My two gold, er copper...

Barbarians have always been weird. They happen to be rather strange. So far, from my playing experience, Barbarians have been basically beserkers. They rage to fight better in combat, and they can't read or write. They rarely have any of their nature side come up.

Bards make sense as a separate class mainly because you need to have a class for elan. other than that, i can't see much of the appeal. "I can sing to make my allies hit better, and i am a wannabe rogue. Oh, i also have this nifty ability to find stuff out, which is nearly the same as a skill. Oh, i can cast magic through music."

Druids: I think i like the concept, but i think the implentation went a little crazy. The stuff is decent, but the fluff is kinda meh. They do get animal companions, plus being able to have a bunch of spell-casting. The combination of Natural spell with wildshape made them broken, but its somewhat understandable. What they could have done was to make some spells not castable in wildshape with natural spell anyway or maybe make spells a little harder to cast? I don't know.

Paladins are falling more towards clerics on the scale of clerics to fighters. A theme/build for clerics allowing them to pick some stuff to make the cleric play like a paladin makes sense.

Rangers act more like a druid/fighter mix that is limited in what it can done. Maybe if having the druid class, then the ranger could be a build for it?

I won't cover the 4e classes because i don't recall enough to discuss them.

Sorcerors and wizards were two sides of the same coin. They were basically opposites, but nearly all presentation of wizards in the books (dragonlance, Forgotten Realms) treated them as being sorcerers. I think maybe if they had something to make them unique it could work, otherwise it should be a subset of wizard.

I like the idea of having an Assassin class, mainly because it sounds cool. It could have some specialized stuff, plus a mix of fighter/rogue stuff. Being a theme could work also.

I think alot of classes currently available could be made into themes for classes. I think that the classes should be more unique, in that they fill a certain niche and don't have as much overlap. Being a fighter should be something that matters from first to twentieth level and you should be able to do more than 'make sandwiches for the wizard' to quote the idea of what a high level fighter could do according to one of my power gamers.

I think 4e's attitude towards classes was a step in the right direction, but it went overboard. They didn't do the best job of balance but then trying to balance fighters agaisnt wizards is nearly impossible.

Would it be too much to ask for the rules to be made in such as way as to prevent absurd Munchkinery? No more Pun-Puns? Ways to make it fun to DM without having to worry about power gamers or bizarre encounter design?

Please???

Also, you (this is directed at no one) remind me of my bird.