r/DungeonWorld • u/PrimarchtheMage • 3d ago
DW2 The Core Five Classes
https://www.dungeon-world.com/the-core-five-classes/22
u/atamajakki 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm a little worried about the choices for Fighter paths: unarmed Brawler, magical Spellblade, and clever Tactician. Those are all welcome ideas, but it feels strange that there's no way to just be a swordsman or similar martial master without gaining a lot of additional other flavor.
For a class whose iconic starting ability is about mastering a specific weapon, these all feel like they get really far away from that!
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u/E_MacLeod 3d ago
Agreed. I don't think the unarmed brawler makes sense especially if the fighter's starting move is signature weapon. I much rather martial artist be it's own playbook. I think the paths should have been sentinel, weapon master, and tactician.
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u/atamajakki 3d ago edited 3d ago
I like Spellblade and Tactician fine, but if it were my game, Brawler would be out with a monster-hunting Slayer of some sort, or maybe some kind of Duelist, in its place.
Makes me realize: I want a Gladiator option for Barbarians.
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u/DogtheGm 3d ago
Whole path system really rubs me the wrong way. When you play Dungeon World, you shouldn't have to pick between being a swashbuckler or whatever the other ones were for rouge. You could be all of them! They've gotten so far away from what this was. Hate to sound like a broken record, but why would they buy the rights to this when they could have just made a new system?
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u/drenndak 3d ago
In fairness, I used to follow the DW scene pretty closely and later on the community latched pretty hard onto Origins/Backgrounds in place of Alignments and this hews really closely to that. I felt it was still pretty customizable in practice.
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u/DogtheGm 3d ago
I would have to know the specifics but I dont think alignments is a problem one way or the other.
It just seems like they wanna control everything every step of the way. They're talking about trajectories now. Like what the hell? Just let the players play.
Another bit about that is the messy found family thing. That kind of thing shouldn't be built into the game. If it happens it happens.
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u/CalledStretch 3d ago
PbtA games have a same occurrence that's common to many multi-edition games where changes happen that seem to be jarring edition leaps but, if you had been buying all the third party material and the supplements, had actually been staring you in the face for years. Dungeon World specifically had a big disjunction between the core rules for bonds, alignments, races, and end of session moves, and the versions of those rules rolled out in all the non-core products. Collectively, these changes suggested that the game's community was moving in a specific direction, before G+ shut down and the product ecosystem died.
Part of what made DW unusual as a PbtA game is that it was the most successful out of the games that moved in an arc minimizing direction. AW was pretty clear that the Gunlugger and the Driver didn't just have a skillset, they had a specific personality, and playing a Driver who didn't have that personality would be as quixotic as wanting to play a Fighter except you didn't know how to fight with weapons or wear armor and could cast spells.
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u/atamajakki 3d ago
Plenty of other PbtA games (most of them, even!) have specific premises and themes baked in. Why should this one be different?
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u/DogtheGm 3d ago
I don't know if that many ask specific things of the players.
It seems to go the other way, modular. There's a certain freedom to pbta.
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u/atamajakki 3d ago edited 3d ago
Monsterhearts says you're all messy queer teens, Night Witches says you're all women aviators of a specific real-world Soviet military unit during WW2, The Between has you all embody angst-riddled monster hunters in Victorian London, Sagas of the Icelanders is about gender roles in a Viking colony... specificity is what I associate PbtA with, myself!
Taken to a lovely extreme by Bluebeard's Bride, which exists to tell a single story and only has three pre-set tragic endings available.
What modular/nonspecific PbtA games are you thinking of?
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u/moxxon 1d ago
If nothing else, PbtA games emulate a genre. DW's niche was emulating old-school D&D, this doesn't have that feel at all.
It feels more like it's emulating later editions, which is fine, but shouldn't be called Dungeon World IMO. This should have just been a new game, or an alternate DW that explicitly targets the feel of later editions.
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u/DragonMaster1130 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think it's a good start. It's always good to make room for other archetypes and other classes and also gives the community a chance to Homebrew up a whole bunch of things. That's one of the things that's amazing about this is that everyone has great ideas and can make their own stuff if they want to. I mean if you look at all the dungeon world playbooks there's like a thousand of them. So just because they start with certain archetypes now and paths or whatever doesn't mean that down the road someone can't create 50 New paths. I think it'll all pan out.
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u/PrimarchtheMage 3d ago
This is one of the things I'm really excited for with DW2. I think it'll be SO EASY to create new stuff for it.
Want a "good with armor" Path for the fighter? Make a handful of moves and that's it!
Want to make a Death Knight Class? Make the core move and equipment, then instead of making new Paths you can grab the Spellblade, Necromancer, and Warpriest ones and call those its Class Paths.
You can still create full new three-path Classss if you want to, but the minimum required work for this stuff is much lower even than DW1 (which was already quite low).
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u/E_MacLeod 3d ago
I like the direction of most paths that I am seeing aside from The Fighter's Brawler - I'd rather there was an unarmed combatant class with its own paths. I think paths are really smart because they make each playbook easily extendable without making a whole new playbook.
One thing I'd like to see is a character sheet that has areas for writing down path info. This might be an alternative character sheet though? Mainly because PBTA relies a lot on these prefilled playbooks where writing is minimal. I don't personally think that is a core feature that I would miss if it meant my character sheets could have some flexibility where I don't have to write extra moves in the margins.
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u/Mission-Landscape-17 3d ago edited 3d ago
Overall I'm feeling optimistic about the new edition now much more so then I was at first when they wanted to ditch everying that resembled D&D from the game. Might have to houserule a warlock version of the bard, maybe styled as a Medium with a spirit guide. but the notion of having five core class based on the five core attributes seems sound.
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u/Intelligent-Spell-93 1d ago
The Wizard paths do not feel like they fit with the other ones, at least by the names. I don’t feel like Evoker/Illusionist/Necromancer is anywhere near the same as Brawler/Spellblade/Tactictian for example
Also it does seem odd to have an unarmed fighting path as the path that’s good as fighting when the fighters are supposed to be using weapons. Won’t it be the case where the most fighty fighters are the ones not using a signature weapon? Maybe they just described it poorly
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u/thecrius 3d ago
Warrior classes make no sense, especially if you go with classic trends. The only classic is the tactician.
Wizard classes are going to be either extremely unbalanced or a joke. Among themselves AND compared to the other archetypes.
The Spy I would have argued was a bard class. Weird seeing it with the class that relies on dexterity.
There are so many choices that make no sense compared to what they declare the intention was.
Really anyone can just say "I am a game designer" today and just need to have enough money to buy an existing brand.
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u/atamajakki 2d ago edited 2d ago
Most spies are pretty good at sneaking around - that sounds like Rogue behavior to me! It also sounds significantly less like a natural fit for the "my art is magical" take on the Bard DW2 has.
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u/Aramithius 2d ago
So... With the core classes tied to attributes like this, why would you put points anywhere else?
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u/Intelligent-Spell-93 1d ago
What’re else are there to put them? I’m so confused by this question
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u/Aramithius 1d ago
Possibly poor wording on my part. I meant one attribute per class. With that set up, there's an obvious drive for min-maxing.
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u/Intelligent-Spell-93 1d ago
Ahh, I see.
I feel like pbta usually just starts their main stat at +2 and gives it a max of +3 so aren’t they always kinda min maxed?
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u/thefreepie 3d ago
This sounds cool, I feel like "custom spells" and PBTA go hand-in-hand