Meh. Sounds like the 4E core is still there but you use it as a reference along the way rather than a starting point. It's nice to hammer home that exceptions are allowed, but this is one of the make or break issues for me and it's way to close to 3E's hot hit die mess.
A)Grinding bosses is not the optimal way to grind. They're a tiny part of the game, the best grind comes from champs/elites.
B) This also just isn't statistically true. The most popular level 6 runes at 60 right now are the really good defensive cooldowns like smoke screen due to people using...
A friend of mine came up with this, it's a little rough but covers most pre-darksun weapons easily. I'd make a few adjustments myself (weapons with more than one type should cost more).
Standard free expertise. All defenders and melee strikers have a good melee basic for free, all ranged strikers have a good ranged basic for free.
Magic items are boring in 4E, in most cases. This generally lets me replace them wholesale with more interesting ones of my own design.
Decoupling...
Yeah, iterative attacks are one of the worst things in 3E. I'm pretty happy with 4E's one attack per round, unless you have something that lets you make more like two weapons or the ability to cleave from one opponent to the next.
What the hell? Kits, Themes, Paragon Paths, Epic Destines and Prestige Classes?!!?
That's five names for the same concept. I don't want any of these, I want to see you fix them and do them right this time!
The new magic missile sucks, both from a power perspective and a design perspective. The only thing it's good for is being a free ranged basic for the Mage.
Replace every instance of +[Ability] in powers with the following:
Level 1-7 +4, level 8-13 +5, 14-19 +6, 20-28 +7, 29-30 +8
Retain standard rules/bonuses for feat requirements, defenses and skills.
The thing that worries me now is feats. Feats are going to fix every and any problem and be used to do everything, from what we're seeing.
The vast number and quality of feats in both 3E and 4E was a serious problem for me, and a system dedicated to churning even more of them out worries me...
Playing an agent of the Throne (think: CIA) in a weekly 4E game based loosely on the Cold War. With the potential to rotate DMs at a later point.
Playing a half-elf bard in a weekly online 4E conversion of Carrion Crown who just arrived in Illmarsh and subsequently extorted around a thousand GP...
I'm really hoping that alignment is a module you can add or remove at will (or possibly two for law/chaos and good/evil). So I would expect that, even if there are restrictions, it's not required that DMs use them (since it's not required that DM's use alignment).
Healing surges are the single best character-based mechanic in 4E. They fix nearly every problem with healing/hit points in earlier editions. And every problem I've seen people claim they introduce is easy to fix with some optional rules.
I'm fine with them not being the default, but the rules...