Heh. An amateur getting paid a "couple times," I was always taught, made them a professional. Some people are just more fortunate to be able to be paid enough to make a living at it (and some of us have other things we think are more important).
For what its worth, I didn't say "its not looking right." Its not an issue of whether it can work or not. Obviously it can. Plenty of boardgames use that sort of artificial delineation to achieve "balance." However, I pointedly think, for an RPG like Dungeons and Dragons, the very idea is itself a bad idea.
Yeah, it's used in RPGs, and was used (sort of) in a prior edition of D&D itself. Do we really need to go through a list of other RPGs that use similar classifications for classes, or can we both agree some other RPGs have done so?
As in "It goes completely against the grain of what I want in an RPG like DnD." As in, "no level of polish or professionalism is going to make it a good idea for what I want from DnD." Such a system works fine at a certain level of abstraction. I could see something like Burning Wheel getting away with it. But for a game like DnD, I don't want that same level of abstraction, and if I did, I would be playing a different game.
I am not even seeing how it is an abstraction. That's also not in your argument against it. How does, say, a Ranger being a member of the warrior classification, so that the game achieves a certain commonality for all warrior-types which can be used to help new players recognize what sorts of additional classes are like, and can aid in future product releases that include additional sub-classes in that warrior classification, a higher level of abstraction?
I prefer a more detailed oriented approach. If I am playing a fighter, and I find boots of stealth, I want to be able to be the fighter that now, via the magic boots, can be as stealthy as any rogue. I don't want to be told, "no, those boots are for a different sort of character and your fighter can't use them because it does not fit the character type or the 'group type' of your character."
You show me where they said that's how it's going to work. I already described how this sort of classification system can work to help with magic items, without it excluded use by some classes. As repeated twice already, here is an example, "Boots of Elven Kind: While wearing these books, rogues gain expertise in Dex (move silent) checks, all others gain skill proficiency in those checks." That's it, you achieve a useful differentiation between the broad classes without denying use of the item. Rogues can utilize a magic item that provides stealth better than fighters, but fighters still gain a stealthy benefit from them.
And when I said earlier that maybe you're not seeing the whole picture and making assumptions, this is the sort of thing I was referring to. You're assuming you have all the information necessary to draw a conclusion that it WILL operate a certain way, when you simply don't have that kind of information. You're depending on your own imagination, and how you think it will likely operate, and instead of phrasing your reaction in that context, you're instead declaring you know it operates a certain way and that way is bad.
I had hopes of WotC producing a game I could like and play, but if they are following this sort of design philosophy, I think its looking very good for Paizo. :/
I had hopes that sort of edition-warring language would end, particularly for this kind of issue. Hey Wicht, if 5e isn't for you, fine, 5e isn't for you. But leave the, "and I am speaking for everyone" sort of language out of it (which is what "this looks very good for [another game]" implies - since you're obviously referring to many more people than just yourself). This sort of classification system isn't the end of the world for me, for example, even if it did work how you think it will (and I don't think it will work that way).
). What we need is an inclusive system rather than an exclusive one. If you've got to have hybrid classes (groan), shoehorning them into the groups defined by their component parts is just madness. A ranger is not a warrior or a trickster; he's both, and if you're going to label him he should benefit from possession of both labels, not be punished by being given one arbitrarily.
