Constructing Cosmos: Part 2, Classes

Well, the plan was to do one of these "Constructing Cosmos" dealies every other day; it's been three weeks since the first one. Typical, really; the podcast I posted last night was also two weeks late. In fact, it was a couple of hours late to being a day late to being two weeks late.

I've been in contact with game designer Rob Heinsoo, who was indeed willing to give a few game-building tips to his cousin's best friend's nephew... have I done that joke already? I can never remember what I have and have not already said on the blog. Heck, I think I may have done that joke twice in my emails to him alone.

The first insight he had to offer once I pitched the premise to him was that Disney films tend to be about the development of one character or a pair of them, growing and proving themselves, while the dynamics of a mainstream RPG are of an ensemble of adventurers, so he wondered if there was some indie RPG system I was drawing inspiration from in order to reproduce the Disney formula. And then, well, I gave him a bigger pitch about how, no, I'm putting the ensemble-driven atmosphere of your standard RPG into a world that feels like that of a Disney fairytale.

Later, he wanted to arrange a meeting with me to discuss game-building (for just a couple of minutes, he's a busy guy, apparently more so than usual recently, so nice of him to keep checking in with me anyway!) and... I wasn't prepared, because I hadn't yet finished this thing I'm doing here, re-building the world. Rob assured me that thinking I need to design the world before I start making the game is a fallacy that often prevents erstwhile gamemakers from ever getting around to making games. I have no doubt he's absolutely right! So... I had to search myself, and it's clear: Keys & Kingdoms is a world for telling stories in first, an RPG setting second. Playability is definitely in the back of my mind with every creation, but how to actively come up with a world that's playable? No clue.

I'll get to the RPG part sometime later, and see what Rob can tell me about where to go after I'm finished with this seven-part blog.

Episode 2: Classes - written by Sage Mann

Okay, lots of thoughts about classes. I first considered making up my own, but D&D just has such a good array of options that are so great at providing choices for being whatever kind of character you want to be. I decided that the Keys & Kingdoms class list would consist of every class which has been in the core rules of more than one edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Conveniently, this turned out to be the exact same class list that 5th Edition uses, so when transferring over to using the 5E Open Game License, that was easy.

• Debuted in 1E: Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard
• Debuted in 2E: Ranger, Paladin, Bard, Druid
• Debuted in 3E: Barbarian, Monk, Sorcerer
• Debuted in 4E: Warlock

A really cool thing about 5E is that every class includes at least two subclasses, or archetypes, which you choose sometime from Level 1 to Level 3. Is your fighter the kind who hits really hard, or the kind that uses tactics and finesse? Is your rogue the kind that orchestrates elaborate heists, or the kind that infiltrates and assassinates? Your archetype determines this. Now, while every class includes at least two archetypes in the core rules, and many more in expansions, the OGL only includes one archetype for each class, to encourage being inventive and original, making up your own. I sorta-kinda worked on that a little bit. Now that I'm no longer directly lifting from 5E rules, I need to come up with new ways for classes and subclasses to work. And, again, maybe not calling them classes anymore. Final Fantasy calls them "jobs". That's stupid. "Profession"? Not exactly accurate. "Archetype", as used by Pathfinder 2? Eh... don't like it, works better as a term for a sub-class.

Another question would be whether there should be an Explore Cosmos episode about classes. Classes are a necessary game mechanic, but would they be a thing in-universe? I guess there's a pretty quantifiable difference between a wizard and a sorcerer, but is the difference between a fighter, a rogue, and a barbarian really perceivable in the context of the fantasy world? Hard to say.

Barbarian: Famed for its primo alphabetical position on the cast list, the concept of the barbarian derives from "blood and thunder" literature, and represents a warrior character from a tribal culture and an untamed land. Its main gimmick is going into a battle rage that makes the character strong and resilient, but not particularly careful, while fighting. I see that in the short films, I vaguely alluded to the various homebrew archetypes that the crew and I had brainstormed... I was never particularly happy with those ideas. So, I decided to look at some archetypes that currently exist in the 5E metagame -- not all of them, just the ones from the core rules and one of the earlier expansion packs, Xanathar's Guide to Everything -- and think about how to go about making up my own list of archetypes.

• Path of the Berserker: Barbarian subclasses in 5E are called Primal Paths. The subclasses are flavored like that. Anyway, as mentioned, the barbarian has its battle rage gimmick, and the berserker really leans into that; it doesn't have any supernatural powers, it's just really, really good at the raging part. Works for me.
• Path of the Totem Warrior: The other option in the 5E core rules, the totem warrior is even more customizable than most archetypes, as not only do you choose to become a totem warrior, you choose an animal totem, each of which grants different supernatural powers themed off of the animal. Some expansions offer new totems in addition to entirely new archetypes. So, yeah, I can see us doing a thing like this one as well.
• Ancestral Guardian, Storm Herald, and Zealot: The three archetypes introduced in Xanathar's Guide. The ancestral guardian can call upon the spirits of their culture's ancestors, the storm herald has... storm powers, I suppose, and the zealot... er, I gotta look it up. Okay, the zealot serves a very angry war god who grants them divine power when they rage. Mm, not really vibing with the zealot, but those first two are cool are worth adapting. Ancestral spirits, and storms. Both very, you know... primal.
• Other: While some pals and I were brainstorming archetype ideas -- at the time, we weren't aware of any subclasses outside of the core rules -- one idea we had was the Primal Soul... rather ill-defined, kind of combines aspects from all three Xanathar's archetypes. And another was the Noble Savage, someone from a barbarian culture who's learned the ways of the city folk. Kind of like Tarzan... original novel Tarzan, not Disney Tarzan. Tarzan did that in the books, right? He went back to England, did aristocrat stuff? I dunno. Anyway, I'm not sure what kind of game mechanics the noble savage would have had, seems to me that if a barbarian wanted to combine his skills with those of city folk he'd, you know, multiclass.

Bard: The bard is, well, a bit of an odd duck. I'm not sure where they came up with the idea of this character archetype. A bard, after all, refers to a reader of epic poetry. But in D&D, a bard is the ultimate jack-of-all-trades. They take some aspects from all four of the classes that debuted in 1st Edition; they have some fighting skill, some thieving skills, some arcane magic, and from 3rd Edition onward, also some healing abilities. But ultimately, they were never as good at any of these things as a class specializing in one of these things, and were best served doing the one unique thing the class had: singing. While the bard was singing, all of their allies got a minuscule bonus to combat and other skills... and the bard was completely incapable of doing anything else while singing. Not really worth it. Then came 5E -- in 5E, the bard is easily the most powerful class (well, maybe not "easily", but the case can be made), the simple reason being that they've been changed from the secondary spellcasters they used to be, and are now primary spellcasters. (I don't know how official the terms "primary spellcaster" and "secondary spellcaster" are, but I'm using them) The subclasses are called Bard Colleges.

• College of Lore: Essentially the default bard, this bard specializes in knowledge, the most notable trait of that being that they can learn spells from other class lists, largely contributing to the bard's status as the maybe-strongest class. Now, I'd want all my subclasses to be described with relatively simple nouns rather than the more flavorful descriptions given to some but not all of 5E's subclasses. Not sure what noun to give to this one, as it's basically just your default bard. Let's go with "Loremaster" just as a placeholder.
• College of Valor: The other core-rules bard subclass, the College of Valor was about combat and swordplay. Rather unpopular, as it's not a super-great idea for a primary spellcaster to enter combat with a sword. Such a character, a bard who also specializes in combat, is often called a Skald.
• College of Glamour and College of Swords: Two of the new subclasses in Xanathar's Guide; Glamour bards use their magic to captivate and hypnotize, while the College of Swords strikes me as an attempt to patch the College of Valor to make a better version of the fightin' bard, a College of Swords bard being called a Blade. Don't really strike me as being interesting enough to rip off...
• College of Whispers: The other new subclass from Xanathar's. I'm not really clear on what their powers are, but the sinister bent of their description intrigues me, I like that they seem to produce bards with a more sinister bent; I'll have to look into that.
• Other: The 2nd Edition-based game Baldur's Gate II gave most of the original eight classes three subclasses to choose from in addition to the option of being just the vanilla version of a class. In the bard's case, their three subclasses were the Blade, the Skald, and the Jester. The first two we've already talked about, but I was always fond of the Jester. In Baldur's Gate II, the only actual difference between the jester and the regular bard was that the jester's bard song, instead of bolstering allies, confused enemies. Pretty uninteresting excuse for a subclass, I'd want my jesters to have all sorts of comedy-themed powers.

Cleric: The cleric is a primarily spellcaster whose magic comes from the god they serve. Their archetypes are called Divine Domains.

• Divine Domains: Divine domains were, I believe, introduced in 3rd Edition. Every god had a handful of domains to their name, and every cleric chose one of the domains as an aspect of their deity to embody, and each domain had a number of exclusive bonus spells. 3rd Edition had a bazillion different domains, exemplifying every possible thing a god can be a "god of". 5th Edition's core rules cut back to only eight domains: Death, Knowledge, Life, Light, Nature, Tempest, Trickery, and War. Every god in all the campaign settings could be put the umbrella of at least one of these domains, it's covered pretty well.
• Forge Domain and Grave Domain: These two domains were added to Xanathar's Guide, and... I don't really think they were needed. In the core rules, forge-related deities like Hephaestus were put under the Knowledge umbrella, that was baked into the Knowledge domain's original description, and the Grave domain was a less-villainous version of the Death domain, dealing with preserving the dead and protecting them from undeath. Yeah: I think these two domains are just way too specific and totally unnecessary.
• Other: I have one criticism about the original eight domains: that the only option for a number of evil deities was the Trickery domain; surely clerics of these deities can specialize in something more evil than that? I had two ideas for domains that are a bit eviler: Darkness and Inferno. Hmm, I feel like the Death domain covers Darkness pretty well, and the Light domain basically has all the fiery powers I wanted from the Inferno domain, just with different flavor. So, this'll take some thinkin' about, for now I'm just gonna put on the record what we originally came up with for our OGL plan: twelve domains. The original eight, but with Nature replaced with Forge... huh, why'd I do that? And then four others: Darkness, Inferno, Earth, and Arcana. Arcana Domain is definitely also in 5E somewhere. Oh, and since I wanted all K&K subclasses to be nouns referring to a person, I came up with a whole bunch of synonyms for "priest" and appended them to each domain: apostle, chaplain, curate, deacon, elder, bishop, friar, vicar. Not ultimately super-satisfied with the results; like I said, I'm gonna have to think about it.

Druid: The druids are like shamans, primary spellcasters rather similar to the cleric but taking their magic from nature spirits far older than the gods. For whatever reason, such entities are never given nealry as much focus as the gods in these games... druid subclasses are called Druid Circles, each circle a different organization of druids with a different opinion on how best for sapient people to coexist with nature and civilization.

• Circle of the Land: The default druid subclass. When you take Circle of the Land, you choose from the game's list of natural habitats, getting various bonus spells depending on the biome you pick and... other stuff. I might call such a subclass the Preserver. But... nobody ever picks this one. Why? Well...
• Circle of the Moon: All druids can transform into animals; druids of the Circle of the Moon focus on it, able to transform into more powerful animals sooner than other druids, and eventually into elementals as well. Druids of the Circle of the Moon are right up there with the bards of the College of Lore as the most powerful characters in the game, largely because if a druid dies when in animal form, they instantly return to their normal form in full health; a mercy when you're morphed into a tiny animal that can be killed in one shot, but just plain cheesy when you're shapeshifted into something that's actually powerful. And since everybody loves animals in role-playing games -- whether you're befriending them, summoning them, shapeshifting into them, or, depending upon your play style, killing every one you see -- everybody goes with the Circle of the Moon instead of the Land and is nearly invincible for it. Another thing I don't like about druid shapeshifting in 5th Edition? Well, the higher your character level, the higher the power level of animals you can change into, with druids of the Circle of the Moon being able to access a much more powerful repertoire, but regardless of how powerful the animals are that you can become, you can't become an animal that can swim until you're level 4, and not one that can fly until you're level 8. I know that's for game-balance purposes, but it just makes no sense from an in-universe logic standpoint, there's really no reason that a master of nature magic who can turn into a lion wouldn't be able to turn into a bird. As for the name of our own interpretation of this subclass, seems only natural to go with Shapeshifter.
• Circle of Dreams and Circle of the Shepherd: The two new ones from Xanathar's, with Dreams being about fey magic, and the Shepherd seemingly being about summoning animals instead of shapeshifting. The latter is similar in tone to my own druid subclass idea of the Totem Keeper... the Dreams one seems like a pretty fair idea too. I was also interested in creating a druid subclass called the Warden, based on the 4th Edition class of the same name, who transform themselves into guardians of wood or stone or wind, crap like that, I forget exactly how it worked, only that I thought it was real cool.

Fighter: The most common class, the fighter is... exactly that. They fight. And they're good at it. Generally, more about equipment and expertise than the barbarian. Their subclasses are called Martial Archetypes.

• Battle Master and Champion: Two of the three fighter archetypes in the core rules. As I alluded above, the Battle Master is the master of tactics, techniques, and finesse, while the Champion is about physical perfection. I kind of found myself with a "D" theme going, renaming these archetypes the Duelist and Defender respectively... those are a bit too specific, not quite "archetypal" enough, but the basic "strength vs. finesse" deal is definitely a necessary feature for two archetypes.
• Eldritch Knight: The third core archetype, which turns the fighter into what I like to call a "tertiary spellcaster", supplementing their battle skill with rudimentary wizardry, mostly of the offensive and defensive nature. I kept this one in the "D" theme: the Dragoon. That one, I'm gonna keep -- in the short film, I allude to the dragoons as a specific order of fighters or knights. And that's what my crew had for archetypes, just "D" renames of the existing core archetypes. Let's see what Xanathar's had.
• Arcane Archer: Elite warriors who follow an elven tradition of mixing magic with their ranged weapon attacks. That seems awfully specific, but it goes way back. I like how two of the three Xanathar's fighter archetypes would seem at first glance to be an archetype of a different class, in this case because archery is usually associated with rangers.
• Cavalier: When I think cavalier, I think one of the paladin subclasses from Baldur's Gate II -- I don't know how faithful these Baldur's Gate II subclasses are to D&D 2nd Edition, as subclasses are only in Baldur's Gate II and not in any of the other 2nd Edition games made by the same company. The cavalier was super good at slaying demons and dragons, with all sorts of great powers and immunities and stuff... that's what I'd continue to do after calling an archetype a cavalier. The 5E cavalier is, let's see, a noble knightly type most comfortable on horseback. Hmm. Not exciting enough.
• Samurai: Well, that's certainly a cool thing to call a fighter subclass. Let's see, what do they do, by the book? "Tireless resolve" seems to be the main theme here, with a little bit of courtly manners. Neat! Sounds a bit too much like the Cavalier, flavor-wise.
• Other: This seems like a good place to mention two classes that were invented for Critical Role and have seen a bit of popularity in mainstream 5E circles: the Gunslinger, a fighter subclass invented so Taliesin Jaffe's character Percy, who invented firearms in his backstory, could make the jump from Pathfinder to 5E, and the Bloodhunter, an entirely new class invented for CR's second campaign so that Taliesin could once again play a character unlike any other. I like the idea of fantasy worlds having a small handful of very special people running around with guns. As for the bloodhunter, people who it seems draw power from shedding their own blood, effectively sacrificing their own hit points for more offensive power... meh, it's just... way too specific? To be its own class? Maybe if it was a barbarian subclass.

Monk: The monk class represents a mastery of Eastern martial arts, fighting without any armor and either bare-handed or with the simplest of weapons. A class that's very hard to master and scarcely worth anything if you don't play it exactly right.

• Way of the Open Hand: Basically the default monk, without any quantifiable supernatural powers, just total perfection of the body. Still, of course, able to do things like paralyze you or kill you instantly with a single strike of their hand. I'd refer to a member of this flavor of subclass as simply a Master.
• Way of the Four Elements: Seemingly inspired by the benders of Avatar: The Last Airbender, this subclass offers a load of interesting options for martial arts attacks that release elemental powers. Your Four Elements monk can choose powers related to only one element, or they can mix it up a little. I knew this had to be a monk subclass long before I started reading 5th Edition and learned it actually was one. I'd call this subclass the Elemental Bender. You know, just so it's clear what we're talking about.
• Way of Shadow: Ninjas. Just ninjas. With actual mastery of shadowy dark magic, and presumably some assassination-related techniques if I had to guess. Go ninja go ninja go.
• Way of the Drunken Master and Way of the Kensei: Two from Xanathar's Guide which are seemingly also non-magical, the former being a very bobby-and-weavy style of combat that's very distracting and unpredictable, the latter representing a spiritual connection with one particular weapon. Neither of them really impress me, conceptually.
• Way of the Sun Soul: This Xanathar's monk subclass was the very thing that made me realize that I simply had to start using 5th Edition content outside of the core rules in my own campaigns, because this subclass is apparently inspired by Dragon Ball -- not Super Saiyan stuff, but the sunlight-themed techniques Goku learns before discovering he's a Saiyan. I... don't actually know squat about Dragon Ball, I've only ever seen the Abridged Series, but I just thought this was a damn good idea and decided to call practitioners of this subclass the Guiding Light.

Paladin: The paladins are holy knights, champions of the gods, bound by a sacred oath, which is how their subclasses are flavored: as Sacred Oaths. Paladins are secondary spellcasters with powers similar to the cleric in addition to their battle skills.

• Sacred Oaths: The core sacred oaths in the game are the oaths of Devotion, Vengeance, and the Ancients. As I understand it, Devotion is about, like, bringing the light to the people, healing and protecting and stuff, Vengeance is about smiting monsters and villains, and the Ancients is about, like, defending nature, I think? And then Xanathar's includes two more: Conquest and Redemption, which, well, sound self-explanatory.
• Oathbreaker: The Oathbreaker is one of two subclasses which are in the core rules, but in the Dungeon Master's Guide instead of the Player's Handbook, because they work best for villains (the other being the cleric's Death Domain). If a paladin breaks their sacred oath, they get this assortment of evil-themed powers until they redeem themselves. Of course, paladins can also be evil in this edition, so if they swear their oath to an evil deity they don't get the evil-themed powers until they break it. Semantics.
• Other: So, again -- nouns. The nouns I originally came up with were: Redeemer, Cavalier, Inquisitor, and Blackguard. Redeemer... don't like the name, first of all, but I figured it would be similar to Devotion, maybe a bit of Redemption? Cavalier, well, I described that back under fighter, it's all about killing the scum and evil of the world. Inquisitor... I don't remember what I was going for? Maybe it's all about redemption? And the Blackguard, well, it's a non-oathbreaking version of the Oathbreaker, it's all about conquest and darkness and death.

Ranger: The ranger is basically the warrior of the wilds, living outside of civilization and protecting it from the very dangerous world which is definitely out there in any sort of fantasy world where there are a lot of adventurers. The archetypal ranger either wields a bow, or two swords. They're also usually secondary spellcasters, with powers similar to those of the druid, which... makes absolutely no logical sense to me, how does a person whose upbringing presumably consists of just knocking around in a forest and learning to survive there suddenly acquire nature magic upon hitting level 2? I don't get it. Their subclasses are simply called Ranger Archetypes, because I guess they ran out of ideas.

• Hunter: The subclass of basically every ranger who goes by the core rules, for reasons that'll become clear. Basically, the Hunter comes with a whole ton of various options about killing monsters, highly customizable. I like that; I would have had one subclass for dual-wielding and another for archery, but the Hunter archetype allows you to be both and focus on the heart of being a ranger rather than a single combat style.
• Beast Master: 5E has made a number of attempts to design a subclass with mechanics for the ranger who has an animal companion. They've all sucked. This core rules subclass and everything they've ever tried to patch it with, it's all been terrible. Just incredibly restrictive; you have a very limited number of options for what kind of animal you can pick, and the rules on the combat utility of your animal companion are so heavy that the pair of you are destined to be almost completely useless. How I'd handle this, well... no rules about animal companions, plain and simple, I'd just encourage GMs to let rangers befriend animals the way you'd befriend any NPC, and with that animal in the party, the GM adjust encounter difficulty to account for the additional party member. Granted... inevitably, any animal companion will simply become too outmatched by the horrible monsters that higher-level characters have to fight, get killed, the ranger will have to get a new one... but maybe that's just the way it goes.
• Gloom Stalker, Horizon Walker, and Monster Slayer: The three Xanathar's ranger archetypes. They sound pretty self-explanatory, and I'm not really interested, I feel like the Hunter basically takes care of how to be any kind of ranger you want to be. But we can't have a class with exactly one subclass, so, I think how I'd handle ranger archetypes would be as follows: the Hunter, which focuses on the combat and the killin', the Stalker, which has more focus on the stealth and wilderness travel parts, and the Archer, with more hunting skills and trick shots.

Rogue: The rogue (formerly "thief", but changed in 3rd Edition because people didn't like it when their group's thief, under the impression they were obligated to do so, stole from their fellow party members... gamers make weird assumptions, sometimes you have to remind them that genocide is bad) is a versatile specialist with a variety of absolutely necessary dungeon-crawling skills that no other class can match. The subclasses are called simply Roguish Archetypes.

• Thief: While every rogue is all about those aforementioned skills -- picking locks, picking pockets, disabling traps, moving stealthily -- this archetype focuses on these skills over combat, along with other stuff like, I dunno, climbing walls.
• Assassin: These guys deal in, well, death. The 5E version specializes in poison and infiltration as well as heavy damage-dealing attacks; I think one or two past versions of the subclass (sometimes a class in its own right) also heavily relied on dark magic. Lots of directions I could take the K&K interpretation of this subclass.
• Arcane Trickster: The third of the three core rogue subclasses; like the Eldritch Knight, this one turns your rogue into a tertiary spellcasting, in this case specializing in illusion and, er, one other thing, I forget.
• Inquisitive, Mastermind, Scout, and Swashbuckler: Xanathar's gives us four new subclasses for the rogue, more than any other. The Inquisitive is like a detective, the Mastermind is best at intrigue and social manipulation, the Scout does roguish things outside of cities, sorta-kinda doubling as a ranger, and the Swashbuckler is your classic dashing swordsman, like a dread pirate or musketeer. I think I'd just start with the core three and the Swashbuckler, I've always liked swashbucklers (technically my first D&D character ever was a swashbuckler, if you count my first Baldur's Gate II character as a D&D character). I also considered inventing two others: the Bounty Hunter, one who excels at tracking and setting traps, I suppose that might be covered by the Scout; and the Scoundrel, who relies on intimidation, thuggery, and torture. ...Needs a better name, all rogues are scoundrels.

Sorcerer: The sorcerer is someone who is born with magical power. When the class was introduced in 3rd Edition, they had the exact same spell list as the wizard; this was altered in the next two editions to better reflect the fact that their magic is something that simply happened to them, rather than something they've learned, making their spell list a little bit more primal than the carefully-crafted magic of the wizard spell list. The subclasses are called Sorcerous Origins, reflecting where they got their powers.

• Wild Magic: The sorcerer gains their magic from the chaotic arcane energies of the universe. Their gimmick is control over probability, as well as the fact that everytime they cast a spell after using one of their special abilities, there's about a 5% chance that something weird happens, that "something weird" being randomly generated by a big chart of 50 different options -- things like opening all doors in your vicinity, turning into a sheep, or, I dunno, maybe your head exploding. Well, I made that last one up; modern D&D is never so merciless. I for one love the Wild Mage as a character type, but I'd imagine it's not much fun to actually play, just too many variables.
• Draconic Bloodline: The sorcerer has power due to being descended from dragons. This was the default explanation for where sorcerers come from back in the old days; in these days, dragon sorcerers not only have breath powers but also very visible dragon scales that provide them with natural armor. Mm, proper noun. Dragon Mage, maybe?
• Divine Soul, Shadow Magic, and Storm Sorcery: The three origins provided by Xanathar's Guide. Magic respectively granted by being a favored soul of deity, something about the Shadowfell, and I'm guessing something elemental? I dig all three of these, and I was at a loss for ideas about any other sorcerous origin other than the main two, so that's good.

Warlock: The newest of the core classes, the warlock gains power by making a bargain with a powerful supernatural entity, who may or may not care about them or seek something in return. The subclasses are called Otherworldly Patrons, and describe what sort of creature the warlock gains their power from.

• The Fiend, The Archfey, and The Great Old One: The three core options. Exactly what they sound like; you might get your power from a powerful demon or devil, or a powerful member of the faerie courts, or an eldritch abomination. So what kind of entities can be responsible for these pacts in the K&K universe? I've made up a couple of fiends for the setting... haven't made a full list yet, don't really remember it, the most prominent being Maldiabos, a gigantic demonic whale inspired by Disney's Monstro... he doesn't seem like the type to make bargains. The archfey, well, I'm going to start with Shakespeare's Oberon and Titania and work from there. And the great old ones, well... I like Cthulhu. As I understand it, Cthulhu is mostly in the public domain (not because he debuted in 1928, but because Lovecraft deliberately made his continuity open-source), but not free to use in tabletop RPGs, the creators of the Call of Cthulhu RPG have exclusive rights to that. However that works.
• The Celestial: One of the new Xanathar's options. Gotta say, that's certainly an interesting way to be a warlock, having your pact be with an angel. I really think when it comes to celestials giving people arcane magic, I don't think we need a Divine Soul sorcerer and a Celestial warlock...
• The Hexblade: Well, this subclass doesn't even describe the patron, it describes the warlock themselves. A hexblade warlock wields a magical sword infused with dark magic. ...I don't like it, I don't like theme-breaking. Though I'm given to understand that the Hexblade is the only warlock subclass powerful enough to actually be worth playing. That being said, the Hexblade's magic comes from a creature from the Shadowfell. I've never really been clear on what kind of creatures come from the Shadowfell, but I definitely had it in mind for coming up with a new, original warlock subclass. Oh! And when I was coming up with the original four warlock subclasses (the core three and one shadow-related one), I decided to give each one a truly evocative and scary name, much like the names of the warlock powers in 4th Edition. Respectively: Conscript of the Legion, Otherworld Scion, Prelate of Cosmic Horror, and Reaper of Gloom. Meh, not really all that good. Maybe we can do better.

Wizard: And finally, the wizard: the geniuses who study hard and prepare their magic every day, the most versatile and awesome spellcasters in the game world. The wizard subclasses in 5E are called Arcane Traditions, but wizard subclasses go way back further than those of the other classes.

• Schools of Magic: Since the earliest editions of D&D, every spell was marked with what school of magic it belonged to: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, and Transmutation. In 1st Edition, these meant nothing. ...Gary Gygax was a weird dude, 1st Edition was absolutely nonsensical, and 2nd wasn't much better. Things started making a little bit more sense in 3rd. But anyway: in 2nd and 3rd Edition, the schools of magic were more than just a bit of flavor text that give you a very, very vague idea of what a spell does. There were a couple of actual rules related to the schools of magic, and wizards, the first of any class, were granted subclasses related to specializing in one of the eight schools, so you could be an Abjurer, a Conjurer, and so on. However, there was absolutely nothing about being a specialist wizard that made you actually special in that school of magic; instead, you were just able to learn and cast more spells per day than a non-specialist wizard, at the cost of being completely unable to learn spells from one or two of the other schools. In the very first TAPAS project that was ever made -- the first video of my Icewind Dale playthrough -- I commented that if it were up to me, I would have made specialist wizards somehow actually be better at their chosen school instead of only noteworthy for what kind of spells they can't use... but I had no idea how to go about that. 5th Edition figured it out, giving each wizard subclass a couple of cool features that make their specialty actually stand out. And I'd follow their lead there; for the sake of the shout-out, I would make the eight schools of magic the eight wizard subclasses.
• War Magic: The one new wizard subclass appearing in Xanathar's Guide. They didn't need any. They had eight. The eight schools of magic. That's... perfectly sufficient. War magic ain't a school. Stupid.
• Other: Here in the wizard section, I'd like to talk about two D&D classes that never appear in the core rules of any edition, but always turn up eventually. First, the Artificer. I believe that in 5th Edition, the Artificer started out as a wizard subclass but eventually got a release as a fully separate class. ...I've tried, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what the deal is with artificers. I think they use arcane magic and apply it to gadgets and magic items, and then fight with that? Or something??? I really can't figure it out. Then we have the Psion; D&D has always had some mild science fiction elements, in the form of otherworldly portals through which aberrant creatures from the cosmic horror genre enter the fantasy world; and the energy from these alternate dimensions can give people psychic powers. In 5th Edition, I don't think they've made the Psion a playable class yet, but several creatures have psionic powers, which use the same mechanics as any other magic, but are marked "psionic" because, allegedly, psionic magic has a few unique rules that apply to it, though... none that I've ever seen. I imagine they're saving that for when the rules on playable psions come out. No intentions for psions or artificers appearing in K&K, just wanted to bring them up.

Almost done, I swear. I remembered something while writing this post today, specifically where I got the idea of calling the default monk subclass simply the "master". It's something I renamed the monk class loooooong ago.

The first fantasy world I ever created, which I worked on throughout my teenage years, was Christalss. And one thing I did once was set up a class list... specifically, 40 different classes, figuring it could be some sort of videogame action RPG where you pick your various special abilities off a menu, like those two Kingdom Hearts games that use the "Command Deck" feature, or, well, D&D's own 4th Edition. That class list, split into four categories of 10 classes each... well, it's got some originality to it and might be a helpful way to come up with some original classes and subclasses.

The four categories... well, they used to have names, but those aren't on the copy of the list I found. As far as I can tell, the first category focuses on direct combat, the second category more on skirmishing in combat, the third on a mix of magic and combat, and the fourth purely on long-range magic. And so... I would like to present the Christalss class list I found -- I'm not sure how long ago I compiled it, just that I've still been using it in Christalss-related material as recently as, hrmm, I think the last time I looked at a Christalss project was in early 2016. I think I'll just present it without any comment or modification, and then we can think about it later.

Category 1

• Soldier: Expert in all weapons and shields; very accurate.
• Knight: Armored warrior with some divine magic.
• Sentinel: Expert in armor, stone wall.
• Cavalier: Dragon and demon killer, resists elemental damage.
• Executioner: Massive damage dealer with huge weapons.
• Undead Hunter: Area of effect attacker, best vs. undead.
• Vermin Chaser: Low damage disabler, best vs. giant bugs.
• Berserker: Fast, unskilled brawler, often unarmed.
• Crusader: Anti-magic warrior.
• Centurion: Speedy reach-weapon user with arcane magic.

Category 2

• Ranger: Fast and stealthy warrior, some nature magic.
• Thief: Sneaky with lots of skills.
• Archer: Ranged specialist, some nature magic.
• Swashbuckler: Acrobat, stuntman, swordsman.
• Assassin: Backstabber and poisoner with dark powers.
• Trapmaster: Drops mundane and magical traps.
• Lurker: Stays hidden, charging massive damage powers.
• Blade Dancer: Dances to evade and defend, some arcane magic.
• Mechanic: Inventor, tinkerer, and artificer.
• Master: Unarmed warrior with elemental bending attacks.

Category 3

• Priest: Healer, warrior, and caster of the gods.
• Druid: Healer, warrior, and caster of nature.
• Mystic: Magician and warrior.
• Alchemist: Fights with potions and other creations.
• Transmuter: Modifies the environment to fight.
• Shapeshifter: Changes into magical or natural forms.
• Totem Keeper: Summons natural creatures to fight.
• Beastmaster: Fights alongside animal companions.
• Warlock: Fast-paced zapper and disabler, some melee capability.
• Bard: Musical controller, buffer, disabler.

Category 4

• Wizard: Widest variety of spells, from a book (mostly area).
• Sorcerer: More primal, wild spells, from blood or breath (mostly single-target).
• Conjurer: Summons spirits to battle.
• Necromancer: Spells of life, death, and the undead.
• Protector: Powerful healing and abjuration.
• Oracle: Divination and illusion spells.
• Psychic: Unstable and scary mental powers.
• Prankster: Humorous and pop-culture laden magic.
• Spellslinger: Speedy spellcaster capable of occasional melee.
• Wild Mage: Huge and fast spells, off-chance something weird happens.

Okay, I do have one comment, that being that I was sure there was an Elementalist class in there somewhere... I must have replaced it with something else, apparently having had a better idea, figured Elementalist was the one that would have to go in order for there to still be exactly 10 in each group.

Been thinkin' about Christalss since yesterday; Naty and I were talking about a whole bunch of our projects, those that aren't important or developed enough yet, I decided to add every one we could think of do our to-do list, under "Appendix G: super-low-priority projects", including Christalss. I was thinking, we have Keys & Kingdoms, we have Whirlwind, we have Irregular Fantasy, I really don't think we need any additional high-fantasy worlds to our name, but the way I see it, maybe Christalss can be another Keys & Kingdoms campaign setting just like Cosmos. So... yeah, I'm gonna go find the world-building info I have on Christalss, there's a bit of it here in my computer and probably quite a bit more in an actual folder I've been carrying around for a decade, see which bits of it can be filtered into the overall Keys & Kingdoms multiverse. So, yeah, this will be an eight-part blog series!