Steely_Dan
First Post
What I selfishly desire is some form of Monk (love my Grand Master of Flowers).
The Druid being a divine sub-class of the Cleric is basically saying that the "nature god" of whatever pantheon you are using is a special snowflake who gets to have his own class. All the other gods only get to have "specialty priests" or domain Themes for their worshippers... but the nature god's Druids are IMPORTANT. Important enough to get their own class.
I don't buy that for a second. The same way I don't buy that the Illusionist gets to be its own class, while the Evokers, Conjurers, Enchanters, Necromancers, and Transmuters all have to just be specialist wizards or themes too.
And if you try and make that case... then I demand that Warlocks become Divine as well, because their powers are granted to them from another source too (the fey, the devils, the far realm)... thus making them much closer to Clerics than Wizards.
If Druids get defined as a Divine sub-class... then by the same definition, Warlocks are too.
I think the right mix is 3 or 4 really vanilla classes, 6 to 8 additional quirkier core classes, and then over the life of the edition maybe another 10 or so classes that fill in other idiosyncratic niches.
The "Core Four" are good enough; everything else can be represented by the right combinations of themes and backgrounds layered on top.
I a new player can't generate a Drow Ranger by picking Race: Drow and Class: Ranger, 5th edition will have failed in my eyes.
Easy enough. The core rules can present a Ranger that is later revealed to be a Fighter with the Wilderness background and the Hunter theme (or whatever), while the core Fighter is revealed to instead have the Soldier background and Slayer theme.