As for 4e: What I'm trying to do is remove "I want to be a guy who has excellent skills at combat but is also a rogue and that makes me a ninja!"
Being
competent is a reasonable achievement. Medium BAB should be (as stated earlier,
to WotC for not making it so) "competent". Good is "excellent".
Now sure, one should not remove something simply because one dislikes it anymore than necessary (if you're designing a setting, whether or not anyone wants to play a drow should not add drow to every setting)...and that's not my goal.
I don't like horse archery, but I'm not against Mounted Archery (though I'd make it work differently, that's another story).
So...stop assuming that I'm out to remove everything I dislike. There are lots of things I dislike that do have a place, and some things I like that really don't.
Robby: Why can't "It's not." be stated against something?
Sure, one should not confuse "it's never happened before" with "it never will", but saying "there are no dwarven sorcerers because dwarves never have an innate talent for magic" is perfectly legitimate.
Now, "no dwarven wizards", when wizard is something that theoretically anyone smart enough can learn...that's probably pushing it.
My view on firsts and uniques and so on with PCs is this:
"I want to play one!" does not mean you should be allowed to. Nor does the fact it is unique mean that it should
always be banned.
So its a "Some things just don't exist here." thing, and a "it is rare beyond rare for the norms to be completely shattered." thing.
Uber: And since when does "class" mean nothing that the character can sense? Is it impossible to tell that someone is a champion of Pelor, which happens to mean the Paladin class?