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Oh, sure, and it was 3E's biggest flaw. Too many modifiers, and too many circumstantial or variable modifiers. Slowed down combat tremendously. The player of the barbarian in my game had a page full of his attacks and damage under different combinations of effects. Inspire Courage varying...

That's one thing that I saw as increasing the complexity, the AC bonus. Varying numbers slow down the game; many players have to stop and recalculate their math each time something changes. It's not a problem with every player, but in general it gets more pronounced as you have a) more...

I had heard that "wizard" was like the words "braggart" and "drunkard." Braggart = one who brags a lot Drunkard = one who is drunk a lot Wizard = one who is very wise Based on this, I always viewed a wizard's mind as his most important asset, and I have loved stories in which wizards solved...

Prestige classes sort of filled this role in 3E, along with the paladin and some base classes. While the Holy Liberator and Blackguard were really too much "paladin with the serial numbers filed off," there were some better options. Here's one way you could have set up each alignment with a...

I know it's not exactly what you were getting at, but one way to integrate both player ability and character ability is to allow the player an amount of time dependent on the character's Intelligence. An average 10-Int PC might have 2 minutes to solve the riddle. If the PC has only 6 Int...

In the past, there were 3 game-balance mechanics applied to wizards relative to fighters. These were not bugs -- they were design principles that made playing a magic-user a very different kind of challenge than playing a fighter. 1) Wizards started off weak but could eventually become very...

+2 to hit for 1d8 damage is pretty good at 1st level. If the fighter is at +5 and the wizard is at +2, then the wizard will still hit AC 14 opponents (which MM suggests is appropriate for CR 1) about 45% of the time to the fighter's 60%. So, he hits 75% as often as the fighter, and does maybe...

Yeah, but the "wealth by level" is really not useful, since it doesn't account for the items actually being useful for the party. Consider two parties. One has a set of Splint Mail +2 and two +1 Throwing Axes. The other has two sets of MW Fullplate, a +1 longsword, and 50 +1 arrows. The...

What about saving throws and ability DCs? I can see leaving off skills and feats, but it sounds like with what you're increasing it's not that different than 3E monster upgrading. I had gotten pretty good at adding HD or levels to monsters. I did have to look up some effects of the size...

Not core AD&D, no. But certainly the bloated mess that 2E had become was full of options for character optimization (such as two-weapon style specialization).

Not as I recall. Remember, TSR had gone bankrupt, 2E had gotten bloated with the Skills & Powers options, and with new ownership a new edition made sense. You had a great deal of streamlining with 3E and that was part of its appeal. The bankruptcy shouldn't be ignored either -- there was a...

Right now, the wizard gains three spellcasting benefits from high Int: 1) Bonus spells are nice but not essential 2) The ability to cast higher-level spells is essential for a small fraction of games. For most games, a wizard could have a 16 Int and never be limited by it. 3) Spell DCs are...

I think there's a lot of middle ground between "unimportant" and "as important as they are in 3E." Spell DCs made Int/Wis/Cha far more important than they ever were before. Power Attack made Str doubly useful -- you add to damage directly, and can turn your to-hit bonus into more damage. The...

"Fewer or more expensive stat-boosting items" and "less impact of ability scores on game mechanics" are both ways to reduce ability score inflation. Along with the other ideas I mentioned. If having an 20 Int doesn't give you that much of a benefit over having a 16 Int, then you won't see as...

The game could certainly stand to have ability scores be less important. There's no point at which you don't "need" additional bonus in 3E. Even if you started with 32-pt buy and got 1 ability point every 2 levels, that Belt of Giant Strength is still going to make you a better fighter. Or...

It does feel to me more like an entirely new game rather than a revision of D&D. Take these three things we've heard: 1) Alignment will have few or no mechanical effects 2) Wizards will never entirely run out of spells and should never need to resort to a mundane weapon 3) PCs will be FAR...

There are a few ways around this that would reduce powergaming and streamline gameplay. Str-boosting items could go back to giving a flat bonus (Gauntlets of Ogre Power in earlier editions, Divine Power in 3.0). That's not a bad mechanic as long as the buffs are curtailed enough that an 18 Str...

Biggest worry is encapsulated in this train of thought: "PCs are heroes from the beginning. So they get triple HP at 1st level." Heroes are defined by their choices and their courage, not their powers. Rephrase it as "PCs are superior to everybody else around them from the beginning" and...

I'd hope that 4E would address the things that were introduced in 3E but turned out to be poor design choices, sometimes in ways that the designers hadn't foreseen. Iterative attacks keep fighters viable at high levels, but slow down the game quite a bit, especially due to the variable math...

This would be fairly easily done in 3.5 by just giving everybody Combat Expertise for free, removing the limit, and granting certain weapons adjustments when using it (such as some exotic weapons have already). I recall that Rolemaster had something like this, with a statement that only an...