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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oni" data-source="post: 5039090" data-attributes="member: 380">There is an assumption built into the game that PC's will have level appropriate gear, especially the three most important slots, implement/weapon, armour, and neck.  Those offer bonuses to hitting and defenses, and the monsters are built to factor that gear in when determining their hit and defense bonuses.  So if you want to remove the half level bonuses and have the basic math of the game remain as the designers intended then you have to account for the +X bonuses from magic items.  The simplest way to do this is just to leave the +X items as is and forget about it.  Alternately if you want to flatten the power curve more you can remove them, but then it will skew the game too far toward the monsters at higher levels and so you'll have to compensate by making adjustments to the monsters' bonuses based on the expected bonuses of PC's of the monsters' levels.  Or, if like me, you don't like the reliance on magic items, and the treadmill of acquiring bigger and bigger bonuses, you can simply make the expected +X items bonuses an inherent one.  Each will give you a slightly different feel.  Not to dissuade you from 4e, it's a fine choice, but if you're looking for a simple version of D&D to play with kids might I also suggest <a href="http://www.basicfantasy.org/" target="_blank">Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game</a> it's free and has a lot in common with older versions of the game, but updates some of the clunkier mechanics like thac0 and descending AC.  There are some other free retro clones available that are a little more traditional as well.  Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, and OSRIC (which is AD&D for all practical purposes) spring to mind.  The more traditional ones have the advantage of lots of fan material, that is all roughly compatible with each other and the original games they're based on. Heh, I'm getting increasingly off topic, hopefully I answered your question though.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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