These classes feature "singular talents" - talents that do one thing. The fighter's Weapon Mastery would be one of these - it provides +1 attack and damage. The Rogue has a whole bunch of them -- the Rogue talents.
Singular talents really restrict creativity and create several problems (let's look at the rogue talents):
1) They need to be roughly equivalent in power.
2) They need to be appropriate at 1st level
3) They don't build on each other. Each is stand-alone
4) They don't allow class customization
A different way to do this would be with a talent "tree". This idea really already exists. The Rogue's Sneak attack could be restructed into a tree to look like this:
Sneak Attack: Each time you take this talent, gain +1d6 to your sneak attack.
The Trapfinding ability could become a tree:
Trapfinding
1) First time you take this, you get the ability to detect and remove magical traps.
2) Second time you take this talent, you gain Quick Disable - you disable a trap in half the time.
3) Third time you take this talent, you become a Trap Master. You gain +2 to Search and Disable checks for traps.
4) Fourth time, you are Sure Handed. You must miss a Disable Device check by 10 or more to set off a trap.
Designing talents in these tree chunks allows easy customization of classes. In another thread, folks are complaining about the lack of a swashbuckler type of class. With talent trees, you could accomplish that - Take a rogue. Drop the Disable Device talent tree, replace with a "AC In Light Armor" tree.
Talent Trees could have prerequisites as well. The third instance of Trapfinding requires 7th level, etc. This way each step of a tree doesn't have to be roughly equal to other classes. If Bleeding is too good for 1st level rogues, that talent tree can start at a higher level.
This works well for other classes too. Rather than all fighters having the Weapon Training and Armor Training trees (these are trees already), let fighter's have the Axe Talents that do interesting things with axes, the Whip Tree for specializing with whips, Shield Tree for bashing about with your shield. Rough example:
Hammer Talent Tree
1) Gain +1 attack and +1 damage with Hammer weapons
2) Take a -3 to your attack roll, if you hit, you do damage and perform a Bull Rush to move your target back 5 feet
3) Take a -3 to your attack roll, if you hit, do a Combat Maneuver to knock the opponent prone
4) Some other cool hammer thing.
Monte Cook's Book of Experimental Might did this with spellcasters.
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I love this idea, I'd also like to throw in more bonus feats for all the classes (ala d20 modern). There's a lot of awesome feats out there (over 3k just in Wizards books) but only 7 feat slots, it's ridiculous. In my group we've separated feats into "Good Feats" and "Poor Feats". You get good feats as normal, and every third level (including first) you also get a poor feat. Poor feats include things like Acrobatic, Skill Focus, Improved Initiative, and other feats that just aren't as worth taking as say Roof-jumper from Cityscape.
However, I think Talent Trees are too far removed from 3.x to be easily backward compatible,
We already have Talent Trees, just in a different format and characters are FORCED to take them.
Take Sneak Attack: It's a talent tree that occurs every 2 levels.
Evasion/Dodge is a Tree: 2nd level Evasion, 4th level Uncanny Dodge, 8th Improved Uncanny.
The new Weapon Training/Armor Training are trees with a set benefit every couple levels.
So existing characters could be said to USE trees and have taken the DEFAULT selections. New trees could be opened up though for players to use and future NPCs to make use of.
