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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mhacdebhandia" data-source="post: 2384266" data-attributes="member: 18832">Replying to myself to clarify.I think the game vastly improved from Second to Third Edition. I bought the three core books when they were revised because a) I only owned the original Player's Handbook, and b) I owned very few unrevised books (in fact, I've bought more since the revision - such as Ghostwalk and Oriental Adventures than I did before it), both of which combined with my interest in Wizards' future products to make it not such a big deal to "upgrade".When it comes to a Fourth Edition, though, my tolerance for change is smaller. I'd like a Fourth Edition to be as backwards-compatible as possible - in other words, a smaller change than from Second Edition to Third Edition, though I'm comfortable with a greater set of changes from Third to Fourth than from original Third to the revision.For instance, I would be happy with a Fourth Edition that made one of its tasks a complete bottom-up redesign of the ECL/LA rules so as to make playing "monster" characters a truly competitive option, as long as the game as a whole was recognisably related to Third Edition in a way you can't really say Third is related to Second.Ideally, Fourth Edition would be a d20 System game which uses the excuse of "it's a new edition" to rethink everything that doesn't work very well right now, a short list of which includes:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Effective Character Levels and Level Adjustments - one option could be to redesign all ECL-carrying monsters to tie their special abilities to racial Hit Dice and have "monster classes" with a Hit Die at every level, which would also make it perfectly simple for a DM to throw weaker versions of strong monsters at his party.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Too little distinction between classes - wizard and sorcerer, for instance. The Fourth Edition distinction ought to be as great as the distinction between clerics and druids.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Polymorph and wild shape.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Epic-level play - specifically, the way in which the current epic rules simply magnify the "cool factor" gulf between spellcasters (cool high-level spells --> epic spells) and warriors (no exciting high-level feats --> incredibly dull and overrated epic feats).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Multiclassing - better to include optional "hybrid" classes akin to Monte Cook's mage blade from Arcana Evolved which effectively represent the fighter-mage concept than to patch the multiclass rules with prestige classes.</li> </ul>That's not everything which a new edition could fix, but it's a start. Basically, I really like the way Third Edition plays. I'd just like to see its weaknesses repaired.If Fourth Edition goes off in a new, non-d20 System non-OGL direction, it would have to be really freaking good to convince me to play - and even so I would be also playing d20/OGL games like Arcana Evolved, Iron Heroes, and Third Edition.</blockquote>

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