Shattered Alliance

True, except that my plan is to that the group and dynamics are different depending on which of the 36 combinations the player chooses. A male human rogue, for example, would get a different group than a male elven rogue, who would get a far different group than a female orcish mage. So adding another 12 combinations becomes a little larger than it seems at first. I do appreciate the suggestion, though.

Not really necessary when there's already a generic Mage class, which I assume covers all kinds of magic; offensive, defensive, healing, support, etc.
This does raise the question of how characters are going to heal themselves. The most obvious answer would be Potions and other items, but I'm sure J_Taylor has some more interesting options planned. I'll just go ahead and throw out random ideas while it's on my mind:

-Mages will of course probably have access to some kind of White Magic
-Rogues may end up being "Item Specialists" and be able to use better items, or take normal ones and enhance their effects
-Warriors may be able to focus their power into some kind of self-heal, a la the Monk's Chakra ability from Final Fantasy Tactics
-Trolls from various mythologies are renowned for having enhanced regeneration healing
-Dark Elves have occasionally been compared to vampires, so you could incorporate a racial health draining ability

^^^ only one I hadn't considered was the warrior one. I'm still not SURE how I'm going to implement healing, as I want every member of the team to be individually useful, so I don't want all members to be able to heal. I mean, obviously, the characters will heal slowly naturally, as that would happen in reality. But as for hyper-healing, I'm thinking I'm going to stick to mages and potions.

This brings up a point I'd like to offer, too. I don't want the normal battles (Yeah, I know. I'm practically re-making EVERYTHING from the default...). Right now, the concept is in-game walkaround battles. But that could be somewhat unwieldy. I've discarded a few dozen re-imaginings of the current battle system, but none seem to work. Any ideas?

In-game walkaround battles? I'm not sure I follow. Are you talking about battles that are initiated by coming in contact with enemy NPCs, as seen in the Mother and Mario RPG series?

Unfortunately I haven't the foggiest idea on feasible ways to rework the OHR battle system. You'll probably have to fabricate a new battle style yourself with plotscripting. The best advice on this matter I have is to play other OHR games with unique battle systems and ask the author if it would be okay to peek at the code and learn / borrow from it.
Only one I can think of that's sortakinda relevant to your situation is Mogri's Do You Want to be a Hero?

I'm not familiar with Mother or Mario RPG, so I'll reference OHR games. Walkabout battles would be like those from TimTim's Tower or The Crypt of Baconthulhu. I think you had the right idea before.

I've though of a couple ways to redo the battle system that I'd like to use, but none seem appropriate for Shattered Alliance.

Oh! Well, that's completely different from what I was thinking of.
But with those kinds of battles, there's always been just one character doing the fighting. You've been talking about forming a whole party of people. I can't think of a game that's done battles like this, aside from maybe Gauntlet, but that relies on your allies being human-controlled.

Final Fantasy Adventure had AI-controlled allies.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

I'd be yet another complex script, but hey, this game is gonna go into my portfolio when it's done, so the better it is, the... well, the better it is!