What's the right number/breakdown of base classes?

[Gnorman]

Playgrounders,

What's the right number of base classes for you? What's the sweet spot, in your opinion? And, if that number is different from the traditional eleven, what do you prefer to add/remove?

Personally, I favor the 12-15 range. More variety than core, which is missing a few archetypes that I feel should be represented as base classes, but not so many that it gets overwhelming. Classes I like to add to reach that goal: Warlock, Duskblade, Factotum, Psion, Psychic Warrior. I frequently remove the Monk.

Shower me with your wisdom, folks. I'm primarily looking for your input on 3.5, but if you want to talk about PF, please feel free.

[EisenKreutzer]

For me, the more the merrier. Anything that gives players and GMs more options is a good thing in my book.

A class to me is nothing but a set of mechanics with an element of flavour to help create unique and varied characters. Limiting the number of classe to me is the same as limiting the potential for every player to craft an individual character. I think that as many options as possible (whithin the context of the campaign and setting, obviously) makes it easier to create unique and memorable characters.

[Psyren]

Shower me with your wisdom, folks. I'm primarily looking for your input on 3.5, but if you want to talk about PF, please feel free.

Well - PF has over 30 at this point, and that's just the 1st-party ones. They are adding even more later this year, plus archetypes for each.

Personally I don't think you can ever have too many. There are so many great concepts out there. Even the really bad ones like Soulborn or Mountebank have a place in some build out there somewhere, or become an ingredient in an Iron Chef-style optimization challenge.

[mabriss lethe]

It varies from game to game for me, based on the needs of my players. If I've got a primarily veteran group, I put as few limitations as possible. If it's primarily newer players, I'll cut things down to something simpler.

[Gnorman]

Would your answers change if you had a new / relatively unsophisticated group?

[Psyren]

Would your answers change if you had a new / relatively unsophisticated group?

For a group like that I would likely cherry pick the classes they had access to rather than going for a specific number. So something like Summoner or Artificer would be out, as would Incarnum, ToB, and possibly even psionics.

[Susano-wo]

I prefer either have only a few, basic classes that are designed to be able to produce a large number of archetypes each (EG having warrior, skillmonkey, and caster classes that have options that allow multiple focuses, and can be combined together in different amounts to create different concepts), or a metric butt-ton.

What's easier than monkeying with fighter and wizard levels? Having a duskblade/magus class. If each class is a tool to provide certain mechanical suites, or to allow one to play a concept out of the gates without having to mess with multi-classing, etc, then please give me as many tools as you can, without making new base classes becoming a goal in and of itself

And as far as what to present to new players, I would give them the run of classes, warning them about the harder to play classes, and which ones will be more complicated to design and run.