I think its a mistake to assume that a social role and a character class should be contiguous sets. I look at the noble class and the noble social role. The best way to portray a social role is role playing the character. Even so, sometimes you’re looking for mechanics to reflect something that isn’t already covered in an existing class. That’s why you can have a noble class and a noble social role that are not contiguous (though nearly all noble class characters should be noble in the social sense). A Taelinri class doesn’t have to be the be all and end all of the Taelinri social role. Any character played as a teacher, scholar, or philosopher might be a Taelinri.
I’m not keen on the Harper-Scout, Harper-Mage, Harper-Beautician, Harper-Blacksmith model of class design. When I ditched the paladin as a class (softly, if somone wants to play the class I won’t say no) what I replaced it with was the role of paladin and a set of Paladin feats. If your character has one level of priest and one level of fighter, you can attempt to get your character recognized by your faith as a paladin. Once a ritual is performed, you can purchase paladin abilities as feats. That way if you want a smiting fighter-priest who can call a warhorse, you can without having a class limit your build too much.
The best wizard models from literature make the wizard a learned person. I have seen cases made that Merlin was a wizard, a bard, and a druid. All make sense. Its hard to make wizards into characters who know anything at all. As a single class, all they can do is cast spells. Most sensible builds use a lot of their skill points for concentration. Their high Int scores allow for a lot of extra skills, but compared a smart bard, they don’t seem so learned. Most of my wizard builds today are multi-classed with the Scholar class from the Medieval Player’s Handbook.
It looks like 4e will use the same kind of ability paths that d20 modern used (or something similar) and I’d love to see wizards able to be as smart as bards (where the difference is specialization vs jack of all trades) and that’s where I’d be with the Taelinri. I make nobles out of noble classed characters, rogues, and fighters, priests, and wizards with a few levels of noble. If I were called upon to make a lot of Taelinri, I imagine I’d be making them out of my Taelinri class (wizard design, druid spell list), bards, and by mixing nobles and fighters with Taelinri and bard. Since I use a spell points system, getting wizard and bard levels to stack is no problem.
So even though I have a Taelinri class, you could expect me, given enough time, to create a bard/rogue and call him a Taelinri if he was a sneaky sidhe scholar.
