Hey Wulf.. completely off-topic again, but I wanted to bounce this off you, as someone with real game design experience.
This is something that's been bugging me about D&D since I started playing in 1982 (the red and blue basic set, closely followed by the AD&D books). First off, I always was annoyed that in 1st and 2nd edition AD&D the monsters' stat blocks were completely different from the PCs' (aside from THACO, saving throws, and AC), making it difficult if not impossible to have sensible rules for interaction between PCs and monsters besides simple combat (for example, how would you adjudicate a PC wrestling a minotaur in 1st edition?). Also, monsters had no way of using the non-combat rules (non-weapon proficiencies, etc.) that the PCs enjoyed.
Then along came 3rd edition, and I thought: "Well, now they've finally caught on!". Monsters now used the same ability scores as PCs, they used the same skills and feats system, so all was looking grand.. until I noticed that the most heinous artifact from 1st edition still remained: the Hit Die.
PCs use levels to represent their degree of prowess; higher level lets you: attack more frequently and with more accuracy, have better saving throws, improve your spellcasting and other class abilities, etc. Monsters use Hit Dice in the exact same way (i.e. as a mark of prowess), except it has another factor rolled into it: a monster's size.
To reflect the extra hit points a monster of larger size would have, extra Hit Dice are added to its statblock. This is fine except that increasing Hit Dice also increases BAB, saving throws, and number of skills and feats. Seems innocuous at first glance, but this results in really large, really powerful monsters having absolutely ridiculous BAB and saving throws, which means that PCs have to have ridiculously high-powered magic items, spells, stat boosts, etc. to be able to defend themselves against these monstrosities. I think this is one of the main reasons people complain that D&D breaks down after about 10th level.
It would be a lot better, in my opinion, to replace the Hit Dice stat with a Level stat, which works exactly like a PC level: it is used to calculate your BAB, saves, skills, feats, etc. If a monster is larger or smaller sized, their are specific size-based bonuses and penalties applied. For instance:
1) Strength
2) hit points (increased hit die size, flat hit point increase, bonus hit dice for purposes of hit points only, or whatever other system you care to think of)
3) grappling attack bonus
4) increase or decrease to poison DC (if the creature has a natural poison - the bigger you are, the bigger the dose of poison you inject.. even if a weak poison is a lot deadlier if you get a half gallon of it instead of a drop)
5) increase or decrease to poison save (or maybe to Fort saves in general)
6) etc.
Some examples to illustrate:
Why would a blue whale, which is basically non-aggressive and completely unskilled in combat, have the attack capability of a really high-level fighter?
Why would a sheep the size of a house have better combat ability and better Will saves than a run-of-the-mill sheep?
Basically, I like a simple ruleset that is evenly applicable. The Hit Dice for monsters/level for PCs works against that in my opinion.
I know that was a bit long, but any thoughts?
