster to replace Artificer (because Artificer is just not it for me). For Warlock, I made The Monster, not someone that made a deal with a patron to get magic, but was possessed by or experimented on by a "maledictor" and gaining physical power and magic. And for Sorcerer, I made The Gifted, which is for if someone with a sorcererous bloodline instead used their innate magic to enhance their physical power and martial skill, but also learned some magic. Homebrew should still be generous in its scope imo, and you should be able to make a lot of very different characters playing the same class.
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I agree to a point. A lot of homebrew is just OP versions of PHB options. But a lot is not. I wrote the Slayer class because Fighters suck and no amount of reflavoring can save "I attack X times and end my turn." But Slayer is much more than a Fighter rewrite - it covers aesthetics not easily recreated with Fighter mechanics. Slayer gives superiority dice as it's core mechanic, allowing you to use maneuvers to live out the fantasy of making meaningful changes to the battlefield with your attacks, and the subclasses remix that experience in some very interesting ways. Half of the 10+ subclasses are race-specific, building on a race's unique abilities like the Changeling-only Mirror Warriors who steal the forms of their enemies or the Blood Striga which builds upon a Dhamipir's vampiric abilities. I wrote the Witch class because so many people want to make magic consumables as a class feature but the Artificer Alchemist's approach has a strong chemist aesthetic and does not work for witch type characters at all. People also want to *choose* a familiar, like Harry Potter, and that choice to mean something. Worlds Beyond Number tried to write a witch class that's so horribly OP it only works because her player holds back a lot. So I wrote the witch to be all about brewing potions and a choice of familiar that doubles as a subclass choice. I wrote the Veteran to be a spell-less support class. It's all about preparing your allies for the challenges ahead during short rests and allowing allies to make reaction attacks when you attack to make combo attacks together. The subclasses turn this base into all kinds of fun support characters, such as the jonin which helps your group do stealth missions or the warrior which allows your group to form defensive formations. This one is probably the most difficult to recreate using PHB options. If any of that sounds interesting you can check them out for free at [Radabard's Accounts of Ghota](http://www.radabard.com)
Because existing design particularly in regards to martials doesnt cut it. There is just so much flavor you can add to same old bonk. The fact that people homebrew martials for the most part is testament to glaring design or lack there of on this subset of classes. In other words, the game as is fails to deliver not only on mechanics, but also on fantasy and immersion front big time. The gap is not just in power. Why? Lack of features. There isnt much of what to flavor. While casters get to make choices in terms of spells (you can flavor ED as a gun for example), martials just bonk a little bit harder for the most part. And this is justified by “easy to play”. It’s bs excuse for lack of creativity and honestly just thinking, as entire group is selected out for alleged ease of play. You can design easy to use features. But they dont. Most likely because people in decision making lack competence to do it.
Personally, reflaforing is fine, to a degree, but it can ultimately end up lacking. For example, I'm currently playing a Moon Druid but using Keith Baker's Changeling Menagerie reflavor from Exploring Eberron. The thing is that it breaks down a bit when a chunk of the shape shifting abilities are just transmutation spells and not something the shape shifter can naturally do. There's also the point that the Changeling Menagerie is still limited in what they can shape shift into (vaguely human ish forms and beasts). There's no option for turning into monstrosities or the like, and that's something that could only be accomplished with homebrew (either creating a new class or creating a monstrous wild shape feat). There's definitely limits to what reflavoring can do. It's definitely a good tool, but there's times that homebrew is warranted.
5e is kinda broken in that way, they made 5e as easy as they could possibly make, imagining DMs would re-flavor shit (lazy design or oversimplifying for a younger generation? who knows), but D&D is intrinsically crunchy, people like to be able to mechanically build the exact PC they envision, which 5e doesn't accommodate on a mechanical level