As the bards, rangers, illusionists, druids, assassins, and paladins begin adventuring through our B/X games - I wonder if somehow they belong. Not as in get rid of them, but as in, "Were they ever implemented correctly?" I am thinking of this as in adding them in a way that doesn't take away from the central four classes in the game. I know historically these have been staples of fantasy gaming since AD&D, the moment when the basic four classes were all there was and the huge change began at "race as class."
And the door was opened to expanding the game beyond the core four classes.
So the question becomes, why play one of the original classes? A ranger does more than a fighter, flavorfully the ranger is more cool, and all the fighter really has is "better numbers" or "different attack options." When you introduce subclasses into the game, you make the original classes less interesting to play, and all of a sudden you are backporting cool into the original four when they were fine to start with.
Skill Rolls for Subclass Abilities
The old saying "a ranger is a fighter with a bow" comes up. Robin Hood did not have spells or dual-wielding abilities. You could simulate a ranger as a fighter in a game like Basic Fantasy by letting the player make nature-style skill rolls that a ranger would have as a background option and keep the game simple and maintain the strength and role protection of the fighter class.
Basic Fantasy also has that built-in leveled "skill roll" mechanic that makes this easy.
Same with bards, a thief with a musical background - or a mage-bard if your bards are mages. All of a sudden I have two music flavored classes by using bard as a background option instead of creating a standalone bard class that competes with the others. What about music? Let them "do what music does" through skill rolls, charm a crowd, soothe the savage beast, and so on through skill rolls - those don't need to be spells. In the case of the magic bard, well, they are spells and that is how they cast them. The magic bard's music background skill could also be used for any other music related check, and you are done.
Illusionist? That skill roll could be used to create minor illusions, manipulate the ones they create, and see through others. You could do some mechanical stuff within magic user to give them double daily use of illusion spells in a spell slot, and forbid them from scrying and informational style spells. Whatever you want to do in magic user is fine, but keep it in the original class with as few changes as possible. Same thing with ranger, adjust the allowed weapons and armor, and give them a +1 to-hit with ranged weapons and forbid them from wearing metallic armor.
Paladin? I would make paladin a background option of cleric, finally let them use edged weapons, and limit them in another interesting way. Perhaps forbid them from harming like-alignment foes, tithing, and getting constantly sent on missions against evil (or good if anti-paladin). You don't have to weaken or change cleric much in this case, and the base cleric is still a core of the game, while paladin is just a cleric flavor (and retains access to the full spell list). The one thing I never liked about AD&D paladins was that weak spell list. Here? A special type of cleric with some benefits, and some limitations to trade them off.
Let the base classes use their "class skill" for interesting uses too, fighters could identify foes, or know the origin of weapons and armor; thieves have a lot of cool skill rolls just on their own; clerics know rites and religions; and mages know history, spells, and other magic knowledge. Your background determines what your class skill roll covers. A mage-bard would know more about music than general wizard magic, but still know some things.
Parties of Subclasses?
And I am still sticking to the basic four classes, and the core party and play balance is not upset, but I have the options and flavor I always wanted. You get into these groups where you have a bard, ranger, druid, and illusionist and all of a sudden some core abilities the game's balance depends on are missing. Maybe no access to the heals the game expects you to have, or the bard's thief skills are sub-par. Do the additional abilities make up for it or is there a problem here? In AD&D I might say I felt there was a problem of parties of subclasses and things never felt right, or I had to fudge rolls to keep the play balance feeling correct.
I Still Like Them, but I Wonder...
Yes, there is a case to be made for nostalgia and unique class mechanics. Design wise I find those interesting too. But we should not feel beholden to the past or what came before, or feel if a game doesn't have a class and a player wants to play something similar, that we should limit them. With a little hacking and creativity, we can come up with custom class-mods to the original four (or how many ever your game has), and create something unique that the player could have a hand in creating with you.
I just wonder at times how really needed dozens of classes really are. I mean, it is nice to have options, but once you have dozens of almost-similar classes and variants in the game where you are doing numerical trade-offs to keep them feeling different you have lost me. The B/X style classes in Old School Essentials are really cool, and they are an example of what I would say "true" feeling subclasses would have been. The ones in AD&D never really impressed me, they felt like blends with weaker versions of powers other classes already possessed.
But if someone wanted to craft a custom B/X class at my table, I would jump at the opportunity to be creative with them. Rule zero applies to how your group interprets the game and how they design characters. You can change anything, even before you pick up the dice.
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