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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 5914664" data-attributes="member: 11999">They were "sub-classes" in that they were organized under the major classes of fighter, magic-user, cleric, and thief.  It wasn't a designation of inferior power, simply an organizational term, as in a paladin is a sub-type of fighter.  And yes, in the case of the fighter sub-classes, they were very much fighter + extras.There was also the part where paladins and rangers could lose their status and special abilities (generally for violating good alignment) and would revert to being regular fighters.  The 1e sub-classes were designated as sub-classes rather than "basic" classes because they were later additions to the game and they were more specialized and narrowly-focused variations of the four core classes.  They shared attack and saving throw matrices with their parent class, as well as generally sharing the same role in the party.And despite doing this, the fighter, cleric, wizard, and rogue were still broader and more flexible archetypes than the barbarian, bard, druid, paladin, ranger, and sorcerer.  And the monk, but the monk was always weird like that.  2nd Edition had a restriction on multi-classing within the came class group (such as fighter/ranger), and there wasn't anything in 3e to even base such a restriction on, so you got melee characters dipping into a couple levels of fighter, a couple of ranger, and a couple of barbarian to pick up desired special abilities.I agree with you and I'd like to see 5e go with fighter, wizard, cleric, rogue as base classes and use themes/skills/feats/talents/whatever to create the more specialized classes.Given that this probably won't happen, I'd like to see the classes organized as in 1e; the four core classes are the least restrictive and most open to customization, while the specialized classes are "sub-types" and by definition won't be as flexible.  It may not have a big effect in terms of game mechanics, but it makes it clear and sets a precedent that some class concepts are simply more narrow in scope.  And like in 2e, it neatly draws a line that designates these classes as "optional, depending on your campaign."</blockquote>

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