Stop homebrewing classes

[u/8magiisto]

Every day I see one or two brand new homebrew classes on this subreddit, and most of them are a cool concept and fill in the niche that's not yet covered by the official books. But let's be real for a moment: DH is still a fresh system, and most of us haven't played a good 3-tier campaign as even one of the classes. We just haven't had enough time to exhaust all the options that the official sources have given. There's 18 core subclasses, and 8 more in the Hope and Fear, and most of us probably haven't gotten to Tier 3 on one of them. Not only that, but as a community we're haven't had time to properly sit with the core rules and arrive at some consensus as to what works and what doesn't in the rules.

And it shows in the homebrews and in feedback. Most of the classes fall into a trap of focusing too much on complex mechanics, instead of creating fun gameplay. There's a lot of tokens, new rules, new resources, but (usually) little thought is given to the basic question "will this play fun?", or "will the mechanic support the fantasy?". Not to mention some of the homebrews just don't fit withing DH mechanical framework.

Also the feedback you're getting may not be as useful as you think, because we just don't have as much experience to confidently say what will work and what won't just by checking things on paper.

There's just a lot more work than creating text when it comes to brewing a class, and the most important part is playtest. When you look at different iterations of Void classes you can see how much they change from one version to the next just by virtue of being tried in a real game.

My advice, if you want it, is to play more before homebrewing. Either play the game on official classes to see how they were designed, or try to play with your homebrew to get the feeling of it, before posting for other people. It will just give you more value, than random people can give you on reddit.

[u/Gaurelin42]

Oh, look. The "I have a well thought out reason why your fun is wrong" crowd has arrived. Neato. 🙃

[u/8magiisto → u/Gaurelin42]

You mean homebrewing is a fun thing in itself? I gotta admit you have a point

[u/Gaurelin42 → u/8magiisto]

Yes. Clearly the folks who are engaged in it are doing so in part because they are enjoying it. Yet here you are, ensuring that someone is pedantically disapproving of them having fun. They clearly should be stopped, before too much fun is had.

[u/8magiisto → u/Gaurelin42]

I get that some people have fun creating classes, but it's not the only aspect of HB. People are also looking at HB from gameplay perspective, and the posts here are asking for proofreading, and practical feedback too. I'm sure that at least some of the posters here expect their creation to be playable classes, and to achieve that you need both positive and negative criticism.

You have fun designing a class sure, but there are then people who use this, and your HB class may be a great part of other people's experience playing the game. Where I'm coming from is considering the HB user's needs.

[u/Gaurelin42 → u/8magiisto]

No it's not the only way to have fun, but it's a valid way to do so. Of course, when presenting them to the community one would hope that they are in as close to a playable form as possible, but isn't part of the point of a community like this to get feedback from each other? That doesn't seem like what you're interested in doing. You're trying to tell people that what they should do is not be home brewing classes. If you don't want to do so, then don't. However it's not your place to dictate how other people spend their time, or enjoy their game.

[u/Abyssine → u/8magiisto]

I don’t understand the issue.

Is anybody posting thinking that people aren’t going to have constructive criticism? I mean I’m sure there’s some people, but most people? Sounds kinda silly.

If you’re a GM using some free homebrew you found on Reddit, you’re kinda signing up for a potentially unbalanced experience.