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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5347764" data-attributes="member: 58197">I completely agree with this.It's worth noting that before 3E, stats played a minor role in determining your attack value. In AD&D, you needed a 17 Strength before you got so much as +1 to hit! To get +3, you needed a perfect 18/00; if you were rolling 4d6 drop lowest, the chance of that happening was less than 1 in 1,000. (With six stat rolls, there's a 9.3% chance that one or more comes up 18, and then you have to roll double zeroes on 2d10.) Likewise, you needed a 15 Dexterity before you saw any benefit to your AC and 16 to get a bonus on ranged attacks.BECMI was more generous, but bonuses still maxed out at +3 and you needed an 18 to get that.As it stands, stats are one of the remaining bastions of "system mastery." Especially given the way 4E is balanced--a +1 bonus to hit makes an appreciable difference--how you arrange your stats has a big effect on your PC's performance. If defenses and attack bonuses weren't stat-dependent, the system would be greatly simplified, multi-classing would be less of a headache, and new players would have one less chargen trap to fall into.Another major change I would make would be to get rid of +X items, or at least change how they work. +X items add needless complexity for players and bookkeeping for DMs, while contributing nothing to the game experience that would justify their inclusion. 4E gets a lot of (justified) flak for its bland magic items, but the blandest magic item of all has been around since the beginning: The +1 sword.+X items are also the driving force behind 4E's crazy economics. The +6 sword is an integral part of the math for epic-level PCs, so it has to be readily available at high levels--it can't be treated as an artifact or near-artifact. But a low-level character with a +6 sword has an overwhelming advantage, so there has to be a way to keep it out of the lowbie's hands. Hence, we end up with epic-level items priced in the millions of gold pieces, and people who trade in such gear yet somehow never have adventurers kill them and take their stuff.</blockquote>

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