So to preface this, a long time ago I was a fan of the Legend of the Five Rings RPG. The first edition was great. The first book hit it out of the park, and other than a few limited problems regarding, of course, the ads/disads system (where ALL point buy games are broken).
Then came the splatbooks. Because like today, every game in the 90s had to have splatbooks. And the core premise was lost.
So L5R 1E had a world with very strictly compartmentalized clans, exactly like Vampire. I'm almost certain the game began as a Vampire hack, come to think of it. There is a good reason for this, unlike Vampire. Clans are made up of family units. The Song of Ice and Fire RPG was smart enough to have PCs play in houses, but still commits one sin. Really, the sin this entire post is about.
The sin is: if you have a RPG, have a fucking point. In D&D you murder shit and collect loot. There isn't a merchant class because it would be stupid. L5R is a samurai epic game. In the original core book, even the shugenja are considered samurai. By the second edition it disappeared up it's own ass with fucking naga, ratlings, courtier classes, storyteller classes, etc. All of that shit is just fat on the premise of the game. Unnecessary extra crap that doesn't help anyone. I've had players want to play Naga because their twinkery. I've never had players want to play any other non-samurai class in L5R. If someone said they wanted to play a courtier in L5R I would ask them what samurai epic is about a courtier. Because I can name 10 about a samurai for every 1 you name. And I bet you can't name one.
Where's The Witcher RPG in this post? Here it is. The game has 10 classes - Bard, Craftsman, Criminal, Doctor, Mage, Man-at-Arms, Merchant, Priest, Witcher. A full half of these classes have no adventuring skill or it was obviously tacked on to a poor class design. And of the five that are left, the Doctor is borderline. Several exist to be antisocial - support classes that allow you to ignore the world's merchants, doctors, priests, etc. I say this because the core premise of this game is so obvious that you don't need to read it to know - witcher goes around killing supernatural beasties for money and has a crew tag along with him. So why the hell would he bring a merchant? And if he did why the hell would anyone want to play it? The simple answer is nobody would and nobody thought about this during the design process.
The WFRP Caveat: WFRP gets a pass because it's premise is "average people against the forces of darkness". While some people are less average than others, by the end everyone is an adventurer. Also there are 60 base classes in the good versions of WFRP. Pruning the 20 that aren't very combat focused should you want to have a more pulpish game isn't difficult. With Witcher, you're down to about 4 classes people might actually want to play.
