Myths and Legends d20 [work in progress]

[Belial_the_Leveler]

As both player and DM, I love monsters, especially the cooler ones. Undead, Demons, Dragons, Angels, the occasional Fae; I've both played them and used them as NPCs more often than actual humanoid characters over the past two decades.
And now, I've been thinking; how about a game where instead of normal classes and normal races, we have monstrous progressions of our favorite monsters? The idea is pretty basic but it revolves around the following points;


1) There will be several monster progressions, each one replacing classes of a certain type and playing in a certain way. Specifically:
Angel: Plays protection/healing and the occasional smiting role (cleric/paladin)
Demon: Very resistant vs damage, demonic SLAs (barbarian/warlock)
Dragon: High attack and damage, some magic (fighter/mage gish)
Fae: Long-range attacks, strong magic (primary spellcaster)
Undead: Very resistant vs nondamaging or ranged attacks, fast and hard-striking but usually brittle combatant. (monk/rogue)

2) The monster progression will give ability score increases, natural armor and some abilities fixed for the progression-these bonuses will replace standard items. It will also offer monster abilities and powers-those will replace class abilities. Both ability increases and powers will be spread over 40 or so levels; a low-level dragon will be a wurmling equivalent. An epic-level dragon would be a great wurm equivalent.

3) Abilities and powers will not be fixed to the progression; over levels a dragon for example could focus more on its physical attacks, its breath attacks or its magic-or advance all three evenly. An undead could be a very fast/mobile fighter or could focus on powerful offencive abilities such as energy drain/curses or could focus on being more resilient and hard to kill.



Your thoughts?

[Cieyrin]

So kinda like fixing up Savage Species' monster level system to work as both race and class? That could be interesting. Also kinda reminds me of this adventuring group from Allies and Enemies, The Claw, who were all monstrous adventurers. I believe they were a troll fighter, umber hulk monk, phase spider sorcerer (with a cute little cat familiar XD), ettercap druid (with giant spider companion) and I believe there was one more but what they were escapes me. If you're aiming towards that, I agree whole heartedly with this endeavour ^_^.

Them's my 2 coppers. Take as you will.

[Eldan]

Love the idea, really.
Just make sure to make the different creatures diverse and versatile enough, then: different enough from each other and with enough choices within class.
Since there won't be any races and only few items, a lot of customisation drops away which needs to be replaced somehow, otherwise this won't be good for much besides a one-shot.