Gestalt replacements

[Blackhawke]

Lately, I've been looking at the D&D 3.5 gestalt system. I look at all these different combinations, and I think: Can't you just beef up a certain class? So, with your help, I was thinking of undertaking this task, but I am very new here. I know not the use of these nice fancy tables that make life so much easier. Any assistance would be nice, and hopefully could be placed in this thread. This is probably going to be a base before I get going.

Most of the ideas I'm looking at for gestalt replacements are beefs or selective mergings of several classes. Merges and beefs include:

Barbarian/druid/ranger - Master of the Wilderness
Super Monk (name yet to be thought of)
Barbarian/Fighter... sorta - Heavy Weapons Master
Ranger/Fighter - Expert Archer
Fighter/unknown - Dual-Wielding Master
Fighter - Shield Master

Just some ideas. If you haven't guessed, I'm more of a combat player. But beefs and tweaks aren't the only things I've been thinking of. Entirely new classes like the Psychotic Maniac would tickle my proverbial whiskers to make, so I'll start drafting up some ideas in a few days, try some self-balancing against some monsters...

[Erk]

Why not just use gestalt classes, and give them fancy names rather than "rogue/fighter gestalt"? Saves you a lot of trouble, and lets your players design their characters with more freedom.

[Jack_Simth]

I think I need to second the "why?"

In the process of simply upgrading classes vs. "normal" gestalt, you're reducing player options (which, while it reduces powergaming, also reduces how much flavor the player can mechanically squeeze in).

[Talanic]

Yeah, making classes default into specific gestalt combinations is more limiting than enabling.

What exactly do you really want to do, and why precisely?

Are you looking to make up charts that tell how a particular combination gestalts up?

[Blackhawke]

Actually, I think I might have not exactly mentioned this well enough. My idea was simply creating classes, but were more powerful than normal characters. Normal gestalts are nice, I'll admit (I like the monk/rogue one myself), but some feature I may want to drop to add another, or possibly make up an entirely new class with unique features.

This is in no way meant to limit characters at all, just give a specified class instead of going two different approaches at once (IE: full-on archery master, instead of slugging through it as a ranger/fighter and running out of useful feats). If you'll notice, most of my classes use a base fighter in it, because thats the only relative thing I could think of. Fighters, in my opinion, got the short end of the stick (I do like the 4-option variety posted in these forums, might adopt that), so most of these are major buffs to the fighter, but would be far too powerful for standard adventuring.

I'm simply proposing major buffs, not limitations. I sincerely apologize if this came across poorly, or if it still does.