What are your ideal design goals for D&D?

[The Little Raven]

If that business model works for other classic games, why not D&D?

Other than the fact that roleplaying games are hugely different in scope than board games, I have no idea.

But then again, I'm not a subsidiary of the largest board game maker in the world, so it's not in my field of expertise.

 

[WheresMyD20]

Cleric was one of the original 3 as well.

They were one of the three classes in original D&D. However, clerics weren't in Chainmail.

They were added in one of Dave Arneson's proto-D&D campaigns when a player wanted a character that specialized in hunting vampires in order to oppose another player who was running a vampire as a PC.

The classifications of "fighting-man" and "magic-user" make a lot more sense in Chainmail, where it defines the role of the combatant and those were the only two roles in the game.

In D&D, the class names of "cleric" and - later - "thief", "paladin", "druid", "assassin", "ranger", etc. describe a profession rather than role. IMO, it has the effect of making the terms "fighting-man" and "magic-user" seem a bit awkward, especially since many of the other character classes also perform a fighting or magic-based role - but those two class names are just part of Chainmail's legacy that got carried into D&D.