What is your favorite class and why?

[PaulBlay]

Speaking of - what's the point of that, anyway? Would priests in Angband be too powerful if they could use bladed weapons? Is it more pious and holy to messily bash someone's skull in with a flanged mace than it is to cleanly slice the head off with an axe?

It's a holdover (or 'homage', if you prefer) from D&D. Which in turn was from the allegedly actual beliefs of some monks in the past, some time.*

Classes and races in Angband are specifically not carefully balanced (indeed I got jumped on for suggesting they should be) so I doubt that it is because they'd be 'too powerful' otherwise.

* If you want something more detailed and/or more accurate you can try Googling for it yourself.

[Whelk]

Hmm. Rather than playing the "classes should be balanced" card, can I play the "classes shouldn't have dumb, pointless limitations" card?

Also, why should Angband try to be like D&D? Yuck.

[Pete Mack]

High-level priests are unbelievably strong, with or without the pointy (icky_wield) penalty. Yes, it takes some effort to get to cl 20, but once you are there, you can just cruise with a combination of Holy Orb, Protection from Evil, CCW spell, melee, and archery.
If it really bothers you getting rid of icky_wield is a minor change to the class.txt edit file.

I don't much care for Paladin, because it takes a long time for the various healing spells to be worth much, and in the meantime, lousy stealth means all the monsters are pummeling you. Rogue is much easier for starting characters. The lack of healing spells in the late game isn't that big a trade-off, especially with %age-based !CCW.

[Mondkalb]

Poor stealth of paladins makes it easier though to choose equiment with aggravation, which I otherwise leave untouched. ^^

[Malice]

I usually play Mages in computer RPGs, Angband is no different. The assumption being that being rubbish at low levels will be offset by being awesome at high levels. Sadly, the vast majority of my Angband mages have never made it to high levels .

[ElectricPaladin]

My current favorites are Paladins and Warriors.

I used to like Mages and Rangers, but I became sick of Mage frailty and eventually decided that I was more fond of the Priest spells (with their focus on enhancement and detection) than the Mage spells (with their focus on killing shit) for half-casters.

Warriors, on the other hand, are a new development. I sometimes find the vast spell options of casters and half-casters to be a little daunting, but building a high-intelligence Warrior and picking and choosing what Artifacts, rods, and wands I carry around can be fun.