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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6126342" data-attributes="member: 6688937">I totally understand. I would point out that gamers have been successfully dealing with this kind of ambiguity for a long time. I don't think it was a big deal for people in 3rd to understand that the Wizard is an expert at arcane matters while not being an "Expert" class member, and I don't think it would present much trouble for future gamers. Nor am I particularly wedded to these names that I came up with off the top of my head.Your last paragraph strikes upon the heart of the matter. If "Necromancer" is a wizard subclass, then it tells me "who I am" as well as "what my tactics are". Which, I think, rather limits Necromancers for in-world concepts, and forces a lot of "re-flavoring" on a lot of groups. I don't think there's any particular problem with letting mechanic A tell me "who I am" and mechanic B tell me "about my tactics". The Basic game, for those easily confused newbies, doesn't need to consider any of these as choices. Personally, I'm not a big fan of all these predefined fiddly bits anyway, in part because this very problem is unavoidable when you create lists of pre-defined fiddly bits. I'm okay with a system that had open-ended descriptors adjudicated at-table. Then we skip the whole business. Unfortunately, I figure we are doomed to lists of fiddly bits because:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">WotC/D&D needs to sell splat, which is hard(er) to do with an freeform system.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Organized (and possibly Computerized) play requires a more pre-defined uniform system.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Its harder to consistently convey a world to inexperienced players (which ties into the other two.)</li> </ul><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" />I'm not sure what you're trying to say here vis-a-vis the naming of subclasses.However, IMO, an optimal D&D system would handle a Necromancer Fighter and a Gladiator Wizard by putting the "Necromancer" and "Gladiator" parts in the Background. The player can then choose how much to weight the "Necromancer" vs "Fighter" parts through multiclassing. If all they want is come dark boney flavor, leave it at Necromancer background and get some bonuses on ability checks about Undead. If they want some actual wizardly ability, take a level or two of Wizard and the associated magical tricks. This works especially well with the "apprentice" levels as discussed.</blockquote>

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