Epic Heroes [Dn D 3. 5 Mod w/ Exalted feel] (Need Help)

God_of_Awesome Since: Jan, 2001

#1: Jul 24th 2013 at 3:54:21 PM

So, I'll do this with bullet points since I'm best at that just getting to the point.

I am not too good at actual balance and the like, or filling stuff in. I have big creative ideas, but my crunch can get a bit clanky and some creative ideas are largely overarching without substance. So I'm hoping for creative people and crunchy people to just help out with this.
My ideas are not rock solid, I'm not too attached to each one specifically, just the overall idea.

Design Ideas:

Class balance, that's a given. To make that possible though, I abandon any sense of mundanity in the non-caster classes and go full on supernatural. If you're a PC, you have some fantastical element to yourself, even if doesn't manifest in a big flashy away. Exalted, for example, would just make you supernaturally charismatic, smart, fast, strong, so that's a thing.
Acting like Exalted's Charms, each class is mostly built around their unique Feat Trees. Their might be crossover, mind, with some feats being taken by multiple classes, but quite a few specifics of that fear are likely to be different from class to class. Prerequisites could still be a thing but feats scale up with level, so most feats don't have to be retaken to regain benefits from it. As the point above suggests, most feats are expected to have big epic effects. Not always flashy, mind.
Spells are locked up in groups of Circles, kinda like Exalted's Circles of Sorcery. These Circles, in fact, are Feats available mostly to Wizards and Clerics. As a Wizard, you take First Circle Necromancy or First Circle Illusion, or as a Cleric you take First Fire Circle or Fire War Circle, and you would get all the spells in there. Any potentially powerful spells, like Teleport, get their own Circles.
Other spell-casters, like Sorcerers, might get Circles at higher levels but are no longer spell-casters, mostly getting Feats of a supernatural flavor.
Fluff wise, the idea is that people with PC classes are exceedingly rare. You, you, are something special and are perhaps the saviors of your people in a world of darkness, the great shining beacons of light. The scale you operate on is meant to expand as your power grows, meaning you come to the attention of things once outside your sphere of influence and they to yours. In your country side, you might have been alone, but in the whole nation, continent, world and worlds beyond there will be people and things capable of equaling your new level of might. Presumably, also a helluva lot of things beneath your level, but numbers have advantage.
I'd probably try to do away with the alignment system

Class Ideas:

Soullit Berserker: The Berserker's Rage is a supernatural force, the expression of their souls detonating, exploding out into the material. When in an a rage, they must act like they are in a rage, or the rage will end. Their feats are centered around making them a terrifying monster, an unstoppable force and an engine of destruction. Fairly simple bonuses to damage, to strikes, to health, to armor and the like are to be expected. Also fast healing, sonic battle cries, monstrous transformations, becoming the center of a whirling vortex of elemental destruction.
War-World Fighter: The Fighter is a man who has, in battle, become attuned to the war drum of the world, granting him super natural insight into the ways of violence. The Fighter has feats that depend on Awesome by Analysis for the most part, and may in fact rely heavily on the Fighter being allowed to 'Stunt' his actions, using each and every unique environment to his advantage.
Mind-Sung Bard: The Bard has become aware of the songs of others, or the dance, the art, the play, the joke. Like the Fighter above, this allows him keen insight into how to win people over, manipulate their thoughts and their feelings, for his own benefit and sometimes for theirs. He is the diplomancer, perhaps the least useful in combat but most useful outside of it.
Chosen Paladin: The Paladin is meant to have a feel of the Chosen One about him. He has been chosen, usually at birth, by a god or gods to be a living champion here on the material plane. They have Plot Armor, smite and detect evil are refluffed to be exactly what you expect the shining hero to have, they get some very Solar-esque powers like just being that shiny charismatic hero who inspires the people, gaining angels wings wouldn't be out of place, you gotta have a horse.
Knight Of The Mystic Order: Well, a mystic order. Arthurian Knights usually get associated with magical shenanigans a lot so I decided to take it a step further and make them magic. The Knight is a master enchanter. Their class is based entirely on their home made batch of magical equipment.
Scion Sorcerer: The Sorcerer is the scion of mystic heritage. The default is that his family held a long dormant gene of magic that only now awakened in him, while variations have it that he is descended of some mystical creature. The feat tree is more of a line really, but a different line for every blood line. The sorcerer, like the berserkerer, should be pretty straightforward.
Blessed Cleric: The Cleric is not like the paladin who was more arbitrarily chosen, but blessed for his devotion, his purity of purpose and heart, for being a mortal so uniquely in tune with their god. As explained earlier, cleric gets Circles of spells, with themed domains depending on their patron. Each domain should have some healing spells in the First Circle at least or give clerics the ability to burn spells for healing. Clerics noticeably have fewer spells available to them. In exchange, they ditch Vancian casting.
Threaded Wizard: The Wizard sees it all, all the intricate threads and webs of connection that tie all these powers together, and now he's tugging on every one to give himself a piece of the power pie. Unlike all the others who use these threads on instinct, he must go through them each and everyday, weave a tapestry of power and feel it burn inside his mind when he puts it to use.
Rogues and Monks: I'm not entirely sure what to do here. Rogues seems a good fit for some shadows and monks go for some enlightened punching. I also have an idea floating in my head of fusing the two into a Ninja class. I dunno.