I don't know what to say. All I'm getting from this is "If D&D were different, then D&D would be different.. it's not, but it could have been" which is both obvious and useless. Either I'm looking for meaning where there is none, or we're coming at this with such different fundamentally outlooks that mutual understanding and two-way communication are impossible.
Like I said, I digress a lot, go off on tangents and so forth... and since I'm not writing a paper or anything I work on ideas as I write --- think with my fingers, so to speak.
Oh, it does... However, precisely BECAUSE the fighter lacks options it's easier to play - you can even make feat choices which merely give static boosts without granting further options. Alternatively, you can start a fighter out with static boosts and pick feats which give more options as your skills improve.
Maybe it is the different outlooks problem, because this in particular seems to at least be a (few) meaningful statement(s), but it also sounds plain crazy. In terms of construction, the fighter has an overwhelming amount of options, far too many to take in all at once. The trouble is, having no class features, he has to plan way ahead and combine his feats in synergistic ways to get anything done at all. He can't take disconnected static boost feats and then start taking real feats later, not unless he wants to be npc warrior with slightly nearer misses on rolls he's still going to fail anyway. Those feats are all he has. You're holding up fighter as being easy to play for a reason that barbarian is good for newbies and fighter shouldn't even be shown to them. Not what you meant to do, maybe, but how it looks to me.
Weak =/= Unplayable. I did sort of make the assumption that newbies play the easier classes while the more experienced play the ones requiring more gameplay skill, so, my bad.
I am also NOT paying much attention at the power parity between classes, so Barb is roughly equal to Fighter here, which is roughly equal to a Warrior (same thing, just weaker).
Fighter is potentially a bit simpler to play than Barb, by the difference of Rage, but that's not much of an extra mechanic to keep in mind. You're still going to end up with people forgetting to add 1.5 times the extra STR to 2h attacks, forgetting the temp HP, and so forth.
By that logic, a commoner is the easiest class to play. Unless you define "play" as "have an actual effect on the game".
Replace commoner with warrior, and this is exactly what I thought when I read the bits of the post I could extract some sort of meaning from.
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Correct! At first level, a fighter with Toughness and Weapon Focus, for an example is effectively a super-tough Warrior and OF COURSE it's much weaker than almost anything else, comparably. It also touches the minimal possible amount of EXTRA rules. The fact that simple classes are weaker is something of a case of 'could'a, would'a, should'a' with the rules, as the Druid is seen as overpowered precisely because it has way more options than other classes.
I think one of the good things about retraining rules is that it reduces the focus on builds.
One player of mine initially wanted to make a simple character, yet ended up as a Wiz/Warblade/JPM gish, so now he has to juggle two entire sets of rules AND keep in mind JPM's special abilities. After a long pause, he generally has NO idea what the character can even do. Another player is getting UTTERLY frustrated with the 'game' side of things, and flat out REFUSED to update his paladin's Smite Evil to Pathfinder's release rules. My most savvy player just built his first Sorcerer, and since he wanted to focus on ranged touch spells, he picked every ray spell he ran into, so now he has several ray attack spells at EACH level. T_T
Most of my players aren't all that fond of reading rulebooks.
....
Okay, I ended up ranting.
There IS one player who ALWAYS plays a pure Dwarven Fighter (unless either of those things are explicitly banned), and he's quite happy to just stand in melee and swing away. By allowing him to be the very best there is in this, he gets the gameplay experience he's after.
My original point was that the Monk (and the Rogue) can be seen as the 'harder' difficulty melee class, skill-wise, as they have increased options at the cost of weaker base numbers. The fact that monks are weak, unless built and played in specific ways is just a failure in the class's design, not the concept.
Bard is really the better example, as they are rather powerful, but only when utilized correctly. Of course, there's the CO game which can be played without disrupting the group, by specifically picking underpowered classes which require heavy optimization to be balanced with other classes even moderately optimized.
On the other hand, put a shining diamond of a character which requires the use of flanking, cover, spatial awareness and knowledge of special abilities to the hands of a player who doesn't care for such things and you might as well hand them that Warrior/Commoner. Our group played YEARS with a rogue who never sneak attacked.
Back to the point: The DM could utilize the different difficulty levels between classes, guiding their players towards classes which match the individual gameplay skill. This can be used to tweak the gaming experience so that everyone's satisfied.
....although as seen with the Delve sheets, sometimes it's just a difference in how you present the various character abilities.
But, as this post is even now HARDLY concise, and is already way too long, I'll avoid digressing any further into the various subtopics.
