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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1055640" data-attributes="member: 10201">Actually, the classes and races are the biggest elements of setting in D&D, IMHO.  You can't really build a con artist who isn't also pretty good in combat, and knows how to sneak attack, frex.  Or a cat burglar.  There are a whole passal of thief/rogue archetypes out there that either can't be done with the Rogue class, or end up with a bunch of extraneous abilities.  Extraneous abilities aren't as bad as missing abilities, but they still cause a problem: the classes are balanced assuming all abilities are used, so if you don't use them you have an unbalanced character. And if you do use them, you've changed your character concept.  And you can't "trade them in" for something appropriate, other than through GM fiat. [yes, obviously, you can change the classes.  i'm talking about the game as written.]I still don't understand why they chose to make the dirty-fighting elements of the Rogue the core of the class, and shuffle all the deception and nimble-fingered stuff off to skills (where (1) you might not have them and (2) any class can learn them).Or, look at the ranger and druid, especially in 3.5E: what if you want a woodsman, not a one-with-nature-guy?  And, now, you can't even play a beastmaster, because you get one animal companion, period.Why do "barbarians" have berserker ability?  Where's the class for playing the "noble savage"?  How is it that barbarians are "honorable" yet not Lawful? Is this some new definition of "honorable"?Why must those devoted to a deity (1) be good at magical healing, (2) be very good warriors, or (3) cast spells at all?If you want to boil the classes in D&D down to their archetypes, you'd end up with --> guy who can fight--> guy who's got good social skills (such as fast-talking and/or charisma)--> guy who's really skilled/jack-of-all-trades--> guy who can cast spells--> guy with faith--> guy who is in touch with nature--> guy who draws upon inner strengthi can easily argue for the social-skills part to be split between the jack-of-all-trades guy and the faithful/religious guy, with parts of it (being charismatic) being elements associated with all of the archetypes.  [The jack-of-all-trades, as a heroic fantasy archetype, is usually the charismatic rapscallion, and/or the quick-thinker who is good in all situations that don't rely solely on brute force.] That leaves me with 6 basic archetypes for heroic fantasy.  Sometimes, you see these combined.  Sometimes you see them further differentiated (Unfettered vs. Warmain, frex).  How does D&D3E stand up to these archetypes?  Well, there are really only two of the pure archetypes that you can do: guy who fights (fighter), and guy who casts spells (wizard).  The sorcerer, psion, psychic warrior, and monk all sort of dance around the inner-strength guy archetype, and likely one of them will be appropriate for a character concept in that mold, without too much extraneous junk.  The closest you get to the wilderness guy are barbarian (comes with a bunch of personality and ability assumptions, like rage), ranger (comes with spellcasting, and a strange juxtaposition of huntsman and friend-of-nature), and druid (pretty good, but the spellcasting needs to go).  Skill guy? Nope.  Your options are rogue (tons of inappropriate combat stuff), expert (explicitly underpowered), and bard (more hedge wizard than bard, much less jack-of-all-trades).And then we get to faithful guy--this one is the worst match.  Your choices are paladin (holy warrior--a much narrower archetype, and this one is a very specific morality of holy warrior), druid (at a stretch--they're about equal parts priest and one-with-nature), and cleric (what's with all the militarism?).  And all of them are wizard-style (as in, like wizards in literature/folklore, not wizards as in D&D class) spellcasters.AD&D2 was moving in the right direction, and D&D3E should've continued in that direction: all of the personality-specific classes shoulda been made prestige classes, and the core classes should've been built around just skill sets, not personalities/societal roles.  Then, it'd be relatively easy to create whatever character you wanted by multiclassing just right.  And, lest you think i'm just spouting: yes, i *do* think i can do better.  And i'm in the middle of it.  There will be 6 classes, with abilities grouped as above.  Flexibility, for those who want to differentiate more within an archetype (a la unfettered and warmain) comes from having many of the class abilities be like talent trees or bonus feats: choose appropriately from a broad set, to customize the character.Oh, and to get vaguely on-topic: i think a previous poster was right that, in many ways, the classes in AU are closer to the fantasy archetypes than those in D&D3[.5]E are.  The greenbond, with the spirit-talking abilities and healing, is much closer, IMHO, to the general shaman/nature-magician archetype than the druid is.  The akashic, while using a bunch of mystic mumbo-jumbo to get there, essentially is a jack-of-all-trades if you look just at results and game mechanics.  The Oathsworn is at least as good as the monk or psychic warrior for inner-strength archetypes, and maybe better (some of the new feats help this one out, particularly). Religion/faith is a core element of your character (through ceremonies/feats) -- or not-- rather than being just another excuse for kewl powerz.  Actually, that's not entirely true: the champion is an *excellent* interpretation of the faithful warrior, much better than the paladin, because it's much less straight-jacketed.  Finally, the totem warrior, along with the greenbond, is a *very* cool class, very much along the lines of the one-with-nature or noble savage archetypes.So, while AU has some fairly specialized classes [though the only one i've questioned the grouping of abilities for is Runethane: why do they cast spells at all?], i think it also has classes that let you get closer to more of the pure archetypes of heroic fantasy than D&D3E does.But, Dark Sun is hardly "straight out of the box" as D&D is concerned.  And notice that, other than name, they may as well have invented all new races (even their general appearance is changed), and they basically redid all the classes, tossed several, and invented several more.  Obviously, you can strip out the setting elements and/or change them.  But that entails a fair bit of work, and stripping things down beyond the basics--some of the "basics" of D&D3E are the problem.Anyway, my complaint is that D&D3E wants to be a fairly generic system, and it was known that many, if not most, D&D players build their own worlds.  So i'm rather disappointed that they didn't go further in getting down to the core genre archetypes, so you *don't* have to break things down, just build them up (such as by favoring certain feat trees).edit: doh! missed a tag.  much better now.</blockquote>

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