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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9316924" data-attributes="member: 6790260">The problem of differentiating a &quot;class fantasy,&quot; which is a good (thematic) seed around which to build a class, from more general thematic or mechanical elements, which are not enough to cross that bar. &quot;Elementalist&quot; is too generic to build an entire class around, but it is a great focus for classes that already have an established class fantasy.And, to be clear, I don't actually believe my list of 24 is the end-all, be-all. Perhaps new archetypes can be discovered with time. I personally consider the Avenger to be a great example of a relatively-recently discovered archetype, which taps into the thematic space of things like Ezio Auditore (who, despite being an &quot;Assassin,&quot; behaves rather more like an Avenger due to the order's religious nature.) Certainly, 30 years ago, the idea of a &quot;machinist&quot;/&quot;engineer&quot; type character would have been just offloaded to items, but these days, &quot;person who is a genius with devices and tools to achieve amazing success&quot; is established enough to merit attention in its own right. D&amp;D, and its descendant WoW, played a huge part in the development of &quot;Druid&quot; and &quot;Paladin&quot; as distinct class fantasies worthy of attention and individual expression. Conversely, &quot;Illusionist&quot; was once its own distinct thing, a rarity among early-edition stuff where a specialized class was created for that role rather than just refocusing an existing one, but that class-fantasy has quite clearly fallen by the wayside, becoming absorbed by the Wizard (its near-twin) or, in many cases, the Psion and related concepts (e.g. GW2's Mesmer, the &quot;Psychic&quot; or other concepts in Final Fantasy, and to a certain limited extent the modern D&amp;D Bard.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9316924, member: 6790260"] The problem of differentiating a "class fantasy," which is a good (thematic) seed around which to build a class, from more general thematic or mechanical elements, which are not enough to cross that bar. "Elementalist" is too generic to build an entire class around, but it is a great [I]focus[/I] for classes that already have an established class fantasy. And, to be clear, I don't actually believe my list of 24 is the end-all, be-all. Perhaps new archetypes can be discovered with time. I personally consider the Avenger to be a great example of a relatively-recently discovered archetype, which taps into the thematic space of things like Ezio Auditore (who, despite being an "Assassin," behaves rather more like an Avenger due to the order's religious nature.) Certainly, 30 years ago, the idea of a "machinist"/"engineer" type character would have been just offloaded to items, but these days, "person who is a genius with devices and tools to achieve amazing success" is established enough to merit attention in its own right. D&D, and its descendant WoW, played a [I]huge[/I] part in the development of "Druid" and "Paladin" as distinct class fantasies worthy of attention and individual expression. Conversely, "Illusionist" was once its own distinct thing, a rarity among early-edition stuff where a specialized class was created for that role rather than just refocusing an existing one, but that class-fantasy has quite clearly fallen by the wayside, becoming absorbed by the Wizard (its near-twin) or, in many cases, the Psion and related concepts (e.g. GW2's Mesmer, the "Psychic" or other concepts in Final Fantasy, and to a certain limited extent the modern D&D Bard.) [/QUOTE]

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