[3.5] Class features for Clr/Sor/Wiz

[Cicciograna]

Thinking about the Tier list, it's obvious that the Full casters are on top due to their spells. Wishing to tackle them down a little, I tought that one thing that could be done would give them the Bard spell progression, capped at spell level 6 as the Bards. This could be a first, debatable thing, so please, give me your impressions on this system.
However, whereas Druids have tons of class features that would fully balance out the nerf bat of less spells per day, of lower level, Clerics, Sorcerers and Wizards completely lack other class features that would make the classes appealing apart from spell potential.

I was thinking about granting Wizards some of the features from Specialist Wizard Variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/specialistWizardVariants.htm) list, although these depend on the selected school and greatly vary in usefulness and power; I could ransack Pathfinder for Sorcerer bloodlines or again take them from UA, but those too have a broad range of applicabilty. For Clerics I'm totally blind.

Do you have suggestions?

[Eldest]

Clerics should have more stuff that's specific to their god. Sorcerers should have stuff related to spontaneity and freedom, or go with the bloodline as well.
And if you are using bard spells, all of their class features should be on par with the bard class features. Just basic things to suggest.

[Vladislav]

The Cleric could gain Divine feats on level 1 and every 5 levels, similar to the way Wizard gains bonus feats.

[Cicciograna]

And if you are using bard spells, all of their class features should be on par with the bard class features. Just basic things to suggest.

Please note that I'm not thinking to give them Bard spells, just to give them their spell progression, meaning that, for example, at 4th level they would cast 3 zeroth level spells, 2 first level spells and 0 second level spells (that is to say, only spells granted by their casting stat, as the Bards). Their spell lists would remain the same.

[Morph Bark]

If you are giving them Bardic spell progression, be wary about the Bard: they have some spells at lower level than them. This is not really unbalancing since the Bard will still get them rather late, but some might not like that.

[HunterOfJello]

Clerics, Sorcerers, and Wizards often gain class features from the prestige classes they go in to. They can pick and choose which specific features they want this way instead of relying on the base classes features and without getting stuck taking multiple levels in a base class just to gain a final class feature that their class relies on. In fact, the Cleric, Sorcerer, and Wizard are freer and have far more options in terms of class features than most of the spellcasting classes. They simply happen to have a lower opportunity cost when going into PrCs than the Druid, Archivist, or Artificer.

[Cicciograna]

Clerics, Sorcerers, and Wizards often gain class features from the prestige classes they go in to. They can pick and choose which specific features they want this way instead of relying on the base classes features and without getting stuck taking multiple levels in a base class just to gain a final class feature that their class relies on. In fact, the Cleric, Sorcerer, and Wizard are freer and have far more options in terms of class features than most of the spellcasting classes. They simply happen to have a lower opportunity cost when going into PrCs than the Druid, Archivist, or Artificer.

Supposing that PrC are not available, are there interesting class features that I could harvest from them to place at suitable levels for the base classes?

[Eldest]

I understood about what you meant about the bardic spellcasting. I was saying that the bard (6th level spellcasting + bardic music + other bard stuff) is tier three. You need to have the wizard, for example, have (6th level spellcasting + class features = tier 3). So the class features should be roughly on the same powerlevel as the bardic class features. Make sense now?

[Prime32]

Try looking at PF's bloodlines (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/sorcerer).

[DeAnno]

While Sorcerer bloodlines are generally pretty good and interesting, they just aren't on the level of Wild Shape + Animal Companion, or probably even Bardic Music. The same goes for most specialist wizard variants I think.

You might want to consider speeding/opening up spellcasting for those classes a little bit more, maybe having it go from 1-7 instead of 1-6. Honestly a Druid with Bardic casting progression is probably still Tier 2 as is, so you might want to watch out for that.

EDIT: Another idea. Maybe allow the bonus spells on those Pathfinder Bloodlines to each also be cast as a SLA 1(+?)/day, to give Sorcerers a taste of spells at a higher level than they normally get.