nem z said:
Subsystem for dramatic events... see JackelopeKing's D20^A
Thanks, Nem
Were I designing 4e with what I knew today and I was trying to keep it distinctly D&D...
Character Creation/Advancement
Choose your race, choose your power source, point-buy your ability scores. New power sources can be bought later in the game via feat trees, but are going to be more expensive than your first one.
A single generic BAB/Save/Defense/Feat acquisition/Skill progression. Characters should be getting one feat/special ability/whatever each level.
Four generic classes based on the Controller/Defender/Leader/Striker divide. These would determine factors like hit points and proficiencies.
The concepts of feats and talent trees get mashed up into something like the mastery levels from
Iron Heroes, with the prerequisites being based either on character level/tier for general feats that anyone can take, or based on your level in a specific class for more specific abilities. These feat trees should be where the distinct flavor comes in, with trees being named things like "Ranger" or "Wizard", providing very specific and very appropriate abilities.
Feats need to advance with the characters as they level so that they're always useful, or at least useful throughout a given tier. No more "throw-away" feats that are only good at first level. A feat shouldn't grant a bonus 5 hit points: it should grant a character extra hit points at each level.
Skills become very broad, more like skill groups but only available packaged. Advance all skills at the same rate, but allow multiple tiers of bonuses from feats (perhaps from an expert feat tree) to specialize in skills.
Combat
Simplify where possible, inject action where needed.
Tracking tokens in IH sounded like a good idea, and could still work nicely, but I think a simple binary system like Psionic Focus would work best. All of your "powers" have two effects: a "passive" one you can use while focused on that power source (such as a Martial Power granting you a +1 Dodge bonus while focused), and an "active" one that you need to expend your focus for (such as the same Martial Power granting you a +8 dodge bonus against one attack), so you always have the choice of whether to keep the bonus from a lot of small abilities or use one big one. It takes an action to get focused again, and you need to "take five" before you can use certain abilities again.
Get rid of 99% of the conditions out there: they're unnecessary and require players to flip through rulebooks and slow down the game. Unless the condition is spelled out in the spell the player is casting, it's not necessary.
And that goes for combat conditions too (like flanking, grappling, prone, seated, high ground)... wrap them all into the concept of combat advantage, and make it a staged condition, so one level of combat advantage gives you +2 to hit and the ability to use things like sneak attack; two levels denies your foe his dodge bonus to AC; three levels denies your foe his dodge bonus to
all attacks. You don't need huge mechanical distinctions between grappling with somebody and throwing sand in their eyes if the end result is you just trying to put your foe at a disadvantage if the disadvantage is always mechanically similar and mechanically significant.
Non-Combat
See above for nem's all-too-kind plug. Resolve non-combat challenges (like chases, social combat, etc.) with series of wagers and bets resolved by opposed checks. Wager and betting is something anyone can get their heads around. Use the dice and the ebb and flow of gains and losses (perhaps represented physically by chips or a pool of dice you roll and wager) as cues for how the interaction is going in general terms, such as pursuers gaining or losing ground, or a guard being negotiated with becoming more or less suspicious.
Give everyone something to do during non-combat encounters, especially by making the aid skill more attractive, so even if Bob the Fighter has no more tact than your average barnyard animal, he can still try to make a DC 10 check to give Ted the Bard a bonus to his check.
Magic
Simplify, simplify, simplify. Make each type of magic distinct (including differences between power sources and between schools or spheres or whatever within a given power source).
Follow advancement similar to the warlock spread out across different feat trees for "spell selection", so a wizard-wannabe might take spells at different levels from the Fire Mage feat tree and the Wind Master feat tree and the Light Shaping feat tree. Like other powers, spells need to scale with level to remain useful throughout a character's career.
Magic Items
Whether or not a character needs magic items should be up to the player. There shouldn't be any "magical arms race" where players "need" a certain plus on an item or be sorely below their power level. If any of the Big 6 remain, there should be clear rules that the DM can use to simply tie the bonus they would otherwise grant to tiers as "bonuses".
Other magic items which provide neat-but-not-numerical bonuses should continue to exist, because they're fun, providing more options.
There should be feat trees which have options that "use" certain slots, such as a Monk tree that uses your "armor" slot to give you a bonus to AC equal to your wisdom or whatnot. Maybe a wizard feat tree uses a similar concept, only it adds Intelligence or Charisma instead of Wisdom to represent "mage armor".
Kill stacking dead: only the highest bonus counts.
Monsters and NPCs
Monsters turn into templates which are applied to monster roles at appropriate levels. A mind-flayer, for example, is a template which would allow for some psionics, a mental blast, and some brain-snacking. The roles would determine essential combat stats, like attack bonuses, AC, saves, etc. Make it clear that some templates have a "minimum level" because of the power of some of their abilities or stat modifiers.
The basic method for creating a monster should be "apply template to role at appropriate level". The MM should do this for the DM in the main monster write-up (providing both the mind-flayer template and the iconic level 9 mind-flayer mastermind), but the appendix should rip the hood off and show the DM how to do it for himself (just in case he wants to do something like scale down a mind-flayer to be a doable challenge for his level 4 party).
Provide clear guidelines for fudging monsters on-the-fly, so that if I need an appropriate random encounter for my level 9 party, I know off the top of my head roughly where I need to peg the members of a wandering orc warband.
