Archetype Design 101: How to Start a Subclass Right & Arcane Zoology
For our first piece of published homebrew, I am pleased to present the Arcane Tradition of Arcane Zoology, a wizard subclass that takes a lot of cues from its druid colleagues. Rather than only study spellcasting, these wizards focus on magic’s effects on the animal kingdom, and on the many varieties of magical creatures that roam most fantasy settings we are familiar with. As a result, they are much more in tune with their familiars, allowing the connection between familiar and master to be far more useful than usual. From a gameplay perspective, the archetype has a great many utility options and is capable of being played as a less grim ‘minion-mancer’ than the Necromancy wizard.
Before we look at the archetype itself, though, I want to talk a bit about the creation process, something we’re very interested in at Gelatinous Cubicles. The Arcanozoologist began from the idea to build a wizard around the familiar, a classic feature of the wizard’s broad toolset. The concept was for the familiar to become like an arcane spin on the Beastmaster’s Animal Companion, and the flavor of it as a zoologist of magic followed afterwards. From there, the draft came together fairly quickly, as between the long find familiar spell description and the ‘supernatural biologist’ fluff, there was a lot of fertile ground to work with. It’s even possible that there may be more content in that space, for Wizard or otherwise; that remains to be seen.
Once I had the first version complete, we set about revising. The majority of our attention was paid to Soulbound Familiar, which was not all that surprising, as the first substantial feature for any archetype is often defining in how that character option operates (more on this later):
I started fairly conservatively, and the arc of the feature was slowly strengthened over the course of development and testing. Early in development, Soulbound Familiar let the wizard’s familiar attack, as other more powerful familiars can. In the end, we found that Soulbound Familiar’s earlier iterations were not defining enough, as the familiar was still secondary to the basic options for Wizard, namely spellcasting. Every round the Arcanozoologist could either cast a spell or have its familiar attack, and the spell was always better. The solution I finally went with, from amongst many ideas we came up with, was to let the Wizard cast cantrips through their familiar, essentially saying “why choose?” between utilizing the familiar and casting a spell.
Overall, balancing the Arcane Zoology archetype was not too difficult, as it was weaker and slowly tuned up, rather than being wild and needing to be more limited. You’ll notice that none of its features let a player cast extra spells, or increase damage output in any meaningful way. Instead, they allow the player greater flexibility, more options to play with. As a result, the archetype is no more broken than the options the Wizard already has, which is to say, just broken enough.
Subclass Design 101: The First Feature
The development of Soulbound Familiar, to me, is indicative of an important part to character option design, especially archetypes. Often, archetypes’ first features are intentionally defining, since the entire reason we have archetypes to begin with is to specialize and differentiate between members of the same class. We spent time making sure Soulbound Familiar was just so because to make an archetype interesting, it needs to feel distinct as soon as a player reaches that point.
This principle is why so many archetypes, and indeed classes, are front-loaded, getting several features out of the gate and then fewer later; it’s so the player immediately feels like they are playing a different sort of character than any of the other options. It’s also why archetypes often have very mechanically powerful features early. For me, whether or not an archetype feels distinct is one of my very first and most foundational critiques, and to fail that litmus test, subjective as it may be, is usually enough for me to lose interest. For instance, Rogue’s Thief archetype isn’t bad, per se, but I’ve never had any interest in it, simply because it doesn’t do anything unique until much later. The ability to use any magic item regardless of restriction or to take two turns in combat is interesting, sure, but it’s still tough to get excited about an archetype that doesn’t become interesting until level 13. Before that, all we get is the ability to… climb better. Nothing worth chasing, by any stretch.
On the other hand, most of my favorites in 5E are archetypes and classes that manage to distinguish themselves especially well. Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight are good examples of this principle, as they immediately expand the toolkit of the character who reaches that milestone. Both give a normally martial class cantrips and spells, adaptable extra tools in their arsenal, as well as ways for them to incorporate those abilities into their normal skillsets. In this way, these archetypes feel and play quite differently from other subclasses from the very beginning.
Notably, this distinction is not about mechanical power level, and there are archetypes that have a great deal of stopping power but are still rather bland. Champion Fighter, with a greater crit range of both 19 and 20 and an extra Fighting Style, is quite powerful by the numbers, but it does not feel distinct. Champion’s features almost fade to the background, enhancing its effectiveness but making the archetype almost invisible, as the character still simply attacks without any change.
One of my goals as a brewer is to avoid this pitfall of designing a strong player option without the flavor to make it meaningfully new. After all, if we’re going to go to all the trouble to write new content, how could it be worth it if it didn’t feel new? If you have any questions, we welcome comments, as well as feedback on this or any other piece of our content. We have plans for much more to come soon, so keep a lookout!
- James the Snickering Ghoul