What the classes SHOULD do [3.5]

[Teapot Salty]

Hey guys. So, I've been thinking about what the classes should do, not what they actually do, and this is what I figured that they should be:

Barbarian: Solid damage dealer with a few options and nifty damage affects that make it more than a crappy fighter when not raging, but tons of damage when raging. An example of the top of my head would be your attacks always do one con damage, or three when raging.

Bard: Jack of all trades with support on the side.

Cleric Buffer, healer, defensive magic. NOT a gamebreaker

Druid A combination of the other casters +animal shenanigans.

Fighter The wall that hits back, other options in combat, master of many styles.

Paladin Team support, a "hound" for enemies almost, a massive hindrance to foes. Fighter-master of many styles+some debuffs.

Ranger The primary damage dealer, the pointman.

Rogue Less damage than a ranger, but still very respectable +targeted debuffs.

Sorcerer The blaster, the guy who does mass damage and makes things go boom.

Wizard The gimper, the debuffer, not as focused on the debuffs as the rogue, with slightly less powerful shots, but more targets and more options. A bit of offensive magic for defense.


What do you guys think the classes should do? Instead of "I take power attack" or "I break the game"

Thanks, and as always, go nuts.

[torrasque666]

I like it. More clearly defines party roles as well as makes it so that a party needs to rely on each other rather than just go "I'ma be a wizard/cleric/druid! FEAR MY T1 BROKENNESS!!!!!! Party? What's a party? I handle all obstacles by myself due to my versatility!"

[Inevitability]

I'm surprised how much this overlaps with 4e. Most of the classes there could be described as this.

But I like it. It's nice for people who are making 'fixes'.

[Psyren]

Druid A combination of the other casters +animal shenanigans.

If your goal is "avoid breaking the game" this one really needs to be defined more.



Sorcerer The blaster, the guy who does mass damage and makes things go boom.

No, no, no! Blasting isn't just a weak concept to build a class around (Warmage proved that amply), it's also just plain boring if it's the only thing you can do, no matter how good at it you end up being.

Sorcerer should be the "thematic arcane caster." Look at all these themes (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/sorcerer/bloodlines) - there's blasting there sure, but also enchantments, illusions, plants, fiends, angels, the weather, the cosmos itself. Where is the fey sorceress that crooks her finger and has lesser beings dying to appease her? Half the school wants you to have decent Charisma anyway, it's a perfect fit - and spammability is great for enchantments since they have so many uses out of combat too. Where is the dark elf sorcerer who sculpts shadows and nightmares into terrifying guardians? Where is the gambler who trusts solely in his "luck" to see him through dangerous situations? There's so much more to this class than throwing fire and lightning around. (Though I'm fine with them having more raw power and less versatility/control than wizards do.)



Wizard The gimper, the debuffer, not as focused on the debuffs as the rogue, with slightly less powerful shots, but more targets and more options. A bit of offensive magic for defense.

I'm largely okay with this but you seem to have left out divination and summoning, the two things I would expect wizards to be supremely skilled at, given how much education would help you to be good at both.

[HunterOfJello]

Bard is a jack of all trades that is the perfect 5th wheel to a traditional group. They improve the abilities of others and make the ultimate party face.

Rogues are damage dealers that strike when the enemy isn't looking. They build up a wide variety of skills that they are able to use both in combat and out of combat. They make great scouts and are able to find traps and enemies before anyone else.

Rangers are damage dealers both close and from a distance. They use their animal companion and small selection of spells to backup the party and keep everyone going strong. Rangers are useful against all enemies and absolute powerhouses against their favored enemies.

Druids are switch-hitters who can fill the role of almost any other class, but not as well as that class itself. They are a mix of every other class' elements thrown together along with their own unique style.

Sorcerers are the dependable caster who can always be trusted to have their pragmatic but short selection spells available whenever they are needed. They don't always have the right tool for the situation, but they can always hit enemies hard and stop them in their tracks if necessary.



~~~~~

I think that druids ended up far too strong to the point that the focus of their class was lost. I also think that Rangers failed the worst at achieving their class role.

[Phelix-Mu]

A quick and more focused druid checklist:

- Weather magic

- Plant magic

- Animal magic

Additionally, a good focus for this is overlap with some of the less offense-oriented ranger stuff. Things that grant scent, spells that turn you into an animal for a brief period of time (in order to do away with the insanity of wild shape), buffs to certain survival-oriented skills, and the like.

Also, in keeping with the theme, I'd focus less on combat-capable spells. Some summoning is okay, that's pretty thematic, but we really should cut out access to things with SLAs. Druids should be good at shaping life and death, growth, renewal, destruction, but not blasting. Druid damage-dealing should be summons, limited polymorphing into animals, and out-of-combat stuff like control weather, which can deal damage but operate on a wider scope of time and scale.

Let's save the blasting for the arcanes, and the majority of the efficient healing to the clerics. Some healing is fine, what with the life and death focus.

I'd probably also ditch the animal companion as class feature, focusing more instead on charming animal for hours/days, and leave animal companion builds to employ Wild Cohort feat if they want that flavor.

Really, druid has a slight problem as is in that it comes with so many bells and whistles that like 90% of feats out there are like "meh" compared to the class features. Only insanity like Rashemi and Greenbound can shine through the general quasar that is the 3.5 druid.

(Yay, I got to use the word "quasar!")

[Arbane]

If you want to make the arcane casters less gamebreaking, it might be worth it to split Wizard (etc) into a dozen or more classes with stricter themes. Wizards in fiction and folklore were sometimes curse-flingers, sometimes demon-summoners, sometimes weather-controllers, sometimes corpse-reanimators, sometimes soothsayers... but almost never ALL of those at once the way a D&D wizard can be.

[A.A.King]

Is there any particular reason you left out Monk from your list?

[eggynack]

Really, druid has a slight problem as is in that it comes with so many bells and whistles that like 90% of feats out there are like "meh" compared to the class features. Only insanity like Rashemi and Greenbound can shine through the general quasar that is the 3.5 druid.

You may be correct on the percentages, though I can't say for certain (without losing my mind rifling through every cheetah's speed, craft whatever, and imbued summoning), but the druid feat list provides some of the most ridiculously broken stuff in the game. There's the two you mentioned, the form adding feats, ranging from aberration at the top to frozen at the bottom (anything lower than frozen is below the bottom, and anything above it grants abilities that most classes would kill for), the obvious natural spell, the really good animal companion options, which mostly consist of natural bond, companion spellbond, and exalted companion, and of course, magic stuff like versatile spellcaster. This doesn't seem like much of a druid problem, so much as it is an everything problem, in that, as Sturgeon's law states, "90% of everything is garbage," though it could indicate the inverse problem, that druid feats are way too good sometimes.

Edit: Also, the non-broken options aren't particularly bad. Stuff like initiate of nature, nightbringer initiate, ashbound, augment summoning, extend spell, craft whatever again, child of winter, and a bunch of others are powerful enough to provide a reasonable benefit to a druid, without consuming the game with first level wall of thorns, or double spells every round.

[A.A.King]

The role of the monk is to hold back any party stupid enough to let a player play one.

Believe me, that heavily depends on the party. In my low to no-op party my op monk does more then his bit

Also, more importantly: The thread is called what classess SHOULD do. What the current monk actually does is neither here nor there :smalltongue:

[Prime32]

What the monk should do: Have amazing mobility and reaction time. No rough terrain or walls of fire or magical slowing is going to stop them from getting in, hitting and stunning a vulnerable target a few times, and getting out again before anyone can counterattack. Another thing they should do is be extremely dangerous even without items, which is easiest to pull off by letting them craft/purchase items as innate powers that can't be magically detected.

[Zombimode]

What do you guys think the classes should do?

The problem I have with you suggestions is that you try to define classes around some mechanical concepts. The results are both (1) way to narrow and (2) not consistent with how classes are made up in 3.5. Now, if (2) was your goal then, well, you succeeded.
To me, classes like this would be boring and uninspiring.

Take for example, the Ranger. You say the ranger should be: "The primary damage dealer, the pointman."
Why should the ranger be a primary damage dealer? You could say "because he is a warrior." Ok, but why should "dealing lots of damage" be his defining point as a ranger?

When I think of "Ranger" I associate the following terms with it: Warrior of Nature, a (wo)man of the wild, good with animals, maybe some magical/supernatural powers related to outdoors/animals/plants, a spectrum ranging from a more martial inclined druid to an only slightly mystical scout-type warrior.
Now, while "fighting" is surely a part of the definition of a range, being a "primary damage dealer" is not, not even hinted.

[VoxRationis]

I agree with Zombimode to a good extent. While balance is important, we must not lose sight of thematic elements and the key differences between classes that should create—that was 4e's mistake.
I would feel, in-universe, rather unimpressed by a "wizard" whose main function was to stun nearby opponents so his fighter buddy could stab them to death unopposed. Magic should have more functionality than that; scrying comes to mind right off the top of my head, but there are others as well.

[Eldan]

I always feel that using magic in combat is a bit of a waste. If you need someone dead, you can use a weapon, they are not only made for it, they can also be used without changing the laws of reality.

Magic isn't about dealing 4d6 fire damage. It's about finding the secrets of the universe and then staring them down until they give you what they want. As a wizard, you find the one pebble that sets off the avalanche that changes all of history forever. As a sorcerer, you yell at life until it gives you something bloody well better than lemons. In both cases, it's about knowing what man was not meant to know, because no one has the right to tell you what you're meant to do. It's about finding the dirty little secrets that the gods tried to keep under the carpet and then abusing those secrets for all they're worth. It's about bending and breaking all the energies of creation. You don't just memorize spells to fly. You cut a piece of gravity out of existence altogether and keep it imprisoned in your head until you allow it to make you fly in exchagne for its freedom.

Not blasting or debuffing. Your rogue can do that with some alchemist's fire and a net.

And that goes for all the classes.

Where does it say barbarians have to deal damage? That's not what I think of when I hear barbarian. I think of an uncivilized tribal warrior. He spits on your customs. He cares not for your fineries. His ancestors lived in these lands before your feeble people learned to make fire and they will still be here when your cities have fallen to dust. He is a survivor.

Or a cleric. Why heal? Here's what a cleric does. He implores the gods to grant you help in battle. He makes sacrifices to stall their wrath for another day. He makes the evocations to bring shame upon the enemy in the eyes of the gods. And he calls down fire and brimstone on the unbeliever.

And rogues? Why damage? Fighters deal damage. A successful rogue or thief is the one who is never even seen. Who goes in, does his job and leaves again with the enemy none the wiser. If you have to kill an enemy, you have already failed as a thief and scoundrel.

[Inevitability]

Monks should be the mobile martial artist who rolls initiative, clears 50 feet and then punches you three times.

If rangers are high damage and rogues about high damaged mixed with control, the monk is about mobility, with damage and control second.

But really, monks should get a lot of pseudo-magic tricks. Something like giving them a nonpsionic version of Up the Walls (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Up_the_Walls) for free.

[Phelix-Mu]

I let monks move 1/2 their speed as a swift action. This alleviates some FoB dysfunction and obviates the need to cram pounce in there at early levels. It can also obviate the need to use stuff like the Spring Attack tree to get hit-and-run stuff down. I definitely agree that mobility is the monk's strong suit in-combat, and that an array of protections against the more supernatural threats is also in keeping with a more mystical monk flavor. One of the few areas where 3.5 monk shines is that, because they gave it a ton of [useless] features, the list of monk ACFs and sub-levels is among the largest in the game. This allows a single class to actually have a pretty wide range of fighting styles and many options during character building.

Part of the problem is that the monk really tries to incorporate a wide array of stuff attributed to irl martial artist/brawler archetypes, especially mystical kung fu stuff, and thus ends up wildly unfocused in many of its abilities. Like they gave the monk Wholeness of Body (a pretty terrible class feature), but forgot that anyone engaged in hand-to-hand combat better be able to actually hit (via, I dunno, full BAB), but also better have a way to benefit from magical stuff (which can be a big problem for monks in parties lacking DMM Persist buffers or dedicated support classes).

[Elkad]

Defining roles? That's exactly what I don't want.

People should be free to craft their character in whatever direction they want, whatever class they took.

[Phelix-Mu]

Defining roles? That's exactly what I don't want.

People should be free to craft their character in whatever direction they want, whatever class they took.

D&D has a lot of mechanics with actual impact on playstyle for a really free-form character creation. I'm all for refluffing when desired, but most games aren't going to tolerate a wizard that isn't actually using magic or something like that.

That being said, having themes underlying the class concepts doesn't necessarily mean pigeonholing every character into that archetype. The existing core classes have themes and general roles, but are still impressively flexible for the most part (especially once we add in ACFs and sub-levels).

[PaintByBlood]

Regarding the Monk, I think the existing monk had good direction - it just didn't pan out at all. The monk is set up to be a caster-killer, able to slip past the enemy formation (thank you fast movement, high dex, theoretically high AC, dimension door, etherealness, tumble skill), ignore the things the casters try to do to them (high saves, bonuses against spells, spell resistance, outside type, doesn't rely on weapons that can be shrunk, shattered, etc; or rely as much on magic items that can be disjoined), then hit them a lot (high unarmed damage, flurry of blows, stunning attacks).
The problem is, casters just exploded with all sorts of fantastic ideas about what they should be able to do (prepare for any eventuality, for example, like having a Monk in your face), and Monks got bogged down with stupid abilities that seemed Monk-ish without offering any real benefit (slow fall, timeless body, quivering palm). And I guess they wanted to keep Monks from trying to be on the front lines, so they gave them medium BAB, a middle-of-the-road Hit Die, and ultimately crappy AC, without considering that not only are some of the casters fairly comfortable on the front lines (Cleric, Druid), but that if you are going to ask Monks to charge into the middle of things to take care of casters, you've got to give them a way out, or they are going to die the first time they actually try it.

I think the Monk should be a caster-killer that works. Things like short range swift teleports, limited counterspelling abilities, limited dispelling abilities, spell resistance that isn't as much of a liability, a better AC progression...

[Zanos]

I always feel that using magic in combat is a bit of a waste. If you need someone dead, you can use a weapon, they are not only made for it, they can also be used without changing the laws of reality.

Magic isn't about dealing 4d6 fire damage. It's about finding the secrets of the universe and then staring them down until they give you what they want. As a wizard, you find the one pebble that sets off the avalanche that changes all of history forever. As a sorcerer, you yell at life until it gives you something bloody well better than lemons. In both cases, it's about knowing what man was not meant to know, because no one has the right to tell you what you're meant to do. It's about finding the dirty little secrets that the gods tried to keep under the carpet and then abusing those secrets for all they're worth. It's about bending and breaking all the energies of creation. You don't just memorize spells to fly. You cut a piece of gravity out of existence altogether and keep it imprisoned in your head until you allow it to make you fly in exchagne for its freedom.

Not blasting or debuffing. Your rogue can do that with some alchemist's fire and a net.

And that goes for all the classes.

Where does it say barbarians have to deal damage? That's not what I think of when I hear barbarian. I think of an uncivilized tribal warrior. He spits on your customs. He cares not for your fineries. His ancestors lived in these lands before your feeble people learned to make fire and they will still be here when your cities have fallen to dust. He is a survivor.

Or a cleric. Why heal? Here's what a cleric does. He implores the gods to grant you help in battle. He makes sacrifices to stall their wrath for another day. He makes the evocations to bring shame upon the enemy in the eyes of the gods. And he calls down fire and brimstone on the unbeliever.

And rogues? Why damage? Fighters deal damage. A successful rogue or thief is the one who is never even seen. Who goes in, does his job and leaves again with the enemy none the wiser. If you have to kill an enemy, you have already failed as a thief and scoundrel.
That works great if you're not playing 3.5, which is very heavily focused on combat.

[Eldan]

It's focused on encounters. That's not the same thing. You get just as much Xp for avoiding a battle cleverly, with much smaller risk. By the rules, if the priest can cut off an enemy's divine blessings, or the wizard can move the party around the battle or the rogue can just sneak in and take the plot item, the party has done their job and get the same reward. There's rarely a good reason not to try a nonviolent approach first.

[Anlashok]

OP describes 4e roles pretty accurately oddly enough. I think those definitions are too narrow though. Versatility and breadth of options should always be a key. Your healer/debuffer cleric should be fine, but we shouldn't invalidate the cleric who lays down holy justice with a warhammer because of it. The debuffing rogue is fine, but we shouldn't invalidate the assassin because of it. Etc. etc. etc.


If you have to kill an enemy, you have already failed as a thief and scoundrel.

Not sure I really care for this "you're doing it wrong" attitude if someone wants an offensive rogue or a practical wizard.

[Zanos]

It's focused on encounters. That's not the same thing. You get just as much Xp for avoiding a battle cleverly, with much smaller risk. By the rules, if the priest can cut off an enemy's divine blessings, or the wizard can move the party around the battle or the rogue can just sneak in and take the plot item, the party has done their job and get the same reward. There's rarely a good reason not to try a nonviolent approach first.
Last I checked the CR of an encounter was primarily based on how difficult the enemies it's composed of are to defeat in combat. 3.5 gives very detailed combat stats of monsters and not a whole lot else. Indeed, stats and abilities that focus on non-combat roles seem to be tacked on. You can run 3.5 without a focus on combat, but I strongly suggest you use a different system and if you think it wasn't designed to have a focus on combat I don't think we're reading the same books.

More to the point is that if the rogue sneaks in and takes the item nobody else has done anything that session. And as was mentioned earlier the rogue has the poorest kit for being caught alone in enemy territory. If the wizard teleports everyone into and out of the vault nobody else has done anything that session. If you make the other classes incompetent at combat then when the party does have to fight they will get absolutely wrecked unless you've somehow made 'combat' classes so good that they can handle the encounters themselves, in which case if there is a fight nobody but the fighter has done anything that session.

Not being relevant to what's going on the majority of the time doesn't sound particularly enjoyable to me.

[Zombimode]

That works great if you're not playing 3.5, which is very heavily focused on combat.

But in 3.5 the barbarian is NOT defined through damage (nor is the ranger), the sorcerer NOT through blasting, the cleric NOT through healing.
So it seems to work just fine in 3.5

[Eldan]

Last I checked the CR of an encounter was primarily based on how difficult the enemies it's composed of are to defeat in combat.

The CR system is pretty useless anyway. Since I already mostly ignore it, that's not a problem.



You can run 3.5 without a focus on combat, but I strongly suggest you use a different system and if you think it wasn't designed to have a focus on combat I don't think we're reading the same books.


I've tried some two dozen systems, haven't found another I like more. And I do indeed focus on non-combat sessions.



Not being relevant to what's going on the majority of the time doesn't sound particularly enjoyable to me.

Who's talking about the majority of the time? I was talking about encounters. And I have no problem whatsoever with the occasional encounter mostly solved by one player.

Example. You have a party of a diplomat, their black-ops agent and their bodyguard. On the road they are attacked by a group of non-intelligent monsters. The fighter takes care of that. Cue two rounds of the fighter holding the things off and cutting some down while the diplomat scrambles for safety under the cart and the rogue prepares some clever way to drive them away. Ten minutes, at most, that the diplomat wasn't all that relevant. Out of a four hour session.

Wizard teleports into a vault? Make it so he can only get in while astrally projected and the fighter has to guard the body. Or he needs to take the rogue along to disarm the trap.

[Telonius]

No, no, no! Blasting isn't just a weak concept to build a class around (Warmage proved that amply), it's also just plain boring if it's the only thing you can do, no matter how good at it you end up being.

Sorcerer should be the "thematic arcane caster." Look at all these themes (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/sorcerer/bloodlines) - there's blasting there sure, but also enchantments, illusions, plants, fiends, angels, the weather, the cosmos itself. Where is the fey sorceress that crooks her finger and has lesser beings dying to appease her? Half the school wants you to have decent Charisma anyway, it's a perfect fit - and spammability is great for enchantments since they have so many uses out of combat too. Where is the dark elf sorcerer who sculpts shadows and nightmares into terrifying guardians? Where is the gambler who trusts solely in his "luck" to see him through dangerous situations? There's so much more to this class than throwing fire and lightning around. (Though I'm fine with them having more raw power and less versatility/control than wizards do.)

Blasting is perfectly fine and fun to play, as long as you can blast with style. Warmage is a blaster with power but no style, but Warlock is a blaster with style and no power. Warlock gets all the fans. So why not have both? Bloodlines (or some similar mechanic) are a terrific way to add that kind of style to a Sorcerer, but I think they're be best in addition to a solid blasting focus.

[Rogue Shadows]

Level Design:
1-5: Heroic. Character abilities should be conceivably within the limits of the real world, or at least a world with ambient magic. Example: Real life, with level 5 representing folk like Napoleon, Einstein, Alexander, etc. In comics, Captain America.
6-10: Legendary. Character abilities should officially be superhuman; or in other words, non-magical classes can now begin to do things that should be outright impossible in the real world, but remain basically nonmagical. Example: Spider-Man.
11-15: Mythical. Character abilities are obviously superhuman and have never been achievable by real-world humans, such as being able to fly unaided (including without magic). Example: Magneto from the movies.
16-20: Deific. The characters are arguably deities at this point in terms of what they can achieve. A fighter, for example, should be able to swing his sword hard enough to sunder castles. Example: The Hulk, Doctor Strange.

Barbarian: Pure warrior. Damage, damage, damage, while having out-of-combat wilderness utility that a creative player could apply to urban environments. Also, he relies on sheer hit points to take damage, rather than having any interesting ways of negating or avoiding damage otherwise. Nonlawful only.

Bard: Expert/mage. Party buffer, secondary skill monkey. King of social encounters and can "fill in for" but not really replace the warrior, rogue-, priest-, or mage-type characters. Should be re-fluffed so that music is neccessarily part of anything it does so that, if the DM wants to run a low-magic campaign, the bard can replace the sorcerer and wizard. No alignment restriction.

Cleric: Pure priest. Healer and primary go-to guy when dealing with Outsiders, Elementals, and Undead. Lots of "passive" spell effects that provide buffs, few direct damage spells (except when targeting Outsiders, Elementals, and Undead). Primary source of interplanar travel. Alignment must be within 1 step of patron deity's.

Druid: Expert/priest. Imma break with tradition here and say: shapeshifter that allows for a lot of utility, but it should come at the expense of raw power. The druid should not be a full caster or even a half-caster in the vein of a bard, but rather she should have only a limited spell selection a la ranger or paladin. Excels at wilderness encounters and rewards a creative player who finds good uses for shapeshifting. Neutral alignment only (NG, LN, N, CN, NE)

Fighter: Pure warrior. The King combat. Damage isn't quite as good as the barbarian, and hit points aren't quite as high, but he should have several abilities that let him avoid damage entirely (a la mettle) as well as being able to shrug off mental attacks with relative ease. Lots of combat tricks. The only class without built-in secondary utility outside of combat, but is so good in combat that it doesn't matter. No alignment restriction.

Monk: Pure expert. Movement. Wherever the monk wants to be, the monk should pretty much be able to get there in one round, no matter the obstacles in the way. Makes lots of attacks rather than one big attack, but these can bypass a lot of magical defenses. Monk is a mage-killer, basically, while also having secondary utility as a trapfinder, and a decent skill spread. Nonchaotic only (Note! This means that multiclass barbarian/monks are allowed)

Paladin: Warrior/priest. A solid tank that can take or redirect damage even better than the fighter, and can even protect those nearby in the same way. Damage is lacking unless fighting evil opponents, in which case it outpaces the barbarian's. A solid social character, but depends on "positive" social interaction more than "negative," most of the time. King of mounted combat. Lots of auras provide passive buffs to friendlies inside of aura radius. LAWFUL GOOD ONLY.

Ranger: Warrior/Expert. King of the Wilderness. Picks favored enemies as he goes up and can mess with them like no other class. Favored enemy shouldn't be restricted to a creature type, but instead can be worked out with the DM (such as "Thayans" or "bandits," subject to DM approval), and changed as he levels. Good skill spread geared towards attacking from hiding. None of this forced combat style bull, though. No spellcasting, because damned if I can think of even a single ranger from literature, even D&D-based literature, that can cast spells. No alignment restriction.

Rogue: Pure expert. King of the Dungeon and King of Urban Encounters. Disables traps. At low-levels, requires party to set up backstabs; at middle-to-high levels, the rogue can set up his own backstabs without needing to strike from hiding. Lots of targeted debuffs. Decent at social encounters if need be. The Son Goku of Skills, he gets more than anyone else and he can do 'em better than anyone else. No alignment restriction.

Sorcerer: Pure mage. King of Magic. Can interact with and manipulate magic unlike any other class, including built-in spell resistance, easier time countering or disrupting spells, and being really good at redirecting spells. Gets only a small number of spells himself, but can cast them ludicrous numbers of times per day. Spell selection favors big, flashy effects, though not necessarily damage. No alignment restriction.

Wizard: Pure mage. Lots and lots of utility spells, but forced to specialize in one school of magic to the exclusion of all others, though feats should allow for access to additional schools. Becomes insanely good with specialized school of magic, however, even better than the sorcerer with that school, though can't cast as often and is not as good at damage. Can debuff and mess with the battlefield but lacks spells that can straight-up deal damage or kill. Your go-to guy for teleportation within the same plane. No alignment restriction.