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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5706450" data-attributes="member: 82106">Eh, my perception would be that the 1e approach, with 4 separate spell lists was clunky, and the 2e refinement down to 2 lists was more elegant. Yes, each list was larger, but most of the overlap disappeared, and the 1e lists overlapped a LOT. Now, maybe the lists grew overlarge in 3e, I don't know, that could certainly happen at some point. They were fairly hefty in 2e, but still seemed under reasonable control (I only refer to 2e PHB, I have no idea what came later, we eschewed it entirely). I do kind of remember thinking the wizard list was getting a bit bloated with marginal and somewhat redundant options though.In any case, I think 3 core lists, Magic User, Fighting Man,  and Cleric, would be pretty good. They really don't need to be super extensive, especially if they are written in such a way that the powers scale with level. Honestly, I'm going to be brutally minimalist here. The classes are Fighting Man, Magic User, and Cleric. That's about it. You want a Paladin? Well, OK, there can be a Paladin, but lets refactor again...Instead of three classes, lets have 3 power sources, Martial, Arcane, and Spiritual. Now you can use the class names for builds, so you can have all the classic class names back:Martial - Fighting Man, Rogue, Ranger, Barbarian (maybe Monk and Assassin too)Arcane - Wizard, Warlock, Bard, Artificer, SwordmageSpiritual - Cleric, Druid, Paladin, ShamanNow you can have your specialized builds within those classes. Some of the things I listed above might even be builds instead of classes, and some of them will have 'minors' in other power sources. My instinct on minors in another source would be to have it allow picking of some smaller number of your options from the minor source. So you might get to have at most 1 less power of each type in the minor source or something like that, and split your at-wills between the two, with the option to take both in your major. You could then take an MC feat to let you get into the third power source if you REALLY want to be a triple dipper (or a 2nd one for a single source class with no minor). Masteries and Themes, or whatever the heck there is, would still potentially have their own limited skill lists, but they could also open up access to powres from other sources if it made sense (IE the Ordained Priest Theme could give you access to one Spiritual power for instance). My justification for the short list of power sources is really pretty simple. Spiritual simply pulls together all the "you get your power from some higher source" stuff. You can set up your cosmology with a god of nature, or natural spirits, or some totally different scheme, it doesn't matter. Powers are either fluffed to be appropriate to the given class, interact with a class feature that makes them suite the theme of the class, have a pre-requisite, or have a rider. Any or all of these can be contemplated, and many powers can simply be generic to all classes in the source, like basic attacks.As for Role... I'd still definitely keep them. I guess it is possible you could key powers to roles. I am not sure I like that much balkanizing, but at the same time it seems like powers are critical to roles, even with class features supporting each role. Again, some kind of rider might help, but I'm not exceptionally fond of that either. Eh, well.[MENTION=2011]KarinsDad[/MENTION] I think that's cool. Powers can certainly be patterned along those lines, and maybe that works to solve my role quandry.</blockquote>

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