Modular Classes in D&D

It’s Four Job Fiesta week. I’m probably going to participate, and you can pop in on Twitch to see me flail ineffectually. But more relevantly for this blog, it’s reminded me of a class design space I’ve wanted to explore for a while.

In D&D 5E, classes have required subclass options. Unlike 3E where prestige classes were the way and Pathfinder where optional archetypes expand on class options, in 5E you must select a subclass that tweaks your base class; clerics can follow light or life, rogues can be thieves or assassins, and so forth. Each base class provides a framework, and these unique subclasses are where the classes really expand into interesting choices.

Okay, but, and I’m just spitballing here, what if those subclass options weren’t unique…or even permanent?

Four Job Fiesta?

This section isn’t about D&D but I think it provides important context.

Final Fantasy V for the Super Nintendo has a very modular class system. When you pick a class, you get that class’ baseline powers—knights get HP, attack power, weapon and armor proficiencies, and the ability to protect allies; white mages get magic power and all the white magic you have available; thieves get agility, the ability to steal from enemies, and limited weapon and armor proficiencies. You can change any character’s class at any time except during battles and cut scenes. It’s intended that you shift your party composition for certain challenges, like not bringing berserkers to a boss who counterattacks every time it takes physical damage, but you can muddle through the game with basically anything.

This gets interesting with class levels. As you win fights, each character gains experience in their current class, unlocking new abilities. You can then add one of these abilities to the character regardless of their current class. For example, I have a character who gains three levels as a white mage. If I change him to a knight, I can give him “white mage L3” as his free ability, and he becomes a knight who can can some white magic. He still has knight stats instead of white mage stats, so he’s not a great healer, but it gives the party options they wouldn’t have if he remained a straight knight. This mix-and-match is the main strategic aspect of the game and it’s one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.

Four Job Fiesta is a type of challenge run for FFV where you’re only allowed to use four of the game’s twenty or so classes, randomly determined. Furthermore, your party must contain as many different classes as possible at any given time. When you only have one class in the early game, fine, everybody can (and must) be a monk. Once you unlock time mage as your second class, at least one party member must be a time mage. You can still mix and match abilities, but you have to plan out who’s going to be what when. Knowledge of the game is very important; if you know you’ll want everybody to have the ninja’s Throw ability for a certain boss, you’d best make sure you rotate everybody through the ninja class long enough to unlock Throw.

This works because there is no restriction on what abilities you can put on a character. If you have it unlocked, you can use it. White magic on a knight? Sure, it’s basically a paladin. On a ranger? That works, and it’s useful when you need backup heals or the bow isn’t being helpful. On a white mage? Weird and useless, because it just gives you two commands that do the same thing, but it’s valid. On a berserker? Even more useless, because a berserker can’t select the magic command, but you can still do it. On a black mage? Not only is that possible, it’s very good because they rely on similar stats. The game doesn’t care whether the class abilities are thematically linked or synergistic, only that you want to use them. Some combinations are awful and some are disgustingly good, and figuring that out is the player’s job, not the game’s.

How This Applies to D&D

D&D is not good at this sort of freeform class structure. You’re expected to pick a class at L1 and stick with it until credits rolls. The most reliable version of it has historically been multiclassing, which until recently wasn’t actually very good. In 3E, multiclassing characters took an XP penalty, which meant they gained levels more slowly than single-classed peers, and the only way to avoid it was to use each race’s specific favored class (half-orcs could multiclass freely into barbarian, elves could be wizards, gnomes could also be wizards but only a specific kind until 3.5E where they instead learned to hit people with banjos).

The penalties were even higher in 4E. A character could multiclass into a second class, but it cost a feat and gave him a tiny fraction of its power, like “once per day, you can use this ability that normal members of the class get to use twice per fight”. If he takes three more feats, he can get some of the class’s powers, but he has to give up his own class powers to do it. The capstone comes at L11, when he gets to adopt a few more powers from the second class, at later levels than normal, in exchange for all of his paragon path’s powers and abilities. It was not great. The hybrid classes in the Player’s Handbook 3 were much, much more usable and interesting, even if they did put you into a sort of “worst of both worlds” space regarding shared features.

Compared to that, 5E feels downright permissive. You can multiclass into anything (assuming you have a certain ability score, which is fun because single-classed characters don’t have that restriction, so it feels like you have to pass the fighter entrance exam before they’ll let you learn about swords). You don’t have to pay extra taxes in the form of XP, feats, or class features. You even get to grow your spell levels if you jump between casting classes. It’s much better for making characters work than it was when I started.

But it’s still not exactly what I’m looking for. Almost every character ability is still linked to its linear, static class progression. If you want to be an assassin, you have to be an L3 rogue, which means you have to excel at two skills (expertise), speak a new language (thieves’ cant), become an expert in two weapons (weapon mastery), run good (cunning action), and learn to calm down for a minute and plan instead of headbutting your problems away (steady aim). It does make sense that the L3 assassin ability, which can make your sneak attack better once per fight, wants you to be in a class that uses sneak attack. But it’s certainly not required, and there’s no reason getting advantage on initiative rolls should require “panic and flee as a bonus action”. If I want my ranger or monk or sorcerer to get off a single, devastating shot in the first round of combat, should that cost her three levels?

Also, most choices are still permanent. Retraining has vacillated between “allowed but not encouraged” and “house rule” since I got into the hobby. 5.5E is better at this than most editions because so many class features have a “you can swap this out during a long rest / when you level” option, but it’s certainly not everything.* D&D is designed around tactical play and always has been. Strategic play, like anticipating upcoming challenges and modifying your kit to handle it, is an afterthought as best and banned at worst.

A Modular Subclass System

The simplest way to put a system like this into D&D is a wildly generic house rule, like this:

Whenever you finish a Long Rest, you can change your subclass. You lose all features of your current subclass and instead gain the features of the new subclass for which you qualify based on your class level.

Immediate issues I see and some back-of-the-envelope solutions:

• Multiple subclasses: If I’m a Fig3/Rog3, I have both a fighter subclass and a rogue subclass. Can I swap out both during a long rest, or just one?
• I’d say you can swap one subclass per Long Rest. That’s not a power balance thing as much as it’s a bookkeeping thing. It’s faster to manage than making multiple changes at once.
• Different ability levels: Barbarians gain a subclass feature at L6. Paladins gain one at L7. If I have an L6 barbarian and I switch to a paladin subclass, do I get nothing? Can an L6 paladin gain the L6 barbarian feature even though his own subclass doesn’t have one there?
• Most subclasses have abilities at four levels: L3, L6-9, L10-13, and L14-18. (Exceptions: bard subclasses only have three features, fighters have five, paladins get their third and fourth abilities late, sorcerers get their third ability late). We can alleviate, but not eliminate, this by saying that a subclass grants its “first ability” instead of its “L3 ability”, and so on. Bards and fighters still need their own special rules. We can also keep it as level-based, which means yes, your L6 barbarian with a paladin subclass doesn’t get a second subclass feature until he reaches L7. This should be part of your strategic considerations.
• Invalid prerequisites: My rogue went into a warlock subclass and got bonus spells known. But I can’t cast spells. Does this feature just do nothing?
• Yes. Similarly, any hard-coded ability scores (“you can add your Charisma modifier to spell damage”) remain as written and don’t change based on your class’s casting stat. Some class/subclass combinations are not synergistic. This also should be part of your strategic considerations. I would allow an exception for anything that keys off your class level, like the Healing Light power of the celestial warlock which gives you a pool of healing based on your warlock level. That would instead be “your level in the class to which you apply this subclass”. Otherwise the feature is guaranteed to never work for another class, and that’s not what we want.
• Prerequisites: Can I pick any subclass, or just any subclass from my own classes, or any subclass from a class for which I have the requisite multiclassing ability score, or what?
• Follow your heart. I’m inclined to say you have access to any subclass from your classes or for which you have a narrative justification. I could see subclasses as quest rewards, either bespoke (because the party saved a forest spirit, one party member at a time can tap into the druid’s circle of the land) or campaign-wide (anybody can be an assassin, but only after you’ve dealt the killing blow to three sapient creatures who were unaware of your presence). A DM may also add certain roleplay restrictions on subclasses. This all depends on the sort of game you want to play.

A properly modular class system would retool things a bit so all classes got abilities at the same levels. My dream system (in this context) has very generic base classes where most of the fun stuff comes from the subclasses. Imagine a black mage class with a basic “arcane blast” cantrip, and the subclasses make it a fire spell one day and a wind spell the next day. Meanwhile, the warrior class has swords and armor and multiple attacks. That same fire subclass gives the warrior speed and damage, while the wind subclass grants AC and a Dex save bonus. Effectively, who you are each day is a combination of your function (blaster, tank, healer, nature person) and your element (fire/destruction, wind/perception, water/protection). From a Final Fantasy standpoint this sounds a lot like the Guardian Force system in FFVIII, but my core inspiration is probably the DSS system from Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, easily one of my top ten favorite games.

But that’s all more work than I want to do in one post.

* — Linguistic nerd moment: this is the proper definition of “the exception that proves the rule”. It doesn’t mean “if something doesn’t follow a rule, that means the rule is usually followed”. It means “the presence of an explicit exception implies a rule to which the exception applies only when stated”. A sign that says “parking allowed on Sunday” is the exception that proves the rule “parking not allowed”. In D&D, “whenever you finish a Long Rest / gain a level, you can change [class feature selection]” is the exception that proves the rule “your choices are permanent and cannot be changed”.

Later, we’ll discuss “eat your cake and have it too”.