Here's the Classes and Specializations in the D&D Player's Handbook

[Atmos Duality]

Yes...I have encountered problems with munchkins exploiting certain builds/classes feats etc in games I DM. But I do think the flexibility 3.5 brought to the table was incredibly valuable. D&D next seems (at least to me) to be encouraging players to follow a set of rather defined character types.

Aye, 3.5 became very munchkin-esque. It's probably why Pathfinder remains very popular to this day.
On the other hand, I think a lot of that bloat needed to be trimmed down without eliminating the more fun concepts.
(something that Pathfinder started out doing...and then it bloated out into absurdity anyway)

I didn't like 4th Edition at all, so my latest D&D experience was effectively 3.5 (and Pathfinder, which is essentially D&D 3.75).

From where I stand, a return to more class-centric character style is welcome, but without going to the depths of 2nd edition's iron clad class restrictions.

 

[JimB]

I wonder if necromancy will be categorically evil again. That always got on my tits.

 

[Baralak]

I wonder if necromancy will be categorically evil again. That always got on my tits.

It wasn't evil in 3.5. Not that I recall, at least.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

I wonder if necromancy will be categorically evil again. That always got on my tits.

It wasn't evil in 3.5. Not that I recall, at least.

Divine necromancy virtually was. And I'm pretty certain the undead you summon were still technically of the evil subtype, regardless of your own alignment.

 

[Towowo]

Necromancy isn't always all about animating the dead, sure it's a big known use of it however, sometimes you got great defensive spells and debuffs from it.

 

[Slycne]

Maybe the Life specialization IS the problem... It's definitely a possibility, since the basic Life Cleric is good at precisely NOTHING other than casting healing spells. They get no cool combat tricks, nothing interesting to do in combat at all other than cast the occasional cure spell.

Man, poor Clerics. How will they every find anything fun to do between channel divinity, cantrip spells, having good hit point progression, decent weapon/armor proficiency, rituals and frankly a boat load of spell castings. Even a Healbot Cleric should have plenty of fun. Perhaps it's not a system for everyone - the best groups always find whatever system best suits them, but I'd put more burden on the player than the mechanics.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

Maybe the Life specialization IS the problem... It's definitely a possibility, since the basic Life Cleric is good at precisely NOTHING other than casting healing spells. They get no cool combat tricks, nothing interesting to do in combat at all other than cast the occasional cure spell.

Man, poor Clerics. How will they every find anything fun to do between channel divinity, cantrip spells, having good hit point progression, decent weapon/armor proficiency, rituals and frankly a boat load of spell castings. Even a Healbot Cleric should have plenty of fun. Perhaps it's not a system for everyone - the best groups always find whatever system best suits them, but I'd put more burden on the player than the mechanics.

Er, if about half of those spells are expected to be heals (and all of the channel divinities), then I can kinda see why they might complain. Note, this is only related to Life Clerics. The Cleric class, as a concept, has always been ridiculously overpowered, but only when they aren't focused on healing, which is generally a near worthless endeavor.

 

[WarpedLord]

Maybe the Life specialization IS the problem... It's definitely a possibility, since the basic Life Cleric is good at precisely NOTHING other than casting healing spells. They get no cool combat tricks, nothing interesting to do in combat at all other than cast the occasional cure spell.

Man, poor Clerics. How will they every find anything fun to do between channel divinity, cantrip spells, having good hit point progression, decent weapon/armor proficiency, rituals and frankly a boat load of spell castings. Even a Healbot Cleric should have plenty of fun. Perhaps it's not a system for everyone - the best groups always find whatever system best suits them, but I'd put more burden on the player than the mechanics.

Wow... way to open the basic rules and type out all the Cleric class features...

Let's look at all the awesome, fun stuff you kindly listed (again, only looking at the "healbot Cleric" we have full info on, but you said yourself they should have "plenty of fun")

Channel Divinity - so... healing. Um.... yay?
Cantrips - You HAVE to be joking here. While the Wizards get plenty of cool cantrips, Clerics get mostly out-of-combat stuff, with only really 3 cantrips useful in combat, with one only being useful if they let a party member hit 0 HP, one that's actually a decent attack spell (amazingly), and one that's a crappy buff that relies on Cocentration (more on THAT later)
Good HP Progression - Okay, sure... but how does this make Clerics "fun"?
Decent Weapon/Armor profiecency - Weapons? Yeah... enjoy those awesome simple weapons and the amazing ZERO manuevers Clerics can pull off with them. As for the armor... So they get okay armor... that's not going to help when most of the decent spells (that aren't heals, so granted, they'll never cast them anyway) all rely on concentration, which is AWFUL now, so the last thing you're going to want to do is cast one and then get into melee.
Rituals - Again... nothing to do with combat, which like it or not is a HUGE part of most campaigns... and Clerics being dreadfully boring and sucky in combat is what I was pointing out in the first place.
A "boatload" of spellcasting - Between the removal of stat-based bonus spells, and the fact that as Revnak mentioned... at LEAST half the cleric's spellcasting will be healing spells that are now far less effective than 3rd or 4th edition, playing a Cleric will hardly feel like you have a "boatload" of spells. More likely at mid-levels, they'll get 2 or 3 offensive castings per day, tops. Those other rounds, they can run up and swing at stuff with their mace while the fighters and rogues are dancing around the battlefield showing off all the fun new tricks they get.

[insert HEAVY, dripping sarcasm here] Wow... now that I look at it again, I've changed my mind. Clerics look like sooooo much fun! [yeah... like a tidal wave of sarcasm]

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Now if only someone will make a PC CRPG out of it I will buy pre-order that bad boy. I'm sad that there's not really a way for me to enjoy the intricacies of this game. To the best of my knowledge, the last D&D video game was NWN2 way back in 2006. (I'm not including MMOs DDO or NW). It's way past due for a new, epic D&D CRPG.

 

[cyvaris]

Listening to all the cleric complaints. Man, if only there were other classes that could heal or buff. That would be sweet. Maybe there should be a few of them, like an entire archetype. Leader sounds like a good term for it. Maybe we could get a non-magical "Leader" even, like say...a Warlord. Man that could be AWESOME. A class focused around ally movement and buffs that also can attack enemies at the same time. Shame we don't have something like that.

Speaking of such things, nice to see they cribbed the Warlock verbatim from 4e.

It's good to finally see the Specializations for each class, mostly since this was apparently where the more complex (and you know maybe actually interesting) martial characters would finally show up. Unless superiority dice actually provide some cool mechanics, I don't really see anything I like. You've got herp derp melee basic attack Fighter or Wizard Fighter. Yep that's the way to fix everything, make everyone a Wizards WotC! Perfect balance there!

 

[Slycne]

snip

Or you know, list the powers and mechanics my Healbot cleric is actually using. If a player is incapable of doing anything but stand around and cast Cure Wounds on the party that's an issue with the player not the mechanics. Personally, I'd rather work at using what the Cleric has than the 4E approach of simply reskinning an attack to be Holy Healing Smite. As mentioned, ultimately different strokes for different folks. There are plenty of systems that are have healers with a larger combat presence or subvert the need at all, that's just not D&D for me so I'm quite happy with the comfortable middle ground that 5E has found.

 

[GamemasterAnthony]

I wonder how these new rules will mesh with this little project I was working on [http://z6.invisionfree.com/Fort_Ticonderoga/index.php?showtopic=1865]?

Definitely liking the specializations for all the classes. Also...Warlock, eh? Let's just hope they don't go on an adventure where there are those who want to build a bridge out of them...

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

snip

Or you know, list the powers and mechanics my Healbot cleric is actually using. If a player is incapable of doing anything but stand around and cast Cure Wounds on the party that's an issue with the player not the mechanics. Personally, I'd rather work at using what the Cleric has than the 4E approach of simply reskinning an attack to be Holy Healing Smite. As mentioned, ultimately different strokes for different folks. There are plenty of systems that are have healers with a larger combat presence or subvert the need at all, that's just not D&D for me so I'm quite happy with the comfortable middle ground that 5E has found.

Okay, then why not answer me here, the guy who was comparing it to 3.5. I still think that the life cleric looks really boring, far more so than doing a similar build in 3.5 since at least then they had more casts and didn't have to increase the spell slot of cure to get more healing done with it. And they had way more spells so them ignoring their healing duties was easier. Oh, and they could get better weapons, since apparently they're stuck with simple this time around.

Other domains may look fun, but life cleric looks outright stupid.

 

[Slycne]

Okay, then why not answer me here, the guy who was comparing it to 3.5. I still think that the life cleric looks really boring, far more so than doing a similar build in 3.5 since at least then they had more casts and didn't have to increase the spell slot of cure to get more healing done with it. And they had way more spells so them ignoring their healing duties was easier. Oh, and they could get better weapons, since apparently they're stuck with simple this time around.

Other domains may look fun, but life cleric looks outright stupid.

Heh. Well that's hardly fair, a properly specced Cleric in 3.5 was arguably the best class, hands down, outside of some truly broken stuff.

I'm actually kind of baffled at the backlash to the spell level casting system in 5E, I really love this implementation. Often in earlier editions you would be forced to blow a high level heal since a bunch of smaller ones wasn't going to cut it, so you'd usually be overhealing a lot. Now you get to tailor the amount of omph you want to put into it every time. If anything I think this mean Life Clerics will keep more of the high level spells for "fun" stuff. Likewise, I think the shrinking of the spell list has a lot to do with this method, no more need for Cure Moderate, Cure Serious, Critical, etc, which leaves the Cleric approximately as many other spells as they had before.

I would agree that life is likely the least interesting of the bunch, but I don't think that suddenly makes it completely unplayable or unfun to play is all I'm getting at.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

Okay, then why not answer me here, the guy who was comparing it to 3.5. I still think that the life cleric looks really boring, far more so than doing a similar build in 3.5 since at least then they had more casts and didn't have to increase the spell slot of cure to get more healing done with it. And they had way more spells so them ignoring their healing duties was easier. Oh, and they could get better weapons, since apparently they're stuck with simple this time around.

Other domains may look fun, but life cleric looks outright stupid.

Heh. Well that's hardly fair, a properly specced Cleric in 3.5 was arguably the best class, hands down, outside of some truly broken stuff.

I'm actually kind of baffled at the backlash to the spell level casting system in 5E, I actually really love this implementation. Often in earlier editions you would be forced to blow a high level heal since a bunch of smaller ones wasn't going to cut it, so you'd usually be overhealing a lot. Now you get to tailor the amount of omph you want to put into it every time. If anything I think this mean Life Clerics will keep more of the high level spells for "fun" stuff. Likewise, I think the shrinking of the spell list has a lot to do with this method, no more need for Cure Moderate, Cure Serious, Critical, etc, which leaves the Cleric approximately as many other spells as they had before.

I would agree that life is likely the least interesting of the bunch, but I don't think that suddenly makes it completely unplayable or unfun to play is all I'm getting at.

I actually really like the system, I just think it sucks in regards to the healing spells since they used to get more dice with levels anyway, rather than taking up a higher spell slot (though that might just be Pathfinder). And I know the cleric was broken, that's why I never played it. However, the healbot cleric really wasn't, since they usually weren't doing things like getting summoning or combat feats, and I'm pretty certain the life domain was terrible. And this new healbot cleric is much worse than that one, to the point that it seems like an honestly boring class compared to the flavorful and fun martial classes or the other full casters (the latter of which apparently includes the fucking bard this time around, which I cannot imagine is a balanced class in this game).

 

[spartandude]

I dont mind the Cleric, just hope that other classes such as the Druid and then later the Paladin and maybe Ranger can heal aswell otherwise, Bye bye me playing as Cleric.

 

[WarpedLord]

I dont mind the Cleric, just hope that other classes such as the Druid and then later the Paladin and maybe Ranger can heal aswell otherwise, Bye bye me playing as Cleric.

I completely agree... which is why it concerns me a great deal that healing isn't even mentioned in the Druid section of the article, and it seems that the Pally spellcasting will be very limited. Maybe the Bard will be a viable healer?

 

[syaoran728]

But my question is, can I play the famous Luchadore Grappler Monk? If so, sold.

If you want to do that, you should consider checking out Exalted instead.

 

[WarpedLord]

snip

Or you know, list the powers and mechanics my Healbot cleric is actually using. If a player is incapable of doing anything but stand around and cast Cure Wounds on the party that's an issue with the player not the mechanics.

You've brought variants of this up a couple times, and sorry... but you're wrong. It isn't the player's responsibility to figure out how to make a class fun to play. It's the responsibility of the game design to give each class fun options in situations in AND out of combat. Here's an (extreme) example: If they had a "Sage" class, where every few levels they got abilities that were limited to reading and writing different languages, understanding ancient runes, and knowing the history of just about every civilization, but in combat all they could do is use a quarterstaff, with nothing else to do... no one would play it because it's a BAD character design that would be terribly boring to play in a major aspect of the game. That's NOT the "player's responsibility", that's just bad design. The "Healbot" is only slightly better than my example... and guess what? It's poor design, plain and simple.

I'm curious... were you part of the playtest? I was, and through the different iterations, the Clerics actually had some fun stuff they could do. Judging from the WotC forums, though, a bunch of idiots complained that the Cleric was "as good as the Fighter" at low levels (which was totally untrue... and even if it was, who cares? They SHOULD be about even for the first couple levels until the fighter starts learning more advanced tricks), and lo and behold, we got the final crap Cleric we're now stuck with.

Gee thanks, Internet.

 

[Ballbo Big'uns]

Looks like a lot of prestige classes and multiclassing are being rolled together into the core classes...not sure how I feel about that, but I am not thrilled that the only two ways to play sorcerer are 'wild mage' and 'dragon disciple'....not sure all this forced specialization thing is up my alley....3.5 had a bit more flexibility is my impression from this.

Well, not exactly...

3.5 gave the ILLUSION of flexibility and options; what it really had were one or two viable choices for each concept buried in a deluge of trap options. Remember that an option that isn't worth taking isn't really an option at all.

5E customization is more straight forward and honest. If you want to make a good tank or a good archer, the game explicitly gives you the best choices right up front, whereas 3.5 is written to make these choices more ambiguous to reward hardcore players and punish newer and more casual players.

Why would a game NOT want to reward it's more hardcore players? That's fine if it's GURPS, or Hero, or even Pathfinder...a game that is explicitly for established gamers. D&D as the flagship title of the hobby, doesn't get to be THAT game. It's job is to be intuitive, welcoming and user-friendly.