A 4e "fix" book...

[N0Man]

I have mixed feelings on these subjects. In some ways, I'd like for there to be more freedom allow someone to say be an eagle-eyed character with great perception, but not necessarily great listening as well.

On the other hand, breaking thievery into 4 different skills (like in 3E) was really a raw deal for Rogues then. It gave them the illusion of being a skill monkey, with more skills than any other class, but too many that were expected of them to take by default to do the job expected of them. It became a kind of false bonus.

However, I think that Backgrounds don't take much alteration in order to make them a viable alternative to complicating the skill system. I think next time I run a campaign, I want to *require* players to actually come up with additional backgrounds such as professions and such (beyond just picking 1 for mechanical benefit), that can lend them circumstance bonuses when in a situation related to those backgrounds.

I have even considered a Background advantage/disadvantage system so that a skill might be particularly effective in one circumstance, or less effective in one.

 

[cattoy]

Not exactly a fix, but explicit power design guidelines.

Madness. They'll never publish those, they keep such things internal so they can parcel out packets of game design in additional PHBs or power books.

How else are they supposed to make money? Never publish anything you could serialize. It's not power creep, it's profit creep.

 

[Jhaelen]

Madness. They'll never publish those, they keep such things internal so they can parcel out packets of game design in additional PHBs or power books.

How else are they supposed to make money? Never publish anything you could serialize. It's not power creep, it's profit creep.

Nope, they'll never publish those because balancing powers is an art not a science.

They'll never be able to create guidelines that wouldn't be abused to create broken powers and then everyone would complain...

Regarding the background argument:
Well, that's what the aptly named 'backgrounds' are for. I could totally see backgrounds granting bonuses to several skills under specific circumstances rather than a single skill bonus that applies all the time.

 

[Dausuul]

I like the idea of an "Unearthed Arcana" book with a bunch of optional rules variants - especially if those variants were incorporated into the Character Builder. But...

...as I think about it, I can't come up with much that would go in a 4E Unearthed Arcana. I have two main classes of problems with 4E.

The first class of problems is with specific feats, powers, and class abilities. These problems mostly boil down to one or more of "X is godly," "X is weaksauce," or "X adds to the profusion of fiddly little modifiers that I have to keep track of in combat."

The second class of problems is with core systems; the big one being the magic item system, which I consider to be totally messed up and pretty much unfixable without a complete rewrite.

It's hard to see how problems in either of these categories could be addressed by an Unearthed Arcana-style patch. For the first, they can hardly errata thousands of powers, class features, and feats. For the second, they'd have to whack out huge chunks of the game and replace them somehow.

With the "inherent bonus" option, I think the DMG2 has already done about as much as can be done to fix magic items - the rest of the issues, like the wacked-out economy, couldn't be fixed without creating a whole parallel system and list of items/prices, which is beyond the scope of an Unearthed Arcana book or a DDI article. It would require a whole book on its own.

Hmm. Maybe I should write that book...