I think the classthing goes not only back to D&D, but allso to Diablo (and most likelly even further back to some old RPG I've only heard the name of). Especially Diablo 2 has a very restricted classystem, you choose a class, and you get skills no other class has.
D&D is a bit less restricted, but you choose your class, and then you can't really change. You CAN multi-class though, and that gives you somewhat more freedom. IMO a game like NWN has a quite fun charactersystem to play around with, to sort of take advantage of the system and create interesting classcombos <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.
But total freedom is allso good, since you can do whatever you want. But it would be nice if you could use 'skill-combos'. Just like in DD1, only that you can combo some of the skills for different effects. This would really add to the experimentlust in charactercreation, I think. But it should still be completelly free though, no classrestrictions. Best would be if you didn't get any startingskills, just starting skillpoints.
Übereil