Edit: It seems I never spelled out what my issue with 5e was. My grievance is that as a player the game doesn’t empower me to do what I feel is the core fantasy of most classes. I can’t fault the DMs for forgetting to include spell scrolls as loot or not do overland travel or whatever, they are small easy-to-forget things. It just gets frustrating when I ask the DM to give out a certain kind of loot or let me interact with other druids to do Druid things and then they (understandably) forget.
A while back, I got into a heated argument with a friend about 5e; I wanted to play a new system becuase I was getting tired of how generic 5e is, but my friend insisted that i could hombrew 5e to create any style of play i wanted. This was back in 2017 and we have not been friends for a while now, but I’ve been pondering how to homebrew 5e into a shape that encourages a specific style of play.
My main issue with 5e after all this time is that I don’t feel like the classes actually encourage you to behave like your class. Druid is personally my favorite class because it’s the exception (i liek da aminals) but every other class is at best somewhat samey and at worst actively frustrating (looking at you, PHB ranger).
Here’s my thoughts about what I think the core fantasy of each class SHOULD be. Lmk what you think. I want to know if I am really off-base with these.
Bard: I think you play a Bard to be a drama queen and an artist.
Barbarian: s t r o n k
Cleric: The main appeal of being a cleric, for me, is promoting a god, proselytizing, doing outreach, building a temple, and most importantly asking the DM very specific questions about their setting and making them very happy. It’s all about that faith babyyyy.
Druid: i liek da aminals. (fr, the actual appeal for me is similar to cleric but with Druid stuff)
Fighter: the only reason for me to play Fighter is the Battlemaster Archetype, so I can play 5e like the wargame it sometimes seems like it wants to be. I also like the Champion for the expanded crit range, but if you like being stronk like bull you could just play barbarian? (Starting to think that Barbarian should have been a Fighter subclass).
Monk: wuxia/xianxia. Kinda out of place, but I can dig it. They should have leaned more into that.
Paladin: The only class that I think was incredibly damaged by WotC’s decision to make alignment not matter mechanically. IMHO, the concept of Oaths should have been more fleshed out, and there should have been consequences for breaking your oath included in the rules.
Ranger: the one time I played a ranger, I worked with the dm to homebrew some cool stuff for traveling so I could be the ultimate master of the wilderness. (We then went into a dungeon and spent the rest of the mini-campaign there.) I think a better ranger would have more cool stuff for traveling, and maybe let you make more animal friends.
Rogue: Stabby glass cannon skill monkey. 5e’s rogue knows what it wants to be and it is very good at being its best self. I have never played a rogue, but I totally get the appeal. IMHO, best class in the game. I think the only way to improve the rogue would be to make skills better.
Sorceror: I have mixed feelings about the Sorceror. I like sorcery points, and I like being able to do more with a limited spell list. That said, if I want to play as a magical boy who casts spells as easily as breathing, I think there should be a way to slam together a spell-like effect on the spot with nothing but your Wits.
Warlock: My favorite misfit child. As a DM, I love how I can use this class to yank a player around my cool setting under the threat of [REDACTED]. However, I have noticed multiple players seem thrown off by this. As a player, I love using my Warlock pact to exploit the hell out of the setting for my own game, but the way it’s spellcasting works runs completely counter to how every other class works. Ultimately, could be a better power fantasy, all things considered.
Wizard: I have a bone to pick with this class. Yes, this class offers a path to ultimate power. However, the main way you do this is by shoving spell scrolls into your spellbook like a kid on Halloween grabbing fistfuls of candy from a bowl labeled “Please Take 1”. This means going into dungeons to find them, and hopefully also the gold to copy them into your spellbook. However, every DM I have played with seems to forget that spell scrolls, especially Cantrip spell scrolls, are a thing that exist and can be found as loot. More importantly, we rarely even go into the dungeons that these scrolls are in! In my opinion, the best way to make wizards playable is to make 2 changes to all or most of the other classes:
- Give the other classes abilities that similarly depend on the Dungeon. Maybe give them stuff to spend copious amounts of money on?
- Give some of the other spellcasters spellbooks so more people are hungry for scrolls. (Bard could definitely use a spellbook, since they are kinda like music wizards.) Then, all you would need to do is give the wizard some tiny boons to their spellbook usage to make it slightly more efficient than the other classes.
Artificer: Inventing stuff is cool! I just wish that WotC wasn’t so scared of giving players the freedom to customize stuff. Maybe in another timeline we could have gotten an Artificer that functions like the PF1 Summoner. Also, guns. Not sure why they are so afraid of guns. Any table that bans Artificer is also going to ban guns, and any table that really wants guns will also really want Artificer. The venn diagram of Artificer enthusiasts and people who want guns in D&D is a circle.
Here’s my thoughts on what I would need to do to make 5e conform to a style of play I like:
- Cull the redundant classes so my work is a bit easier. Barbarian and Paladin become Fighter subclasses. Druid becomes a Cleric subclass. Eliminate Sorceror, Monk, Warlock, and Artificer until I know what to do with them. This leaves Bard, Cleric, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, and Wizard.
- Rework the lower levels to incentivise the core fantasy of each class.
- At higher levels, give each class ludicrously expensive stuff to buy so they still want to go into the dungeons and get loot. Move the currency system to be based around copper pieces so I can more easily deploy the overcomplicated currency systems that make me happy.
- Make skills a little more fun to work with. For example, maybe whenever you use a skill successfully yoh can increase your proficiency with that skill by 1?
- Circle back to Sorceror, Warlock, Monk, and Artificer. Make new classes to replace them. Artificer gets a whole framework for fully custom inventions. Monk gets proper cultivation genre mechanics, diving deep into eastern alchemy on top of the standard martial arts flair. Sorceror has spellcasting, but also gets a toolkit for slapping together spell effects on the fly. Warlock gets a full point-buy system with their pact boons. I do not think this is very doable, though.
Lmk if I am completely off-base.
The mechanics in d&d are mostly about combat and skill checks because as a player you get to decide how you behave and the mechanics are there to have a framework for that. If players aren’t acting like you want them to as a DM and you feel like it’s a good idea to enforce your desires through changing the mechanics, you’re going to disappoint yourself and frustrate your players. If you want a certain style of role playing, that’s something you can discuss with players, but it’s ultimately collaborative as opposed to enforceable.
I feel like you read a different thing than I thought I wrote. Maybe I could have been clearer. This is about me not wanting to be a player in 5e because the game does not encourage the dm to do stuff. I could have dwelled more on moments where I asked a dm to do something that would help me play my class (spell scrolls in the loot, give me opportunities to interact with other druids in my circle, overland travel, let me make use of my knightly title) and then they just forgot to do that. As a DM, I get it, a lot of these requests were very small things that just get lost in the shuffle, and its not pleasant to tell a player “hey, we wont be doing overland travel, if travel is what makes ranger appeal to you maybe dont play a ranger this game”. It would be easier if they game empowered the players to be active in the world and make class-informed choices that the DM can react to.
Ah, typically it’s DMs that alter mechanics and approve homebrew. If I were running a campaign, and I had a player saying “I want to change the rules so you have to run the game a certain way,” it would be a huge red flag.
If a player wants to play in a certain way, it’s not usually the mechanics that prevents them. Your example where you picked a ranger that didn’t fit what was going on in the campaign, that seems like a failure of communication. The DM allowed you to think wearing a snorkel in the desert was a good idea. I don’t think having a class with snorkel AND fins would have helped in the desert and I don’t think the fins would have forced the DM to put a river in to suit the diver class. I don’t think it’s unreasonable or unpleasant for the DM to say: this is a dessert campaign, you’re not going to want a 60 pound tank on your back for this even though it’s very helpful in a situation where you’re trying not to drown.
I don’t think restricting what can be done or changing mechanics would make that DM any better or make communication any less necessary or force the DM to make changes to the campaign.
Again, it’s best when collaborative and avoiding unpleasant conversations leads to just as many problems in d&d as it does in any relationship. Rules aren’t going to help if there’s not communication.