I agree. As long as the gladiator has a presence, whether as a core class, fighter alteration, PrC, or in any other guise, I'm happy.
*looks around* Now where was that email I had been meaning to send to you . . .
Not that I've seen in my games anyway. Then again, I've discussed this with others before and it does seem to be a split issue. Paladins have a great deal of versatility on their side, and some people feel that is their penchance for being overpowered without their code. Others feel that versatility without mastery is balancing but not overpowering. I guess its a matter of opinion. I had a GH game going that altered the Paladin's code for more 'cavelier-like' paladins, lessoning its restrictions (and changing others). I removed some minor abilities to compensate and had a rough time playtesting it. I would not have included it into the game, but the player still insisted. Although the PC turned out great, there were times noted by myself and the player that the class was slightly under par. Your milage will vary I guess.
I agree that there are several types of 'PC and NPC interactives', political amongst them. Political would fall both within interactive, as well as skill based incorporating both within its type.
Your actually asking to go through each and every character concept found in a typical setting (of which there are probably several hundred) and give a cross referencing list of DS alternatives. I'm sorry that DS has not include flavor templates for a few archetypes found in most genres, but I think your asking someone to count the grains of sand on the beach here. Nothing is being forbidden either. I still can't see why your feel so. These are RPing templates. You keep asking 'Does Dark Sun fobid this, that, or the other'. Yet I still have yet to see a role mentioned that can't be adapted into DS in some way (even if some of those roles break a little flavor, but that's only my personal interpretation of the setting that I would never want to see made into canon). Yes, some rule specifics may not be so easy to adapt, but the role that those rules encompass are still ever present. Spatula's role filling suggestion work just fine IMO to filling those roles. Your still talking about potentially thousands of character concepts.
Arms courteous. Let's try not to be rude and start any flamewars. We can all get along and sing koom-bye-yaa while pracing nekkid peacefully around a campfire, even when we disagree.
