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| Champion, by Arankin |
And that’s okay, to a degree, but I don’t think it should
be the design goal of a subclass in 5e. Because subclasses represent a choice
for a character. And, personally, I would prefer a choice that means more in
the context of a campaign than just “hitty guy, hitty guy with specific hitty
attacks, and magic hitty guy.”
Don’t get me wrong. I understand why the Player’s
Handbook subclasses all, for the most part, totally suck. They have to be
generic. Because if they’re too specific, then you’re selling a campaign
setting with the core rulebook, which is the antithesis of a D&D core
rulebook. It’s supposed to be generic enough to inspire you to create your own
world. And if the Fighter archetypes were Purple Dragon Knight, Steel
Legionnaire and Warforged Juggernaut, then people wouldn’t know what to do with
them outside of their respective campaign settings. Just a little more inspiration
in your class design, is all I’m saying. Commander, Dervish, and Duskblade.
Doesn’t that sound more evocative than Champion, Battlemaster, and Eldritch
Knight?
But why am I talking about this? Why am I bitching about
friggin’ fighter subclasses?
Well, I’m writing a new campaign, right now. Part of
that, for me, is creating a new setting into which I can drop my players. And
creating a setting is more to me than NPCs and towns. It’s religions, and
races, and classes. It’s every aspect of the game. It’s about creating a rich,
living world where players want to get lost.
And a big part of THAT is the creation of subclasses that
fit into the world. Almost all subclasses in this upcoming campaign are going
to be homebrewed. The reasoning behind this is that, as mentioned above, I want
to give the players something onto which they can attach themselves. In
addition, I want to make a definitive line in the sand between players and
common NPCs. There’s no “soldier” martial archetype because PCs aren’t just
soldiers. They are commanders, special agents, assassins and swordmasters. It’s
a bit of an objectivist view of D&D, where the cream rises to the top and
some people are more special than others, but I feel that the very nature of
D&D is already a bit Randian. Like superheroes.
But I’ve rambled on enough, and that’s not why you
visited this page. You came for a new class archetype. Thus, consider this the
first entry in my series on my upcoming campaign: The Beacon in the Black.
I present the Knight of the Realm.
