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Message: <blockquote data-quote="slobster" data-source="post: 6008777" data-attributes="member: 6693711">I think 1 and 3 on your list are pretty much the same thing. By the time a character idea has established itself so firmly in fantasy that you could call it ubiquitous, I think it embodies a pretty specific archetype.I also think that a class needs to satisfy both of your (now consolidated) points if it is going to be made. It needs to have a specific niche in the gameworld to give players and GMs a starting point for how to include it in the game. Playing off of existing fantasy tropes is a great way to do this, because you get a lot of mileage out of relatively little text thanks to the miracle of association. If you want to make a class that blazes new ground without a huge body of fictional predecessors to back it up, good luck, but you'll be swimming upstream in getting people to accept it.Mechanically all the classes should be distinct as well. If they aren't, then you open yourself to the criticism that you are publishing unnecessary bloat. If my ranger is nothing more than a slightly modified fighter, why couldn't you just give me the fluff about the ranger and a couple of feats and called it a day? Why is the ranger class taking up valuable page space in the expensive book you expect me to buy?When you get classes that are unique in both fiction and mechanics then you get great classes that players love. The 3.X warlock, love it or hate it, is a good example. It was fictionally distinct from other arcane casters (something that the many wizard/sorcerer derivatives like wu jen, warmages, shugenja etc. failed to do), mostly by dint of being dark and shadowy. Its mechanics were something that hadn't been seen yet in 3.5, which was especially refreshing after the dozens of published classes that basically reused the same mechanics in slightly different combinations. If all the classes are as distinct in those two categories as are the sorcerer/warlock/wizard in the playtest, I'll be a happy camper.</blockquote>

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