just sorta popped in my head but what if you gave up tower shield proficiency but could choose racial feats in addition to normal combat feats. i've taken to calling it the paragon fighter.
Because taking a niche ability like that of tower shield proficiency and giving a greater wealth of options which have the potential to be vastly more useful to more builds in general is not really balanced.
I take it this would be more of a racial fighter so to speak? I mean this in the fact that they would be trained as a fighter by their own people.
I think they cover this sort of thing in some of the Advanced books, but I don't wish to prevent you from trying out your thought. Use it as a temporary house rule and see how it works.
anything else i should take away then? it didnt seem that over-powered at the time maybe fewer skills?