So, I've already looked at Clerics, who will be having their subclass count in the 2024PHB cut down to four (repeating here my reminder that you'll still be able to play all the 2014 subclasses if you want, though I can understand a frustration if the subclass you like doesn't get a tune-up revision next year). However, the other Priest classes have fewer subclasses in the 2014PHB, meaning that Druids, who have only two in the Player's Handbook, will be getting two more, while the Paladin, which has three, will get one addition.
We should also note that it's possible that some existing subclasses might get cut and swapped out, while at the same time some brand-new subclasses might get implemented - there has been a mention of a Bard "College of Dance" option that they're working on, so we could also potentially expect to see other new subclasses implemented here.
Still, for my purposes, I'm going to generally err on the side of assuming that we'll be keeping the existing 2014PHB subclasses in the 2024PHB, and playing with the idea of adding existing subclasses from other sources like Xanathar's or Tasha's to round out their numbers rather than creating new subclasses whole-cloth. Now, this might be the wrong approach - they might choose not to add any existing subclasses from non-PHB sources and let those live in the secondary supplement land. But it's the more conservative, more likely approach for this post's purposes.
As I've mentioned in previous posts on this subject, 5E's approach to classes has been to have the classes themselves represent broad fantasy archetypes - generalized tropes that can fit into as many fantasy settings as possible. A Rogue should be able to fit with a sneaky Halfling thief who spies on a powerful dragon, like in the classic fantasy of The Hobbit, or a smart aleck space-smuggler like in the science-fantasy of Star Wars.
Subclasses then serve to narrow those archetypes into more specific tropes. While these can still be rather broad (Swashbuckler Rogues could be anything from Robin Hood to Jack Sparrow) they take a slice of that broader archetype and try to give you a more tailored fit to your character concept.
Some subclasses get deep into specific lore that the whole class generally shies away from in the name of staying more broadly applicable - like the Rune Knight Fighter, which makes use of D&D's very specific Giant lore (which, to be fair, borrows elements of Norse myth).
But I think that the subclasses to be found in the Player's Handbook generally aim to fit the broader, more universal sub-tropes of the truly universal (or as universal as possible) overall classes. Each class comes with a "default" subclass, but really, all four of the subclasses in the PHB should also feel like the "classic" versions of these classes, reserving things like psionics for fighters or thalassic behemoths as warlock patrons for the odder supplementary sourcebooks.
So, let's get started:
The Druid is definitely a classic fantasy archetype, though you could argue that it was D&D that really popularized this notion of Druid as nature-mage. (Historically, of course, Druids were just the priests of a pre-Roman civilization in Britain.) But the Druid not only gives us a nice third option for powerful spellcasters who don't want to be associated with the quasi-scientific Arcane magic or the faith-based Divine magic, and lets us play as people tied to nature in a magical and spiritual way that doesn't take the more god-based approach to spirits and the supernatural.
The existing subclasses in the 2014PHB take two of the Druids' iconic powers and focuses on them. Circle of the Moon, which is presented in the playtest document as the Druid's default class, focuses on Wild Shape, which has become kind of the defining Druid ability in a lot of RPGs (certainly in Blizzard's two fantasy RPG franchises, Diablo and Warcraft, Druids are the "shapeshifter" class). Now, I've written at length how the apparent intent of Wild Shape in the 2024 version is good, but will need some serious reworkings and revisions, but assuming that all gets buttoned up, Circle of the Moon has historically been a popular and effective subclass to let a Druid's shapeshifting thrive as a primary mode of use (and leaves them with plenty of powerful spellcasting on top of that - anyone who watched campaign one of Critical Role or who has seen The Legend of Vox Machina knows what an absolute powerhouse their Moon Druid Keyleth is - I honestly wonder if the choice to have Doric in Honor Among Thieves be a red-headed druid with tiefling horns that resemble Keyleth's antler crown was a conscious decision).
Circle of the Moon's inclusion is no question, but it also wouldn't be one even if we hadn't been presented with it in the playtest document.
Now, Circle of the Land in the 2014PHB is meant to focus more on the spellcasting side of the class. And indeed, it does that, giving you a number of free spells (similar to later Circle spells we'd get with some, but not all subclasses) along with an extra cantrip and a copy of the Wizard's Arcane Recovery feature.
But I never seem to see people play this subclass, and I think that is, in part, because Circle of the Moon, while technically not as versatile a spellcaster, is not really very far behind but then also gets a much more powerful Wild Shape.
Premise-wise, though, I think Circle of the Land could work, even if it needs a significant mechanic rework (at level 10, you become immune to being charmed or frightened, but only by elementals and fey. Are there any elementals who use charm or fear effects?) But I could see this as being the ultimate Primal Spellcaster option.
(Mechanically, the change from "Wild Shape charges" to "Channel Nature uses" frees up some design space, but I'm mostly looking at vibes here.)
But that leaves us with two spots to fill.
Spellcasting is a broad category, so let's revisit it a little. Druids have a lot of elemental damage spells like Call Lightning or Firestorm, or elemental crowd control. While "Land" is not necessarily the best name for it, I tend to think of Circle of the Land as being the Druid that focuses on these sorts of effects. One could almost think of them as leaning into the identity of World of Warcraft's Shamans, which distinguish themselves from Druids by being more focused on the elements and the primordial forces of nature rather than the weave of organic life, as that game's Druids are.
In contrast, then, the Circle of Shepherds competes with the Conjuration Wizard as the ultimate summoner subclass. Bringing in elementals or beasts or fey to fight alongside you really fits with a classic Druid-affiliated trope - the character who calls upon all of nature to rise up against their foes. As Henry Jones Sr. in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade says, completing inventing a false quote of Charlemagne's, "Let my armies be the rocks and the trees, and the birds in the sky." While there's no Druid who actually does this in the story, the Shepherd Druid is the one leading the Ents to charge Isengard. Or, hell, it's any number of Disney Princesses who are attended upon by charming woodland creatures. Or, you know, it's Willard from the movie Willard with his swarms of murderous rats (which, to be fair, overlaps with the Swarmkeeper Ranger, but we're not assuming that one's inclusion in the PHB).
If we've got the elementalist in our Circle of the Land, our shapeshifter in the Circle of the Moon, our summoner in the Circle of the Shepherd, what is left?
Well, I'll admit here that maybe when I mentioned Circle of the Land I got the names wrong, but the Druid is a Priest class, and Priests are meant to be able to play a healer or at least preserver role (the Paladin doesn't do a ton of healing, but they seem to have options to help protect and absorb damage their allies take). Regrowth and renewal are major themes of the Druid's overall vibe - they often work to cleanse the earth and roll back the destruction that unchecked expansion of civilization wreaks on the natural world (there's a whole post to be written about how the "nature guardian" trope wasn't always thought of as positively as it is now, but given how badly our environment has suffered from human behavior, even the most extreme Druids read as ultimately working for the greater good).
Perhaps if we swapped things around a little, Circle of the Land could focus on healing and perhaps a bit of battlefield control. While Land's environment-based sub-subclasses aren't as restrictive as a 2014 Ranger's Favored Terrain and Favored Enemy (in fact, it's really just a different set of bonuses you get depending on that choice and I don't think is impacted by where your druid happens to be at any given time,) I could see a greater embrace of "place" with the class, where perhaps you can establish beneficial zones for your party on the battlefield, perhaps with an eye toward healing creatures on the land (including allied adventurers) as well as the land itself.
Then, I could imagine something like Circle of Elements, or perhaps Circle of Wrath, to represent the offensive spellcasting Druid, which focuses on pouring out damage spells and devastating foes in that WoW Shaman kind of way. Here, the focus goes more to lightning and lava, tidal waves and earthquakes, and messing foes up.
With that, I think we create a pretty broad area to play around in regarding the Druid's overall vibe. So, to be official:
Druid subclass predictions: Moon, Land, Shepherd, "Wrath"
Paladins:
Here's the thing about Paladins: they are unquestionably a popular fantasy RPG class. But can you name a single paladin that really reads as a paladin in any fantasy media that isn't a game? And no, Honor Among Thieves doesn't count. See, you might look at the righteous, selfless, just, and overall awesome guy that is Aragorn from Lord of the Rings and say "oh yeah, there's your paladin," but Aragorn is explicitly a Ranger, and I suspect that the whole D&D Ranger class is actually largely inspired by Aragorn, whose skills tend to be things like tracking and knowing the right healing herbs. Hell, you ever notice that religion as a thing doesn't really exist in Middle Earth? People are aware of God and the Valar and Maiar and all that, but there aren't any churches or temples or priests.
Now, there are plenty of knights who take oaths and take them seriously, but it sort of becomes this wishy-washy thing. Is any knight sworn to some duty a paladin? Maybe, but then, aren't some of those Fighters? The Warders in The Wheel of Time (assuming the Amazon show matches the books, which I've never read) are sworn defenders of their Aes Sedai (basically Wizards) but while they're magically bonded to them, they don't really have magic powers of their own.
But is that a problem?
Well, I think this is where the problem manifests: without a lot of clear-cut Paladins in media (actually, James Holden from The Expanse was explicitly written to be a paladin character, but he's in a hard sci-fi series, not a fantasy story, so at best he just has the personality of a paladin) there are fewer obvious tropes to point to in order to see how the class can take on different forms.
(EDIT: I realize that, in fact, there is a profoundly popular example of the paladin in one of the most popular fantasy series of all time, which is the Jedi of Star Wars. They even have their own flavor of "corrupted, fallen paladins" in the form of the Sith - Darth Vader might not be technically undead, but you could argue that his cybernetic life support is the science-fantasy equivalent thereof, reinforced by the skull-like appearance of his breathing mask, and thus Vader is actually the prototypical Death Knight. The only reason I think it's hard to translate this is that the Jedi and Sith have to kind of carry the weight of the entire supernatural aspect of Star Wars - yes, I know that in expanded universe materials there are other magical forces at work, but in the movies people actually know, the fantasy part of Star Wars is only utilized by these two orders of force-users, and thus they have to also play the role of wizards and sorcerers and clerics and monks.)
And thus, when you look at basically all the Paladin subclasses other than the "evil paladins" like the Oath of Conquest and Oathbreaker (the latter intended more for villainous NPCs than players,) there's very little deviation from the general paladin vibe.
And that's also reflected in the fact that, mechanically, my experience has been that paladin subclasses aren't as impactful as other subclasses often are. Oath Spells are all well and good except that almost all your spell slots are going toward Divine Smite (the playtest UA allowing a free casting of each Oath Spell does help to combat this a little bit, I'll admit).
Now, to be fair, I do think the PHB makes a good effort to find different overall vibes for its three subclasses.
The Oath of Devotion is obviously meant to (and is) be the "default," classic paladin archetype - someone who is bound by duty to stand up as a heroic champion of justice and all that. While the tenets of Devotion don't explicitly say you have to be Lawful Good, their meaning pretty much ensures that - "Compassion" being a not terrible definition of what it means to be good and "Duty" summing up basically what it means to be Lawful in D&D.
While they can play similar roles, I do think Oath of Vengeance provides a good counterpoint. In both cases, the character might tend toward Lawful Good, but Vengeance is concerned less with what they stand for, and more about what they stand against. Devotion's role is to stand up for compassionate duty, while Vengeance's role is to punish and destroy the wicked. Vengeance, thus, can fall into a more morally grey, "he who fights monsters" identity, though it's not forced into that role.
The last of the 2014PHB Paladin subclasses is Oath of the Ancients. And this one I always struggle to wrap my head around a little. On its surface, this is the "Druid Paladin," but I'm not entirely sure that it fits that descriptor, at least entirely.
The tenets of the Ancients don't really say much about being a protector of the natural world, but instead just basically encourage you to be a beacon of hope and kindness to those around you - I can see it as sort of being the Neutral Good archetype compared to Devotion's Lawful Good. Mechanically, though, they get a few Druid-like abilities, like several druid spells as Oath spells, as well as a channel divinity option, Nature's Wrath.
I'm not opposed to the idea of Oath of the Ancients, but I think it needs a stronger identity to better distinguish it in flavor from Devotion. And, if they want to continue leaning into this "guardian of nature" vibe, it probably needs to be be more consistently reflected in the mechanics.
Before we talk about what other existing subclass could be added to the PHB, we've got to take a step back and really ask what the boundaries of the Paladin design space is. What, ultimately, is a Paladin?
And here I think we're hampered by the fact that the Paladin's original design in D&D was extremely narrow. In earlier editions, you could only play a Paladin if you were Lawful Good. Stray from that alignment or the tenets of your oath and the DM could just tell you you weren't a paladin anymore.
This has led to a kind of stereotype of all paladin characters being played as these stick-up-their-asses rules sticklers who will never deal with morally grey NPCs the other characters need to and are essentially the fun police.
Now, more recent editions have relaxed those restrictions, and in particular the addition of the Oath of Conquest shows that a Paladin need not be a good person to still fall under this class archetype.
Essentially, we need to define what makes a paladin a paladin, and to reject the old narrowness of that definition.
In World of Warcraft, the Death Knight class was added in 2008's Wrath of the Lich King. Death Knights in D&D are generally paladins who have fallen so far to corruption that they have become undead monsters - the very monsters that paladins are sworn to fight against. While WoW adjusted the lore to say that the undead Scourge could make Death Knights of any fallen champion, the design of the class in those early days included some references to the Paladin, such as giving Death Knights the talent "Dark Conviction," which worked the same way as the Paladin's "Conviction."
While we can expect the 2024Monster Manual to change how the Death Knight monster stat block works, the 2014MM makes no bones about the fact that the Death Knight uses paladin spells.
I'll go one further: Death Knights are not even former paladins. They're just evil, undead paladins.
Ok, so rather than continuing to beat around the bush: what makes a paladin a paladin?
A Paladin is a martial combatant who supplements their combat capabilities with divine magic, which they derive from the embrace of a philosophical worldview that they seek to live by.
Now, crucially, what this definition does is open us up to any and all philosophical worldviews, not just the ones that are lawful, good, or lawful good. In this sense, even an Oathbreaker Paladin, who has forsaken any duty or adherence to an oath they made, could be said to now adhere to a philosophy of nihilism or self-interest.
Instead of binding the Paladin to the idea of an Oath, by simply connecting the Paladin to a philosophy (and in some cases a patron deity who represents that philosophy,) we open better to philosophies that might not care about oaths. A chaotic good champion does not do anything because they swore to do it - they do it because, in the moment, trusting their instincts, they just do it.
So, I could actually see a broad reconceptualization of the Paladin as basically "philosophy warriors," and that allows for a whole lot of different philosophies to be represented. I would love, for example, to see a kind of anarchist paladin, whose philosophy sees them opposing order and structures, perhaps feeling that these things are inherently corrupting and oppressive if they're chaotic good or that they needlessly bind people from following their true natures if the character is more chaotic neutral or chaotic evil.
That being said, I don't think we're likely to see this broadening of the Paladin identity, at least in the way I've termed and explored it, in the official publications.
Of the non-DMG post-PHB subclasses for Paladins in 5th Edition, the Oath of Conquest is certainly the most different, giving us a subclass that skews Lawful Evil in its overall flavor. The presence of this subclass in the PHB would go a long way to demonstrating the versatility of the class on a conceptual level.
But I might then encourage WotC to draw broader distinctions between the PHB subclasses. Are Devotion, Ancients, and Vengeance meant to represent Lawful Good, Neutral Good, and Chaotic Good? Not... quite. While I think that the intent with the first two is to hit those segments of the alignment chart, Vengeance can fit in nearly any alignment depending on how dark you want to go with it.
There is, also, the issue of the mechanics. Again, I think that giving paladins a free use of each of their Oath spells could go a long way to making them actually using the "spellcasting" feature of their class rather than only Divine Smite.
Of the post-PHB subclasses for the Paladin I've seen in 5E, I think my favorite is actually Oath of the Watchers, but I suspect it's not really distinct enough in vibe.
So, perhaps more than any of the other classes, this one's one where I don't feel confident about my predictions, but let's just go for it:
Paladin subclass predictions: Devotion, Ancients, Vengeance, Conquest.
Next, I think we're going to possibly drop into the non-Wizard Mages before we finish things off for this round with the Warriors.
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