How Many Classes Do We Really Need?

Given what we now know about backgrounds and themes, how many classes are really necessary to replicate classes that have been in previous PH's?

Obviously, the core 4: Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and Cleric. My own preference would be for the Priest to take the Cleric's place, and let the armored cleric be a theme or a multiclass, but whatever.

Ranger and barbarian seem easily doable as a combination of background and theme on a fighter or rogue base. (Or even a druid base, for the ranger.) Likewise, it seems obvious to me that the assassin can be done easily on a rogue base.

Paladin... the argument could be made that it has enough unique touches to justify a class. Personally, though, I think it would do well as a theme, or perhaps even an advanced theme.

Depending on just how flexible the Cleric/Priest's options are, druid could perhaps be folded in, a la 2e, but I'm inclined to doubt this.

It is to my mind necessary for the game to offer some alternatives in terms of magic, so I regard the sorcerer and/or warlock to be essential. Not necessarily both, though - it wouldn't be hard to fold them together.

I think the bard pretty much has to be its own class, though a case could be made for a rogue/druid or rogue/sorcerer multiclass - especially if they fix the issues 3e had with caster multiclasses. You'd need some sort of 'spellsinger' theme, but that seems doable.

Specialty mages... they seem to be going for advanced themes for these, which makes me very uneasy. I would much rather see them get their own spell lists, personally.

Though... If a specialty-mage theme granted you *access* to a list of specialty spells the base wizard didn't get, I could maybe go for that.

The monk is an odd duck. To the extent he's a martial artist, a theme should suffice. But they've also got the whole ki/psionics thing going on, I dunno. Probably rates a class.

Any other thoughts?

I think either extreme of how many classes to include will dissatisfy me and lead the game to be either too top-heavy or feeling too bland.

I've heard a lot of people talk about classes being put into traditional restrictions like the LG Paladin or the Good-aligned Ranger, and they often say things like "crusaders of other gods or alignments can get their own class". This seems reasonable on its face but I have an issue with it because A. a lot of the time these classes end up flavored for a pantheon people might not even use and B. It causes a lot of needless repetition for what is effectively the same class with a few modifications. If we include a class for every character concept we might have (here's the lightly armored fighter, here's the heavily armored fighter, here's the two-weapon fighter, etc.) then we're going to end up with a ton of books and difficulty coming up with a decent sense of balance for class power and also difficulty distinguishing what makes the classes unique.

On the other end of the spectrum, reducing all classes down to just the classic 4 (or even 3 if divine casters are somehow relegated to the mage position!) which are then fleshed out by feats/themes/whatever will cause a problem in my opinion, particularly when it comes to class identity and replicating older edition feels. With too many optional features, it's possible that class-defining abilities will span across classes and thus dilute the class itself. There's also the possibility of overloading the player with options. Not only that, but there are concerns about mixing and matching classes or overlap where Themes or Backgrounds are created with one or two classes in mind but when applied to other classes results in strangeness.

I think the solution is to include a class for every core concept D&D has seen (and that includes Rangers and Barbarians and other types of classes which people think have "identity" issues). These classes need to have distinguishing features since that's why we have the class system in the first place. Once we establish the role of each class, feats help us distinguish the details which might span across classes (TWF, 2H, Sword and Board, Animal Companions, etc.). From what I can tell, 5e is headed in this direction. I sure hope they keep a good sense of balance between the uniqueness of the classes and the openness and customization options provided. On top of all of that, it's possible that the open-ended options to emulate old classes might not be flavorful enough so the "Paladin is a cleric/fighter!" chant might result in Paladins who feel less like Paladins and more like Fighter/Clerics. If you see where I'm trying to go with all of this.

So basically, I'd say we should avoid cutting down the class list, but we also should not be aiming to expand it much unless we really think there's some kind of missing character concept that can't be fulfilled in whatever system emerges in 5e. Instead, we should try to be generalizing a few eccentric aspects of classes that seem unnaturally tied to the classes (TWF for Rangers, for instance) and emphasize what makes each class special.

I think 8 sounds about right.

I liked the idea of three classes - fight guy, skill guy and magic guy - but the valid objection was raised that magic is too broad, so how about this for a radical idea?

Fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric.

With sorcerer as a module in the PHB.

Fighter includes all heavily armored warriors such as paladins, and also barbarians, as class options. Rogue includes all lightly armored martial types such as rangers, archers, and monks. Wizards can do flashy magic such as fireball, fly, shapeshift, necromancy and summoning. Not all in the same character, these are options chosen during char gen. Clerics do healing, protection and divination, and have martial options to make them resemble the traditional plate-wearing cleric.

Under this system, a druid could be either a cleric or a wizard, depending on what you want to emphasise, but he's probably a wizard. 2e/3e-style bards can only be achieved by multiclassing.

I won't say any previous class can be remade with Core 4 class + Background + Theme....

We don't know how stripped down the base classes are nor how the feats of themes work nor the applications of skills?

But overall I don't think a small class list would work. It would be limiting and it require the DM to allow/create mechanics to match the visions of the player.

Will Giant-slaying, twohanded weapon based abilities, archery based abilities, tracking, animal based abilities, tracking based abilities all be feats in one theme? or two? Or three?

How many themes would it take to turn a fighter into a 3E barbarian? Or a cleric into 4E paladin? Or turn a wizard into a star pact warlock? How much does the player have to sacrifice to turn a rogue into an assassin?

What if animal companion, thrown weapon, and wildshape are different themes? Should the DM give them all at level 1? Or let the player pick the feats naturally and wait to level X to recreate the 3E druid? Or say "no, pick one." and hope the player doesn't leave?

See I don't think all lot a characters can be made as a multiclass of a core 4 class and a slapped on ability without a SuperDM. That's a lot of weight to put on the DM.

SuperDMs are uncommon and many SuperDMs don't have the time to meticulously analyze everything to see if it'll work and adjudicate according.

Well, the classes they're going to include so far are:

Barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, psion, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, warlock, warlord and wizard.

In addition to those, I would like to get an arcane trickster base class and some sort of fighter/mage base class. Depending on how they handle paladins, I might also want to include the avenger.

classes for every attribute - martial (for fighters of all kinds), dextrous (for more sleigh-of-hands/skillful/point-blank shooters or light weapon users), primal (for constitution, some sort of barbarian-druid-monk-shaman mixture using internal resources), specialist (for intelligence, knowing all the stuff from books, mages and alchemists and etc.), spirituals (for wis, gaining all power from faith, clerics and paladins etc.) and egoists (for cha, gaining all the power from their internal ego, their blood, talent or any personal gift from higher beings, so bards, sorcerers and warlords)

25 - 30 classes so no one get bored would be wonderful.

Are we talking how many classes at launch or how many by the end of the run?

Ellington said:

Well, the classes they're going to include so far are:

Barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, psion, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, warlock, warlord and wizard.

Click to expand...

Last I heard they were going for every class that's been in a PHB 1.

So, also Assassin and Illusionist.

Psion has never been a class in a PHB 1, and last I heard they said "the Psion is currently crying in the corner", or something to that effect.