I agree the Paladin can rename as Knight. This might also open the class up to both magical and nonmagical knights, including was is currently D&D Warlord, Cavalier, Samurai, especially Eldritch Knight (!), as well as the White Knight (Devotion), Green Knight (Ancients), Black Knight, and Red Knight of the current Paladin, plus Psi Knight and so on.
Knight corresponds to heavy infantry and formal education, as Fighter might specifically be a skirmisher, corresponding to light infantry, and relying more on agility and sometimes stealth. (I could even see the "Athlete" gymnast brawler, and the Monk, as archetypes for a more skirmishy Fighter.)
I'd argue that the Sorcerer discovered its identity in 4e when it could no longer be the Nonvancian mage. I think that the mechanics could better push this by making its casting all via Sorcery Points (which stack relatively nicely with the variant rule: Spell points in the DM's Guide, fi you want to combine them with house rules. But narratively the Sorcerer fills a niche that other casters do not, that of a character that did not "earn" their powers but came into it and now has to figure out what they're going to do with it. The inheritors of magic. The results of a science experiment gone horribly right. "Everything special about you came out of a bottle." Who is Mewtwo and why does he exist?
I also think that Psions are essentially Sorcerers in this way, but we'd have to be more liberal with letting players swap out their primary ability scores to make a full on Int-focused Psion be represented by a spell-points variant Sorcerer with the subclass of Aberrant Mind.
Yeah, Sorcerer fills a mechanical space better if it is only about spell points.
Regarding flavor, the Sorcerer concept that the character does magic by instinctive nature rather than by learned nurture, contradicts the mechanic that a Sorcerer must use spell components, which inherently require learning and formulas. It is difficult for me to get past the dissonance.
For me the flavors of Psion and Sorcerer differ saliently. A Psion is the mind only. A mind is something that everyone (and everything) has. It might be that some minds are stronger than others, and training and disciplining ones mind matters. But a mind is something fundamental and normal, that everyone has.
By contrast, the flavor of a Sorcerer feels more like an exotic superhero origin.
Both the Psion and the Sorcerer should lack spell components, casting innately, but for different reasons. Also, where the Psion is about a powerful mind, the Sorcerer is about a magical body. This feels significantly different. Even the new Aberrant Mind Sorcerer is only psionic because the body itself is of Aberrant origin.
I forget that other D&D players associate the Psion class with the Intelligence key ability. We mostly use psionics for the Nordic region. Reallife Nordic magic (historically) is the opposite of memorizing formulas. In Nordic magic, the person strives to focus ones mind to become one with the target. Any techniques to focus the mind, silence, stillness, chanting, commanding, even sometimes rune-carving, are all improvisationally spontaneous. Thus songs and words, if any, are NEVER the same thing twice. For this reason, our Nordic Psions use the Charisma key ability. Likewise, Telepathic mind-manipulation involving enchantment and phantasm works better with Charisma. And Shapeshift in the sense of self-expression, works well too.
I think the tribulations are a big part of narrative. Enduring despite the odds or with love and grief co-mingled.
Of course, the historical ordeals are important. For me it is painful to dwell on reallife suffering. At the same, I appreciate the good that these unique cultures do. I feel that who they are is vastly more important than what other people have tried to do to them.
