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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4244236" data-attributes="member: 40961">In general, I agree with you.  But!1. There are places this doesn't work.  Certain classes are constructed around specific combat styles, and are balanced with the assumption that the characters built using that class will fight in particular ways with particular weapons.  Sometimes, rather than trying to patch this with feats, you need a new class.  A good case in point would be the 3e fighter.  If you wanted to make a lightly armored fighter who fought with a rapier in a duelist sort of style (ie, one v one, not stabbing people in the back), the game suggested you do it by means of a fighter with the appropriate feats.  The problem was, the Fighter was balanced on the assumption that you would wear heavy armor and fight with the largest weapon you could, with either a two handed weapon or a shield in your off hand.  A rapier-duelist with light armor and an empty off hand was a sub-par choice for a Fighter classed character.  In fact, in order to obtain the abilities that made a duelist appealing, you needed to spend feats- for example, spending a feat to get Weapon Finesse.  But since Finesse wasn't balanced to function properly for Fighters, it meant you were spending a feat for the chance to be extra sub-par.  This isn't a good thing.  In situations like this, a new class built from the ground up with the balancing assumptions that go into a duelist was most certainly the best route to take.2. 4e is making each class narrower, but deeper.  Fighters, for example, seem to cover two handed weapons, and sword and shield.  Nothing more.  But within those two choices, there seems to be many more choices and possibilities tha there were in 3e.  If you want a new class to have a similar depth, it may need to be a full, new class.  Now, some of the abilities might be functionally identical to existing abilities from other classes, or nearly so.  But that's not necessarily a problem, particularly for basic abilities like "hit a guy and knock him down" that might be appropriate for many different martial classes.3. Creating entirely separate classes keeps them distinct.  Take a hypothetical 4e Shadowcaster, for example.  We could create it by inventing a bunch of powers for the Wizard, and telling people who wanted to play Shadowcasters to just make shadow magic themed wizards.  But if we did that, we'd end up with a lot of powers bleeding over between the classes.  Instead of shadowcasters fighting with shadowmagic, they might fight with a mixture of shadowmagic and the best spells from the wizard list.  Separating classes polices this line more effectively.With all that in mind, though, I'm a major fan of retheming, and encourage my players to borrow mechanics from existing classes and retheme them to create unique characters.  I have seen, over the years a Feral Human (secretly a monk), a shuriken based ninja (secretly a scout), an iajutsu master (secretly a rogue), and several others.  These were great, but the fact that they were possible doesn't mean that there couldn't have been classes to cover these ideas more effectively.</blockquote>

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