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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5581477" data-attributes="member: 2067">Aside from the Vampire, they are the most recent, and they both are the most egregious offenders of the &quot;Does this really need to be a class?&quot; test. Invoker? Sure, I can see a more &quot;cloistered cleric&quot; as a functional class, that doesn't rely so much on melee and armor. Could be done without it, maybe, but you might not gain much. Battlemind? Ardent? Eh...weaker. Do you really need a Battlemind when you can just have a psionic Fighter build? Maybe, maybe not. Why you need 400 unique &quot;Ranged Weapon Nature Themed Controller&quot; powers when there's the Ranger and the Druid sitting right the heck there is a little less clear. The seeker doesn't do much that couldn't be done with a build of one or the other. As you get more choices, it becomes harder to find things that aren't garbage (for your particular character concept), and harder to make an easy and effective way to find the one you really want. With the specificity of many powers, it becomes a &quot;300 channels and nothing on!&quot; kind of problem. More powers for more classes isn't going to fix that, it's just going to exacerbate it. For certain values of &quot;generic.&quot; I mean, you had three classes to begin with. The game as it stands now doesn't really need more than four. Classes are a great rules element, and they really help define your character, but you only get to pick one, and having 50 more that you never touch and never can touch doesn't do anything to help anyone. I don't think there's a specific target quantity, but there should be a specific target quality of classes, to justify the novella-length requirements of support that a unique class needs. Is this really a distinct concept that the current rules can't be tweaked to support? Is this really character-defining in a deep, archetypal way? Is it something more than 5 people will pick up and use after they see it? Is it worth 20 pages of rules to support? If there's twelve or two or fifty or five hundred of those, that's fine, as long as each one gets fully justified as a broadly useful thing to add to the game. The distinction between &quot;Fighter&quot; and &quot;Paladin&quot; and &quot;Cleric&quot; may be deep enough to require three separate classes. The division between &quot;Fighter&quot; and &quot;Warlord&quot; and &quot;Battlemind&quot; and &quot;Warden&quot; may not be. A class that just exists to &quot;fill a gap&quot; isn't an inherently useful class, any more than a monster or location or sourcebook that just exists to fill out a grid is a useful addition to the game.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 5581477, member: 2067"] Aside from the Vampire, they are the most recent, and they both are the most egregious offenders of the "Does this really need to be a class?" test. Invoker? Sure, I can see a more "cloistered cleric" as a functional class, that doesn't rely so much on melee and armor. Could be done without it, maybe, but you might not gain much. Battlemind? Ardent? Eh...weaker. Do you really need a Battlemind when you can just have a psionic Fighter build? Maybe, maybe not. Why you need 400 unique "Ranged Weapon Nature Themed Controller" powers when there's the Ranger and the Druid sitting [I]right the heck there[/I] is a little less clear. The seeker doesn't do much that couldn't be done with a build of one or the other. As you get more choices, it becomes harder to find things that aren't garbage (for your particular character concept), and harder to make an easy and effective way to find the one you really want. With the specificity of many powers, it becomes a "300 channels and nothing on!" kind of problem. More powers for more classes isn't going to fix that, it's just going to exacerbate it. For certain values of "generic." I mean, you had three classes to begin with. The game as it stands now doesn't really [I]need[/I] more than four. Classes are a great rules element, and they really help define your character, but you only get to pick one, and having 50 more that you never touch and never can touch doesn't do anything to help anyone. I don't think there's a specific target quantity, but there should be a specific target [I]quality[/I] of classes, to justify the novella-length requirements of support that a unique class needs. Is this really a distinct concept that the current rules can't be tweaked to support? Is this really character-defining in a deep, archetypal way? Is it something more than 5 people will pick up and use after they see it? Is it worth 20 pages of rules to support? If there's twelve or two or fifty or five hundred of those, that's fine, as long as each one gets fully justified as a broadly useful thing to add to the game. The distinction between "Fighter" and "Paladin" and "Cleric" may be deep enough to require three separate classes. The division between "Fighter" and "Warlord" and "Battlemind" and "Warden" may not be. A class that just exists to "fill a gap" isn't an inherently useful class, any more than a monster or location or sourcebook that just exists to fill out a grid is a useful addition to the game. [/QUOTE]

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