jmartkdr2
Hero
I REALLY agree with this. PrCs made me roll my eyes. I didn't much care for Paragon Paths or Epic Destinies in 4E either, even though I'm a huge 4E fan. I kind of dislike bloat in general.
While I absolutely agree that bloat was a problem, I found that Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies were actually pretty good solutions to an issue with high level play: after a while, it stops being fun to get the same abilities but bigger. PP's and ED's gave you ways to add new toys mechanically and new paths narratively to characters who would otherwise be getting stale.
On the other hand, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
On the original question: it's really hard to say based on the existing structure because frankly there isn't an existing structure. What a class represents varies from mostly mechanics (sorcerer) to almost pure flavor (druid) to both (done well - paladin - and done poorly - monk) to a vague collection of things that look like they should fit together but are just piled up (ranger). Without a clear delineation of what a class means (ie what it tells you abut the character) vs what a subclass means, how do you know what should be a class or subclass?
If we were to overhaul the classes, I'd make classes about the mechanical identity of the character and let subclasses provide most if not all of the flavor. But that's a big change.