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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jmartkdr2" data-source="post: 9354131" data-attributes="member: 7017304">Upon further reflection, I don't mind that classes like fighter and wizard have fairly thin identity as classes - the subclasses can make up for that by adding identity and flavor at that level. After all, you're not meant to play the class without a subclass.Fighters suffer a bit from a first impression problem: the fighter subclasses in the PHB don't do a good job filling in the identity, but the post-core subclasses all offer excellent examples of how to do that. Even the Arcane Archer doesn't lack for identity or flavor; it's just weak so the mechanics don't support the fantasy. The most popular third-party subclasses in the game (according to my experience: gunslinger and echo knight) also overflow with flavor. But the core options? Not so much.If the base fighter is white bread, the Champion is buttered toast or maybe a grilled cheese. But that's fine - there's a taste even if it isn't complex. The Eldritch Knight is just a really clunky, unintuitive and self-hampered attempt at something classic. The Rune Knight does a vastly better job at getting the idea across and making it playable. The Battlemaster is just more chassis with no body - even more tools to build to the flavor you bring from something else. You can build a samurai or cavalier or gladiator or gunslinger with a battlemaster, but if you've selected you class, subclass, and fighting style, you shouldn't to go get the spice from somewhere else. If the Rune Knight and Samurai were core and the Eldritch Knight and <s>swordsage</s> Battlemaster came later, I think the fighter would be polling a lot better.The wizard's issue isn't really a lack of flavor (I changed my vote) - even the basic wizard has an identity of being a bookish, skill-based magic user (rather than faithful or charming or bound to something - a wizard is pure skill) and the subclasses often add a lot of extra identity on top - a necromancer is a great, complete, possibly even over-flavored concept. But the mechanics don't support the subclasses because the basic spellcasting feature is already so strong. I played a conjurer to 20th and conjuring was almost never worth the effort; fireball is just too good and I didn't get a conjuring-boosting feature until 10th level (at which point the conjured creatures don't scale well enough to be useful compared to actual high-level spells). There's no lack of identity just a lack of mechanical support for it. Sorcerers lack a meaningful throughline - I think there should be a dragon magic class, but all the other sorcerer subclasses could just as easily fit in another class, usually warlock. And most would work better as warlocks anyways.</blockquote>

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