Is RPG.SE able to answer questions related to the creation of homebrew classes in 5e before all the books are out?

Question

I have a character from WFRP that I want to port over to D&D 5e. The character is a dwarven alchemist, with some bombs, poisons, magic abilities (like casting knock) and really good healing abilities, really good armor, good health, but not so good with weapons.

I know that to port over the character the way I want, will involve the creation of new items, skills, and class abilities. So the question is, how do I craft such a Class so that I can port it over.

Note that all the core books for D&D 5e are not out yet.

Would this sort of question be too opinion based for RPG.se or would the question be answerable?

Answer 1

I think that this sort of question falls under the Good Subjective guideline (but more on that later). There's no One True Answer, but people who have done this sort of conversion can show what they've done and how they'd do it again, and the best answer (for you) can be accepted, and the best answers (for the community) will be upvoted.

The main issue in this case, I feel, is that 5e is too new. One of the main tenets of Good Subjective that makes those kind of questions and answers useful is the ability to back it up. This requires solid experience. Since very few people have played 5e, and fewer still have written up new classes, there can be very little solid experience with this process at this point in time. Answers will probably be "I read the playtest packets and I think the best way could be to do...", which falls under Bad Subjective, and probably closed as Opinion-Based.

So the bottom line is that I think the questions are fine, and a good fit for the site, but that 5e questions, specifically, are likely to attract bad answers at this point. Not all answers, of course - there's already a 5e homebrew community out there, and answers from those folks would be welcome, but the pool of possible contributors is small, and care must be taken to prune out the bad answers quickly.

The best way to do that is to explicitly state, in the question, that you'd like solid experience to back up any answers, and promptly challenge any unbased answers to prove their experience. Don't wait for the mods to step in and possibly close the whole question, but be proactive in demanding specific criteria for answers.

Answer 2

I'm rather opposed to this bent of questions at this point. For one simple reason:

• We don't know enough about 5e's published intent to make an objective assessment about balance yet.

Until we see the final edition of the game, speaking of balance is going to be purely hypothetical. 5e's balance environment changed so many times throughout the playtest that I'm virtually certain that nothing we've seen so far reflects the final game at all.

We don't know the final maths, we don't know the final class build structure (and yes, I expect some changes there from the final playtest).

But most importantly, we don't know what the system's expectation on balance is. There is too much unknown to even write a good subjective question on creating homebrew that will be compatible with the final version of 5e.

Answer 3

If you like, you can ask about converting to the playtest, which should get you 9/10ths of the way to a legal conversion for 5e once it's released.

If you really want it for 5e, wait until 5e is released to ask. I know we're in that giddy waiting period for a new edition, but let's not get ahead of reality. We can't accept questions about a game that nobody owns yet.