D&D 4E Three Moves to Fix/Change 4E

[Tequila Sunrise]

1) Math "fixes" / "feat taxes" - whatever you want to call them - are baked in and removed from the feat section.

This would be my #1 too. Part of the "baking in" would be the removal of stat boosts as you level. Stat boosts look cool, but they inevitably throw a monkey wrench into any balanced math. And honestly, stat boosts are barely a "choice."

2. An inherent enhancement bonus system that's more than an afterthought. This includes adding the word "enhancement" to various bonuses that shouldn't stack with inherent bonuses like racial attacks, fighter shield attacks, Improved Grab, etc.

3. Change everything to hexes. It'll never happen, but hey, this is all purely hypothetical right? At least until 5e...

 

[Mummolus]

1) Integrate the Essentials subclasses into their primary classes, like any other build, and allow the selection of class features at the beginning of character creation. As part of this process, allow each character to select an Expertise at level 1.

2) Improve racial powers to be competitive with one another without losing flavor, along the lines of the change made to Infernal Wrath when the tiefling handbook came out. Carefully add more racial utility powers as part of this process.

3) Themes for everybody.

 

[ppaladin123]

2) Themes are a core part of character creation. Consequently, they will have to be massively expanded. This is also how multiclassing will work from here on out (with bare minimum feat cost to do it).

Maybe everyone gets their racial bonuses, one theme for their race (the racial power, and the option to take racial utility and attack powers) and one background theme (occupation or region of origin, etc.) to start. They can then spend a feat to gain access to one multi-class theme or another background theme (some minor bonuses to skills, an encounter power, and the option to swap in attack and utility powers). The powers for the multiclass theme could be actual powers from the parent class or a smaller subset. Once you have access to a theme, you also have access to any of the associated race, class or background feats.

Half-races would pick one theme from their parent races and have the option of gaining access to the other. This would take up a theme "slot" that could not be spent on a background or multiclass theme.

How does that sound? Too many themes to keep track of?

 

[SSquirrel]

1) Bake in all math fixes, inherent bonuses and use correct monster math from the get-go.

2) Make 80% of all powers power source dependent and have the class specific ones be one of 3 options at certain levels. This will reduce the number of powers drastically as you don't need to have so many similar powers w/different names for different classes.

3) Since inherent bonuses are built into the game, magic items are all items of legend that power up with you. As you become higher level they also gain abilities. Maybe in the heroic tier all weapons have a daily or a constant bonus. In paragon they all gain an encounter ability. At epic they add another constant bonus or an additional use of the daily ability.

4) Keep the 1 constant and 2 choice stat bonuses for all PC races and any designated monster PC races. Make sure these things are available in the CB as soon as they are released, new book on the shelf, official errata or just straight up changes. Like the way they added the stat selections for a bunch of other races recently and then didn't both adding it to the CB. My sub ran out again so they may have rolled them in w/the new update.

5) Either roll Essentials back into the main classes as builds or re-brand Essentials as Basic D&D and re-brand 4E as Advanced. Some of the ideas in Essentials are nice, but I'm not a fan of the different format or the simplification and reduction of choice in making a character.

Yeah I threw in a couple extra, but some of the things I want were already covered

 

[JoeGKushner]

Eliminate rolling to hit multiple targets. One hit roll, one damage roll.

 

[Destil]

Note: this is 4.5 territory. I wouldn't make all of these changes if I could, because they make the game to different in to many annoying ways. That said:

+X items go to +9. Fixes nearly all of the math. There are no plussed items at 1st 11th or 21st level. Move some other items around to be 'tier appropriate' to make sure those gaps aren't a big deal. Split all existing magic enhancements into minor medium and major (rather than weapon +0 through weapon +5).
Level 2 +1 minor
Level 3 +1 medium
Level 4 +1 major
Level 5 +2 minor
Level 6 +2 medium
Level 7 +2 major
Level 8 +3 minor
Level 9 +3 medium
Level 10 +3 major
Remove expertise and the defense feats.
PCs add a magic armor's enhancement bonus to attack rolls made to bull rush and grapple. Make sure all non-implement/weapon attack powers are ability +3/+6/+9 (or +5/+8/+11 vs. AC).

This also means fixing item rarity rules:
A vanilla plussed item costs the same as a minor item but is common and a property can be added at minimal cost with some (cheep 5% of the item's cost) uncommon reagent. There should be no other common minor enhancement, just vanilla plussed items.
Rare plussed items base their plus on the wilder's level and things like temp HP on the wielder's tier. Make every weapon and implement that adds/changes a keyword/damage type rare. Make sure all rares are awesome and something that will be cool for 30 levels. Make every item that adds a constant item bonus to damage rolls rare.

Weapon and implement cleanup: Every implement starts with a 'superior' bonus by default (i.e. all wands are accurate, all staves start with the stuff in staff expertise for free, all orbs impose a -1 save penalty, all rods are 'defensive'). This would roughly even them out with weapons. Make sure all implement classes have a few options.

Clean up superior weapons and implements, add 'Superior Weapon Training' feat options to bring a martial weapon to par with a superior one (purely a flavor thing, I'd love to see longswords, greataxes, halberds and hammers with non-stupid names have a place the game). Something like the new expertise/superior implement feats, but simpler, cleaner and never applying to superiors. I'd keep superiors but drop their number, leaving it mainly as a style choice (huge sword vs. a guy who's amazingly good with a 'small' claymore).

Make sure weapliment builds never have to double dip in feats.

Add two-handed throwing weapons, make the tantalyr +3 and give it a non-stupid name (winged spear).

Fix Multiclassing
Any multiclass character gets power swap feats for free. If you're trained in a skill and get skill training in it from any other source you instead get skill focus (general cleanup, also applies to shades et cetera).
Paragon multiclassing gives you an action point bonus (based on your second class, these would be added to the multiclass feats) at 11th and an at-will from your second class at 16th.
Hybrids need some cleanup but I'd need to look at the specifics more.

Oh, and if I'm allowed one last tiny thing, a one line bug fix. A new action.
Lunge: Standard action. Move up to one square and make a melee basic attack after your movement. You can only take free actions after a lunge.

 

[eamon]

Well, if I had to make three specific changes:
1. PC's don't choose 2 scores but raise all scores at levels 4/8. Barbarians may need tweaking.
2. Get rid of expertise feats. Fix monsters if necessary.
3. No limits on free attacks per round nor opportunity attacks on your turn. Some free attacks redefined as opportunity attacks, possibly some opportunity attacks removed for balance.


But seeing as there's no way I can pick just three things, I'll split em into three groups

1. Reduce the # of feats, powers and items:
- powers should be merged into power-source lists, and these should be not much larger than a current class; but with all the gunk removed. Some keywords may need to be added because classes should retain unique class riders, which would be implemented via keywords.
- feats: just trash a bunch of them, and merge similar feats - i.e. don't have Implement Focus and Weapon Focus, but merge them. Don't have Great X but Great Defense etc. Most feats should have fewer prerequisites since they've been merged with similar feats on similar lines. Feats that do require prerequisites should be easily sorted into groups to make levelling easy; i.e. avoid ability score prerequisites and prefer class/power source/weapon prerequisites etc. The aim should be to fit the maximum amount of variety and spice into 100 feats - if a feat is too specific, it should simply be cut. Avoid tier distinctions where possible.
- items: most can simply be trashed. Items should avoid using rules that encourage centering builds around them (e.g. flaming/frost) unless these are common and easily exchanged: the game is about characters, not items. Whatever the case, to discourage pigeonholing, things like "flaming" should not replace damage types but simply add damage - so the original power still matters and resistance to it's type still matters.

2. Make the math work. I don't care how - as long as it's not an "optional" extra. Get rid of expertise, Masterwork armor, Scaling in defense feats, selective ability score increases (either increase them all or not at all). My preference would be to simply drop them all, and drop many enhancement bonuses, and rebalance monsters to this a slower attack/defense progression - it's better for high level monsters to slaughter PC's than for a dragged out unwinnable contest in which they simply never hit, and conversely it's better for PC to quickly overcome underlevelled opponents that may get in a lucky shot rather than a safe but slow combat. Thus, it's necessary to scale damage at least as much as attacks/defenses. Monster math should be akin to a simplified, abstracted PC math, not an entirely separate beast (thus scaling of PC's and NPC's would by definition be comparable).

3. Clean up combat rules. Get rid of weird exceptions like "only 1 free action attack per round" and "no immediate actions and opportunity actions on your turn" and try to make the whole thing shorter. A good test: if a random D&D player is not likely to know the rule, it's a bad rule no matter how justified.

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

And now for something completely different:

1) The PP costs for psionic augmentations are dependent on the character's level, instead of the level of the at-will power.

PC Level  Augmentation PP
1-10	  1	2
11-20	  1	4
21-30	  2	6

2) Characters gain one non-combat feat every 5 levels. Non-combat feats are:
Skill Training, Skill Focus, Linguist (or one language with Int < 13), Skill Power, Ritual Caster, Expert Ritualist, Alchemy, Martial Practice, Deep Sage, Dungeon Experience, Fey-Minded, Herbalist, Holy Speech, Inner Compass, Jack of All Trades, Bard of All Trades, Long Jumper etc.

3) V-shaped classes get to choose their attack & damage stat for all their powers. Cleric uses Str or Wis, Paladin uses Str or Cha (also applies to DC and DS), Warlock uses Con or Cha.



Other stuff would be math fixes, at least 4 skill trainings for all classes, multiclassing as themes. Lots of good ideas in this thread.

 

[eamon]

2) Characters gain one non-combat feat every 5 levels. Non-combat feats are:
Skill Training, Skill Focus, Linguist (or one language with Int < 13), Skill Power, Ritual Caster, Expert Ritualist, Alchemy, Martial Practice, Deep Sage, Dungeon Experience, Fey-Minded, Herbalist, Holy Speech, Inner Compass, Jack of All Trades, Bard of All Trades, Long Jumper etc.

I like this, but I wouldn't call em feats - that's confusing. Perhaps call the entire group of rule elements Skill Focus?

 

[erf_beto]

I guess I could/should have mentioned Death To Ability Scores as a fix worth suggesting... covers a lot of ground, and I'm not even sure I would want to do it, but it does simplify things.

You know, I've been thinking about that just the other day...
But I figured it would never happen. The most sacred of all cows would probably not slaughtered on D&D. No matter how much you want to kill it and take its stuff. :/