I am fond of all 4 core classes; but if nobody else wants to play a Cleric, I'll take one for the team.  However, I'll be running my character.  I don't want other players telling me, that I need to go heal so and so.  I know what my character could do, but I may feel the need to deal out some Mace to the face.  My character is not just a heal bot. 

Gish, fighter/magic-user, whatever you want to call it.  I love the flexibility of martial ability mixed with magic, even if I'm not even with the specialists in either skill set.

I usually liked to play an Elf Illusionist or 1e Assassin, but for some reason, I am always FORCED to play as a Ranger. This is why I hate the Ranger class, and why I started GMing full time.
If I was to play now, I'd play ANYTHING but a Ranger! 

When I played 5e it was usually a halfling ranger with a dog companion.

Now-a-days I'll go for the warrior or thief class if I have a choice and play them kind of ranger-y. I guess I just thought Strider was way too cool back in the day, and that's stuck with me.

Quote from: consolcwby on December 10, 2020, 12:15:00 AM
I usually liked to play an Elf Illusionist or 1e Assassin, but for some reason, I am always FORCED to play as a Ranger. This is why I hate the Ranger class, and why I started GMing full time.
If I was to play now, I'd play ANYTHING but a Ranger! 

Are rangers so essential that your group MUST have one?

Favourite 1e character classes in rough order: magic-user (by far the first choice, nothing beats the feeling of casting that first fireball), druid or paladin (cycles back and forth), cleric if nobody else will do it, and thief/rogue.

Very rarely ranger or illusionist. Might try bard as long as it's an independent class, not the fighter/thief/druid dual-classing grind, but otherwise no.

Never assassin (don't like evil), never monk (too complicated and dull), never fighter (too simple and boring). Those are all personal and subjective taste, freely admitted; more power to those who find more entertainment in them than I do.

fighter; used to play mages and bards in 2e.

I will usually try to play a swordsman of some kind, be it swashbuckling rogue, paladin, barbarian or plain 'ol fighter.

Quote from: Thread TitleWhen you get to play, what character class do you play?

ALL of them.

OK, maybe I tend to prefer mages and I'm iffy about lots of the newer made up classes, like "warlocks", but I always either play whatever is missing in the party or whatever I feel like playing that time around, which is somewhat weighted towards mages, but can be ANY class.

Quote from: Trinculoisdead on December 10, 2020, 12:55:37 AM

Quote from: consolcwby on December 10, 2020, 12:15:00 AM
I usually liked to play an Elf Illusionist or 1e Assassin, but for some reason, I am always FORCED to play as a Ranger. This is why I hate the Ranger class, and why I started GMing full time.
If I was to play now, I'd play ANYTHING but a Ranger! 

Are rangers so essential that your group MUST have one?

Pretty much my thoughts exactly. My impression has always been that rangers are one of the least "necessary" classes, mechanically speaking. It's basically a weak fighter with crappy sneaking abilities and no trap finding/disabling or sneak attacks, and eventually crappy druid spells no one even remembers exist.

Any of the old favorites are fine by me.  I'm not even going to play in a campaign that has warlocks in them at all, let alone play one.  Same with tielfings.  A monk would not be my first choice for a character, but if I got handed a pregen for one, I'd roll with it. 

My issue is that I play so rarely that it is very difficult for me to really play a character as a PC.  I nearly always slip into playing it more as an NPC, deferring to the rest of the party. 

Quote from: VisionStorm on December 10, 2020, 07:02:06 AM

Quote from: Thread TitleWhen you get to play, what character class do you play?

ALL of them.

OK, maybe I tend to prefer mages and I'm iffy about lots of the newer made up classes, like "warlocks", but I always either play whatever is missing in the party or whatever I feel like playing that time around, which is somewhat weighted towards mages, but can be ANY class.

Quote from: Trinculoisdead on December 10, 2020, 12:55:37 AM

Quote from: consolcwby on December 10, 2020, 12:15:00 AM
I usually liked to play an Elf Illusionist or 1e Assassin, but for some reason, I am always FORCED to play as a Ranger. This is why I hate the Ranger class, and why I started GMing full time.
If I was to play now, I'd play ANYTHING but a Ranger! 

Are rangers so essential that your group MUST have one?

Pretty much my thoughts exactly. My impression has always been that rangers are one of the least "necessary" classes, mechanically speaking. It's basically a weak fighter with crappy sneaking abilities and no trap finding/disabling or sneak attacks, and eventually crappy druid spells no one even remembers exist.

Rangers got nerfbatted a bit from 1E, but they've always suffered from being somewhat overspecialized. If you faced something they got bonuses against, they were amazingly effective. But if not, yeah, they were a second-tier fighter.

Mostly human clerics and dwarf thieves or fighter/thieves. Once in a great while a magic-user.

Of course it depends upon the system & setting - but I mostly play support classes like bards.

Partially it's because I enjoy power-gaming the heck out of a system, but I don't want to be THAT GUY. Power-gaming a support character makes everybody else better rather than overshadowing anyone.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on December 10, 2020, 02:48:21 AM
fighter; used to play mages and bards in 2e.

I never played 2e tabletop - but from Baldur's Gate the bard always felt like it was in an odd place in 2e. It got the same spell list as mages - but it was behind and got fewer spells. Except because it leveled faster, SOME of the spells were actually more powerful when cast by a bard if they scaled off character level - perhaps most notably Dispel Magic - which doesn't have a cap.

Bard got a few thief skills - but not the really useful ones to actually fill that slot in the group (no trap-finding), and it's combat skills were not good either. That, and unlike later edition bards, it couldn't do anything else when doing their bard song. Am I missing anything?

A few of the kits seemed to make them substantially better, but the base bard was just in an odd place.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on December 10, 2020, 08:15:02 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on December 10, 2020, 07:02:06 AM

Quote from: Thread TitleWhen you get to play, what character class do you play?

ALL of them.

OK, maybe I tend to prefer mages and I'm iffy about lots of the newer made up classes, like "warlocks", but I always either play whatever is missing in the party or whatever I feel like playing that time around, which is somewhat weighted towards mages, but can be ANY class.

Quote from: Trinculoisdead on December 10, 2020, 12:55:37 AM

Quote from: consolcwby on December 10, 2020, 12:15:00 AM
I usually liked to play an Elf Illusionist or 1e Assassin, but for some reason, I am always FORCED to play as a Ranger. This is why I hate the Ranger class, and why I started GMing full time.
If I was to play now, I'd play ANYTHING but a Ranger! 

Are rangers so essential that your group MUST have one?

Pretty much my thoughts exactly. My impression has always been that rangers are one of the least "necessary" classes, mechanically speaking. It's basically a weak fighter with crappy sneaking abilities and no trap finding/disabling or sneak attacks, and eventually crappy druid spells no one even remembers exist.

Rangers got nerfbatted a bit from 1E, but they've always suffered from being somewhat overspecialized. If you faced something they got bonuses against, they were amazingly effective. But if not, yeah, they were a second-tier fighter.

I've always loved the idea of rangers conceptually--kinda sorta "on paper"--but mechanically speaking they've always felt a bit underwhelming, particularly in more recent editions. Mechanically speaking I'd rather play a fighter/rogue and say they're a "scout" or something for "RP" purposes.

Quote from: VisionStorm on December 10, 2020, 08:50:51 AM
I've always loved the idea of rangers conceptually--kinda sorta "on paper"--but mechanically speaking they've always felt a bit underwhelming, particularly in more recent editions. Mechanically speaking I'd rather play a fighter/rogue and say they're a "scout" or something for "RP" purposes.

I do remember that in 3.0 they were used almost entirely as a 1 level dip for rogues and any martial who wanted TWF, as it was very top-heavy in class abilities/feats. Even in 3.5 it was primarily a dip class, but it wasn't as extreme.