While I'll admit that I love coming up with interesting or unusual character concepts inspired by literature & history, I've also come to realize that the vast majority of such characters are still more or less encapsulated by the four core D&D classes of fighter, cleric, magic-user & thief.  {And yes I know that the thief came a bit later, but I'd consider it one of the core}.  Ninja, samurai, berserker, druid, necromancer, etc., are all just derivative and can be created easily enough even in, say White Box D&D.

So do you and your players prefer lots of class options?  Or keeping things simple?

And what about races?  Are you for lots?  Or human-centric? Or somewhere in between? 

Personally, I go with the classic AD&D races of human, elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling, half-elf, and half-orc and that's pretty much it.  No drow or duergar PCs.  You kill those bastards on sight.

I am all about the Core 4 Classes.  I also love White Box D&D, via White Box - Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game.

The Core 4 is all you need, but I prefer to also have means of making a few other things.
Like Paladins. Make a new Fighter subclass, or allow a multiclass Fighter/Cleric?

I prefer the core 3, Fighter, MU, and Thief. Clerics are unnecessary and should be merged with MU. I don't mind a combo fighter/MU make it an actual combo of the two rather than some bizarre religious thing

If I had to pick a fourth class it would be a ranger or some other wilderness type

You could make do with just one if you wanted to, but why would you want to?

It comes down to whether it's easier to present a new class as a variation on one of the first four, or as a new thing.  Bard, psionicist, and warlord all seem different enough from the base classes that it's easier to describe what they are than to describe them as a base class but with a list of differences.  It seems to me that each area of concentration deserves its own class, so it makes sense to have a class for fighting, magic, stealth, social interaction, leadership, wilderness survival, and probably a few others

Quote from: Mishihari on December 21, 2021, 08:35:16 PM
You could make do with just one if you wanted to, but why would you want to?

For anti-wokeness reasons.  Tolkien is basically a woke "diversity is our strength" allegory where the Hobbits can't even take a ring to a volcano and drop it in without a bunch of other races joining to help, so "diversity is our strength." I'd prefer a game where simply humans alone can be heroes or player characters and all non-humans are monsters who exist only to be killed.  Anything less is wokeness.  And no this is not a joke.  More and more all the drama proves this point.  If you let people play elves and hobbits then they want to play orcs, and if you let them want to play orcs then they want to play Beholders, and then they agitate to remove any description of Beholders as evil from the monster manual.  So its a slippery slope that all started with allowing non-humans to be heroes.

Quote from: georgesnori on December 21, 2021, 08:38:54 PMFor anti-wokeness reasons.

And the cause of what you said was people playing pretend instead of wrestling or taking up plumbing.

You have either been driven into counter-culture paranoia, or your a troll. I err on the later.

Cleric makes a really crappy core, because it's such a weird and specific class with the mix of Catholic priest, odd prohibitions, and vampire hunting. Thief is also a little weak, because there are rogues and charlatans and nerds in fantasy and legend, but not a ton of pickpockets or burglars.

But you can generally get away with a spellcaster, a warrior, and a skill-based class.

I have heard it said, that Cleric was the original Prestige Class.

If the party doesn't pressure the Cleric into being a heal bot all the time, he makes a pretty good Fighter / Magic User.

A party of Clerics and Thieves could go a long way, as odd as that sounds.

We only need the Core Two.

And really only the Core One.

But I like to have: Fighter, Cleric, Magic-user, Thief, Ranger, Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling.
And for the sake of variety, I also offer a choice of one ability taken from three different classes. As in Worlds Without Number, I call this the Adventurer. Infinite variety.

Quote from: Pat on December 21, 2021, 10:45:32 PM
Cleric makes a really crappy core, because it's such a weird and specific class with the mix of Catholic priest, odd prohibitions, and vampire hunting. Thief is also a little weak, because there are rogues and charlatans and nerds in fantasy and legend, but not a ton of pickpockets or burglars.

But you can generally get away with a spellcaster, a warrior, and a skill-based class.

I disagree.  The clerics have the healer role, which is unique, distinctive, and important.  The rest is there just so the player doesn't get bored with only doing healing.  I think that's a pretty good basis for a class.

My system's classes are Fighter (skill in physical combat; the strong/fast hero), Mastermind (helps their allies fight better; the guile hero), Mechanist (arcane device magic), Mystic (primal magic), Theuge (astral/divine magic) and Wizard (arcane word magic).*

One to fight directly, one who's a clever/sneaky fighter, and one caster for each type of magic in the world feels about right. If you had only one type of magic in the world it's basically your Fighter/Mage/Thief split.

Then, in my system, you overlay a background to get your skills and all your non-combat abilities. So a Fighter might be a Barbarian with nature skills/abilities, a Military soldier who knows tactics and leadership skills, an Outlaw with thief-like skills and abilities, or a Religious holy warror with knowledge of faith and non-combat divine magic.

Compared to what is basically Fighter/Mage/Thief for combat style in my system I have TEN different backgrounds to overlay; Arcanist, Aristocrat, Artisan, Barbarian, Commoner, Entertainer, Military, Outlaw, Religious, and Traveler. That felt like a minimum necessary to distinguish the non-combat side of PCs from each other.

* There's also the NPC-only Diabolist (demon magic) and Necromancer (magic from The Shadow World), but those aren't available to PCs in the default setting because their use destroys your free will and makes you a slave/puppet of dark powers (in game terms they'd be PCs where, whenever the GM wanted, the GM would get to decide their actions instead of the PC's player). In my opinion, PCs need free will to be viable PCs (the players need to be able to choose their characters' actions) so they're unavailable to players, but do exist in the world.

It's a slippery slope.  You need enough variety to offer differences in niche and mechanics.  Remove too many and you fall out into a skill-based system to allow enough customization to make the choice interesting for players.

I still think that templated skill-based systems that tie into the traditional class lore is the best approach though.

I'd say we could manage with just fighter, caster and maybe an inbetween point.

Clerics are annoying, rogueish activities can be done by anyone and don't need a special class for it.

D&D has evolved into it's own thing.  In the past, you had two thoes of hero archetypes: the warrior, and the clever hero. 

One guy used his muscles to solve problems, ex: Herakles, Beowulf, Achilles, etc. The other used his wits. Ex: Odysseus, Finn Mac Cool, The Clever Tailor.  Later stories brought us the men of faith, saints and prophets if you will.  These guys used God to solve their problems.

Finally we have the wizard, the one who uses magic to solve problems, ex: Pospero, Faust, etc.  these guys usually got into a lot of trouble with their magic because they sought power and did not consider the consequences. 

From these, we have the Fantasy RPG archetypes.  Many fantasy authors had heroes who were a mix of these.  Conan was a Warrior/Clever guy, while Elric was a Clever Guy/Magician.  Fantasy stories with teams of heroes usually covered every aspect.  Fahrd (warrior with a little bit of cleverness) and Gray Mouser (Clever guy who could fight and do a little magic).  The Hawkmoon series by Michael Moorcock had a team of heroes who had each other's weaknesses covered:  Hawkmoon; a wariior and moral anchor, Count Brass; all warrior, Bowgentle; a clever magician, and Huliam D'Averc; a clever liar, and agile fighter. 

These and other characters laid the groundwork for the modern RPG party of adventurers, until we have the following Archetypes today:

Warrior: Good at kicking ass, either by strength or agility, has few skills outside of combat, sucks at magic.

Rogue: Good with skills and clever solutions to problems, can do a little fighting but usually has a glasss jaw and can't take much damage. Since not every player is actually clever, there arein game mechanics to help them out, like find/remove traps, and backstab/sneak attack. 

Priest: I. With the gods, has healing and buffing abilites, can deal with supernatural threats like undead and demons.  They can do a bit of fighting. Usually a "good guy", but there are Druids and evil proests as well to cover Natural forces and dark gods.

Wizards: they can do anything with the right spell.  But they suck in a fight (unless boosted by magic). 

Along the way, people got bored with the standard archetypes and mixed them up:

Paladin: Warrior/priest
Ranger: Warrior/druid/rogue
Monk: warrior/Rogue/ with some personal priestly resistance and healing
Dex Based fighters like archers/ swashbucklers, two weapon dudes, assassins, gunslingers
Warlock: cheezy spam-attack wizard
Artificer/Alchemist: Wizards who make stuff.
Sorcerers: dumb wizards who just wanna blow shit up.

And so here we are. But yeah, all you really need are the four core classes to have a fulfilling game.