Yeah. The core four.
The fighter, as per OP, in IE games, they tended to end up as quite boring, but still, powerful. Hit things, hit hard, endure punishment. Simple and effective. This design did have some upsides and downsides. Sometimes things could be both. The Fighter didn't need very much micromanaging - time that could be used to manage classes that needed it. And yes, you could micromanage the fighter too, perhaps even increase his effectiveness somewhat by it. Given what I've gathered from the posts, in PE every class will have these pseudo-magical soul-abilities, I don't think the boredom at the class being too simple will come to effect quite as badly as in BG or BGII.
Nevertheless, what I hope and kind of even expect is that the fighter can be build in multitude of different ways, with ranging complexity and need for micromanagement, and even with the soul abilities, in such a way that it doesn't seem very "magical" class. What I really want to see is the option to play the kind of character I once upon a time played in a PnP. This kind of finesse, dirty fighter-master of arms warrior. The kind that had not qualms about throwing sand at the eyes of his opponents, punching them mid-fight, kicking them in the nads, the kind of fighter that lugged around with him a shield, a bastard sword, a dagger (something short-range to use possibly when grappling an unsuspecting opponent) and a mace. A fighter that knows how to and can use those weapons in varying different ways and surprise his opponents with ingenious use of them. Like once, during a very memorable fight, feinting an opponent by looking like he was preparing to half-sword him, and instead of doing that, grasped the blade of his sword with both hands and using swung it, using the pommel basically as a club and hit his opponent in the head, killing him. (Yeah, that characters hands got a bit of wounds, but the enemy died and that's what is important, right?)
The Rogue, a class that I'm most ambivalent about, as rogue is a class that I always intend to play but never get around to doing that. Meaning that I usually have one around for traps and locks, but not much else. I can think of several really fun-sounding rogue character-concepts, but always, always I just don't get around to playing them. But I think that is mostly because I usually find other classes just more interesting. Really, I kind of hope that perhaps I could get around in PE to play a rogue that is really interesting and fun, but I don't count on it. Can't really say much more about them. If I can pick locks and detect traps with other classes, I don't think I will be having a rogue around unless I make my character a rogue.
A mage, ah, a mage, a wizard, whatever. Usually my favourite class in any game. Which is kind of weird, because most of the time in principle, I really don't like mage-mechanics. Especially in cRPGs I really, really tend to dislike vancian magic. I know the pros and cons, and the savescumming and whatnot. Mana-systems I dislike too most of the time, even if for only because the concept of mana is jsut weird in the system and not explained well. At the end of the day, magic just is cool. What I hope/expect at mages in PE? And really, that is going to boil down to cool spells, system that makes sense and works within the setting and game-mechanics. Different schools of magic, specializing, perhaps even different types of magic. I'd perhaps really like to see large hermetic-magic-style rituals that took a lot of time and effort.
And thanks to the info that armor and weapons aren't very class-restricted, I can perhaps create one of the character-concepts I made for a PnP-campaign that didn't took off. A mage in medium armor, using a sword, with some combat-efficiency increasing spells, illusions and magic that affect the minds of targets. The idea with the character was that he didn't want to look like a stereotypical mage, intelligent combatants would be coming right at him then of course, seeing that he was probably going to be one of the most dangerous persons in a group. So he would look like just another fighter and surprise his enemies and play with their expectations. And he would never play fair. People who play fair, well, they seem to die most of the time. (See a pattern emerging, all of my characters seem to be kind of cheating-lying-dirty-fighting.. )
The priest. Yeah. I'm all for heavily armored priest. Not much else to say, another class that never really appealed to me. In PE if I've understood correctly, their powers aren't going to be actually divine in origin, but rather they access their soul-powers through their faith, which I like, opens up a way for great character-concepts, and yet again, I'm reminded and thinking of replicating an PnP-character that I didn't get to play quite as much as would've wanted. A disgruntled excommunicated priest who didn't really like his god and did a lot of philosophical musing on the subjects of religion, the secular power-struggles inside the religion, the gods and faith themselves and whether the believers shape the gods or the gods the believers and whether the gods are appalled at what their worshippers do in their name. An ultimately really fun character to play. And to this date, my only priest-character.
I think I kinda went on a tangent there, chronicling my old characters. But hey, I didn't get enough time to play them, and yeah, given the information we have, I do think I could replicate some of those characters in PE. Which is great for me. And examples are a great way of showing what I'm hoping for.
And yay for wall-of-text first posts.
And yeah, english is not my first language, so, uh, if there is a lot of typos and mistakes and whatnot, I apologise in advance.
