Resist the urge to preorder. The book isn’t going to give you enough information about Sigil to run anything. If you want to spend your money well go into the DM’s Guild and pick up the 2nd edition PDFs of “The Cage” and the planescape boxed set instead.
So, it’s going to be utter shit just like Spelljammer? Got it.
Pass.
Once again, they refuse to learn the important lesson: When you make a book for everyone, you make it for no-one.
They make great one-shots, but horrible, friendship-destroying campaigns unless you have players who absolutely understand how much PVP is about to inevitably happen.
WotC as usual threw the baby out with the bathwater and decided it meant that prestige classes are a dud of an idea entirely.
That’s because they were.
With subclasses, prestige classes become redundant on top of fighting for levels you need to unlock higher level abilities.
If you want things like prestige classes and multiclassing to not fight single-class characters at the design level you need to push single-class abilities away from the high levels of the class, which just leaves them empty and boring. At which point, why bother playing at high levels? Why bother single-classing ever?
You just end up removing choice by turning what should be a valid decision into a false-choice that does nothing but penalize you.
3rd edition, for example, should have cut the base classes off at level 5 or 10. The way the game was designed, there was no need for them past that point since everyone ended up taking either alternative base-class levels or prestige class levels.
With subclasses, you either need to embrace dipping and only define the base classes to level 15, getting rid of EVERYTHING that comes out in levels 16-20 (which kills a sacred cow and will make some people, like me, very un-happy), or you need to retire multiclassing, or at least try to balance it.
That means no more subclassing at 1st level and, preferably, standardizing subclass ability levels. Why people are against that I have no idea. Who cares if everyone gets their 2nd subclass ability at level 7 regardless of class?
Honestly, the only reason I can think of to want them at different levels is purely for power-gaming. The ability to plan out “a build” that is hands-down better than other builds because you get to squeeze in one more ability than other builds.
Seriously, what are the other reasons? The valid reasons?
How often are you making new characters that “playing a class start to feel same-y”?
I typically only get to make a new character once every few months, and pretty much never more than three times a year (unless I get really unlucky…or I’m playing CP2020). What are you doing different?
The deficiency is in the monster building rules in the DMG. They haven’t been updated in almost ten years and it shows. For example, like you say, Druids and Clerics are ridiculously good classes, but they look “fine” because they’re not top damage dealers.
Those rules haven’t been updated for us since 2014. Meanwhile, WotC devs say that they’ve been regularly updating the tools they use to create new monsters and now, for example, take crowd control effects into account by translating the value of a CC into “effective damage” under the theory that “1 damage out” is roughly the equivalent to “1 damage in”.
…we didn’t get any of those improvements over the last 10 years. We’re still using rules set down in 2014 to make monsters.
The only reason this is a “house rule/variant” is because everybody allows the optional rules by default and doesn’t understand what “optional” or “check with your DM first” means.
I don’t allow multi-classing. Subclasses do it better and are actually balanced. When I don’t disallows multi-classing I get 1-3 hexblade dips every group because of how OP the dip is.
I’ve had a ton of Paladin/hexblades, more than a few Wizard (Bladesinger)/hexblades, and even a rogue/hexblade with a fucking double-scimitar.
I’m sick to death of hexblades.
Fuck hexblades. No more multiclassing in my games. Assholes abused it so much it’s no longer an option because I like my hair where it is, and the alternative is for me to quit DMing altogether.
…and nobody else seems willing to run the fucking game…
I think that a martial class’s biggest ability should be universally available at level 17 because that’s when casters get access to 9th level spells.
I also think that pure casters should not get big class-abilities beyond level 3 or 4. Their 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells already are huge game-changers. They don’t need to double-down for no reason.
Oh wow…2 background and 7 feats. I am impressed /s
Fuck you WotC. This is even more half-assed than Spelljammer.