#47. Differentiating Hybrids

Been a while. Things happened here and there, but they're all irrelevant so I won't write the whole thing here. Let's just say that I am going through a transition here, and let's just get down to business.

So as I've been working on D&D homebrews and critiques, I had some thoughts on myself. One thing I took interest, while talking with my peers and colleagues (if I can call them that), was the matter of hybrid classes. So after almost like half a century of trials and errors, the "class" system typically divides a character into some roles: Tank, DPS, bruiser, buff/debuff, heal, and so forth. Most classes can do only a handful of things by themselves, as far as multiclassing or whatnot is not concerned. Then there's hybrid classes, whose shticks are to step on toes of more than a class would normally do.

The problem of hybrid classes, especially in JRPG, is that they are jack of all trades but master of none. Take Red Mage from Final Fantasy, for instance. It is probably the archetypical JRPG hybrid class, who can do all melee swordfight, healing spells, and damaging spells, but none of them are as good as dedicated, or "pure," classes. And as an archetypical JRPG hybrid class, its flaw is shared among many JRPG hybrid classes: It starts strong with diversity, but ends up mediocre due to its lack of specialty.

"Specialty" is the word I'm looking for here. Many hybrid class fails to acknowledge that, whatever fancy fluffs they can provide, what matters most is their specialty, as in, something that can answer the question "So what can I not do without this class?" I've been hitting 'round the bush on this part, because hell, I am a fan of hybrid claass myself, but only recently did I find a suitable answer for myself. I found that answer from, yet again, D&D: The very existence of paladin class.

Take paladin. Your typical tank/bruiser/heal hybrid. Easy peasy. But what makes a paladin different (note that it's not good or bad that counts; it's always different) from a fighter/cleric multiclass? Currently in 5th ediiton, a paladin gains access to a number of unique benefits that only it can provide: A list of exclusive spells, Divine Smite, aura features, and super saiyan 20th-level feature. Of course some classes can gain a fascimile of these stuffs, but without that, only paladin can grant these benefits and therefore has its niche.

So ironically, a hybrid class must be specialized in its own way, while providing multiple benefits that a combination of lower-tier classes would provide. The aforementioned Red Mage has Dual Cast, which is an exclusive feature that only the class could grant, but my disdain is that it is the only feature that makes it different and it comes too late.

So yeah. Maybe I can take this into consideration when I make something that at least is corporeal. End transmission.