I'll Take "What If" for 200 Alex

[Tortoise]

Having seen the books and now having a much clearer idea of how things work for 4e, an idea of "what could have been" popped into my head during a slow moment at work today.

This wasn't one of those "this would be better" or "4e sucks because it wasn't this" type of ideas, it was more of a "that might have been nifty too" type of things.

It's also a sort of "what 5e could be presented as when the time comes" type of thoughts.

Imagine, if you will, having the 1st set of core books be aimed primarily at the Heroic tier, Levels 1 through 10. The second set aimed at Paragon tier, and the 3rd set aimed at Epic.

This would allow more space in the PHB (for example) for things like additional classes or races. More power and feat options. (Especially handy for injecting just a little bit more variety into low level characters without getting too loose in the design.) And room for more magic items.

The DMGs and MMs would also have a bit more room to expand on the depth of game play and how to craft creative and exciting experiences within the given tier and to squeeze in some rules that got held back or less detailed due to space limitations.

It would also give it a little more of the BECMI feel many of us old farts remarked we were getting a sense of a month or two back.

Anything you can think of that might make for a nifty "what if"?

 

[Blue]

Generic classes

This is keying off something Mike Mearls said as "hey, that could be cool", not as a "I wish 4e was this".

A more generic class system where you can pick up any type of ability, but with role protection and balance.

4e classes, once you take out the class features, are very generic. Lists of class skills, HPs and related, armor/weapon proficiencies, and a few class abilities. Say that we generalize those things by power source.

Then put in "power source" levels much like the 3.5 Book of Nine Swords had for the levels of it you could pick, and use that to determine the level of attacks and utilities when you got them. Basically, it was levels of appropriate classes plus half other levels. Then put in 3.x multiclassing (but without prestige classes). So if you took 10 levels of the "martial" class and got to pick an new ability, it could be up to a level 10 martial power or a level 5 power of some other part. A character who was 4 martial and 6 divine would be able to pick up to 8th level divine powers (6 + 4/2), 7th level martial powers (6/2 + 4), and 5th level other powers (6/2 + 4/2).

Cheers,
=Blue(23)