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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7072845" data-attributes="member: 996">Mostly obvious questions with obvious answers, and I have to wonder if they're not all rhetorical.  Anyway, in reverse order:Balance doesn't require exact symmetry, but symmetric designs are easier to evaluate for balance, and, incidentally easier to design and easier to learn.  Also, the 'symetric design' ship has sailed, been becalmed, torpedoed, burnt to the waterline, and dragged to the bottom of a deep ocean trench by a spiteful kraken.  So I wouldn't worry about it showing up any time soon.Enough to be viable alternatives to the other sub-class options.Yes.Balance - which includes having many viable choices that are meaningful - is the typical bar, but not really a meaningful factor in 5e design.  'Player agency,' might be a better one.  Viability could still come into it - as individuals contributing to a party, and the viability of all-martial parties.  Yes.  5e presents a range of sub-classes, some with virtually no options, some with a few, some with more, some with orders of magnitude more.  In that continuum, the 5 martial sub-classes of the PH are clustered over on the  'virtually-no-to-few' side.  Filling in martial classes towards the middle and opposite end - and filling in some magic-using sub-classes on the option-free end (like an Essentials Elemental Sorcerer, for instance), would help address the issue.   Nothing need actually be removed. Lol!  Yes, 5e cares about providing interesting magical options to characters than any previous edition.  You have cantrips, so even when you run out of spells, you're still magical.  You have more flexibility in deciding which spells to cast than ever before.  You face fewer limitations & restrictions on casting than ever before.And, every cast actually uses spells in one way or another, in at least one sub-class.So, as long as you want to cast spells, it's the edition for you.But, yes, when people say 'martial character' they often mean it as 'character concepts that don't include innately using magic.'  Given the way thedjally has been using the term, and contrasting it so bitterly with the privilege enjoyed by casters, his meaning was quite clear.    You think whether a character employs supernatural powers is overly pedantic?Would a wizard who was unable to use any magic still be an acceptable wizard?  Because, if you think the distinction is merely pedantic, it shouldn't matter to you if he's throwing meteorswarms or doing card tricks. Well, 4e martial characters could do a lot more than they could in prior editions or 5e.  So I think your definition of 'vastly limited' is every bit as far off as you denial of thedjally's clear usage of 'martial.' Or, at least, your reasoning is off:   Source wasn't particularly limiting in 4e designs, but Role was.  The need to keep a 'Defender' from stepping on a 'Controller's' toes did limit what a fighter could do in 4e, for instance - or we could've had a lot more exploits along the lines of C&GI.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  That's something where 5e could do better than 4e could have done.</blockquote>

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