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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4071777" data-attributes="member: 4937">There definately appear to be two schools of thought, but I'm not sure that you've pinned them down.That's interesting because one of my fears since they moved to the 'everyone is a spell caster with per encounter powers' model, is that there would be extensive mechanical overlap between different classes abilities and that classes would primarily be differentiated by flavor.  For example, I think it is likely that we'll see something like this:Perfect PositionWarlord 1: Encounter: 1[W] + strength, move the target a number of squares equal to your int bonusArcane ShoveWizard 1: Encounter: 1d6 + intelligence, move the target a number of squares equal to your int bonus11th 2d6 + intelligence, move the target a number of squares equal to your int bonus21st 3d6 + intelligence, move the target a number of squares equal to your int bonusPositioning StrikeRogue 1: Encounter: 1[W] + dexterity, move the target a number of squares equal to your charisma bonusSlamFighter 1: Encounter: 1[W] + strength, move the target a number of squares equal to your constitution bonusAnd so forth.There isn't anything wrong with that per se, but it does suggest that 'niche' protection isn't something necessarily a feature of 'not flexible'.  You can have classes that aren't flexible and don't have 'niche protection' either.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that 4E does not consider niche protection to be a particularly important thing.  I strongly suspect that we will see alot of niche overlap in the class designs so that you can compose a balanced party without the need for a particular class.  I think the difference in thinking is how much complexity you want in a class.  The more flexible a class, the more complex it tends to be.  Think of the space of all possible character types.  You are designing a class system for it.  At one extreme, you could create a single class flexible enough to handle any possible character.  However, such a class would be extremely complicated and have a very high design burden (it would be very hard to balance all possible builds, for example).  The system is elegant, but the individual class is not.  At the other extreme, you could create a very large number of highly individualized classes so that for each concept there would be a class.  Each class itself may be quite elegant, but the overall system with its 100's of class with unique rules is not.  D&D has traditionally used this latter model.  In 3E though, there was at least some attempt to move in the direction of a more elegant set of classes so that in theory you'd only need a few to realize any possible class concept.  That is to say that 3E classes were somewhat more universal and generic than thier predecessors.  Virtually all the third party products that tried to revise the character creation rules moved D20 even further in this direction, creating more generic and more flexible classes in an effort to fix the percieved flaws of the 3E core classes.  Quite a few went down to a model of just three highly generic classes, which may have been to few but was quite elegant.  So I think there was an expectation amongst alot of us that dabble in design that 4E would be another attempt to achieve what 3E tried to achieve - a set of design space spanning flexible classes that would empower characters to create and play any sort of character that they wanted.  Instead, what we seem to be getting is the exact opposite, a move back towards D&D's roots where every profession or archetype required its own class with its own highly individualized rules.   The thing is that alot of us got away from D&D precisely because of 'features' like that.  We didn't see them as features.  We saw them as bugs.  We don't want dozens and dozens of books of kits and classes, which is exactly what this sort of preview promises.  We've been there.  Done that.  Thank you very much, but you can keep it.</blockquote>

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