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I think each class should 2-3 roles you can specialize in. You can balance out or take feats and powers that make you stick out! I think 5e should give you more option to make your character unique, but still effective in combat. Here what I think....

Barbarian: Strong Brute: A brute that take feats and powers to deal tons of damage.
                 Tough Brute:  Can eat a lot and I mean a lot of damage. Just hard to kill. 
                 Raging Brute: Specialize in his raging to make it longer and stronger.

Druid: Elementist: Specialize in element attacks depending where she was raise in her land.
          Shape Shifter: Can transform into a powerful animal  and can do it longer and more often.
          Summoner: Can create, charm, or summon more animals and plants under her command.

Cleric: Undead Specialist: Either you control or destroy. The undead fears you. 
           Healer: Hitpoints just rain from him. No joke, rain that can heal.
           Summoner: Can summon more powerful outsiders under his control.

Fighter: Two-handed Damage Dealer: Good old fashion solid damage. All day, everyday. 
             Shielder Wielder: Maybe you want tank and kick butt with shield?
             Weapon Specialist: You specialize with a weapon so much it's retarded. Don't lose it!

Paladin: Damage Dealer: You specialist can doing a lot of damage in short time. 
              Tank: Toughest Tank in the game, but couldn't dps to save his life. 

Rogue:  Trap Specialist: You can use traps before, during, and after battle. 
             Assassin: Death strikes that sneak attack on fail. Can create and use posion effectively.
             Magic Device Specialist: A rogue that can use magic? Scary, just scary.

Wizard: Artillery: Design to hit hard but have few rounds so use wisely.
             Support: "The whole party have flying, haste, and immune to what?" -DM
             Summoner: Summon more powerful monster under your command.  

I'm a 3.5e user and I say forget about balance. With enough time, gold, and feats, two summoners can have an army under their command. A rogue and a wizard can arm a stronghold with fireball traps. Two fighters can turn a warrrior naked with sunder. In the end, it's all about having fun.

I really don't understand the balance issue. If the DM wants them dead, they will be dead. If the party is really strong for it's level then all the DM need to do is up the encounters. If the party is getting their ass handed to them then the DM will tone it down. Simple. 

What you think how the classes in 5e should be? 

They are close to something I like, which letting classes have competencies, and then letting your backround and theme decide what your 'role' is. The fighter is the master of weaponry, that's his competency, but it's not a 'role'. We already see that it can be focused into a high damage death machine or, via the Guardian theme, something like a 4e Defender.

Clerics have divine magic, but we already see that the focus could be healer, protector or with the Reaper theme damage dealer.

Of course some classes will still be the best at some things, like I don't see how any other class will outdo the cleric as healer, but there's no reason my rogue or mu can't take herbalist, if I'd like to try that.

It's a definite improvement on the class=role approach of 4e 

Jun 1, 2012 -- 5:48PM, aleatoric wrote:

There aren't going to be any 'roles' in 5e. Your specialization comes from your background and theme.

I don't know. I see background and theme as favor to your character.

I don't like this, not one bit... well maybe a little bit.  But I don't want this many classes and variations in the core.  I want fighter, mage, theif, cleric and maybe a nature based.  The variations of these should expanded from these and introduced as modules for the most part.  If this becomes too taxing then a limited selection of hybrid classes like ranger, paladin, druid, barbarian, bard could emerge, but I would like to see these classes simple, fun, balanced and dynamic.  Get them straight then move on to the roles and so forth.

I'm hoping that we get really far away from labeling our classes by their combat roles, and instead get back to thinking of them in relationship to their profession and or backgrounds.

I would like to see the four main character classes Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue. With a dozen other subclasses like Druid, Palidin, Ranger, Illusionist, Assasin, Monk, and Bard, and a few others.

Then ontop of that I would like to see  some mechanism available for creating the other couple dozen less common subclasses like swashbuckler, ninja, beastlord and so forth.

Each class and subclass should have something unique to them rather than only a mismatch of backgrounds, theme, and schemes.

So for example, the Druid would be a subclass of the Cleric with a couple unique features that no other class or subclass in the game gets, such as changing into animal form. However the Beastloard or say the Ranger might be able to achieve a very similar result to that of the Druid by take a background, theme, or scheme which imparted some of the characteristics of the class. Possibly even a reduced or gimped ability to change form, such as only being able to change form once per day, or only into a single type of creature. 

One of the problems of earlier editions, 1E - 3.5E is that the classes were not matrixed very well and so each one was very unique and each additional subclass that was added required a complete new set of rules. 5E looks to be bringing a very customizable approach to classes while keeping them manageable.