What class will be your first?

[Kzach]

Wow, poor cleric. I hope this is just a "ooh, shiny new stuff" phenomenon and that the cleric offers something more enticing in the PHB than what we've seen. Gods are important in a campaign world, IMO.

 

[Cryptos]

Interesting.

I think that after 30+ years of "someone's got to play the cleric" we're seeing some backlash. Regardless of how well they're built in 4e, "healers" and people wrangled into playing healers have a new option (and notice that's now the most popular choice.)

Or it could simply be that in a more secular (or at least, monotheistic) world, it's a lot harder to relate to clerics... we see action movies with warriors, soldiers, generals, tomb raiders, and even assassins; caper movies with thieves and con artists; fantasy and superhero movies with magic and powers... but generally speaking, culturally, we don't see a whole lot of "messenger and champion of 1/10th of a pantheon of gods." Notice also that Paladin is the second least favorite choice after cleric.

Probably some combination of both.

Other factors might include alignments being less important mechanically, and a shakeup of the planes to some unknown extent.

 

[Fiendish Dire Weasel]

Interesting.

I think that after 30+ years of "someone's got to play the cleric" we're seeing some backlash. Regardless of how well they're built in 4e, "healers" and people wrangled into playing healers have a new option (and notice that's now the most popular choice.)

Or it could simply be that in a more secular (or at least, monotheistic) world, it's a lot harder to relate to clerics... we see action movies with warriors, soldiers, generals, tomb raiders, and even assassins; caper movies with thieves and con artists; fantasy and superhero movies with magic and powers... but generally speaking, culturally, we don't see a whole lot of "messenger and champion of 1/10th of a pantheon of gods." Notice also that Paladin is the second least favorite choice after cleric.

Probably some combination of both.

Other factors might include alignments being less important mechanically, and a shakeup of the planes to some unknown extent.

Then again, Flumph is #3.

 

[AtomicPope]

I really want to play a Warlord but I picked fighter. The 1st class I've ever played for every edition was fighter, going all the way back to Basic. Fighters really tell you what the game will be like. They give you a solid glimpse of game mechanics and design, since they tend to be the simplest. But 4e is supposed to put everyone on equal footing so there's the rub.

Warlord, Wizard or Fighter?

Hmm...

 

[A'koss]

I've definitely been itching to give the new fighter a try, followed closely by the warlock...

 

[AtomicPope]

Interesting.

I think that after 30+ years of "someone's got to play the cleric" we're seeing some backlash. Regardless of how well they're built in 4e, "healers" and people wrangled into playing healers have a new option (and notice that's now the most popular choice.)

I have an RPGA advertisement from 3e that says, "Nobody has to be the cleric." There's definitely a stigma against playing the cleric. Most people don't play them now because they hate being a walking bacta-tank. It's going to take some time to lose the baggage.

 

[Kzach]

So if this poll is any indication of people's preferences, then most average five-player (plus DM) groups are going to be made up of a warlord, a fighter, a ranger, a warlock.. and a flumph

 

[MindWanderer]

I've been tracking the breakdown by role, important for RPGA and other pickup players. So far (total votes=306), we have 28% leaders, 27% defenders, 36% strikers, and 9% controllers (wizards). I'm sure that much of this breakdown is due to the 3 strikers/1 controller dilemma, but not entirely so. It's interesting that both the most popular and the least popular are leaders, and the second-most and second-least popular are defenders. And wizard is the third-least.

I'm a bit torn. On one hand, if I go with a wizard, it's fairly likely that there won't be another controller in an RPGA party. On the other hand, controllers are probably the worst role to double up on--it might be better to take a moderate risk of having two defenders or leaders than take a smaller risk of having two controllers.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

Re-creating my epic wizard/savant/archmage. They better have some kind of frost/ice mage paragon path.

 

[Ravingdork]

Eladrin Wizard with Warlord Training and Racial Spear Proficiency with the goal of becoming a Battle Mage/Archmage.