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Feb 6, 2012 -- 12:53PM, Hyrsam wrote:

I say it again for me this is a deal breaker. I'm betting it is as well for most 3.x, pathfinder, and 4e fans, and maybe a large amount of 2e fans as well. Thankfully they aren't leaning this way.

I've got bad news for you friend.  They've already stated that theme will be a choice to select with character creation.  This functions to further customize your class, and they already stated that they are hoping to use theme to pare down the classes planned for inclusion into some sub-classes.  (Assassin as a rogue subclass seems a choice opportunity.)

I am trying to discuss in this thread how to design such a system to give more character options without necessarily adding more classes, which is at least in part a goal shared by the D&D Next design team.

Feb 6, 2012 -- 5:07PM, thecasualoblivion wrote:

Themes add to your class, they don't lessen or undermine the significance of your class. I've got no beef with themes. Generic customizable classes I do have a beef with.

So themes are thus "mandatory", in that not taking one puts a character at a disadvantage over a character that does?

Feb 6, 2012 -- 10:58AM, TribbleGeddon wrote:

Right, so I set out to refresh my memory on how many classes there were in the core sets.  I counted them over here: community.wizards.com/dndnext/go/thread/...

By and large, despite the common accusation that 4e had the most classes offered, 2nd edition was all over the place in this regard.

In 4th edition, you had power sources (arcane, primal, martial, divine, psionic) x 4 roles, netting you 22 some classes.  

In 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition, we see a desire to customize characters drive creation of many many class options.  If you count kits in 2nd edition, which I believe we should, 2nd edition has a very large number of classes...

Your numbers are off because you're biasing your sample. A simple search yields 75 "classes" in Compendium. Remove the 17 hybrid listings, that's 58. Exclude builds and it's 21 "classes". Even if you exclude the Swordmage and Artificer that's still 19 classes, go further to exclude the Vampire and Assassin, that's 17.

AD&D had 11 classes. 2nd Edition had 10 if you include the specialist wizard and specialist priest, 8 otherwise. 3rd Edition had 11 classes, not counting prestige or alternate versions of these "base" classes. And considering the OGL stuff, it's easier to focus on official materials.

So... AD&D 11, 2nd 10, 3rd 11, 4th 21. Yeah, 4th had more. That's an empirical fact. Unless you bias your sample of course.

To compare 2nd ed kits to 4th ed core classes is simple intellectual dishonesty. Include all builds and variants in the comparison to get closer to a fair reckoning. 2nd ed kits and classes weigh in around 100-120 total, 4th ed build variants and classes total 58.

However, most kits were no where near as mechanically different from their "base class" as builds are in 4th. Take the "treespeaker" from 2nd ed. A few limitations (3) and a few advantages (4, spread over 10 levels) but otherwise identical to the base class. This distinction took all of 3-4 paragraphs to detail, speaking mechanics here, not fluff (which was only another 2-3 paragraphs). Whereas a build in 4th ed would take a dozen pages or more to list all the mechanical differences including new powers, new features, or feature swaps, or optional features, or additional keywords, etc.

So 2nd ed kits are mechanical light weights compared to 4th ed builds. 2nd ed kits are closer to 4th ed themes, paths, and destinies mechanically speaking (and space wise). So again, to exclude builds, while including kits is pure intellectual dishonesty. Granted, you have 100-120 kits in 2nd edition, but they're about as weighty as say themes, epic destinies, and paragon paths are in 4th... oh, and just for completion's sake there are 62 themes listed in the Compendium, 112 epic destinies, and 561 paragon paths.

tl;dr: unless you bias your sample, you're wrong. empirically.

Feb 6, 2012 -- 7:36PM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. 

"Never let the facts get in the way."

Feb 6, 2012 -- 7:40PM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

Feb 6, 2012 -- 7:38PM, Blackbriar wrote:

Feb 6, 2012 -- 7:36PM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. 

"Never let the facts get in the way."

The fact is that he defined classes and counted them to get the result he wanted - and so did you.

No, just showed his premise "2nd edition had more "classes" than 4th edition" for the bs that it is.

You're right, PrCs are more design work than kits, paths, destinies, themes, etc. But they're what, 10, 20 levels, with far less individual spells, design work, etc than a full class. So they'd count as either 1/3 or 2/3 of a class. Sorry, it's been too long, I forget how many levels a PrC goes for. Even then, they're sitting about right where kits, paths, destinies, and themes are considering the reliance on existing spell lists, etc. Again, only considering official material. All told, that would likely still leave 4th edition far ahead of the pack. I don't have numbers for 3.x as I didn't buy into it.

Any honest definition of class that would include kits would include paths, destinies, themes, and the like. You have to do some really painful looking mental gymnastics to get a definition of classes that includes kits but no paths, destinies, themes, etc.