AliasBot
Explorer
Pragmatic ideal:
Artificer
Bard
Berserker
Cleric
Druid
Monk
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Sorcerer
Warlock
Warrior
Wizard
(With the recent, extensive class survey, I expect the anniversary PHB's changes to be focused on optimization/alteration of the existing classes, rather than the addition or removal of any classes to or from the list. With that in mind, my only changes would be to change the name of the class in most dire need of it...and also the Fighter, because I think "Fighter" is a tremendously lame name for a class. A Warlord would be great, and I wouldn't be opposed to a dedicated psionic caster, or a dedicated arcane half-caster, or even a Scholar - I just don't think new classes are particularly likely.)
Pie-in-the-sky ideal:
Artificer
Channeler
Hero
Mage
Morph
Rogue
Sorcerer
Spellblade
Summoner
Warrior
(To some extent, this list was built under the assumption of significantly greater mechanical weight falling on the subclasses than in present 5E, giving each of them space to nail down more flavor-based archetypes: there's still a range of flexibility in core class concepts, with Artificer in particular as an outlier, but they're much broader on average.)
Artificer
Bard
Berserker
Cleric
Druid
Monk
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Sorcerer
Warlock
Warrior
Wizard
(With the recent, extensive class survey, I expect the anniversary PHB's changes to be focused on optimization/alteration of the existing classes, rather than the addition or removal of any classes to or from the list. With that in mind, my only changes would be to change the name of the class in most dire need of it...and also the Fighter, because I think "Fighter" is a tremendously lame name for a class. A Warlord would be great, and I wouldn't be opposed to a dedicated psionic caster, or a dedicated arcane half-caster, or even a Scholar - I just don't think new classes are particularly likely.)
Pie-in-the-sky ideal:
Artificer
Channeler
Hero
Mage
Morph
Rogue
Sorcerer
Spellblade
Summoner
Warrior
(To some extent, this list was built under the assumption of significantly greater mechanical weight falling on the subclasses than in present 5E, giving each of them space to nail down more flavor-based archetypes: there's still a range of flexibility in core class concepts, with Artificer in particular as an outlier, but they're much broader on average.)
The Warrior is the more "mundane" of the core martials, ranging from "person who's really good at hitting things" to "battlefield tactician that leads from the front and makes everyone around them better" depending on how heavily an individual build chooses to focus in either direction (with some subclasses leaning more on one or the other). By default, lower-level leans more towards the former, while higher-level leans more towards the latter. (It's possible this should just be split into the Warrior and the Warlord, even with allowing the Warrior increased tactical options, but my answer to "what should a high-level Fighter look like?" is already to lean more into becoming a general and eventually leader of armies, so I'd rather start with the two as one broad class rather than two narrower ones.)
The Hero is the openly supernatural martial, leaning on mythological heroes, demigods, and mystic warriors: they don't cast spells, but many of the things they can do are blatantly magical. As I presently envision the class, it's mechanically closest to the 5E Monk, in that it leans on power points of some stripe to limit the wilder abilities somewhat, though also like the Monk, there are a number of abilities the Hero just has.
The Rogue is, for the most part, similar to its 5E incarnation: a skilled expert at whatever it devotes itself to, whose default combat role is an evasive skirmisher. The main differences are that 1) it goes much further into its use of its chosen primary skills, with rules detailing what a heavy enough focus on a given skill allows you to just do beyond the typical constrains of a skill check; and 2) being much less heavily focused on damage-dealing in combat by default, leaning more on mid-combat disruption - a Thief can steal weapons or focuses or do the fantasy equivalent of tying someone's shoelaces together, a Scout can set any of a myriad of traps and snares, and so forth. (Sneak Attack would probably be an Assassin subclass feature.)
The Mage is the generalist caster, working the most like 5E fullcasters: it learns discrete spells from a large list, though with the specifics of that list mostly-to-entirely defined by the subclass, and has slots to cast those spells from. (The best illustration of my broader thought process here with both this class and this lineup of classes is that 5E's Wizard, Druid, and Cleric are more-or-less Mage subclasses.)
The Sorcerer is the specialist caster, with each subclass having a fairly narrow, heavily thematic spell suite which it can mostly cast from at-will, with a number of ways to modify spells between class and subclass, allowing for much more creative spell use than the Mage can pull off. Basically, take the most interesting mechanical aspects of 5E's Sorcerer and Warlock and dial them up to 11 as the core of the class.
The Channeler is also a caster class, but it comes at it from a more fluff-focused direction than the other two: you draw magic from a powerful source outside of yourself, and whether that source is sapient or not, your casting is always, on some level, a negotiation - you have to persuade the power to do what you want it to do, with the process involving skill checks (or something akin to them) with somewhat variable potential outcomes. Each Channeler has a fairly broad power suite, like a Mage, but is less consistent; the Channeler has theoretically at-will access to its magic, like the Sorcerer, but the more heavily it draws on that magic, the more difficult it becomes, as each DC threshold goes up over time. (There's also the potential for a cast-from-HP mechanic here, with the Channeler offering up some of its own lifeforce to put a metaphorical finger on the scales, though that might wind up as a subclass mechanic.)
The Spellblade is almost certainly the most purely mechanical class on this list, being effectively a pre-built Warrior/Mage multiclass template - half-caster spell slot progression, a less extensive repertoire of martial abilities, and some option to allow the former to fuel the latter. As the name implies, you pair blade and spell: the details, and the flavor, are both subclass territory. (My default assumption with this lineup is no multiclassing allowed, with feats and subclasses allowing one class to dip into the mechanics of another, but the half-caster merits its own framework either way.)
The Morph (or Shapeshifter) and Summoner are each collections of disparate-but-resonant concepts that merit dedicated mechanical frameworks to provide a better home for those concepts: the former nails down core shapeshifting mechanics to be applied by lycanthropes, Wild Shapers, and similar subclasses focused on forms other than beasts, as well as more contemporary-inspired "super-powered form change" characters; the latter nails down optimal-for-fun-gameplay summoning mechanics for beastmasters, demonologists, necromancers, and any number of other characters that take action primarily by directing how others take action. (Casters' spells can then dip into these mechanics as well, though in a comparatively limited and/or more costly capacity.)
The Artificer is...more or less the same as in 5E, save for trading re-fluffed spellcasting for a more dedicated array of ways to use gadgets in combat, plus more expansive crafting rules and options. While this class concept is definitely more narrow in comparison to the rest of the list, I feel like it plays in sufficiently unique space to merit a separate class. It was a close call, though, and it's also possible that, like in 5E, the Artificer could be saved for an Eberron book rather than featuring in the PHB.
(I also strongly considered a Scholar class for this list, because it has a distinct flavorful space which other people have expressed interest in, and that isn't covered in the rest of this class list...I just think a lot of its mechanical space is taken up by where I envision pushing the Rogue, to the extent that I don't know what it does that justifies a full class.)
TL;DR:
Warrior ~= Fighter, Warlord, non-magical Barbarians and Monks
Hero ~= magical Monks and Barbarians, non-caster Paladins and Gishes, others
Rogue ~= Rogue, non-caster Rangers, low-magic Bards
Mage = generalist caster (~= Wizard, most Druids, high-magic Bards, others)
Sorcerer = specialist caster (~= Sorcerer, most Psions, others)
Channeler ~= Cleric, Warlock, Binder
Spellblade ~= caster Paladins, Gishes, and Rangers, others
Morph = shapeshifter (Moon Druids, others)
Summoner = summoner
Artificer = Artificer
The Hero is the openly supernatural martial, leaning on mythological heroes, demigods, and mystic warriors: they don't cast spells, but many of the things they can do are blatantly magical. As I presently envision the class, it's mechanically closest to the 5E Monk, in that it leans on power points of some stripe to limit the wilder abilities somewhat, though also like the Monk, there are a number of abilities the Hero just has.
The Rogue is, for the most part, similar to its 5E incarnation: a skilled expert at whatever it devotes itself to, whose default combat role is an evasive skirmisher. The main differences are that 1) it goes much further into its use of its chosen primary skills, with rules detailing what a heavy enough focus on a given skill allows you to just do beyond the typical constrains of a skill check; and 2) being much less heavily focused on damage-dealing in combat by default, leaning more on mid-combat disruption - a Thief can steal weapons or focuses or do the fantasy equivalent of tying someone's shoelaces together, a Scout can set any of a myriad of traps and snares, and so forth. (Sneak Attack would probably be an Assassin subclass feature.)
The Mage is the generalist caster, working the most like 5E fullcasters: it learns discrete spells from a large list, though with the specifics of that list mostly-to-entirely defined by the subclass, and has slots to cast those spells from. (The best illustration of my broader thought process here with both this class and this lineup of classes is that 5E's Wizard, Druid, and Cleric are more-or-less Mage subclasses.)
The Sorcerer is the specialist caster, with each subclass having a fairly narrow, heavily thematic spell suite which it can mostly cast from at-will, with a number of ways to modify spells between class and subclass, allowing for much more creative spell use than the Mage can pull off. Basically, take the most interesting mechanical aspects of 5E's Sorcerer and Warlock and dial them up to 11 as the core of the class.
The Channeler is also a caster class, but it comes at it from a more fluff-focused direction than the other two: you draw magic from a powerful source outside of yourself, and whether that source is sapient or not, your casting is always, on some level, a negotiation - you have to persuade the power to do what you want it to do, with the process involving skill checks (or something akin to them) with somewhat variable potential outcomes. Each Channeler has a fairly broad power suite, like a Mage, but is less consistent; the Channeler has theoretically at-will access to its magic, like the Sorcerer, but the more heavily it draws on that magic, the more difficult it becomes, as each DC threshold goes up over time. (There's also the potential for a cast-from-HP mechanic here, with the Channeler offering up some of its own lifeforce to put a metaphorical finger on the scales, though that might wind up as a subclass mechanic.)
The Spellblade is almost certainly the most purely mechanical class on this list, being effectively a pre-built Warrior/Mage multiclass template - half-caster spell slot progression, a less extensive repertoire of martial abilities, and some option to allow the former to fuel the latter. As the name implies, you pair blade and spell: the details, and the flavor, are both subclass territory. (My default assumption with this lineup is no multiclassing allowed, with feats and subclasses allowing one class to dip into the mechanics of another, but the half-caster merits its own framework either way.)
The Morph (or Shapeshifter) and Summoner are each collections of disparate-but-resonant concepts that merit dedicated mechanical frameworks to provide a better home for those concepts: the former nails down core shapeshifting mechanics to be applied by lycanthropes, Wild Shapers, and similar subclasses focused on forms other than beasts, as well as more contemporary-inspired "super-powered form change" characters; the latter nails down optimal-for-fun-gameplay summoning mechanics for beastmasters, demonologists, necromancers, and any number of other characters that take action primarily by directing how others take action. (Casters' spells can then dip into these mechanics as well, though in a comparatively limited and/or more costly capacity.)
The Artificer is...more or less the same as in 5E, save for trading re-fluffed spellcasting for a more dedicated array of ways to use gadgets in combat, plus more expansive crafting rules and options. While this class concept is definitely more narrow in comparison to the rest of the list, I feel like it plays in sufficiently unique space to merit a separate class. It was a close call, though, and it's also possible that, like in 5E, the Artificer could be saved for an Eberron book rather than featuring in the PHB.
(I also strongly considered a Scholar class for this list, because it has a distinct flavorful space which other people have expressed interest in, and that isn't covered in the rest of this class list...I just think a lot of its mechanical space is taken up by where I envision pushing the Rogue, to the extent that I don't know what it does that justifies a full class.)
TL;DR:
Warrior ~= Fighter, Warlord, non-magical Barbarians and Monks
Hero ~= magical Monks and Barbarians, non-caster Paladins and Gishes, others
Rogue ~= Rogue, non-caster Rangers, low-magic Bards
Mage = generalist caster (~= Wizard, most Druids, high-magic Bards, others)
Sorcerer = specialist caster (~= Sorcerer, most Psions, others)
Channeler ~= Cleric, Warlock, Binder
Spellblade ~= caster Paladins, Gishes, and Rangers, others
Morph = shapeshifter (Moon Druids, others)
Summoner = summoner
Artificer = Artificer
