My greatest sadness with 4e is the loss of potential :
- the GSL and C&D mindset killed 3rd party support in all forms
- the mechanics didn't get the time (vs the man-hours - which it did get, but it isn't the same : humans need actual time to pass to figure things out; not just MOAR WORK!) to really evolve and explore what they could do (snip)
I think 4E needed designers and developers who actually used it for their home games. And that was not always the case. There's an adventure design seminar on YouTube hosted by Chris Perkins and Mike Mearls at some Con where the audience asks the two WotCites to tell them about their campaigns. Chris, of course, mentions Io'mandra or whatever whereas Mike has to say, "I'm not running a campaign." It was like the 2E days where designers didn't actually play the game they were working on....
)snip There are no really good tools for 4e. Don't get me wrong, there are a few nice ones, and a few that could have been awesome (Masterplan being one of these) but were hit with the C&D so hard... (snip)
I only got around to using Masterplan about a week ago and the version I have is brilliant. Even the monster builder is really, really good. I've also now got offline versions of the Character Builder and Compendium: I'm ready for WotC to turn off their servers and/or Silverlight to go to its death.
(snip) Things that are obviously good ideas but were never made :
- a customizable output character builder : I don't believe that anyone can honestly say that the character sheets we got were good. They were pretty, but never useful for play.
4e plays much easier for players if their characters actually look like monster stat-blocs. While it's true that they all have a whole lot of building blocs, in play, they're not really all that hard to handle - there are few situations w/o an obvious choice - and the pertinent numbers don't really change all that much.
- an encounter builder that actually outputs your encounter in a useful form for TT play! I mean... COME ON! Those stat blocs practically beg to be used in a WYSIWYG printing editor - that I have to make a print-screen, post it in paint, crop it and use it in Word is a freaking blasphemy! A BLASPHEMY I say! (snip)
Early on when my players were trying t grok 4E, I turned their character sheets into monster stat blocks. They got it. I agree; it is the perfect format for character sheets, and I do something similar with the cheat sheets I have mentioned a few times in this thread.
Hmmm, I wonder if someone could get CBLoader to export a character sheet in that format?
(snip) On another note :
Has anyone used the 13Age monster abilities approach in 4e?
I'm talking about the "odd natural hit" = action 1; "even natural hit" = action 2, etc. It just seems like one of those excellent things 4e didn't get the time to get around to.
It's a very elegant design and it can be used with the same intent/purpose of random recharge, attacks that should get something more "on a good hit", and many other situations. (snip)
I have experimented with it a little but, so far, I've really just gone with expanding critical ranges and boosting damage and effects that way. But I "buy" the increased damage from the critical with lowered damage from the normal attack effect. Anyway, it's a concept I plan to play with a bit more and, of course, it is inspired by 13th Age.
(snip) Lastly I'm trying to figure out a way to re-1E-fy the attack option a tad : a bit more abstract. My main target is removing multi-attacks as they are currently presented.
My ultimate goal would be to consolidate everything from a round into a single attack and damage/effects sequence.
Advantages:
- easier to estimate PC cabilities
- easier play in combat (hopefully)
- quicker play in combat (hopefully)
- easier to bring in things like DR (which I really like)
- a bit less jarring on the "attacks are abstract, but not this one, but yeah this one too, but really it's a single swing, but not really, but yeah kinda..." that bothers me a bit in some situations
- reduces static modifier damage supremacy
- can make monsters even better* which sounds impossible - but it's true!
- something else I'm forgetting at the moment...
I've also got charge in my sights - I'm not fond of it (I actually dislike it a fair bit.) It's just too easy to justify all those little bonuses that end up making it the best option in almost all cases (a little +1d6 dmg, of course, he's charging, makes sense. Oh! and let's add a little push to that, makes sense. Oh! and this and that and... WHERE DOES IT END!? )
Well, this turned out much, much longer than I intended...
Interesting. I must admit, I really don't tinker with the PC side of 4E at all as I decided that it was going to be all Character Builder, all of the time. Depending on how much tinkering I can do with the offline version, I may take a fresh look at some character options much in the vein you are suggesting but I will wait until after my next campaign. My next campaign features a knight and a slayer and this will be my first time seeing the Essentials classes in action. If simpler works, then maybe I will look at E-versions of some of the other complicated classes.