Have you given any thought to making them all Aasimar and assigning each one of the "variant heritages." Also, the hiding or gradual revealing of abilities, in my experience anyway, doesn't go well. Could just be the mentality of my players though. If you have a good group that can separate the metagame from the game, you might not even need to hide their abilities from them. You could tell them that their character is not yet aware of this particular power, and you will be making sure it gets revealed in a story significant way.
For example, I have a magus in one of my groups that took the Bladebound archetype. He knew he was going to get a black blade eventually, but we talked and he said he wanted the sentience of the blade to be revealed to him in a story significant way, possibly one that had the potential to change an outcome in his favor. So that's how we did it. The player knew about the blade, but the sentience of the blade wasn't revealed to the character until it made for a great story element.
may i recommend the 3rd party supergenius godling products. The godling, the mystic godling and godling ascendant. They are classes that are meant to do exactly what you are trying to do. And between the 4 types of godlings there is room for alot of character classes. At the very least they might serve as inspiration on how you might want to implement godly influence on the characters
LOL, I first read that as "Peter Jackson Motif".
Is there a question in there? Looks good to me.
Hey Logan.... If you don't have any of the Godling books yet, PM me and I'll make sure you get a copy free of charge. :)
I've read what's available on the srd about the Godling classes, and these look amazing. I'll have to change my original brainstorming, but I think this will work out perfectly. I'm planning on it being a pretty small party (3-4), so having them all be Godlings would be great! I'll definitely keep a campaign journal for this posted somewhere.
Thanks again for all your help!
I tried the godling classes as the prestige class... and it didn't work very well. My guy was an infernal sorcerer and the PrC did NOT mesh well with the spontaneous caster... he was in all ways weaker then if he just kept going with Infernal sorcerer for the same basic premise.
Personally I'd enjoy the kind of surprise twist that your going for here!
For choices over which god? Personally i would NOT decide yet... give it at least a few levels before any 'revelations' occur, then go based off of how they play their characters.
Honestly though it doesn't REALLY matter what god it was. The kids powers do not HAVE to mimic the parents powers... any more then zeus' six dozen demigods are all clones of him. If they're lawful,, the kid could just as easily be chaotic... if theyr'e evil.. the kids can fight that heritage and be good... So I'd say whatever is the best story you wnat to tell :)
Have you looked at the 'mythic' rules? Honestly, that sounds like EXACTLY what your trying to do here.. creating the Hercules and perseus style 'heroes of legend' that don't necessarily 'interupt' the standard class progression.