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O loyal and discerning readers, behold, a choice of ways is given unto you. Inasmuch as we have now completed* our examination of the Bard and Druid classes, we come to the question of what shall be next. I, your faithful analyst and guide**, might continue with the Assassin, the Cleric, the Paladin, the Warlock, or the Warlord, or might branch out into a discussion of mechanics outside of the classes, with Skill Proficiency Rules or Attack Roll Rules. (I promise you that I will tackle Psionics at some point, but I am not ready for that SAN loss, y’all. Have mercy.)

Perhaps a line or two of spoilers from those articles would aid you. Not all of these classes go back as far as OD&D, of course – so if your favorite flavor of gratification is instant and what you really want to hear about is the later editions, then Warlock and Warlord are for you. Creating a cogent through-line to discuss the Warlord ought to be a challenge. The Paladin has been one of the most thematically stable classes in D&D’s history; to its detriment, I would argue. 4e and 5e do come up with some compelling new things to say, though. The Assassin is a mess, but I get to quote one of the most royally-purple descriptive lines that Gygax ever penned, and that’s worth something. The Cleric may have me scraping the bottom of the barrel for new things to say, but we get to talk about the cognitive dissonance implicit in a class based on Western monotheistic religions but placed in fantasy worlds full of pantheons.

So rock the vote! Comment! Invite your friends to vote! (It’s the internet, so there’s no 50-foot boundary on campaigning near a polling place.)


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* There are plenty of things on both of these classes that got cut for space and sanity, such as the 3.x splat-fest and their Pathfinder analogues and which OSR retroclones support these classes and… so like I said, sanity. Also, 5e is still in publication, so we might see new official material at some point.

** translation: scribe of unnecessary bloviation

Image from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade… as if you didn’t know that