Can’t wait to make a DDR themed bard!
Effectively, what Spellblade is to Fighter, Dance Bard is to Monk. Plus buff sharing.
Ocean Druid has some cool stuff, but I always feel like “of the sea” or similar classes wind up kind of wasted. I don’t think I’ve ever had a campaign spend enough time in or around large amounts of water to make a water-specialist class worthwhile. You can like, bypass the random swimming puzzle at the bottom of a dungeon somewhere, and the sidequest to magic pirate island has some nice utility - and then for the entire rest of the campaign you’re on dry land, fighting land-based enemies, and the sea-themed subclass is mostly just flavour rather than mechanically useful.
Great because just what’s 5e is missing is more subclasses
Ok but College of Dance seems awesome!
I am more skeptical of the outright need for Oceans druid (since Land-Coast and Moon both already can lean heavily on an aquatic theme). But honestly, why not?
I read the ocean (was it “sea”?) druid, and it just didn’t look very flavorful. I mean, I guess it’s got power, but I don’t really understand the fantasy.
You are right - Circle of the Sea. I agree that it feels way more specific, and it is mostly a fantasy that you can fulfil by Land and Moon already. I’m not sure that I would ever actually play this one unless I was in a particularly seafaring campaign. But overall I like that they are coming up with interesting alternative uses for wild shape. Wrath of the Sea seems great.
I will say that I ran a pirate game that featured a coast druid who absolutely would have taken this subclass. Most characters in that game were sea elves, water genasi, tritons, or otherwise seafarers. One was D’anne Bonny, a barbarian who would have loved the new weapon mastery rules.
I think druid suffers from a lack of flavor in general. There are a few good subclasses now, but Druid mostly just doesn’t have much going on when compared to the flavors of other classes.
My personal opinion is that’s because the majority of their flavor is sucked up by wild shape
Idk. I’m going in the opposite direction. Shadowdark has brought such a fresh enjoyment to the game for me, taking everything I like as a DM from 5e, cutting out all the cruft and bullshit, and condensing it all into a sweet ichor-like-syrup. Player characters can actually go down, I don’t have books worth of subclasses to know (all of which have long since blended together), classes are distinctive and specialized; I can’t recommend it strongly enough.
You’re…upset about more choices? Weird hill to die on
Not really, when all the subclasses are just on a spectrum bleeeing into each other. None of them feel unique anymore, just a mash of x+y class. It just adds cruft, limits actual creative choice in character building, adds to dm workload, and makes everything feel samey. It’s like the custom stat benefits rule from Tasha’s. On its face, seems like a good idea. But now you just have every race being a reskin of each other. Kill the subclass. Embrace class differences. Let players make their characters unique based on the stories we make together, not trying to fit them into a predefined cookie cutter box.
It’s like the custom stat benefits rule from Tasha’s. On its face, seems like a good idea. But now you just have every race being a reskin of each other. Kill the subclass. Embrace class differences. Let players make their characters unique based on the stories we make together, not trying to fit them into a predefined cookie cutter box.
This is so bizarrely self-contradictory.
Force players to only play the nine classes with no subclasses or features, force species into hard-locked stat differences … to avoid them being cookie-cutter? Like forcing anyone who wants to play a reasonably-optimized STR character to play a species with inherent STR bonus increases creativity somehow? As if using Tasha’s rule to play an unconventional species as a STR class means that player somehow cannot possibly also give their character a unique and interesting story as well as a slightly unconventional class/species combo? Make it make sense.
If you think that having more tools to customize and differentiate species and classes reduces creativity, that’s a you problem and not a rules problem.
Eh agree to disagree. You’re falling into the trap that 5e sets of assuming what is on the character sheet it’s all that’s available to the characters. By forcing players into subclasses that are all just cookie cutter perfectly balanced slight variations of each others, you’re encouraging players to stay entirely in their sheet and everyone basically does the same thing with different flavor, to fulfill ONLY the specific fantasies pre ordained by WOTC. To approach every problem by first looking to their sheet and trying to find the right number instead of creatively looking at the narrative we’re building together and finding a unique solution. It’s not a “me” problem to acknowledge that 5e subclasses and races are incredibly samey mechanically, and if you can’te see that I suggest you try to look past the matrix and pretty illustrations WOTC uses to distract from the fact, and look to the actual fundamentals of how the game works. Prof. Dungeonmaster I think has a great take on the subject: https://youtu.be/UwPnhr2b8VU**___**
Please, tell me what I think some more. It went so well here.
You’re falling into the trap that 5e sets of assuming what is on the character sheet it’s all that’s available to the characters. By forcing players into subclasses that are all just cookie cutter variations of each others, you’re encouraging players to stay entirely in their sheet. To approach every problem by first looking to their sheet and trying to find the right number instead of creatively looking at the narrative we’re building together and finding a unique solution.
None of this is true. It’s a weird strawman that you’ve made up, that would make absolutely no sense to any real person’s opinion - if you weren’t trying to create a fictional scenario where having more diversity of choice and options was somehow bad.
It’s not a “me” problem to acknowledge that 5e subclasses and races are incredibly samey mechanically,
It’s absolutely a ‘you’ problem to see a wide variety of options with very few mechanical constraints, and go “yeah, that limits creativity” - if you feel your creativity is somehow enhanced by having hard mechanical limits on which races and classes can do what tasks in a TTRPG … you can still create that experience for yourself in 5E. Like, having more options doesn’t prevent you from playing however confined and restricted you want - so making all of these points about me, about other people is just projecting your own limitations on the rest of the world and then criticizing them for a problem only you seem to have.
and if you can’te see past the matrix and pretty illustrations WOTC uses to distract from that, that’s a you problem, for not really getting how this game works at the fundamentals.
Like that. That’s not my opinion, “pictures” aren’t why I have my opinion or why I might have the opinion I don’t, and I definitely understand the mechanics more than fine. You just made up an opinion for me, made up an explanation why I might have that fictional opinion, and then got snide with me about an entirely fictional scenario you put on me.
You can just not use Tashas if you want. Imagining that other people need hard-coded stat penalties just to “be creative” and that’s somehow impossible in a system where you, or they, can still choose to have hard-coded stat penalties is just the wildest thing to pretend is ‘wrong’ with D&D.
I aint got time for that. I’m happy for you, or I’m sorry you’re going through that.
