I appreciate the extra information, but I'm still a bit confused on which classes are considered beginner classes.
If you are confused about the "base classes" of YGGDRASIl, it helps to understand what a "base class" is. For instance, Maruyama has laid out the general outline before of melee potential of classes. Here we see the classical archetypes of:
1.) Warrior
2.) Cleric
3.) Rogue
4.) Mage
And these should be evident to anyone who has played a game created with intelligent game design.
However, if we limit our scope to such things as tihe classics, where do things like Paladin, Ranger, and Spiritual casters fit in? Monks?
It helps to understand what you mean by base classes is more akin to unique class packages. There are presumably many base classes in fact. Not all Divine casters have Cleric or Priest for instance and these are two distinct branches on the Cleric or Divine magic user path. Then you have weirdoes like Nfrirea or Gondo who don't even have combat classes.
Thus you have to breakdown classes into at first two paradigms: their utility and their role in the game. The distinction here Ziggy is making the things they are good at (melee strenght, type of magic they can use, actions they can take) vs their intended function in the overall game design.
It helps to understand Maruyama loves to draw from games he likes. Much of this is fairly standard as well.
Let's first take Maruyama's Melee tier list in terms of base classes:
Warrior>Cleric > Rogue > Mage
Now lets fill in the blanks from his own statements.
Warriors > Monks (Blog)
Warriors > Paladins (V7, V9AT, V13)
Warriors > Clerics (V3)
With these additions we have:
Warrior > Cleric/Paladin/Monk > Rogue > Mage
We can further refine this with TRPG knowledge though. For instance, Paladins are the weird middle point between Clerics and Warriors, along iwth other game design differences. In terms of melee though they would fit into this sweet spot. Likewise, Monks are able to face off against warriors (Sebas in the Albedo and Cocytus triangle). However, they excel in countering magic or being a Warrior-like Rogue with abilites based on close range. Of course they lose out in direct feats of brawn (Cocytus beats Sebas) but they counter other people's tricks (Sebas beats Albedo an Evil Paladin).
THus you have:
Warrior > Paladin > Monk > Cleric > Rogue > Mage
Here we know these are base classes due to how they are predefined archetypes and fall under their own rules. So even though a Monk is subpar to a Paladin in melee strength, they actually have an edge against them because a Paladin sacrifices direct power for magical shenanigans. In contrast, a warrior goes full on pure melee dps. By this token, they lack the very tools to deal with the magical edge of others for raw power. It's why they can over power Monks but lose to Paladins who are basically nearly as strong as them but have more tricks. Monks are the weakest of the three but they excel at speed and tricks and can effectively prevent a Paladin from using their tricks as well and can bridge the weaponless or unarmed weapon gap thanks to this.
Thus you start to see on this specturm, we have also Rogues coming in behind Monks. They are not frontliners in most cases and generally can't take a front on attack. But they double down on tricks like Monks and Paladins do and thus becomign an entirely different breed of class.
So how do we distinguish base classes or archetypes? In terms of game design ie the second paradigm, Warrior, Monk, Paladin are basically front liners. They do the thingy to hit the guy with their muscles and sometimes otehr stuff.
Well that's where things get tricky, surely these are base classes since we see people with builds like these lacking the others (Zenberu/Zero/Pe Riyuro are pure monks for the most part barring Zenberu's one warrior level). In contrast, even Warrior can be further refined into more classes!
You have Fencers who are effectively agile warriors who sacrifice power for speed and quickness. Then you have the opposite end, the Knight or INSERT WEAPON Master. The Knight sacrifices power for defense while the INSERT WEAPON Master is someone who pursues one weapon alone and ignores all the others. Then you have everyone's average joe, the Fighter, the jack of all trades non specialization. Many people have Fighter as a class because you first start out trying to understand what weapons you want to use and being a physical well fighter.
Effectively the balance is do you favor armor or your weapon as a tool in combat? Knights favor armor or their shields while Warriors or Weapon Masters favor a weapon to keep them alive. Thus you see how Knights lead to classes like Guardian or double shield users who go evne further into the pure defense category. Fighters are just the basic starting point for many people. It's also important to note the Holy Knight which is pretty much a Paladin. The main difference is they are a different game's version of Paladin, as is Holy Lord. IE the difference between Priest, Cleric, and Bishop is the difference between Holy Knight, Paladin, and Holy Lord. Different twists on the same base class archetype.
Do you see how this starts to get out of hand?
The reason the New World has so much depth is because so many different games are being drawn from!
We haven't even gotten into Spirtual Casters, Commanders, Riders, and so forth.
Effectively, in terms of game design we have three magical systems: Arcane, Spirituall, and Divine.
Arcane users are the super squishy and physically weak mages. Divine users are typically the very physically competent just below Warriors mages. But they trade off this physical competence for a smaller spell list for example. Well, you can think of this as a spectrum as well:
Front line Competence ---- Back line Competence
Divine>Spiritual >Arcane
There are exceptions to this, but basically you have Bishops in the Divine sector which are weird pure mages while you have Priests who fall between the other two.
IE
Cleric>Priest>Bishop>Spirtitual >Arcane
But we also have magical warrior type classes though they are pretty rare. Not split builds like Succulent but actual magical warrior classes. Paladin would fall under this category but it's an Other class. As is most likely Ranger. Ziggy is referring to the self enchanting warriors like Bellriver is supposedly. This is typically a more Eastern based class since in the West we split them.
But that's where Spiritual Casters fall in! Thesse are typcially from Eastern games where the line is blurred. This is why Evileye being a really terrible half vampire half arcane caster build was able to oppose Entoma- She was a Spiritual Caster caught between melee and magic competence.
Now, just like how Bishops are pretty shitty front liners while Clerics are great at it, there are many variants to the Spiritual Caster (though we know very few in Overlord). In theory though, using the game that some Spiritual Caster classes come from, there are more archetypes but you can ignore this for now at least.
So where do Riders and Comanders fall in?
Well these are unique splits as well. Just like magic, there is amiddle ground here as well: the Tamer!
IE you have a specturm of what we can consider the Pokemon class series - IE you fight by using others in your stead. This spectrum lumps in the others though.
Rider> Tamer > Commander > Summoner
Entomancer falls under this spectrum as do certain Divine classes, even Paladin does as well. Paladins are basically using magic to get their Pokemon, while Rider have to raise and train their Pokemon. Commanders rely on others even other people as their Pokemon and thus have less specialized and general buffs and abilites. Summoners are using pure magic to have temporary allies and so you see Necromancers fall under a gray area here as well.
Basically, these classes fuck up our whole understanding of game design because they come all different sorts of game design! Some predate DnD's ideas of these classes before they riipped these games off (well more like came upon the same idea but who knows for certain).
Then you get into schols of Arcane magic, like Illusionist, Necromancer, Evoker/Elementalist, Summoner, and so on.
So each of these base classes like Mage or Rider has variants as well which are their own base classes which twist and specialize the ideas of the class. Just like Mages differ in theri specialization Riders vary in how they fight with their mounts and what their mount does.
Now Druid falls under the Divine umbrealla as well but it differs in feel and competencies too. Adepts would be something in this area as well as one harnesses natural forms to fight temporarily.
THen you have new Overlord exclusive classes like Sacred Archer which neatly fit into thsi intricate web of classes.
Basically this gets really complicated and we need to actually study all the games Maruyama plays to get a better picture but at this point we encounter contradictions in what these classes can and cannot do due to differences in game design when they share classes. THen you have cases where Maru just shoves these different games together to create variance and depth like with Divine casters. The differnce between Templar, Holy Lord, and Paladin all happened due to picking and choosing differences in these games and editions to explain different things.
So when you ask "how many base classes do you think YGGDRASIL had"
we do not have a clear answer since no one game inspired YGGDARSIL. Well that's because Overlord is a love letter to RPGS in general! So we can think of base classes as class archetypes and just say Mage, Priest, Warrior, Rogue, but these exclude other base classes all together like Spiritual casters or Tamers which don't fit into the others quite as neatly.
So you have to reason with game design and uniqueness to really explain where you draw the line between archetype and base class.
do you think YGGDRASIL had available to choose from at the start? Do you think I should make special Base Classes for certain races be available?
Further reading:
Divine casters from different game systems - https://drive.google.com/open?id=10kWsITD-HzflYoYl3uMG7jAr2BYts_Tn9OS-CspvWMI
Warrior Faith classes - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XawKWH5NJ5aUeAkAH2bIYs8W7UPwOkjdAQXB8XN1Oys
Soemthing you probably didn't know about animals and classes - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zghT5u72w2qWVmzY-zEQD_qqBWKeF7SIzl5ohVNEGMk
Why Paladins are not Divine casters - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GN-WP_wCrbk-VYf31dwhQ0YtFpDJ59gZoF4qwvnTsIo
Double counting classes and the pro/con fo them - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1v92uy1ab6NH2x90CHew0_0zCIxP6QMv4aXFxTotVIqQ
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