Campaign Setting exercise: Classes

[Baragos]

For a low magic setting with a focus on warriors I'd use the variant fighters from Dragon 310, especially the Commander, Horseman, Knight, Survivalist, and Targetteer. Either do away completely with the Barbarian or change it according to Unearthed Arcana (gets archery and stuff, instead of rage). For Viking Berserkers you could use Frenzied Berserker from one of the Complete books (Warrior I think).
As for not having a bard: ??? The "early European dark ages" as you call it (Early Dark Ages is 500-900 approximately) is THE time of courtly love, poetry, music, in short everything a bard stands for. So I'd incorporate it...also good for a "spy/diplomat" kind of character...

 

[Stormborn]

Paladin Spell Casting is easily, and sensibly to my mind, replaced by a feat at each level the class would gain a new spell level.

Extra abilites tied to deities also seem like a good idea.

Thematically I think replacing the Turn Undead ability with a Favored Enemy mechanic, or maybe even a kind of Band of Brothers thing where Templar's within X feet of each other recieve X bonus, increasing at certain levels. Something very similar to Turning, but slightly different would be an Exorcism or Turn Outsider ability. I like this for the Paladin and it might work for your Templar.

You said in your original post that the setting was inspired by european dark ages, thus my reasoning that your Templar/Knight class should be the same. When you make statements like: "They aren't noble, they aren't mounted, they aren't leaders and they don't go to war. They usually either go to quests for their church or stand and defend the temples.
That's why I thought they should be different classes." you are basically telling us that it IS NOT like the European Dark Ages. The assumptions you are working on aren't clear.

Same with comments like: "The Archer must not be a Fighter with archery feats, otherwise there would not be any reason for it as a separate class." make no sense to me. You are begging the question. You assume that there must be an Archer class but that statement doesn't tell us why you think so, nor why the fighter class needs to be divided into 3 classes, when perhaps individualized sets of fighter feats might work.


I am not trying to be difficult or attack you or your posts. I simply find that in most cases one will not achieve anything without a clearly defined goal. In developing a set of classes for a campaign world that goal must be something like : I want this campaign world to be X." Where X is some period of history (however modified), a genre from fiction, or a particular novel, comic, TV show, or movie you are trying to emulate.

So,What's the goal? Is it a fantasy version of early dark ages europe? If so then everything needs to work back to that point to support that idea.

If change is the only goal then change is all that happens. Usually not unified or with any real purpose.

 

[Li Shenron]

I probably just don't know enough about how the real early dark ages were... I definitely didn't intend the Templar to be a crusader however, and everything related to religion is not going to match too well with the real world history since instead the default religion here is quite like FR or Greyhawk.

As for the Fighter I agree that there is not a real need to split the class. I'm think of doing that just to have more combat oriented classes, if I succeed in making those classes different enough to justify their existence. In fact, the Fighter is going to be used as a starting point only to make the new classes easier to balance!

 

[Baragos]

For a "Band of Brothers" kinda class you might want to check out the Soldier class in Dark Legacies.
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It has cool formation fighting aspects and for this type of setting would make more sense than a fighter with some exotic weapons training. And those things that are specific to the Dark Legacies setting are easily house ruled away.