The Loremaster (Base Class) - Bridging the gap between EK and BS, with a twist !

[CinnaDomenici]

Design notes :

Initial Design Goals :


Make a base class that :
-Is well integrated in the official materials.
-Is "Balanced against Paladin" or at least isn't objectively more powerful
-Support a variety of archetypes
-Doesn't make multiclassing to awkward while not being an OP dip.
-Fly under the "That **** is OP" radar of readers while still making them enthousiast about playing the class.

More on that in the balance notes.


The name : I came across the "Loremasters of Hoeth" from Warhammer Fantasy, didn't dig too deep into it. Just thought "Oh cool dude in a funny dress, wielding a sword and casting a spell". And basically went from this observation and the name alone.

This was intentionnal, I'm not trying to emulate this archetype from Warhammer Fantasy. The aim is to make a base class that is well integrated in D&D 5e fantasy and that support a variety of archetype.

For comparison, the Bladesinger subclass has to specific of a flavor for what i'm trying to achieve. As a subclass it makes sense, as a base class not so much, at least with my design intentions.

I also became very recently aware (like 30 minutes ago) that the Loremaster was a prestige class for 3.5, I might change the name of the class.

Or I may not, because funnily enough I didn't land too far from what both the Loremaster of Hoeth et the 3.5 Loremaster do. At least it's what I get from some more superficial research.

What I instead reviewed again extensively, were the bases classes for 5e, all the Wizard, Paladin and Fighter subclasses, and a lot of spells from each school of magic.

TL;DR : Saw a Loremaster of Hoeth 8th ed fig, thought "Cool dude, cool name, what would be his base class in 5e ?".



On that clumsy technical prose : I tried to make the RAW as close as possible to the RAI, and lost something important on the way. To do so, and to put the project on wheels, I copied and modified features from other classes, as often as I could . All of this with a strong concern over ruling applications.

The result is that most often there isn't too much more ruling blur than in official D&D material, or at least I gave my best effort at it. The other coincidental result is that most features are a ****ing pain to read and lack any of the elegance present in official material.

Still I have now a strong basis to work from. And something to share and discuss, at the very least from a balance perspective.

Also, as I finished writing the 15th and 20th level features (which was most of the work), I reviewed more and more subclass abilities from official materials. And I realised that they were less shy about being rule bending and less overly concerned about sticking to existing technical writing than I originally thought.

I need to rewrite most features with clarity and simplicty in mind, and to censore myself less when trying to come up with cool abilities, even rule bending ones. I hope the latter point already shows in some late subclass features.

TL;DR: I tried to make it look "real" but it's still very much a work in progress.


Class identity : The Loremaster borrows its class identity from the Wizard first and foremost, and from the Battlemaster second (As many have said, the Battlemaster mechanics deserve to be more than something mainly restrained to as subclass).

In its current form, the class as a whole doesn't do much justice its Battlemaster roots. But I tried my best to keep the Wizard flavor without stepping too much on the original class toes.

With all that being said, as much as I love the D&D Wizard fantasy, I want all the people that want to play cool dudes wielding swords and spells to be able to use this class. Without the class flavor interfering too much with the fantasy the player tries to achieve. I'm a people pleaser and I hope it shows in my approach to writing the Evocation subclass.

TL;DR: New Base Classes are hard to justify and to make. This is still a work in progress.


What I intend do next:
-Fine tune the balance
-Rewrite most of the base class abilities and a few subclasses abilities.
-Implement more original mechanics in the base class. With more ribbons and with the power packed in fewer features.
-Try to reduce the number of ressources to track
-Rewrite the technical prose to be simpler and clearer
-Add/modify the flavor text of all features (You know, that very short phrase at the begining of a feature description that doesn't say much about the mechanics). For now it's a just a copy paste of features from other class.
-Add a class description and all that BS. But to me, the flavor of the class should be able to stand on feature names and short descriptions, without the class full description. With that being said, I'm still very far from that point.

In other words : I need to make it cooler with each iterations

TL;DR: I pretty much have to rewrite the whole thing. But it will be way more comfortable now that I have a complete framework.