Cleric, Thief, Warrior, Wizard; the core classes of DCC. For the sake of this article, we will ignore racial classes - which in the core game are essentially variants of the human classes - though I have plenty to say about those another time.
What classes can we add to that list? It’s something we have all done. Who doesn’t like more variety, more choice, more options? However, the core classes were very deliberately chosen and it's no mistake that there aren't more. Should we add more options?
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The Core Four
Each of the four classes has a distinct and separate domain of stuff they're good at. They each bring something to the table, figuratively and literally. The Warrior, obviously, hits hard. The Thief does skills good. The Wizard makes magic, and the Cleric calls for divine aid.
There's absolutely an argument to be made that the Wizard and Cleric occupy similar spaces in the game (they make magic happen) and I have heard of some players even using deities as Patrons instead of having Clerics, but I think there are very good reasons for separating the two. Each of the classes brings something unique to the game. Warriors and Thieves bring the fight and the sneak - two key parts of any dungeon crawl. Wizards and Clerics bring the weird and the cosmic. DCC leans hard into this and encourages the Wizard to have crab claws for hands, and the Cleric to beg forgiveness from his god for attempting to co-opt divine power to heal the sinful crab-Wizard. From these interactions we get the fun of meddling with powers beyond our control, and the greater cosmic purpose to our adventurers’ minuscule lives. It doesn’t just give us options to play with, it informs the way the character - and the game - is intended to be played.
There are people who argue for the removal of Clerics due to their lack of representation in Appendix N. I think this is largely a result of treating Appendix N as scripture, the canon assembled by the great Gygax as if he somehow knew how significant it would be. Rather, Appendix N seems to be a broad and vague collection of some books the author found inspiring. I mean, that's exactly how it's presented by Gary “The man who put Clerics in D&D” Gygax. Clerics may be less suitable for some settings (Lankhmar obviously comes to mind, where their absence is notable in and of itself), but if you want the Gods to be involved Clerics are certainly a way to make that happen.
And then there are Thieves. This is a controversy bigger and far older than DCC. There's some merit to the arguments made against Thieves, too. I think those arguments don't apply to DCC the way they apply to some old school games. This could be a whole article on its own. I had to trim this down, so for the sake of brevity: DCC's skill system allows Thieves to get bonuses while not precluding other classes from attempting skilled tasks, and Luck gives them something that is both unique and generally useful. Thanks to DCC's mechanics, Thieves get their cool stuff without taking away from the others. Given what the Thief character brings to the fantasy, I think it has to stay. In a world with tombs, there will be tomb raiders - the Egyptians knew that thousands of years ago.
I can only imagine if we listened to both these groups and had just Warriors and Wizards - the two classes nobody seems to disagree with. Well, besides proponents of classless systems anyway. Those are cool too but that's a far cry from DCC. I'd much prefer classless over two-classes, or there'd be another post here titled “Non-binary Classes”. If you're going to use a class system to create archetypes or roles then making the choices No Magic and Yes Magic is going too far.
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Potential New Additions
It feels almost redundant to discuss the core four in the first place, but I’m setting a foundation for the process. I think a vast majority of games of DCC use all four of them. There are probably more people out there who add classes than remove them. DCC Lankhmar cutting out Clerics does raise the point, however, that if you want to steer your game toward a certain feel or focus then it might be completely reasonable to cut a class out entirely. I can imagine games which cut out Warriors and only have various kinds of magic-user (the Thief totally counts) in a world where magic is more common and swashbuckling is not. I can imagine games that cut out the Thief and go more Original-flavoured. I can imagine games that cut out Wizards because the only source for magic in the world is divinity.
As for my games, I keep all four, and next I will be considering potential candidates for further additions. The way I'm going to tackle this is by looking at which classes people add and assessing each individually to see whether they add something to the game that can't already be achieved with the core four. And then in the next post, I'm going to look at it in reverse: analyse what those classes provide, essentially checking my work.
Let's go back to a time when RPGs only had the four classes we see in DCC today and begin with some of the earliest additions. It's worth noting that these come from a time when the rulebook told you there's no reason to stop someone from playing anything, the given example being a literal dragon, so people wanted classes for everything. This doesn't fly so easily these days, so we tend to use classes as broad archetypal groups that we personalize our characters within. As for things that fit in the spaces between - Wizardy Warriors and Warriory Wizards - I figure that if you want to combine classes, what you actually want is multiclassing rules rather than new classes. I use these rules for my game.
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Paladin
The Paladin fantasy is basically already covered by the Cleric. Some deities that were expanded by the DCC Annual (Justicia especially) lean into this. Disapproval even works like an oath. Alternately, it is suggested Warriors become part of a Militant Order which allows easy Questing For It for holy abilities.
Monk
The Monk fantasy generally leans further into kung fu movie martial artist than spiritual priest. As such, I feel this archetype fits within the Warrior class with some creative use of Mighty Deeds. Judge-allowing, some of these Mighty Deeds might even be able to be mystical in nature without breaking anything. Alternately, I could see a well-flavoured Cleric fitting the bill if you do want to go a more explicitly spiritual route.
Assassin
This character archetype is explicitly named under the Chaotic Alignment section for Thieves. Sneaking, backstabbing, disguising and poisoning are all among the Thief skills so I see no need for a new class or any new mechanics at all here. There's nothing an Assassin does that isn't supported already, and any extra special unique Assassin abilities can fall under Quest For It.
Druid
The Druid is another archetype explicitly named, this time under Neutral Clerics. At a few other points, the rulebook even hints at how to treat Druids differently from other Clerics. Here is a fantastic article about making that work.
Ranger
The Warrior gets to use Mighty Deeds with a bow, but that’s not what a Ranger is, is it? I think this is the first one that really stands out from the crowd. There are a lot of great third party and homebrew resources for Rangers out there, and these occupy a niche that actually seems closer to Thief than anything else. They're largely skill-based with specific combat bonuses - that sounds like the Thief. However, their domain of expertise doesn't have much crossover. It could be said that Ranger is to Thief as Cleric is to Wizard.
Illusionist
This one has always seemed absurdly specific to me. This being an entire class distinct from Wizards (or at the time of its origin, Magic-Users) has significant implications about the world - namely that there are enough Illusionists running around to be considered a distinct class, rather than specialized individuals. Furthermore, it begs the question: why aren’t other types of Wizard their own classes? Illusionists use illusions, who uses enchantments? Enchanters? No, Wizards.
Anyway, DCC suggests using custom Mercurial Magic tables to create schools of magic, so one can easily do this, but there's also a lot to be said for catering spell selections and manifestations to create certain types of casters. Codifying schools seems to go against the unpredictable and mysterious nature of magic in DCC, so I think it works better to theme individual Wizards than to create classes for them. This way there also doesn't have to be a preset school to choose - collaborate with the Judge to create something you like. An Evoker, Pyromancer and Elementalist can all exist in the same world and cast Fireball differently.
Bard
This is a bit of a tough one. Its heavy focus on being a support role is sprinkled among the other classes - Warriors who use rallying cries as their Mighty Deeds, Clerics who buff and heal, Wizards who cast utility spells, Halflings who provide Luck. If the important thing about Bards is musical magic, why not just have an improvisational Wizard who uses an instrument as their focus? The rules don’t say you can do that, but they especially don’t say you can’t. If the important thing is general support, Halfling Luck fits the bill very well and can easily be converted to a human class (Judge-allowing). If the important thing is that the Bard is the face of the party, all you need is a high Personality. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that this doesn’t get you all the way to a Bard.
Barbarian
It hurts to say this because I love Barbarians and the third-party/homebrew classes available but… they’re mostly just warriors. The core book describes, under Warrior, a “wild, bear-skinned wanderer”, or a “wild warrior, native of the barren steppes”. It’s clear which archetype is being alluded to and I have to agree. But the mechanics that come with a Barbarian class are just so damn cool, right? There are rules in DCC Lankhmar to help with unarmored fighting and even non-magic healing, and if you want some sort of berserker rage I’d suggest Questing For It if using Mighty Deeds or the critical hit rage doesn't quite get you there.
Mystic, Psion, Warlock, Sorcerer, Shaman, Witch, Artificer, Necromancer…
They’re flavours of Wizard. Unless magic works differently in your world and it’s strictly necessary to give it separate mechanics with alternate classes - Dying Earth Magicians, for instance. But in those cases, I'd replace or modify Wizards entirely instead of adding a competing class.
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After going through some of the common and classic additional classes, it becomes clear that the core four cover most of your bases fairly well and, in my opinion, there's no need to create entire new classes when you can fit your archetype neatly into existing categories without stretching the definitions of the class titles in the slightest. There are a few archetypes I'm not entirely satisfied with though, and those are the ones I'm going to be checking out in the next article.
Those will be the Ranger, Bard, and Barbarian.
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