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<blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 9359383" data-attributes="member: 7635">The bitter irony is even for people who feel the Classic Four is the proper number of classes, they themselves are arbitrary.Start with the original three. Fighting-man represents all martial concepts from barbarian to soldier to knight. Magic-user represents all spellcasting concepts from wizard to witch to occultist. And then there was the cleric, a mashup of Biblical miracleworker, knight Templar, and vampire hunter. None of which needed to be its own thing. Miracle worker fits magic user, knight Templar is a Fighting man, and vampire hunter isn't a class, it's a description. If D&amp;D was designed to have customizable classes, turn undead would be an option. Likewise, if D&amp;D was built with a skill system, thief would not be a thing. But the Hodge podge way D&amp;D was built enshrined that warrior, caster, healer, and skill user are the backbone of the class system. And 50 years later, we are stuck with the fruits of that system as no one is going to legitimately accept a D&amp;D without 12 classes in the PHB, regardless how illegitimate you or anyone else feels about any given one. No one will say &quot;well thank God that the ranger is gone!&quot; They will ask &quot;where is the ranger?&quot; And build 30 different homemade versions of it. Just like warlord. Just like psion. Which is why I find almost every attempt to boil down the class list futile. Because any attempt to merge or remove classes will inevitably result in dozens of people reinventing them.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Remathilis, post: 9359383, member: 7635"] The bitter irony is even for people who feel the Classic Four is the proper number of classes, they themselves are arbitrary. Start with the original three. Fighting-man represents all martial concepts from barbarian to soldier to knight. Magic-user represents all spellcasting concepts from wizard to witch to occultist. And then there was the cleric, a mashup of Biblical miracleworker, knight Templar, and vampire hunter. None of which needed to be its own thing. Miracle worker fits magic user, knight Templar is a Fighting man, and vampire hunter isn't a class, it's a description. If D&D was designed to have customizable classes, turn undead would be an option. Likewise, if D&D was built with a skill system, thief would not be a thing. But the Hodge podge way D&D was built enshrined that warrior, caster, healer, and skill user are the backbone of the class system. And 50 years later, we are stuck with the fruits of that system as no one is going to legitimately accept a D&D without 12 classes in the PHB, regardless how illegitimate you or anyone else feels about any given one. No one will say "well thank God that the ranger is gone!" They will ask "where is the ranger?" And build 30 different homemade versions of it. Just like warlord. Just like psion. Which is why I find almost every attempt to boil down the class list futile. Because any attempt to merge or remove classes will inevitably result in dozens of people reinventing them. [/QUOTE]

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