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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6223607" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think if a player says "I am able to bully the shopkeeper because I am a barbarian", and is using "barbarian" as shorthand for "very strong and obviously vicously martial character with an evident disposition to violent fits of rage", then I'm OK with that.But if I am meant to be envisaging "barbarian" as something having meaning within the gameworld itself, rather than as a metagame shorthand that everyone playing the game at the table understands, then I don't want that at all. The only D&D class that I can really see having some sort of "real" ingame existence is the wizard, because of its ultra-distinctive spell book mechanics. But even then if someone used wizards as written, but when it came to working out the ingame fiction reflavoured the spell book in various ways (rune scrolls, totem staffs, etc) then that wouldn't bother me.I think we're on the same page here. (But if I've misunderstood you and we're not, I'm happy to be corrected.)Not wanting to create yet another damage-on-a-miss thread, but this relates to an issue that has come up a couple of times on those threads.Part of the "concept" of the GWF who does (modest) damage even on a miss is that s/he is so relentless, so overpowering in combat then no one can escape at least being somewhat worn down when engaging with him/her for 6 seconds of fighting. In giving effect to this concept, other - in principle equally viable concepts - take second place, such as the concept of the "graceful dodger". (Not completely - you can certainly approximate a graceful dodger via a rogue using cunning action, but in mechanical terms it's a little more roundabout than the straightforward autodamage of the GWF.)I think that designing mechanics is always going to foreground some concepts and background others, and I think in a class-based system that's particularly so. Designing the ability bundles that make up classes will mean that some abilities are strongly correlated, and others separated, in ways that open the doors to some concepts and close the doors to others. (Eg the rogue, and not the fighter, has been the "precision fighter" in D&D at least since 3E. In AD&D the monk to some extent had this role, with + half level to damage based on knowledge of weapons and anatomy; and likewise the thief and assassin. The fighter has never had it.)So I'm not saying that there has to be a separate class for every possible character concept - multiple concepts could fit under most classes (eg in 4e the STR paladin and CHA paladin are in my view at least different concepts, and the charismatic warlord and the INT-based archer warlord even moreso are different concepts under the same class umbrella, and there are plenty of other examples too). But I think that there will always be many character concepts that cannot be realised effectively within a given PC build system, and I think a class system in particular is likely to make this so, because of the way it takes certain archetypes (whether defined in story terms, mechanical terms or both) and puts so much effort into distinguishing and prioritising them.On the particular example of the cleric being discussed by you and [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION], I think the traditional D&D heavy weapons + turning + healing cleric, and the 2nd ed era specialty priest, are the same class in name only.  They have no more in common within one another than either does with the paladin (in fact, the paladin has more in common with the trad cleric than with the robed fire-wielding specialty priest) or with the wizard (who I think has as much in common with the robed fire-wielding priest as that priest does with the trad cleric - as seen in 4e, where both are non-melee capable controllers).Working out how to allocate these sorts of build options across classes is a technical problem - is it more efficient, given the range of options you are trying to present and catalogue and integrate, to make the specialty priest a cleric variant with different proficiencies, class features and spell list (but perhaps comparable hp - which has the potential to be broken if the character ends up just a wizard with better HD, as can sometimes be the case for druids)? Or to make the specialty priest a varian mage with comparable proficiencies, and some element of the wizard spell list, but a different "power source" (divine rather than arcane - Rolemaster solves the problem this way)?In the abstract I'm not persuaded that it is anything more than a technical problem of the sort I've described. In the context of writing a new edition of D&D, though, it is also a marketing problem - do your (hoped for) customers prefer their classes catalogued by mechanical function (suggests the fire-throwing specialty priest as a mage variant) or by backstory and power source (suggests the fire-throwing specialist priest as a cleric variant)? 4e of course tried to cater to both approaches, by creating new classes to fill roles using new power sources, but then got criticised for class bloat!My feeling is that D&Dnext will take the more conservative (2nd ed AD&D) route and class fire-wielding specialty priests as cleric variants rather than mage variants, and I predict that one upshot will be either (i) complaints about characters being forced to have turning abilities and/or healing abilities that don't fit their concepts, or (ii) particular builds that are, in effect, wizards with d8 HD that are therefore seen to be overpowered, or perhaps (iii) both.</blockquote>

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