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Thoughts on Name Level Classes

by Andrew Theisen

There have been some suggestions in prior threads about this sort of thing that might be worth checking out:

• High Level Fighter Options
• Subclasses in Classic

I was pretty sure there were some other discussions before, but maybe they were on the Wizards' forums, the MML, or the prior versions of these boards?

In any event, I've thought about some possibilities along these lines before:

Thieves

• Swashbuckler: Some fighter combat options, for instance, and maybe some different high level skills while some regular thief skills remained static.
• Assassin: Would resemble the Thug/1E Assassin.
• Bard: Would have some druidic spells and music abilities at the expense of some thief abilities.

Magic-User

• Warlock

When considering these, I would usually find myself going back and forth on a couple of things:
a) Should I stick with the alignment-based idea of the fighter and cleric?
b) Should there be land-owning and wandering variants?

In the former case, I had the idea to do something like a Crusader option for clerics (more martial), and each would have a unique spell list like the druid that would adhere more towards the high level classes' strengths (ie, things like Spiritual Weapon for the Crusader). I also considered that the Fighter, Magic-User, and Thief Neutral options would be more nature based (Fighter would have Ranger; Magic-User would have either a nature oriented Warlock or something similar; Thief's would be Bard).

In the latter case, I was thinking of things like a Thief Guildmaster option, or a Fighter Warlord option, where some of the abilities would be geared towards dominion or war machine benefits.

I have never been quite satisfied enough to settle on anything, though. I also increasingly dislike the Druid as a high level option for Clerics, and have considered having some other base class instead (ex. Shaman) for which Druid would be a high-level option, and then Clerics would get a different Neutral option.

Another option I've been leaning into more these days is to make the high-level options something akin to a multiclass: ie, Paladin is essentially a fighter with cleric abilities. So something like an eldritch knight would be a fighter with some magic-user spellcasting; an Inquisitor would be a cleric with some thief skills, etc.