kennew142 said:
I am one of those players and GMs who likes a large number of base classes. It makes it much easier to find a class that does exactly what you want it to do.
I'm the opposite, I've never liked D&D's tendency towards class glut.
It started back in the original game, and more noticeably 1e. There were lots and lots of classes, and in some cases they were just minor variations of each other.
With 2e, some of the glut went away. The rules focused on a few basic classes, but there was still a good deal of glut when one took into consideration the number of specialty priests that were out there. However, they were theoretically pretty easy for a DM to control, if the god isn't in the campaign, then the special priests aren't either.
Instead of class glut, though, 2e had kit glut. Kits were a good idea in theory, unfortunately they were largely imbalanced, and a lot of them were terribly front loaded.
At the beginning of 3e, the rules showed a lot of promise for eliminating glut. Instead of special abilities being front-loaded into kits, now there were feats and prestige classes. Unfortunately, prestige classes did hit a massive glut, especially with third party products thrown in. And new core classes don't help either. I think now at the end of 3e, looking at all the available classes, it's even more glutted than 1e was 19 years ago.
With 4e, I don't really like the approach they're taking to classes. I'd rather just see a focus on a small set of classes, like the fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard, with maybe one of two others thrown in like the paladin. The game doesn't need to be crammed full of classes any more, I'd rather see the game handle abilities through feats and these paths rather than constantly making up new classes.
Bottom line, the tons of classes that have always been part of the game are one of the sacred cows that DO need to be ground up into hamburger.