Recently, I had the chance to take a look through the core rules for D&D 4th edition. I was going in with no real personal biases, save perhaps some optimism that they may have fixed some of my bigger problems with 3rd ed's rules, and a general curiosity towards how this whole "powers" worked.
What I came away with is a list of quotes about 5 pages long which simply put, absolutely horrified me. Not because the rules are terrible mind you. Most of the mechanic changes I am completely in favor of, or indifferent towards. The things that horrify me are all intentional design choices which A- Completely change the fundemental setting information and class definitions, or B- Change the entire focus of the game from being an RPG with a fantasy setting to a small-scale tabletop wargame with a fair number of RPG-like mechanics, where a small group of characters fights various randomly assembled teams of monsters in a mazey dungeon setting. I am not going to post the entire list here, but a few examples should help explain the situation better.
Let's begin with a quick look at the full title of the player's handbook..."Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook: Arcane, Divine, and Martial Heroes."
... and the little note we have at the start of the classes section.
"Additional power sources and techniques provide characters of different classes with powers and abilities. These will appear in future Player's Handbook volumes. For example, barbarians and druids draw on primal forces of nature, monks harness the power of their soul energy (or ki), and psions call upon the mind to generate psionic powers."
Now, I would understand if the five classes removed from the player's handbook here (bard, barbarian, druid, monk, sorcerer) were pulled on the grounds that they just didn't fit in with the rest of the game, or they were becoming variations on the primarily available classes (say, replacing druid with "cleric of nature" for instance). What we have here though is a bald-faced admission that these were removed explicitly to expand the PHB here to a multi-volume collection of books. Furthermore, the 4 party roles whose balance is heavily promoted throughout these rules aren't equally represented here, with one of the two new additions (warlock, the other being warlord) being far less useful for party balancing than, say, druid or bard would have been. So it's purely a financial decision no matter how you slice it.
"Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook: Arcane, Divine, and Martial Heroes."
... and the little note we have at the start of the classes section.