Keeping it Classy: Updated Core Classes in Level Up
A quick note on terminology: in the context of this article and ones like it, O5E means “Original 5E;” the version of 5E that you’ll find in the 5th edition rules. A5E is a shorthand for “Advanced 5E,” which refers to Level Up.
We’ve previously emphasized how the classes in Level Up now give a lot more love to the social and exploration pillars of the game, and while they certainly do, we haven’t neglected the combat pillar, either. Several of the classes got a more extensive combat pillar overhaul than the others, though, and below we’ll be discussing both the changes and what the benefits from those changes will be for your games. Much of his information hasn’t gotten a lot of proverbial air time because it's more in-depth than what can be squeezed into an infographic, but this is also some of the most impressive design work that the team produced, so get ready for some exciting revelations!
It’s notable that even this is more of a “highlight reel” than an exhaustive breakdown; with a dozen updated classes and the new Marshal class (to say nothing of rebalanced spells, feats, and magic items) there’s much more that’s been rebalanced than just what’s in this article.
The Warlock
“Eldritch Blast was changed because its identity is to be a creepy power unique to warlocks, not something people can grab on the cheap (such as a feat or one-level dip). Changing Eldritch Blast from a cantrip into a feature allowed us to give it more versatility without adding new cantrips to other classes. Besides having a choice of how you use Eldritch Blast from 1st level, we also wanted to add more invocations for further customizing the blast. Eldritch Blast now only improves by warlock level as a result (not by character level).” -Josh Gentry, Lead Designer (Warlock Class)
The O5E warlock was a pretty awesome class to begin with, and its highly-modular nature lined up better with the design sensibilities of Level Up than a lot of the other classes, so it’s perhaps a bit surprising that even with those considerations in mind, it’s probably one of the most-improved classes in the game, especially when you consider the rebalancing effect the changes have on multiclassing.
The first notable change is that while warlocks are still a short-rest caster, their spells run on a pool of points rather than a tiny number of spell slots. This does a couple of good things: the first is that it gives a warlock PC a lot more flexibility and a bit more to do between rests than their O5E counterparts. Being able to use a small number of points on a low-level utility spell and still have some resources left if you really need to blast something is both an upgrade to mechanical versatility and in-play variety of playing a warlock. Having the spellcasting run on a class-specific resource also means that you need to use the warlock’s spellcasting to actually cast your spells rather than as a quick-recharging pool of sorcery points or fuel for Divine Smite like it was tempting to do in O5E.
Another significant change is that Eldritch Blast is no longer a cantrip, but rather is a class feature of the warlock. This also has multiple positive effects; for one thing, making it into a class feature gave the designers more flexibility to explore new forms of eldritch power, and Eldritch Blast now comes in four distinct forms, all of which behave differently, as you can see in the snippet from the rules above. As a class feature it improves by warlock level, not by character level, which keeps players from “dipping” a level of warlock (or using a feat) for one of the best sources of long-range damage in the game. Notably, now it doesn’t even have to be a long-range source of damage if that’s not what you want for a particular character; though the “old” version is still there for you under the name Eldritch Ray if you prefer that option.
This change means that, among other things, the old paladin/warlock combo that was deadlier in combat in both melee and at a distance than most other classes is no longer a thing, though you can make a single-classed warlock with the ability to operate effectively at a variety of ranges quite easily thanks to the new options. In fact, Pact of the Blade warlocks now get the ability to use their spellcasting attribute for weapon attacks and damage as part of that pact boon rather than that benefit being limited to a specific subclass. And that spellcasting attribute can now be Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma to better represent the type of person that might be in service to a specific patron and the nature of that relationship.
The Herald
“I feel like the paladin has a lot of potential for utility, but the limited casting and use of spell slots for smite made it harder to build them in a way that reflected that. Adding cantrips I felt added access to a lot of useful utility spells, without greatly affecting their casting. My favorite change to smite—making it a scaling damage bonus like sneak attack—was also to restore some of that utility, since it allows you to use your slots for actual spells and not just for creating more martial damage.” - Lydia Van Hoy, Lead Designer (Herald Class)
The paladin class feels really good in O5E; it hits like a freight train thanks to its Divine Smite ability, and with its d10 hit die, heavy armor proficiency, and healing abilities, they can also stand on the front lines of combat against even big, beefy monsters and feel confident that they can handle what’s coming their way.
The flavor was artificially limited, though, with the connection to the historical knights of Charlemagne constraining the “palette” for the class to a narrower range of concepts than was necessary. Renaming the class to herald opens up different types of divine or ideological messengers, such as the new Inquisitor subclass, which feels more like Solomon Kane than Sir Galahad.
Much like the warlock, the O5E paladin was a favorite class to “dip” or take just a few levels of. This was primarily for Divine Smite, which allowed players to trade spell slots for bonus damage when they hit with melee attacks. The armor and shield proficiencies of the class also represent a significant defensive upgrade over what classes like the sorcerer, warlock, and bard receive by default. Trading spells for damage, while fun, also meant that while the paladin was a spellcaster, they often didn’t really feel like one; it was frequently more desirable to use spell slots for bonus damage than to actually cast spells with them. In fact, this was often so tempting that it led many O5E players to seek out ways of getting more spell slots than the default; multiclass characters with a few levels of paladin and many more of sorcerer, warlock, or bard were a common way to get extra slots to fuel the Divine Smite ability with and/or take some of the limited resource pressure off of Divine Smite so the player could enjoy casting some spells without worrying about not having fuel for their smites. It’s also noteworthy that this was a place where the surveys that we sent out to the community helped the design team. They were able to go into the design process with feedback supporting a version of Divine Smite that wasn’t tied to spell slots already in hand.
On the licensing side of things, there are a number of first-party “smite” spells that our developers couldn’t use for intellectual property reasons, but add depth, texture, and tactical versatility to the class, so there was a desire to have something similar for the herald.
The herald gets around these and other problems with both single-classed and multiclassed characters by making Divine Smite’s damage scale up with the character’s levels in herald rather than being dependent on the level of spell slots they have access to, as you can see in the table above. Heralds also get a set, level-dependent number of uses of Divine Smite and do not have to spend spell slots to use them. Rather than make a new set of “smite” spells, there is now the Empowered Smite feature which kicks in at 4th level and has some of the same functionality, changing the damage type and attaching additional effects, and as an additional incentive to stick with the herald class, there is also Greater Empowered Smite to look forward to at level 8. In keeping with our design philosophy of adding more player choice, each of these class features has multiple options within it, which allows a herald to adapt their attacks to the foe they are fighting.
The herald still has the ability to trade spell slots in; however, it’s just that now they’re the power source for the maneuvers the class gets and additional uses of Empowered Smite, if desired. That means that whenever you use a spell slot, it will do something more interesting than just adding damage to your attack.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one more small change that may have flown under the radar of some folks who looked over the playtest documents: the herald gets cantrips now! The inclusion of those gives herald players some more options to fully realize their character concepts and brings the class more in line with other types of spellcaster.
The Fighter
“For fighter it was killing the sacred cow of action surges. Action surges were one of the biggest sources of cheese with fighters (especially for multiclassing) as it's a direct break on the action economy. I've given fighters a LOT of hopefully more interesting features as a balance to their removal, but when I took the fighter project removing them was one of my main goals.” - Andrew Engelbrite, Lead Designer (Fighter Class)
The fighter class is much-beloved in O5E, and as much as this may be starting to sound like a broken record, for good reason. It’s much more useful over the long term than its incarnations in previous editions, and yet it’s still a comfortable introduction to those unfamiliar with tabletop RPGs in general or d20-based fantasy games in particular. Yet it also received significant changes. Why?
The first reason is that once you’re familiar with O5E, it gets a little bit bland. Fighters are really good at basic attacks, and they get a lot of them, but unless you take certain specific subclasses, that’s almost all a fighter does—basic attacks. This is helped enormously in A5E by combat maneuvers, and the fighter is the clear choice to showcase that new system to its fullest potential. Fighters are able to choose any of the combat schools in the game, rather than from a limited set, and they also have some additional exertion points so they can use those maneuvers more frequently. They also acquire new maneuvers faster than other classes, as you can see above.
Astute readers have probably noticed by now that Action Surge ability is nowhere to be seen in the Level Up fighter class. This was the other major reason for the heavy revisions to the fighter. While not terribly problematic on a single-classed fighter, Action Surge is a nightmare for the action economy in a lot of multiclass builds. When taken outside the context of a single-classed fighter, the additional action from Action Surge can be used to lob an extra spell in a multiclass spellcaster build, get a second batch of divine smites when mixed with paladin, and so on. It’s worth noting that while Second Wind appears to be gone, it’s not, really. There’s an Adamant Mountain maneuver called Catch Your Breath that fills the same mechanical function, making it optional (and rebalanced) rather than absent entirely.
So like the warlock and herald, there’s now more of an incentive to play a fighter in order to experience the class itself, rather than cherry-picking a couple of powerful front-loaded abilities.
The Druid
“I tried as much as possible to make the wild shapes actually useful because being a giant wolf or a dinosaur is useful, not for hp gimmicks. So our druid drops the wonky hp shifting, but has access to higher CR wild shapes with fewer limitations on forms and higher AC to make them more viable all around.” - Andrew Engelbrite, Lead Designer (Druid Class)
The last class we have to look at is the druid. Unlike the fighter, herald, and warlock, the druid class isn’t frequently seen as part of a cheesy multiclass build. Druids come with a lot of very strong flavor integrated into the class from the very earliest levels. The access to the secret Druidic language, unique weapon and armor choices, and deep connection to the natural world make for a compelling and noticeably unique character choice, so they definitely didn’t need any significant help in the flavor or lore departments.
In fact, druids may seem like an odd candidate for rebalancing because they’re not part of a build with its own name and infamous reputation like “coffeelock” or “sorcadin,” but they still had a couple of places where some finessing was useful.
For one thing, playing a druid in O5E is almost like playing two separate classes at the same time. On the one hand, you’re playing a powerful spellcaster with a range of battlefield control, healing, and blasting spells. On the other, you’re playing a wily shapeshifter with the ability to take on animal forms to scout or fight in. Both of these concepts are fun on their own, so it’s no surprise that players enjoy having both under the umbrella of a single character class.
The problem is that the "wily shapeshifter" half of the equation is constrained in ways that make its utility limited, especially as the character advances in level.
Except in the cases where their subclass focuses heavily on augmenting the Wild Shape feature, O5E druids are very limited in how they can use it. They cannot shift into creatures with a swim speed until level 4, cannot shift into a creature with a fly speed until level 8, are limited to shapes with the beast type, and cannot cast spells while wild shaped for almost their entire character progression. In addition, there's a ten-level gap between level 8 and level 18 where the Wild Shape feature does not change or improve at all, then suddenly at level 18, druids gain the ability to cast spells while wild shaped and at level 20, the limited use of the feature goes away.
This means that the feature feels the best at low levels when the available forms like tigers and giant octopi are more threatening in combat, but as time goes on and levels accrue, most uses of Wild Shape fall into one of two broad categories. The first is scouting, which does remain useful even with low-powered forms. A druid can explore underground waterways with no fear of drowning as a fish or get a literal bird's eye view of a situation while traveling, and turning into a cat or rat is a time-honored way to do a little spying in an urban environment.
The second is combat, but in more of a purely “run the numbers” kind of way than a “fun power fantasy” one. At some point, the combat side of things shifts from “attack animal” to using the Wild Shape form as what amounts to an ablative shield. Because the hit points from a druid's Wild Shape form are added to their current hit points and take damage first, (with the druid reverting back to their normal form once the Wild Shape form’s hit points are depleted) the best use of wild shape in combat at higher levels is to turn into the CR 1 beast with the largest hit point total you can find and soak up some damage. It's not nothing, but it's not as fun as chasing down goblins as a tiger at lower levels, either.
So to address these problems and keep it exciting between levels 8 and 18, Wild Shape was overhauled. Now a druid gets a much wider choice of available forms (including plants!) and the ability improves more steadily and throughout the class’s progression, as you can see in the snippet above.
Druids also have some limited spellcasting while wild shaped from the time they get the ability instead of having to wait until level 18. And as you can see above, druids can now also use their Wild Shape ability to summon a short-duration familiar, which adds to their class’s “friend of nature” theme.
However, they also use their own hit point total plus modest number of temporary hp gained from the shapeshifting process instead of the “sack of hit points” that Wild Shape-focused O5E subclasses can grant, so it’s definitely a good idea to be a bit more cautious while in another form; damage a druid takes while in another form hurts them for real now.
This set of changes generally has the effect of making the druid’s Wild Shape ability more useful as a combat feature in its own right rather than as a sack of disposable hit points or something that can only be used for reconnaissance.
Multiclassing
Some readers may be starting to feel like Level Up is designed to discourage multiclassing at this point, because the first three classes in this article have been adjusted to make specific multiclass builds less potent, but that’s not at all the case. In fact, the core rules contain eight (or maybe ten; we have two more as stretch goals) sets of what we refer to as synergy feats, which are three-feat chains designed to make a specific concept work. The eight that are in there already enable specific multiclass combinations, and the two that are stretch goals will allow you to play as undead creatures! The aim of the changes was not to discourage multiclassing, but to shut off some unbalancing mix/maxed combinations that are seen by some as “correct” builds.
In fact, I, your humble article writer, am planning to use the bard/herald synergy feat chain for my very first Level Up PC after the kickstarter concludes!
Final Thoughts
As previously mentioned, this is far from an exhaustive list of the changes in Level Up, but this is a sample of what the team has done to rebalance some of the more problematic features and combinations of features that have become apparent since O5E released in 2014, or those that weren’t quite realizing their full potential. We hope you’re as excited as we are to start using some of these newly-revitalized classes at your table.