Tips on making new classes?

[Zambaku]

I'd like to start learning to make new classes. And I was hoping you could recommend some good variant that has a few new classes that I could inspect and dissect. Also general advice are greatly appreciated!

[Nick]

For sheer quantity of ideas, I'd recommend (both for new classes and new spells) looking at Zangband and it's derivatives - Z+Angband, Gumband, ToME2, for example.

[ekolis]

Hengband/Chengband/Entroband also have a lot of classes. (Those are derived from Z, right?)

Also Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, though half of them seem to be just various elemental mages...

[NotMorgoth]

There's a big difference between Angband classes and DCSS backgrounds though. A *band class typically determines a big part of how the character will play throughout the game, what spells you can use, how good you are at melee etc. Even in the variants with skills and other customisation, your class generally has a large effect on which skills are available to you or what options you can choose.

While in Crawl your background is pretty much just your starting equipment - there's nothing to stop a wizard becoming a melee tank or a priest becoming an elemental spellcaster.

AFAIK, the only Angband variants which come close are Sangband (which doesn't have starting classes) and maybe Sil (which I'm not really familiar with.)