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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7043806" data-attributes="member: 37579">There were too many classes in 2e. And 3e. And 4e. Pathfinder even made it a goal to keep the number of classes down but, oops, they slowly added up and now there's too damn many. More than any other type of rule option, classes present a problem for balance. Because a class will impact and be involved for every round of combat for every level of the entire campaign. It can interact with any other rules element. It has to factor in multiclassing and feats and spells and magical items. And how it interacts with the abilities of allies of every other class (which also becomes harder as more classes are added). Which also makes them so much harder to balance, as you have twenty levels to playtest. There's infinite design space for potential classes. Both in terms of story and mechanics. After all, if you look at 3e and Pathfinder (and include a few choice 3rd Party books like Ultimate Psionics) you can easily hit 100 unique classes. Without counting Prestige Classes.So, right off the bat "X class fills a unique role/ niche" means squat. Because you can say that about 99 other classes. Class is also one of the more important identifiers of your character. Race is a biggie as well, but that often just described what you look like. A class describes what you do, your role in the world, and the like. If I say I'm a gyr'at great weapon fighter, I have a vague idea what that looks like. I can picture the armour and weapons, and the rest can be easily described. If I say I'm an elf windrider that tells me little. Do you fly? Are you a sailor? Heavy armour or light? Spells? I have nothing. It's much more work. Classes and races are also among the hardest elements to work into a campaign setting. While you can always work a mysterious race of creatures from a hidden valley or isolated woods or distant continent, it's harder to explain an adventurous profession and why no one in history was this class. Now, I think there is room for the occasional new class. I think most can be handled by 3rd Parties, specifically for their campaign settings. Ones designed to fit the world. With official classes, I think these need to be options that *really* bring something new to the game. Something that cannot easily be done by other classes and have little to no overlap with existing classes. Otherwise it's easier and simpler to just have a subclass; even if it's not perfect it's generally better for the game. Instead, new classes *need* to look and act different from other classes. But are also pretty universal and easy to integrate into most fantasy worlds. The shaman is a good example. It's a pretty common trope, and works well with more savage humanoids like orcs and goblins. But it overlaps a lot with the druid, so it's probably easier to just make it a subclass. Similarly, things could be said about the witch doctor. The one class I think that gets a pass is the psion. Or the mystic as it might end up being called. The artificer is also close, having been in two editions so far, and just different enough from the wizard (and rogue) that it doesn't work. It helps that concepts like the alchemist can be folded into the artificer, making it a more broad and diverse class.</blockquote>

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