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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 7673418" data-attributes="member: 2067">I'm not convinced that's actually the issue they're trying to avoid, but regardless, this is them displaying a smart way of going about it - if you set the bar for a new rules option (especially one as significant as a class) high enough, only a few get through, and that is as it should be. That's a strawman. No one is saying that the game shouldn't add options, but people are saying that the game should be smart about what options it does add and how. There's degrees of additions as well - a subclass doesn't need to fundamentally change your mechanics, so the threshold for one of those is lower. A feat, lower still. A spell? A magic item? Yeah, toss it off. A race? Hmm...if it's warrented. A class? If we must. It's not a matter of passing some arbitrary threshold of relevance, it's about doing the work to make it good, to make it worth the cost of adding it. Monks and dragonborn and whatnot were rather arbitrarily determined to be things they wanted to pour development dollars into and risk that option bloat, presumably in the interests of uniting the fans of older editions as much as possible. The Elemental Evil companion was likewise a choice made, and likely made to support the adventure more than anything else. And warlord and assassin players can just go screw?Nah, there are multiple ways to present any given character type. If a class is the chosen vessel, it needs to be significant. If some other mechanic is the chosen vessel, it faces a significantly lower barrier for entry. False dichotomy based on a strawman.The point I'm making is that the devs (who seem to agree) should not simply toss out classes because they were classes before. A class needs to add more to the game than new jargon and a coat of paint (or a different spell list and a few different proficiencies). A psion as a true class in 5e will probably not just be a sorcerer or wizard who calls their spells powers and uses points - as a true class, they will do things differently. What they do is going to depend on the fluff they have. The fluff is key because it will influence the mechanics they use to do things differently.</blockquote>

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