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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9749071" data-attributes="member: 6790260">For me, this is like saying that a Barbarian and a Fighter are thematically similar enough, just reflavor your Champion crits as "oh I was raging then." Like...I guess you can do that? But doing so makes it so "Barbarian" is literally nothing more than a nametag, which is deeply unsatisfying to a fair chunk of people. Ancients Paladins..are Paladins. They have all the (extensive) baggage associated with being Paladins, and have only the most limited, tenuous, arm's-length association with anything actually natural. (The text does an enormous amount of heavy lifting to make the Ancients Paladin actually sound nature-y....when in reality it's much more of a fey knight than a nature knight. It's about preserving beauty, not incarnating Nature's wrath.)I am much more upbeat than you seem to be about defining interesting, worthwhile mechanical niches for different classes. For your Warden example, 5e lacks for a class that exploits stances and limited change between them. That's a relatively straightforward concept, but one with a lot of potential depth. Perhaps the "basic" Warden subclass goes through a seasonal cycle? And then other Warden subclasses could explore other concepts that (physically) embody and manifest natural power actually surrounding a person. I could see a "Cycle of the Spheres" (Sun -> Moon -> Eclipse, perhaps?), a "Cycle of Fate" (Creation -> Preservation -> Destruction), or a "Cycle of Progress" (Extract -> Refine -> Construct).And, to be clear, the other classes that I think merit inclusion are, in no particular order: Alchemist, Warlord, Warden, Avenger, Summoner, Shaman, "Machinist" (still workshopping names; 100% non-magical clockwork- and device-user), Assassin, Psion, Swordmage, Invoker. I have specified archetypes each is intended to fulfill; this is more than just "oh I liked these ideas", I genuinely surveyed the field and tried to come up with a set that was still clean and finite, but which got us to the point where it really genuinely does become "IS there anything else left? Is there room to squeeze in anything more?" Anything else would in fact result in us so thoroughly double-covering something that at least one class would be superfluous, or at least that's where I'm at. I'm willing to listen to external voices, of course, but anything beyond a max of 25 is a tough sell, and anything less than about 18 even tougher.I do in fact split away Assassin from Rogue, because "Assassin" doesn't actually include or really feature "skillmonkey" elements, while Rogue does. I see the Assassin as a distinct thing for exactly the same reason as Paladin and Ranger being distinct things from Fighter. I'm aware there are those who deny that there is value in these distinct classes. I disagree.Samurai, there's a very simple reason not to: It's racist. "You're a Japanese Fighter, so you're Different" is Orientalist exoticism, plain and simple. Druid, over and above anything else, probably shouldn't have been its own thing--but it has a clear and defined mechanical niche now (shapechanger), which has completely outgrown and transcended any cultural associations of the term "Druid" to the point that D&D has now got the primary sense of the term, not "priest and sometimes poet-critic of certain Celtic cultures".In simple terms, the class fantasy of the Warden is someone who physically embodies and manifests the raw, unfettered, storm-like fury and strength of Nature herself. Ancients Paladins...just...they aren't that, and they never will be. They're all about beauty and charm; it's only two spells (eugh), gained at extremely high level (13th), that even remotely manifest this fury-of-nature component, and that's really being generous since one of them is stoneskin. Hell, the so-called "Nature's Wrath" Channel Divinity...isn't even wrathful! It's a bloody snare. And its aura is about resisting spells, which...again, looks way more like a fey-knight whose allies shrug off the manipulations of the fey because they've got an inside man, and not really at all like Nature's representative manifesting her presence before those who would despoil her.Yes, this class fantasy has similarities to the Druid, the Ranger, the Barbarian, and to an extremely limited extent the Ancients Paladin. That's the nature of stories. No man is an island, and neither are stories. They bleed into one another, and they fuel one another.My approach would ensure that every class, regardless of whether it is magical or non-magical, has clear things it can do to contribute to all game pillars, whatever things get defined as such.</blockquote>

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