On character classes and balance

A staple of RPGs are character classes.  A few modern games have let the player accumulate skills without limit (Elder Scrolls series), but the majority of them lock the player abilities and progression to a fantasy archetype (warrior, rogue, mage, etc).  Of course, they inherited from Dungeons and Dragons, which codified the rules and powers from the old myths and fantasy classics (Greek mythology, Conan the Barbarian, Lord of the Rings).

So classes make sense from a narrative perspective, but what about from a game play perspective?  Particularly for a grid-based tactical combat game?  For that, we can look at the granddaddy of all grid-based combat games: Chess.

In chess, every "class" can kill any other, although their method of attacking varies.  They also have different move sets.  What makes chess interesting is that there isn't a straight curve of power. In some situations a knight is better than a queen, a pawn over a rook.

One way I've been looking at character classes is through their strengths and weaknesses, in relation to the grid-based tactical combat. Here's the breakdown:

mobility - how can a character move around the board (charges, teleports, diagonal)

range - how far away a character can attack (ranged weapons, spells, cleave, AoE)

damage - how much raw damage the character can inflict (crits, bleeds, poison)

survivability - how much damage a character can take (armor, resistance, regen)

utility - how can the character alter itself, allies, enemies or the board for the other categories (slow, haste, web, stun, shield)

In chess, the only attributes in play are mobility and range.  You could argue the "castling" move is sort of a utility of the rook.  But mostly, all the pieces have the same damage and survivability. 

Lots of RGPs try to create balance by giving all the character classes the same amount of power.  In a way, you end up with a single character classes "skinned" to look like a mage or warrior.  Chess blatantly has different powers in the pieces.  A queen can completely dominate the board.  But a knight can jump other pieces; a pawn can reach the end of the board and ascend to any other piece.  A chess game fought entirely of queens would be dull. 

So what I'd like to do in my RPG is take some tips from Chess and design classes that play in very different ways, and possibly aren't even balanced in relation to each other.  But in the context of grid-based tactical combat, each class would have use.

What I did was take the five attributes above and try to find some interesting combinations.  A lot of them end up as the classic character tropes from RPGs (heavily armored warrior, agile rogue, weak mage nuking from afar), but there some interesting ones as well.

mobility	range	damage	survive	utility	class?
1	1	0	0	0	fast archer
1	0	1	0	0	teleporting rogue
1	0	0	1	0	armored sprinter
1	0	0	0	1	bard
0	1	1	0	0	sniper
0	1	0	1	0	turret
0	1	0	0	1	buffer
0	0	1	1	0	blademaser
0	0	1	0	1	caster
0	0	0	1	1	armored cleric