Hecate Thinks about 6e D&D

I have, scattered throughout these posts, strongly implied the idea that you more or less kit-build your character. It started way back in the  first post  with the idea that for my 6e we'd use the 5e as the essential building block for all characters, and it got a bit further developed scattered around in various posts. In essence, your class gives you quite minimal class features, in 5e, but balances a bit what you can get access to, and your subclasses, how many HP and MP you get, but most importantly what class training you get access to. That class training, there need to be more options than you can actually ever take, lets you define your flavour. So lets say, for the sake of example, there are 5 picks available at every level, in every class (that seems like too many, but we're playing make believe here). You only get to take three of them... so you can opt for tank, more tank, yet more tank, or attack, attack, more attack or something in between and make your fighters...

In 5e, if you are proficient in a skill, tool, vehicle or instrument you add a level based proficiency bonus, and if you get expertise from somewhere (there are a few sources, but the best known is rogue), you double this. You get proficiencies from some races, all backgrounds, and a variable number from your class. You occasionally get some from your subclass. You can also get them from feats, such as Skilled  and UA skill feats as well. It's incredibly rare to get more after third level, except from feats. In 3e/3.5e, skills worked rather differently. At every level you had a number of skill points to spend, based on your character class and Int modifier, and if you bought class skills you got +1 per point you spent, non-class skills gave you +1 per 2 points you spent. So a bard would get +1 per point in Speak Other Language and Perform say, while a Monk might get it in Acrobatics, Tumble and Religion and a Wizard in Arcana and History. You could focus down and improve the s...

A disclaimer. I really don't think this will fly.  Not that it's impossible to write such a system for an FRPG, RuneQuest did it, Warhammer kind of did it, GURPS Fantasy (and others) certainly did it. So you can certainly write coherent and successful FRPG systems that don't have character classes and don't have levels.  However, would they be D&D? If you think of D&D, what do you think of? If you're of a certain age, you might think of the satanic panic. Or the cartoon show. But typically you think of a party with a fighter type, a thief type (now reframed as a rogue), a divine caster type and an arcane caster type. If you're a bit less informed you go fighter, thief, cleric and wizard, a bit more informed you might say something like well it could be paladin, monk, druid and sorcerer instead, but you still think of those four roles. If you've played 5e, you might erase the cleric for a bard or a second combat character, and call them by their subcl...

In 5e, when it comes to making your character class, there is essentially one choice you make for most classes: what subclass do I take. Even if you're a preparation caster, you have a "typical load" that you carry, although you can change that, and you probably change it a bit as you level up and might change it a bit in response to specific situations. One of the original classes stands out from this: the Warlock. In cast you haven't played one you choose a pact (subclass) at first level, an oath at third, and Eldritch Invocations all the way from second to eighteenth. You make active choices about your character at just about every level. With your pacts, oaths and invocations you can tweak your warlock to be anything from a front-rank fighter, piling out good damage, to a fey illusion-based magic to a heavy blaster, to the party face. While your core class limits your spell-casting (rising to at most four fifth spells per short rest plus one each of sixth to ni...