Plot and character development

[alishenai.livejournal.com]

Hi. Lately I've been sketching out a basic plot for a fantasy novel that I plan to write during Nano. So far I've just been writing down important dot points for each chapter which seems to be working quite well. However I'm a little worried that it might be a bit cliched. For instance the main heroes have to collect various clues. I know that this sort of thing has been done before but is it a bit too overdone? I would love to hear what you think about this.

I also have another question about character development. At the moment I have a wide variety of characters. Such as a snobby but beautiful noble women who eventually becomes one of the most important protagonists throughout the story. I also plan to include background characters, who are initially presented as being "horrible" and "evil" but then later on the main protagonist realizes that these characters really his allies and not his enemies as he initially thought. In your opinion should I try to restrict character development to the mian protagonist? or do you think I should just stick to my original idea?