D&D 1E Common House Rules for AD&D?

[Lanefan]

I think he's referring to Bards here, though the plural is confusing. Maybe he wrote that before the PH was complete, or he was considering including one or two more optional ones in the DMG.

Either that, or Illusionists, Druids, Assassins, Rangers and Paladins were all originally intended as optional but then became core, and he (or the editors) forgot to tweak the bit where it implies subclasses are optional.

 

[PHATsakk43]

Either that, or Illusionists, Druids, Assassins, Rangers and Paladins were all originally intended as optional but then became core, and he (or the editors) forgot to tweak the bit where it implies subclasses are optional.

Given that 2E defined them explicitly as fighter, thief, cleric, and wizard and prior to that these had been the 4 core human classes in OD&D/basic/B/X/BECMI I had always sort of assumed that those were also the only non-optional ones in OAD&D.