Alright, to start off, I allow about 30 classes in my games; basically, my rule of thumb is any class listed in the PHBII, either as a new class or with specific variants to older classes, plus the Psionic Classes, Martial Adept classes (from the Book of Nine Swords), or from the Dragon Compendium. That brings the grand total to about 30 distinctly different classes, all with their own feel and flavor. My basic idea is that classes are archetypes (duh) - there is no Shugenja, but there is a Cleric in an oriental setting called a Shugenja because that's the term the natives would use. From what I've seen, those classes all fit the bill as "functionally different" from one another; obviously, you still have plenty of dualities to have fun with (Wizard vs. Sorc, Cleric vs. Favored Soul, Paladin vs. Hexblade, Monk vs. Battle Dancer, Knight vs. Barbarian, etc.), but part of the fun is getting to play with classes that seem to be meant to be opposites.
There is one class that, to me, needs (or needed) a major overhaul - the Favored Soul. You can't take the Favored Soul as-is and just pop him into Pathfinder with the Orisons ability and expect him to live. He has far, far too few abilities to equal up to anything else.
For that, my friends and I came up with an upgrade to the Favored Soul, called the Herald - Favored Soul was a better name, but we wanted to keep off the non-OGL stuff and create a class which could pass as disputably different yet similar enough to be recognizable as to what it's meant to be.
This is the class, for anyone interested:
http://rapidshare.com/files/244111846/Herald_Base_Class.pdf.html
Personally, I think this worked out really well. In our games, the Herald works just as well as any other class, but isn't a monstrousity.
It's a decent combatant and a decent caster - a better combatant than the Cleric, but worse than a Paladin, while a better caster than the Paladin, yet worse than the Cleric. What we wanted to emphasize was the "Left Hand of Your God" feel from the original Favored Soul. The idea was that the Paladin should still be the all-around better combatant, able to use more gear and weapons, but that the Herald was a force of righteous fury with his deity's favored weapon, and ONLY his deity's favored weapon. Thus, the total effectiveness of the Herald as an outright combatant falls somewhere between the Cleric and Paladin, where it should.
While it seems like the Favored Soul gets a lot, keep a few things in mind - one, the Favored Soul gets no Channel Energy abilities, which means it can't Turn/Rebuke like it's brothers; it also has to spend its own spells to heal, where as the Cleric as spontaneous spells, and the Paladin has Lay On Hands. There are other flaws which bring it down from being overpowered (one of the main ones is the lack of any weapons BESIDES the favored weapon), but testing is the best way to demonstrate that.
So, I thought I'd create this thread to do just that - test it. While my group found it to be just about right, I wanna see what other people think. Is it too powerful? Too weak? Just right?
And not just this class, but other peoples' upgrades of their own favorite classes. Show us by typing them up, even on a Word doc or Excel spreadsheet; we can check 'em out, give ideas, and maybe we'll come to a consensus on what is or isn't the "truest" upgrade of those classes.
Paizo may never be able to publish these because of copyrights owned by Wizards, or maybe they will because we've done enough of a job at making them distinct enough from the originals that they can publish 'em. To that end, if anyone from Paizo likes the idea of the Herald, go right ahead and use it; it'd be neat to see something we've come up with become canon. I'd hope everyone else might feel the same way.
It'd be nice to know which upgrades best match the originals in terms of flavor, use, and all-around feel, so we can share them and use them in our games.
Owner - D20 Hobbies
