What's the best-designed 3/3.5e or PF class in your opinion?

[AnonymousPepper]

Any criteria you want to use for it, it's 100% opinion obviously.

My money's on the Pathfinder Inquisitor. It's a nice, compressed ball of flawlessly-interworked class features that put together make for a capable, multipurpose, powerful-but-not-too-powerful, and beginner-friendly class. It's got a bunch of self-only steroids (especially looking at Judgment and Bane), it has a buff-heavy 2/3 spontaneous divine list, it's got middle-of-the-road BAB and HP, it gets its main stat to initiative so it can almost keep up with the T1s, and it gets flavorful class bonuses to some useful things (Intimidate and SM stand out).

[Amphetryon]

Dread Necromancer is one of the few 3.5 Classes that offers a decent incentive to stick through it all the way to the end, rather than jumping to a PrC as soon as possible. That puts it pretty high up in my book.

[nyjastul69]

I think the 3.5 bard is an extremely well designed class.

[Sacrieur]

I'm a rather big fan of the Magus.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I like warblades, they're very nice.

[Sacrieur]

I like warblades, they're very nice.

Yeah I forgot ToB was official D&D material.

[Vhaidara]

I'd honestly have to second Inquisitor. In addition to the points you raised, it was clearly written with the Archetype system in mind. The class is so modular that you can take off Piece A and attach Piece B and it's very hard to actually unbalance it.

My personal favorite Inquisitor is a Sphere Warpath Follower Infiltrator Preacher Inquisitor

[Afgncaap5]

I like the Druid and Bard from core. I don't know that I'd say they're the "best", but they do a good job of developing on themes across several levels.

[AvatarVecna]

The Bard in both 3.5 and PF is fairly well-designed; it has a good balanced between combat, skills, and spells, and you can choose to specialize in a particular field to the point that you're competitive, whether you dip other classes, take PrCs, or go straight Bard. I like characters that are decent-to-good at just about everything, and the Bard does that very nicely.

[Ssalarn]

Inquisitor was the first class to pop to mind for me as well. Everything about it works exactly like it's supposed to, all the pieces fit, it encompasses a lot of builds in the base vanilla chassis and has a bunch of great archetypes... It's really one of the best bits of design Paizo has ever done.

I'm starting to have similar feelings about the Mesmerist from Occult Adventures, though it hasn't been around long enough for me to feel comfortable with such a sweeping statement regarding it.

[Pluto!]

Warblade is the best-designed class.

It does one complex thing, and has very simple spacefiller abilities filling the rest of its class table.
It presents meaningful decisions in both building and playing, with few "trap" choices and a built-in mechanism for correction. These choices mean that there is room for diversification within the class without havingto dig through a dozen other splatbooks for ACFs.
Its abilities don't require rules abuse to use optimally. Playing intuitively with the Warblade doesn't mean playing poorly, as it does with the many other melee classes that require very deliberate combinations of abilities to be powerful.
It is built with the multiclass system in mind, and does not require outside PrCs to continue its own development.


Its biggest downfall is that its design victory of being intuitive to optimize makes it much stronger than its alternatives in the hands of players who haven't wasted a million hours dorking out over optimization.

[Eox]

I trash talk Paizo daily but I will say that (With the exception of the Summoner) their 6 level casters have all been incredibly well designed. Alchemist, Inquisitor, Magus, hell even the Warpriest finds a half-decent niche as the divine Magus.

[Novawurmson]

Since OP specifically stated that any criteria is fine, I'll give a few answers:

I think the Magus is one of the best-designed classes because it fully encompasses the "spellblade" character concept that players had wanted basically since people realized that Eldritch Knight wasn't actually that great. Beyond just core functionality, it has an enormous amount of customization and round-to-round decision making.

I think the DSP Warder is one of the best-designed classes for actually being able to tank with just class abilities. Other classes can tank decently in PF with highly specific builds, but it's hard to argue with the Warder for sheer area/"aggro" control.

I'll throw in a vote for the SoP Elementalist as one of the best-designed classes. When most gamers think of playing a spellcaster, they think of someone slinging fireballs. Sure, there's always the "a wizard did it" concept (that wizards should be able to play merry havoc with the laws of reality), but generally, when you think spells, you think Black Mage with Thundaga or what have you. The Elementalist cuts through the crap and gives you a way to be undeniably excellent at smacking people with magical energy, with enough customization to do a couple other things well, too. No GM angst about the nascent demigod in the party. No tier envy from a party member being continually outshone. No need to dive through tons of books to cobble together a "mailman" - just pages 24, 25, 68, and 69 of Spheres of Power.

[TheifofZ]

I've always thought that, aside from the potentially hour long turns in combat, the Dread Necromancer's kit was both fairly well designed and fairly flavorful, and even though there's very little support elsewhere for it, it's still one of the best necromancer classes out there.
In Pathfinder, I also really like the designs and flavor that the Witch class has, making for some potentially very interesting characters.

[Eldan]

A few good nominations, already, I agree on many of them, but I'd also like to add the Binder.

[Tuvarkz]

Honestly, I'll say that any Tier 3 class is a great competitor for best design, as it both has a niche and is also competent outside of it, but not to a gamebreaking point. I will agree that the DSP Warder is a strong competitor, being a reliable tank, but that can also deal considerable damage, inflict a variety of debuffs onto multiple enemies, buff the party and keep it alive, or lock down a single enemy, plus generally enough Int to be the party face with a trait or two; or the Paizo Inquisitor.

[Hawkstar]

It's really hard for me to say.

Iniquisitor gets disqualified because Mettle has the dumbest restriction ever on it.

Warblade is excluded because, like every other ToB class, its stance progression is ****ed 10 ways sideways.\

I think I have to say Pathfinder's Paladin, aside from the dumbass code.

I find most Tier 3s to be horribly designed. Yeah, they hit the right balance point, but they're usually awkward and clunky as all get out (Especially the Bard)

[Katana1515]

I will join the choir getting behind the Magus. It's got a clear concept of 'arcane swordsman' and let's you BE that thing right from one to twenty.

Throw in interesting and unique ancillary class features like spell recall, arcana and knowledge pool and you have a surprising amount of flexibility along with an absence of annoying dead levels.