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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ccooke" data-source="post: 5953008" data-attributes="member: 6695890">(This is far too long. TL;DR: Classes should be unique, but having a theme that speaks to the class concept as well would allow groups to decide what sort of chargen they *want* to have)Embrace the power of "Both" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />Seriously... there's enough room in the design space for both approaches, and that way lies much greater flexibility.That's not saying *every* character concept should be a class. I think that classes should only exist where it's possible to explain - in no more than two sentences - exactly what part of the design space that class does better than every other class out there. There should be one thing that every class does that no other class can *exactly* match, otherwise there's no point in it existing.Two sentences to explain what the class is best at, and how it fits into the three parts of a game.(These are all my takes on the classes, of course)So the Fighter is (let's not get into an argument about whether the playtest *sample* character embodies this for you) the best pure combat class in the game. It is entirely focussed on combat. The Rogue is a the best skill-using class in the game. It is balanced between exploration and combat, with a powerful situational attack based on the use of its skills.The Wizard is a powerful Vancian magic-user, and the most flexible magic-using class in the game. It specialises in none of the three pillars, but can be aimed at any of them with spell selection.The Bard can't match the fighter at combat, the rogue at skills or the wizard at spells but it is good enough at all three to fill out whatever areas a group is weak at. It is the best jack-of-all-trades in the game.And so on.The Ranger, I think, should be the best hunter in the game - regardless of whether that's urban, wilderness, whatever. It should be a class which is equally focussed on exploration and combat. But the existence of that class doesn't mean you can't have a Theme that captures *some* of the archetype. You could, for instance, have a Hunter theme that gives you some mechanical benefits to capture or ambush your enemies. This would be orthogonal to the Ranger class - a Ranger might take the Hunter theme and end up particularly aimed at hunting things. But any other character could take that (or similar) themes and be "a bit like a ranger". It's then easy for a group to decide that they want a simpler set of base classes - they could only allow the core classes, and say that a ranger is someone with a ranger-like theme, a paladin is someone with a holy warrior theme, etc.Or they could use the full set of classes. Isn't part of the point of 5e supposed to be about making lots of different play-styles work within the same system?</blockquote>

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