3.5 Replacements for Fighter, Monk/Soulknife, Cleric/Druid, and a new class

[Piell]

Hey, I've decided to do an overhaul of a bunch of classes to get most of them into tier 3 or so. I've made full class replacements for Fighter (the Hero), Monk/Soulknife (Battlemind), and Cleric/Druid (Disciple), and would otherwise ban all tier 1/2 classes. The classes are located here.

Basic Concepts:
The Hero is the fighter replacement. Since we've already got the Warblade as a perfectly good fighter-type with lots of active abilities, I went with something with mostly passive bonuses. Improved mobility and anti-magic defenses were some of my main goals.

The Battlemind is the replacement for monks and soulknives. It was designed to be able to focus on one target and take it out, particularly spellcasters. Slaying Ki might be too strong - should I change it to "pick one of these saves each time you use it" (thus still letting them target the weakest save while not forcing three saves at once), or change it to 1/day instead of 1/encounter?

The Disciple is the replacement for clerics and non-wildshape druids. Since it focuses on specific domains for casting, builds are a lot more varied than the "I can do everything" CoDZilla. I also stole a bit of 4e-style "I can heal and do something interesting in the same round" idea. In addition, they get more turn undead uses as they level, so that they can get more use out of the various feats that are powered off of them.

Finally, the Shapeshifter is a replacement for druid's wildshape and is mostly taken from the Shapeshift Druid variant, with some additional shapes and bonuses, as well as picking up some thief-type abilities. My goal was to make every form have something unique that would make it not entirely replaceable by some other form - while the lower level forms might fade away from combat use, being able to look like a dog or bird still has scouting uses.

In addition, I have a few tweaks and class gestalts to get everything to try to fit into a tier 3->upper tier 4 balance level. I'd appreciate any comments and suggestions!

[RobbyPants]

So far, I've only looked over the Hero. There are a lot of things I like about it, and it would probably be fairly playable in a party. Still, he has a strong dependence on casters, just like the fighter. I don't know if that was your intention or not. For example, even with Weapon Power, he still needs a caster to enchant the items (even though it's cheaper). While he has short range flight, he cannot teleport or Plane Shift. I can see why it doesn't fit with the concept, but he will be beholden to other casters or DM-plot-McGuffins to go to exotic locales.

Other than that, I had a couple of nit picks/questions:

• Weapon Power says that it is +1 at 3rd level and +1 every three levels thereafter, but you list the bonuses as 7th, 10th, 13th, and 16th. Those should all be one level lower.
• Shake it Off works on anything with a duration of one or more rounds. How does that interact with things with a permanent duration. I could see that going either way.
• With Slayer, I can understand the 1/2 CR limit for the AoE portion of the ability, but why limit the CR to to the Hero's HD -2? They get a saving throw, which scales based on level, and most monsters of level 15+ have pretty high saves. Granted, it is Reflex and not Fort, and those are often lower.
• Also with Slayer, what constitutes a "strike"? Is this melee only, or can heroes be archers?

Other than that, it looks like a relatively survivable class with some fun gimmicks.

[Piell]

So far, I've only looked over the Hero. There are a lot of things I like about it, and it would probably be fairly playable in a party. Still, he has a strong dependence on casters, just like the fighter. I don't know if that was your intention or not. For example, even with Weapon Power, he still needs a caster to enchant the items (even though it's cheaper). While he has short range flight, he cannot teleport or Plane Shift. I can see why it doesn't fit with the concept, but he will be beholden to other casters or DM-plot-McGuffins to go to exotic locales.

Other than that, I had a couple of nit picks/questions:

• Weapon Power says that it is +1 at 3rd level and +1 every three levels thereafter, but you list the bonuses as 7th, 10th, 13th, and 16th. Those should all be one level lower.
• Shake it Off works on anything with a duration of one or more rounds. How does that interact with things with a permanent duration. I could see that going either way.
• With Slayer, I can understand the 1/2 CR limit for the AoE portion of the ability, but why limit the CR to to the Hero's HD -2? They get a saving throw, which scales based on level, and most monsters of level 15+ have pretty high saves. Granted, it is Reflex and not Fort, and those are often lower.
• Also with Slayer, what constitutes a "strike"? Is this melee only, or can heroes be archers?

Other than that, it looks like a relatively survivable class with some fun gimmicks.

I'm not concerned about lacking teleport or plane shit or magic item creation. Personally, I see those things as plot-McGuffins anyway.

Weapon Power - fixed the level numbers.
Shake It Off - Permanent duration things would generally be removed as long as they are something imposed (no turning off the sun due to light sensitivity or something like that)
Slayer - Slayer is intended to be used for burning through masses of enemies rather than taking out big single targets, especially since as you mention reflex saves for a lot of big monsters are pretty low. I've clarified that strike can be melee or ranged attacks, though the death touch portion is still reach-only.

[Stratovarius]

I believe my response to the Hero can be summed up thusly:  .

Rather than actually fix the primary problem of the fighter (it doesn't do anything that requires more than taking a full attack action), you've just thrown a large pile of passives at it in the hopes it might boost up the power level to be acceptable in a normal party. It's still the same dull, tedious, frustrating class to play, except now it doesn't die quite as easily.

Given that WotC effectively replaced the Fighter with the Warblade class, who has a ton of interesting and flavourful abilities, why would I want to play this variant Fighter over the Warblade? There isn't any player action that can be taken aside from a full attack still, so for twenty levels, the Hero moves and full attacks, whereas in that time the Warblade grows his list of options, presenting the player with actual interesting choice at the table.

[Piell]

Because some people don't want to have to make a bunch of choices during play and like just full attacking.

[Stratovarius]

Because some people don't want to have to make a bunch of choices during play and like just full attacking.

That's not a justification for boring class design, that's an excuse to avoid making an interesting class. And leaves you with a class that's still weak.