First of all, get rid of the coloured background if you expect people to print this. If it's for screen use, put it in landscape format to suit the proliferation of wide screens.
Good point. Hopefully I can reformat to landscape without having to remake the docs...ah, yet another InDesign puzzle to work out.
I think you need to not copy other people's work. Why not take this energy and submit articles to Dragon or Dungeon?
Why don't I take my role playing energy and audition for local theatre? Because I'd rather do this.
This said, I do dig your idea - collecting a "best of" of all 4E material, updating/errata-ing and putting it together would be amazing (and one could fix expertise/defence feats in the same go or chuck out unbalanced or weird stuff)... but sadly, that's only within the purview of WotC.
Taxpertise and NAD fixers will definitely not appear in C4 Feats...whenever I get to that.
You have some interesting ideas, but it's difficult for me to really dive into them because you actually have, well, all of the quoted stuff getting in the way. It would be a lot easier for me to get a feel for your changes with a change list than having to look at every power wondering what happened.
I hadn't planned on emphasizing my house rules (I can already see the "this thread's in the wrong forum!" posts), but here's a [mostly] complete list of 'em.
Extra Level Boosts: C4 characters get extra attack and defense bonuses at levels 11 and 21, which replace feat taxes and masterwork armor. C4 characters also boost
every score at 4th and 8th levels, which keeps the game numbers consistent.
First Level Ability Boosts: Instead of getting racial bonuses to ability scores, C4 characters get training bonuses. Why?
First, because all races are supposed to be playable with any class, but in practice the number of race/class combos that see play are rather limited. That’s because most players look at a race’s ability score entry, and if one of its ability bonuses doesn’t at least boost the prime ability of the class the player wants to play, the combo gets discarded even if the player sees great role play potential in it. And who can blame those players? A big part of D&D is combat, and the best and most fun way to win combat is to hit. And a racial boost to your class’ prime ability is one of the few obvious and easy ways to get better at hitting.
Second, because some racial bonuses punish players for choosing thematic combos. Tieflings should make natural infernal warlocks, but because they don’t get a Constitution bonus, that combo is played less often than the tiefling fey warlock. There are feats that reward thematic combos, like Hellfire Blood, but they’re often circumstantial and many players would rather just hit more often than have a mere damage bonus.
Class Skills: CC4 classes have long skill lists, because your character history should dictate your skills, not your class. The only skills still restricted are Perception and Stealth, some players would take them regardless of history, due to how useful they are for an adventurer.
Weapliments: D&D writers still seem to think that being good at stabbing things and zapping things is wrong, so they make you maintain two items if you want to do that. The traditional paladin, whose historical weapon of choice (the long sword) is his holy symbol (the Christian cross), whose class powers include both stabbing powers and zapping powers, can’t use his sword for both in D&D. Unless he happens to be an epic paladin with a holy avenger, which inexplicably makes it okay.
Paladins, and all other C4 characters, can use weapons as implements. Because guess what? You shouldn’t be punished [more than you already are] for wanting to stab things and zap them.
Build Fixing: Every C4 build has exactly one of the following: a primary stat to AC, a secondary stat to AC, proficiency with heavy armor or a scaling class bonus. Every C4 build relies on just one stat for its attack and damage rolls. Mostly, this doesn’t require any difference from RAW but some builds need editting. For example the RAW arena fighter has two scaling AC bonuses (Dex and a scaling class bonus), while the bear shaman has no scaling AC bonus -- which only encourages such characters to take heavy armor proficiency. Stupid, huh?
Martial Artists: By RAW, only high strength characters are good at opportunity attacks. A rogue can blind several opponents from a distance with his dagger, but if those enemies rush past him, he suddenly becomes a putz as he flails wildly about trying to stab them. This is moronic, even by D&D standards, so C4 weapon wielders can use their build’s prime stat for appropriate basic attacks.
Gnomes: I’m not even a gnome lover, but I don’t think 4e does them justice. Or maybe I’m just really pleased with this tinker gnome home brew I found. 4e has a lot of races now, but tinkers are a classic trope that's still oddly missing. Also, the official gnome prest...whatever racial power is the saddest I’ve ever seen. It actually punishes players for playing gnome wizards, so I upgraded it.
Other: C4 has a few other oddball tweaks, like dropping the idiotic ‘swords only!’ swordmage restriction and dropping the wizard’s faux spell book.
I applaud your level of investment at least. But, do it in a way that doesn't get you in trouble, eh?
Trouble? I eagerly await my wrist slap.
Your inherent bonuses are thought out a lot better than what we get in DMG 2.
Actually i would push them back to levels X5 and X9 in regular play. So finding a magical sword still gives a real bonus (about +1 when finding level appropriate items)
Not a bad idea...*ponders*
