I started out with the concept of archetypes, warrior, mystic, and trickster. Then every class would be a manifestation of one of those three. However, it didn't really mesh with power sources cleanly at all, and I LIKE power sources. Archetypes were kinda nice, but power source give you more connectivity with the rest of the setting's cosmology and whatnot. Archetype is only about YOU, but power source helps define relationships. So I finally ditched archetype as just being redundant. In any case it was feeling kinda like there were just 3 classes, and that was a bit restrictive, even if they each had a bunch of 'subclasses' (that were called class). Obviously the archetype approach WILL work, and you can spin it to be much like 2e's classes, were the 'group' provided some rules hooks but no actual features.
My idea is characters always start with 3 major boons. Your race can provide one or more, your background can provide one, and your class always provides at least one, but could provide 2, or even 3 (if you just ignore all your racial boons, which is allowed). You also get a few racial attributes, and background gives you some implicit knowledge. You can actually start out 'doubled down' on your race, or even tripled down on your race and not pick any of your class boons at all starting out. You'll still have your power source, which gives access to some thematic powers, and a damage die that reflects your role as well, as well as your weapon/implement/skill stuff from your class. You can always acquire class boons in the usual way later too, it just means you're more 'dwarfy' and less 'knightly' or whatever. Likewise you can forgo any background boon if you want, though you always get some training out if it if you want it.
There are a bunch of things I do with 'Healing Surges', that is Vitality Points, which can be used to power up 'encounter' powers multiple times, and which are required to unleash a 'daily' type of power. You don't really get more points than in 4e, roughly, though, which means you really can't toss out Vitality powers, or do recharges, much. It does allow for a bit of extra use of a really signature power though, when its fully appropriate. You can get a point back after a milestone.
Interesting.
Do Vitality Points not run out much faster this way? I found that increasing uses for them made them run out far too quickly without also increasing the number a bit.
But, I also did make it so that Encounter powers cost 1 Surge to use, and Daily powers cost 2, and you can spend 1 Attribute Surge to reroll a skill check that uses an attribute associated with that attribute. *
Additionally, Action Points can be used to activate a Daily Power, or to use an Encounter power with Advantage on the first roll associated with it. Usually it's better to just use it for an extra Action, but sometimes it's better to use it to do a Daily without depleting Surges.
If you're curious, the way I increased Surges was to tie them to give each player a number of Reflex, Fortitude, and Will Surges equal to their Defense bonus, which is the modifier of the attribute used to calculate each defense. So, if you've a 16 dex, your Reflex Defense Bonus is 3, and you have 3 Reflex Surges.
*If you flub a check with Str or Con, you can reroll OR add a 1d6 by spending a Fortitude Surge, if it's Dex or Int, use a Reflex Surge, and Will Surge for Cha or Wisdom. Or use an Action Point to reroll as per the Surge reroll, but you roll twice and take the best of the three d20 results.
The character sheet will have tick boxes for your Attribute Surges and Hero Surges (what I'm calling healing surges), for ease of tracking.
I too keep power source, and many of the Talents in the game will be organized by power source rather than class. I've converting 4e powers into a more Saga-style format. Talents are either Saga style talents, or give Abilities, which are things like Force powers or Starship maneuvers in Saga, but cover a range more like 4e powers. Since they are all Talents, classes get a talent of a given level when 4e would give a power. This allows you to either focus on using a few Talents a lot, or even take mostly passive Talents, or to have a plethora of distinct, singular abilities like a classic 4e character.
Most characters will be somewhere in between.
[sblock=To be clear regarding Archetypes in my own RPG] my use of Archetype is as a class replacement, rather than an overclass with subclasses. There are many distinct Archetypes, like Theif, Assassin, Champion, Captain, Ranger, Hunter, Warlock, and Alchemist, and also some very world specific ones, like Knight of The Red Dragon, Order of Nuada Alchemist, and Benedante.
Each Archetype gives you 2 Inherent Skills , which you always have Accurate Dice with (which is the game's minor bonus. you always reroll 1's if you have accurate dice) and are trained with 1 rank automatically, and 1 Inherent Trait, which you gain automatically when taking the Archetype.
Then you choose 4 more skills (each character starts with 15 or so skills trained, which is less than half the skills in the game) from the Archetype's skill list, and have a 5 Character Point discount on any traits chosen from your Archetype's trait list. In this way, you can effectively "multi-class" even from level one, but buying another classes Inherent trait and/or some of it's discounted traits, or you can stay purely in your own Archetype. Staying within Archetype costs less, so its usually best to keep most of your starting traits within your own Archetype, but it won't make a huge difference in overall efficacy.
Then Origin is a mix of your race, how you were raised, where you're from, and what you do/used to do (for a living or whatever. your main focus as person outside of adventuring) Each part gives 2 skills, and your race gives certain features. I may give each race some discounted traits, for people who want to focus more on race and culture and background than Archetype, or I may release something later on that features Racial Archetypes, or both.
I know that the main way the system deals with "half" races and mixed race ancestry is for characters to take race specific traits from the other race, with DM discretion, and use parts of an origin tied to the other race. I may also break the traits from races down into point values, but that gets too fiddly for a core book I think.
Anyway, I'd love to compare notes on the system with you, if it sounds interesting. here is a link to my forums for the game, and the setting/game pitch.
http://questforchevar.proboards.com/thread/22/quest-chevar
[/sblock]