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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mhacdebhandia" data-source="post: 3034822" data-attributes="member: 18832">There are certainly hundreds of prestige classes, but there are less than seventy base classes in everything Wizards of the Coast has ever published. You'd only get over one hundred if you counted class variants and classes from official third-party sources like Dragon Magazine.Now that the nitpicking portion of this evening's entertainment is done . . .I know it seems like there are a lot of classes out there that you could be looking at, but in practical terms I think there's actually a very small number of meaningful options available to you.For any given character idea you might have, the vast majority of options simply vanish. If I want to play a devious scoundrel like Jack Sparrow, I don't even have to consider half of the classic D&D archetypes - neither a mage nor a priest is Jack Sparrow! I reckon that even at your most generous translation (i.e. thinking of what he might be in a D&D setting, as opposed to recreating him as-is from the films' setting) of the character to D&D rules, there are only four base classes in the core rules that fit: bard, fighter, rogue, or ranger. Two of those - bard and ranger - are only in there because it's possible to see how in a D&D setting a character like Jack might turn his silver tongue to magic or really gain an intimate, even mystical relationship with the sea; the other two are much closer to the original film character, depending on what you want to emphasise about the character (i.e. Jack's cunning wit or his proficiency with a blade).If we expand our options to the sixty-something classes Wizards of the Coast have published, so what? First, many of these are dedicated spellcasters, which rules them out immediately - he's no favoured soul or shugenja or duskblade or dread necromancer or warmage. Many of the others are tied to specific "capsystems" like psionics, incarnum, and the like - Jack's not a shadowcaster or psychic warrior or totemist either. He's not a knight, an archivist, a dragon shaman, a marshal, a spellthief or any one of a dozen other niche classes.You do have to consider some of the other classes - the swashbuckler, for instance, or perhaps the scout. Truly, though, if you have a firm concept in mind it's hard to ignore the fact that it instantly contracts your viable options down to a handful of classes, which then itself contracts your choice of feats and prestige classes - make your version of Jack a warrior like a fighter or swashbuckler, and you don't have to worry about feats that enhance or alter sneak attack, for instance.There are thousands of different characters you can make just with the rules, not even paying one iota of attention to distinguishing your PCs' personalities, it's true. But it's also just as true, if not more so, that the range of meaningful choices you have at character creation is always constricted down to a manageable number if you have any idea whatsoever of what kind of character you want to play.Hell, a choice as shallow and undescriptive as "spellcaster" instantly cuts down your options dramatically - after a quick count, there are only twenty-three PC classes that cast spells in Wizards of the Coast products, counting minor casters like the paladin and odd classes like the artificer or shadowcaster which kinda-sorta cast spells, but excluding psionicists and classes with supernatural abilties that aren't spells like the warlock (as well as variants like the cloistered cleric):<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Bard</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cleric</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Druid</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ranger</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Paladin</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Sorcerer</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wizard</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Healer</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Hexblade</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Favoured Soul</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Shugenja</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Spirit Shaman</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Warmage</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wu Jen</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Spellthief</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Archivist</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dread Necromancer</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Beguiler</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Duskblade</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Artificer</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Mystic</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Shadowcaster</li> </ul>So we're down from sixty-something to twenty-three after only one word of character concept. I call that good odds we can easily find something suitable with a little more work.</blockquote>

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