Essential Classes

I'm not even sure Thief is essential as long as you don't gate the Warriors and Magic Users off from useful skills in order to justify their existence.

>What do you see as the most essential and iconic archetypes for classes for a D&D-style fantasy game?

The Brute Guy.
The Nimble Guy.
The Wise Guy.
The Charismatic Guy.

Break it down.

The trained and skilled warrior.
The passionate and reckless but energetic and powerful warrior.
The holy man.
The scientist and practitioner of magic.
The prodigious and powerful wielder of magic.
The quick and accurate archer.
The very knowledgeable woodsman/ranger.
The dashing rogue.
The shrewd thief.
The silent assassin.

Some of these can and should be combined. There are definitely more.

Fighter.
Mage.
The shadow with no face.
Mechanical doll driven by the ghost of the fighters ex-lover.
Dark Mage.
Living branch that commands the arm of the archer meat.
Darker Mage.
The dark lurking horror behind the mirror.
He who must not be spoken to.
Thief.

Mundane Close combatant.
Mundane Close combatant who dabbles in magic.
Propper Magic user specifically trained for close combat.

Mundane ranged combatant.
Mundane ranged combatant who dabbled in magic.
Magic user specifically trained in ranged magical combat.

Everything else should fall under skills you can pick up on the side.

>Current year
>We are making D&D heartbreaker!

I'm making one too.

Its just... something you gotta do at one point.

>Dps (sorccerer, wizard or druid)
These classes only shine in DPS vs crowds

Anyway, if you're doing your own system, seriously think about what concepts you're going to integrate. The roles of D&D exist as they do because of its specific rules (classes, hit points, spell and skill system, action economy), all of which have alternative solutions.

The roles also change with the setting and DM. For example, Shadowrun sort of assumes you have a decker, and you'll miss out on much of the content by not having one, but many games make do without one.

>Defender
>Striker
>Leader
>Controller

I like the addition of Blaster.

How does blaster separate from a ranged striker?

Striker is single target focused, Blaster is AoE focused.

It's more a split off from the controller, which was a bit crowded.

Blaster isn't ranged striker, it's AoE striker

Still unnecessary, but it is an important difference

>Blaster is AoE focused
>AoE striker

That's a Striker with Controller as its secondary role.

Oh? So why doesn't it debuff then?

It's cleaner to separate AoE damage guy from single target damage guy and debuff/reposition enemies guy.

these

there should be a system that lets you buy/increase your abilities with experience points, then you just build your own classes as you go

That's what point buy systems are.

>Oh? So why doesn't it debuff then?
What does that have to do with it?

Stealth archer of course.

Controllers are debuffers. If a Blaster is a striker primary with a Controller secondary, it should be debuffing. Like, say, the Warlock, which is an actual Striker/Controller.

AoE damage can be neatly separated from both concepts. If 4e realized this, the controller role wouldn't have ended up overcrowded as shit.

AoE damage on its own would be very boring, considering its main purpose is to clean up Minions.
And how is the Controller role overcrowded?

The controller role is hardly overcrowded, if anything it's the striker role that's overcrowded

The controller role is just poorly managed, with shit like seekers thrown in and wizards being better than pretty much every other controller class at pretty much every aspect of control and also being the only class that can get the most important thing for all controllers in the form of the spell focus feat

How about
>Martial
>Magic user
>Hybrid
And then branch various sub-classes from here?

So... dungeons and dragons in general?

>AoE damage on its own would be very boring, considering its main purpose is to clean up Minions.

I mean, I like minions, but "mirrored" encounters are also quite common. Also, terrain effects fit in nicely with AoEs.

>And how is the Controller role overcrowded?

Just look at the wizard. They never really worked out what it wants to be, so it ended up being a striker as good as the sorcerer on top of having some of the best debuffs on the game.

>The controller role is hardly overcrowded, if anything it's the striker role that's overcrowded

Not sure if we are misunderstanding each other, I meant in the sense that Controllers do a lot of things; aoe damage, debuff, reposition, creating zones, etc. while most other roles usually only do 2-3 things. Strikers, for example, are usually damage+mobility or damage+precision.

>Sword Guy
>Magic Guy
>Religion Guy

>aoe damage

Controllers don't do AoE damage, there are only two controller classes capable of doing semi-decent aoe-damage (wizard and invoker) and, even then, they sort of suck at it compared to aoe-focused strikers like monk and sorcerer.

Hell, you could reasonably argue that creating zones and repositioning are part&parcel with debuffing, so it really does boil down to just one thing they need to do, just with a lot of ways to do it

I was thinking more about starting as a basic class and going into some advanced class.

Something close to what Shadow of the Demon Lord did.

Controllers do only one thing: action denial.
AoE damage removes minions and therefore removes actions.
Debuffs make certain actions less effective or desirable.
Repositioning and zones force enemies into certain courses of action.

And the Wizard is just a typical result of the creators not having fully figured out the Controller role in the beginning and the class being around the longest.

PHB1 4e was weird

Paladins were godlike for solo play but borderline useless in a party due to MAD. Rangers could deal infinite damage once-per-day and Fighters were the only true controller class in the game, with wizards being the third striker class

I see only three as being necessary, rogue cleric and wizard. Between the three of them they have the ability to do everything and have every utility

>Controllers do only one thing: action denial.
>AoE damage removes minions and therefore removes actions.
>Debuffs make certain actions less effective or desirable.
>Repositioning and zones force enemies into certain courses of action.

It's sort of an overly broad definition, because everyone does that. I mean, Strikers are surely controllers then, since they deal lots of damage and remove the actions of what they kill? Or Defenders, since they make certain actions undesirable? Even leaders exert soft control by negating enemy actions with lesser actions, effectively deleting the effects of their action after the fact.

Everything can be defined as basically action denial (or improving your power of action denial), because the final goal of a fight is to stop enemies from acting against you.

AoE damage does more than just remove minions, it does soft control in the form of potential extra damage if the enemies group up (making them easier pickings if they spread out), and softens up groups so they are easier to kill. Also, when designing classes, access to AoE also acts as a multiplier, since it lets you spread your effects over multiple targets on top of the damage (which alone would put it closer to the Striker's area of expertise).

Taking a step back and looking at it through the lens of RPG tropes, I think there's definitely space to separate blaster from controller and striker. The guy who is throwing bombs or fireballs doesn't fit with either the guy who is supposedly manipulating fine arcane energies, or that numble dude who is assassinating people in the back, and having the effect available to both just muddles their image.

Your last point is a bit weird, considering that barbarians are single-target strikers, and they hardly fit with the "nimble assassin" idea any more than a sorcerer does, while monks are definitely "blasters", but are far closer to the "nimble assassin" than the guy throwing fireballs around

I mean, that's just how they are in 4e. A barbarian could easily have been a defender, and a Monk a striker, or full on controller, or even, again, a defender.

My point is that your given argument isn't very solid regarding the importance of the blaster role. Considering how mechanical roles and thematic roles don't necessarily line up.

Personally I think it's unnecessary because both blasters and strikers are all about doing more damage, and ultimately, having both is less important than having, say, a second defender or leader around

Controller is a debuffer and minion killer. as a secondary a class doesn't need to do both those things

I mean, if you were making a new 4e like game, but wanted to keep the classes in the same range as classic D&D, it feels to me it'd be natural to give blasting its own class (wizard throwing fireballs), instead of sharing the effects between Striker (thief) and Controller (bard charming/illusioning/debuffing enemies)

Well most barb builds have innate AC problems and can't quite lock down/punish foes like an actual defender. He's an extra body for when you're real defender needs backup, but he can't do it on his own.

They should've admitted monk was a controller though. monk and warlock. They tried to make too many strikers and ended up making a bunch better at other jobs

>Well most barb builds have innate AC problems and can't quite lock down/punish foes like an actual defender.

I meant in the hypothetical. Nothing in the class name "Barbarian" says it has to be inherently a Striker class; which Essentials later addressed with the kinda meh Berserker.

To get the most out of classes they should reflect that specific setting or system. Dark Heresy is good example of this, it has a collection of classes that both reflect the roles available in that world as well as the kind of talents needed for a violent occult investigation.

I find generally that general archetypes feel flaccid in a class system. Players will usually find the archetypes they want on their own and that the original concept of what a archetype is suppose to do will inevitably be warped.

There are already loads of D&D-style fantasy games, why are you making yours?
>What sort of world is that game suppose to be run in?
>What aspects of a D&D style game do you want to focus on?
>What can magic do?
>What do YOU want in a core book?

Anything can be any role if you try hard enough. I can imagine a controller barb that dominates the battlefield by charging in and summoning ancestor spirits

historically? druid cleric wizard other.
mechanically? healer tank dps support.
thematically?
Now here is where it gets interesting because depending on what the game is centered around the distinctions between classes become less or more important. If your game is a dungeon crawl then class divisions like you see in diablo and the like make sense. If you are running a game centered around court intrigue then the fighter, paladin and barbarian are almost the same guy. Finally if you are running something like an ocean's eleven style heist campaign then you need only a few kinds of up front combat dudes and a multitude of different kinds of trickster characters.

Warrior, rogue, mage

Alteratively: fighter, thief, black belt, black mage, white mage, red mage

It sounds like you're taking the wrong approach. Start with how you want the gameplay to be, and then decide what characters would be viable in that system or world.

Make Combat Skills and Social skills into two separate stat pools that don't interfere with each other. Seems needlessly limiting to make it so everyone wants to dump CHA on fighter, for instance.

Why even have classes? Give everyone access to spells and skills and have roles naturally develop based on what your character chooses to learn.

Someone else working on a potential 4e successor game here, dropping in with a related question we're currently puzzling over.

Should/could Ranger and Rogue be combined, each being a subtype of the same class?

Both are pragmatic fighters who use their environment, and tend towards dual wielding and ranged combat. There are differences in theme and nuances, but a lot of the chassis of the pair is very similar.

boil it down and you can combine all striker, save perhaps monk

We're not going that far, we like the idea of having distinct classes with clear mechanical identities, but when working on the Rogue and the Ranger the similarities were obvious enough that the question of combining them seemed one to ask.

On the one hand, thematically they are quite different, but with the rules aligning so closely... And then you have examples like Aladdin, who seems like a rogue but has a very effective animal companion.

Honestly, I wouldn't say they are thematically quite different. The only real difference is 'One does it in nature'

>Weapon based
>Agile
>Sneaky
>Ranged or Melee
>Pragmatism over honor
>Martial

Heck, one of the original iconic rangers from the Pool of Radiance trilogy spent most of his life as a Thief and did basically exactly the same thing the entire time.

Fighter(Paladin works too)
Cleric(Paladin works for healing too)
Wizard(Cleric works for utility too)
Ranger/Rogue

I'm on the fence about the last one, really.

But what if I don't want to find ORB to give to WITCH so she can give me HERB to heal the ELF PRINCE?

Fighter
Paladin
Rogue
Ranger
Cleric
Druid
Bard
Necromancer
Mesmer
Elementalist

Strike! actually did this. In that you select a Class & a Role, so you could, in fact, have a barbarian who is a leader/defender/controller/striker/blaster on top of being a barbarian that does all kinds of raging barbarian stuff (I assume the user above at least read Strike! cause I don't know of any other game that makes Blaster a role).

At least one "Strong guy" class. This is the guy who applies physical strength of arms to many scenarios. Even in a game with guns, there will always be that one class more likely to ram down a door than anyone else. Even in games without a combat focus, someone will invariably try and make a character that excels in hitting things and moving large objects, or if nothing else be the scariest looking guy in the room.

The "Guerrilla" class. This is the guy who tries their damnedest to not be directly confronted by anyone else. In many games, this is the "ranger", or the "rogue", but even in non-combat games, there will usually be an infiltrator, spy, or something similar.

The "Technology" class. This class is the guy who takes advantage of available resources to fight smarter instead of harder. In a fantasy game, this is your wizard or priest, while in a modern setting it might be a tech-specialist, or a psychic. In a non-combat oriented game, they will likely be similarly empowered, but probably more similar to the guerrilla than otherwise.

Exactly how these classes fit into roles is not predetermined. Your Technology class might be a squishy wizard, or they might invent mechsuits to fight for them, far outstripping the strong guy as a front line presence. The Strong Guy might be a front-linesman, or he might be a specialist who has to choose carefully where he tries to lift something.
The Guerrilla could be your glass cannon, or they could be a battlefield support class.
The way I see it, almost every class is composed of some assembly of these basic class types.

What do you mean by d&d style is the big question here.

You could reverse engineer these by breaking down all possible actions that take place in the game, then combining them to make classes who excel at those things. Some examples:

Traps
Locks
Noticing things
Moving around the environment
Knowing stuff
Talking to people nicely
Taking to people meanly
Hitting things
Shooting things
Being hit by things
Preventing being hit
Treating wounds
Nature shit

Now just combine as many as comfortable. Hitting things, being hit by things, preventing being hit by things= fight man. Nature shit, treating wounds, noticing stuff= hermit. Traps, locks, moving around the environment=explorer.

Take this to an extreme and you'll have what you need.

Fighter (tough and strong)
Thief (agile and stealthy)
Monk (agile and strong)
Black Mage (smart and deadly)
White Mage (pious and supporting)
Red Mage (deadly and supporting)

Wizard
Magic user
Wizard
Sorcerer
Wizard
Mage
Wizard

Strike! also lets you pic a "Kit" that gives all kinds of out of combat stuff and a theme that comes with it.

Thinking about it, it basically reinvented the Legends style of 3 tract character building, except in a terribly laid out and confusing format.

That'd pretty much be my ideal setup. Each character picks:
- A Kit that gives you your basic theme and abilities (i.e. "Nature guy" gives you all kinds of nature shit, rituals related to plants and weather, foraging, tracking, talking with animals, etc.),
- A Class that gives you your general mechanics
(i.e. Summoner that gives you summons as your main mechanic)
- A Role that modifies your powers with bonuses and gives you extra powers to fulfill your role.(i.e. Leader giving you a minor action heal and the ability to reposition allies when you hit with with an attack).

So if you wanted a Druid who heals allies and summon monsters for help, you'd do a Nature/Summoner/Leader.

If you wanted a ranger that focuses on killing shit fast, you'd do Nature/Duelist/Striker