So, while in my last post I contemplated how the Cleric and Wizard would have their subclass options in the new Player's Handbook narrowed down to four (again, if you're outraged by this, remember that you'll still be able to use any subclass published in the 2014 PHB, or Xanathar's, Tasha's, or Wildemount), but this "4 per class" change will be a positive one for every other class.
I know I've speculated on this before, but with a bit of greater knowledge about the way that classes are going to work (obviously with a bit more revision and refinement) in One D&D/2024 D&D/Nu5 or whatever we're calling it (I've literally just come up with Nu5 and already feel sick because I feel like most things with "Nu" in my experience suck. NuMetal is why there was so little good rock music when I was in high school, and why I have the music tastes of a Gen Xer who's about ten years older than I am).
So, let's talk about our parameters for figuring out what we could expect to find in the 2024PHB.
As I see it, the PHB subclasses are meant to represent the broadest, most iconic subclasses for the class. They are meant to represent the archetypes that fall into that class category, requiring them to stick to the common forms, but also demonstrate the diversity of premise within a given class.
Indeed, one of the smart decisions in the way that 5E was designed is that the classes in general have such a broad identity that many other fantasy archetypes can fit within them. Where another game might attempt to make multiple classes out of these concepts, 5E recognizes the similarities between them and finds a way to show that they're kind of facets of the same core idea. And that has meant that, while 5E only added a single new class over the course of its initial run (what I'm calling the 2014-2024 version of it) it had plenty of room for subclasses to find weirder and more idiosyncratic ideas to play with.
So, the balancing act required here is to come up with subclasses that represent classic, easily-understood or recognized archetypes, but that are also sufficiently distinct from one another to feel like you're creating a sufficiently broad space for experimentation with new subclasses in subsequent releases. I doubt it will be easy. But we can also look to the 2014 PHB as a jumping off point. I suspect (and hope) that, in a lot of cases, we'll be seeing updates to the existing 2014 PHB subclasses - all of the sample subclasses we've seen to playtest the new versions of the classes have been updates to versions in the 2014PHB, so I think it's a safe bet that we'll see at least one, and in a lot of cases, many of the existing subclasses revised and reprinted, with the exception of Clerics and Wizards' culled subclasses.
That being said, it's already been indicated that we could be seeing new subclasses, like a proposed Bard College of Dance, so there could be as-yet-unfilled holes here.
To begin, we'll look at the Expert Classes, which we got to look at first in the One D&D playtest.
Bards:
We know we'll be getting the College of Lore. Bards are advertised as the generalist support class, with a lot of ways to boost allies and confound enemies, but also as being able to do a little of everything, including some small combat capabilities. I'll argue that a Bard is not really any better than a Wizard at weapon-based combat unless they pick a subclass that supports it, but since 2014, that's been a part of their toolkit. The College of Valor certainly serves that function, giving us something more of a swashbuckler (though keep that word in mind for two classes down). Now, I'd argue that College of Swords winds up being a more interesting subclass that plays a similar role, but we could of course see Valor getting a rework to be more exciting.
However, what we're talking about with the Bard is fully doubling the subclasses available to them. The divide in the 2014PHB options clearly shows "Bard as spellcaster" and "Bard as melee combantant" as its archetypes. Among the subclasses published later, there are two other subclasses that encourage melee (Swords and Whispers - the latter being a little more Rogue-like with a Divine Smite-style mechanic) and four more that play more in the "support spellcaster" space.
The 2024 Bard does have some inherent healing capability, and I wonder if they'd push into a broader idea of the "Jack of All Trades" identity to make a healing-centric subclass. However, a healer is still, in its way, a support caster. I could imagine that we'd have, in broader terms, two melee subclasses and two caster subclasses. If the College of Dance Bard is actually real, I'd imagine it's likely to be more of a melee combatant, focusing on the fluidity of movement and possibly borrowing some of the evasiveness and grace of a Monk.
Now, one of the ironies of the 2014 PHB is that I don't think that either Valor or Lore really fit with the rock star feeling that I think most players think of with the Bard class. Valor is a trickster swashbuckler while Lore is a traveling storyteller (and, to be fair, closer in flavor to the historical traditions of Bards and Skalds - as someone who gathers up stories and lore and histories). But I think if any existing subclass seems to fit into that idea of "Rock Star," it's got to be Glamour.
Glamour could sit with Lore as one of the more spellcasting/back-row subclasses, but where Lore is gathering all of its magical secrets, Glamour could focus much more on the mental manipulation and enchantment side of things.
Bard Subclass Predictions: Lore, Valor, Glamour, "Dance"
Ranger:
Again, the 2014 Ranger has only two subclasses, and the choice is basically "do you want a pet or not?" The revised Beastmaster from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything more or less fixes the problems with the original version, so I have almost zero doubt that that will make it into the 2024PHB with minimal revisions. Perhaps the greatest fix that the Tasha's version makes is that you don't have to worry about sending a beloved pet into battle, because it's easy to get it back if it goes down (this was a big problem in Critical Role's first campaign, where Trinket was the beloved team mascot but generally didn't participate in most fights out of a fear of losing him - something the animated series I think sort of retcons to make him more awesome).
Anyway, the Hunter is the one truly confirmed subclass, whose identity is... honestly a little generic, but that's the intention behind the "default" subclasses.
I think everyone was very encouraged by the revisions to the Ranger in the Expert Class UA, as it seems to be a far more functional and powerful class than it has been. But I also think the Ranger's lack of popularity in 5E has also left me, personally, at a bit more of a loss as to figuring out the various archetypes.
I do think that part of the fantasy of a Ranger is that they're the person that you could drop into an untamed wilderness and they'd be fine. They're sort of your ideal commandos, where a Fighter is a front-line battlefield warrior, the Ranger is the one who goes behind enemy lines or treks through some span of wilderness to find the enemy base. And I do think that the Gloomstalker does kind of fit that flavor of being the deadly predator of the darkness. It also has the benefit of being a very popular subclass.
The other archetype that I personally adore is the Solomon Kane/VanHelsing figure, the sort of horror-hunter - the character who shows up when a supernatural monster is terrorizing innocents who are living in the middle of a horror story. What I really like about this archetype, and the Monster Slayer subclass that represents it, is that we actually see the Ranger in a very different potential environment. Whereas your typical Ranger is found out in the wilderness, the classic environment for the Monster Slayer is in dense urban cities or in hamlets terrorized by whatever foul creature haunts them from the abandoned castle that looms above them. But it also really ties into the "expert" notion of the class. VanHelsing in Dracula is able to lead the fight against the eponymous vampire because of his wide breadth of knowledge about what one can do against such a creature.
Ranger Subclass Predictions: Hunter, Beastmaster, Gloomstalker, Monster Slayer
Rogue:
So, unlike Bards and Rangers, the Rogue already has three subclasses in the 2014 PHB, which means that if we're happy with the original three, we only need to add one.
We know that we're getting the Thief, which is, I think, truly the iconic Rogue subclass (indeed, I think "Thief" as a class name pre-dates Rogue).
And, I think that Assassin is arguably just as iconic a Rogue subclass as Thief. While I have serious quibbles with the 2014 version on a mechanical level (the level 3 feature is great, but the 9 and 13 ones are nothing, only for the 17 one to again be great, but I think in most cases this is best as a 3-level dip) I definitely think that Assassin will make the cut with revisions to make it better.
The only downside here is that Thieves and Assassins both sit in nearby corners of the Rogue design space - the shadowy one.
The Arcane Trickster does not, I think, represent as broad and recognizable a fantasy archetype, but it gets a big boost from being both very powerful and also fitting in a high-magic setting like most D&D worlds. It also has a lot of fun ideas (of course a Rogue would get very good with Mage Hand) so I'm predicting and would be happy to see Arcane Tricksters reprinted.
That leaves only one open slot. And I think that if we're going to talk about classic archetypes, we need do no more than think of the most iconic heroic rogue in English-speaking traditions: Robin Hood. And Robin Hood is the prototypical swashbuckler, iconically portrayed by Errol Flynn and later by Cary Elwes channeling Errol Flynn. The answer here is just too obvious, isn't it? You could argue that the Swashbuckler is, in fact, the ultimate fantasy hero archetype, with so many adventure stories featuring people who fit that bill. On top of that, Swashbuckler itself contains within it plenty of other archetypes - it covers pirates, highway scoundrels, and daredevils of all sorts.
Plus, from a design standpoint, it shows that a Rogue does not always need to stalk through the shadows. This is the Rogue who makes a spectacle of an entrance and duels their foe one-on-one.
Now, the only challenge here is that the archetype shares a lot of territory with the Valor Bard. I'd argue that this is more of a case of the Valor Bard dipping its toe into the Swashbuckler's territory rather than the other way around, and the classes play sufficiently differently that I don't think it's a problem. Indeed, I think a party with a Swashbuckler Rogue and a Valor Bard would be well on its way to being a band of Merry Men.
Rogue Subclass Predictions: Thief, Assassin, Arcane Trickster, Swashbuckler
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