[kohl]

Originally Posted by Zehn_Druidbane

Step 3) Overlap responsibility. You -can- have classes that have almost identical abilities. One of the -biggest- problems that designers have is they try to make classes the 'best' at something. Here's a better idea. Take 12 classes, but give each class 2 fundamental roles, and most importantly, make sure they are equally effective at both roles.

IE: THe 4 basic roles are Tank, Damge Control, Crowd Control and Debuffing. Your Paladin can tank and does damage control (aka healing), your Warrior does Tanking and crowd control, your monk does tanking and debuffing...your priest does healing and crowd control, shaman does healing and tanking, druid does healing and debuffing, or whatever.

What does this accomplish? You design dungeons around 4 person groups, with the need for at least one tank, one healer, one CCer and one debuffer. Now instead of warriors being the only tank, priests being the only healer, mages being the only CCer...you have 6 tank classes to choose from, 6 helaers, etc...etc...

You allow for multi-dimensional classes and life becomes so much better. Toss in a few 'unique' non-basic role abilities to spruce up each class and voila.

I know it's alot harder then it sounds, but fuck it, they get paid alot more then me so they can come up with the rest.

I think there is a lot of truth to this. Maybe part of the problem is that these concepts of warrior, cleric, paladin, etc are just plain old and need some rethinking or need to be tossed out the window entirely. I realize they come from old fantasy and D&D and whatnot, but it's been done in practically every fucking fantasy game and maybe its time for something new. Like you mentioned, design classes around roles and give them new names or assign existing names to those roles if it'll be more familiar to players.

Every single time you start talking about hybrids and pure classes, balance ends up being a disaster.