Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
Numerical Bonuses
I would probably ditch the 1/2 level bonus. I did this for my Star Wars and Arcana Evolved hacks. I am considering cutting the hit point bonuses at higher levels, for similar reasons- extending the usability of monsters, and also to make the power level differences between 1st and 30th level a lot less. You might still be able to overwhelm a level 20 fighter or wizard with a bunch of archers (though expect a lot of them to die before you can fell them)
Items
I'd also ditch +x items. You don't have a +3 Longsword, but you might have a Longsword with 3 enchantments, say, deal extra fire damage on crit, can be thrown and returns to your hand, and can shed bright light in a 30ft radius. Or you outright have a Flametongue Sword that has a bunch of fire-based powers you can unlock over time.
Class Design
For utility powers, I would probably silo off non-combat abilities from combat-abilities and design all classes to have both.
With the Star Wars one, I gave every class talents that helped define their non-combat / story / narrative purposes more. Like Fringers get talents to help them deal with travel hazards, or barterers, scoundrels beinng good at infiltration or false identities, Nobles get talents for good education and good contacts, or can start with wealth or a luxury space craft, soldiers can become particularly good with explosives, heavy vehicles or interrogation, scouts are good hunters and help a group travel faster, Technicians get gear modifications and are better at dealing with droids and computers. Most of this has little to no effect on combat situations.
Action Management
I haven't really figured out how to do it, but I would like to reduce the amount of triggers for immediate actions to be a bit easier to manage. I don't want to remove them, I think out of turn actions are a cool game feature that enriches gameplay and also helps deal a bit with the artificial nature of turn-based combat. But it can become overwhelming.
Power Management
I've also experimented with the rules on how you "pay" powers. I might ditch dailies all together and just make them "more" expensive powers, basically you might need to spend 2 "encounter power points" to use one daily. Powers being usable more than once per turn means balancing them can be harder, but during my Star Wars campaign, I changed the rule to allow people to use their encounter or daily power uses on any encounter or daily power they knew, respectively, allowing them to reuse them. Of course, in a small campaign with people you know, this isn't going to be a big deal, it might be harder to manage if you try to make a fair system for a highly diverse audience.
In addition, I'd probably ditch the different levels of powers, and only have levels based on tier and frequency - so you get heroic tier, paragon and epic tier powers.
In my Star Wars game, I only had at-will, encounter and daily powers,and no class lists. There was a generic list of powers and Force Sensitive had access to force powers. My game had Jedi and Sith classes that you can only enter at Level 6+. (Multiclassing worked by letting you swith your class at 6th level and every 5 levels thereafter).
For my Arcana Evolved system, I have at-will, advanced, masterful, paragon and epic abilities and they are seperated into spells and exploits (I don't really care for singling out divine/primal and the like).
I am not sure this is the best approach, though - class-only powers might also be easier to be balanced and also allow better interaction with class-specific actions. And all those riders are definitely unwieldly and not beginner-friendly.
There are also some power archetypes I think 4E didn't have, or didn't have enough of.
- Augments: If you hit, you can add a bonus effect (as encounter or daily). Like the Essential's "Power Strike" ability.
- Charge-Ups: Particularly for spells, I like the idea of charging magical energies (mana or whatever) to eventually cast a more powerful spell. Something like a Delayed Blast Fireball that deals more damage and has a wider radius the longer you delayed.
- Passive Benefit + Trigger Ability: Just knowing some powers might give you a small benefit, but you also get an active ability to use occassionally, the active ability being a bit weaker because you have an always-on benefit.
Class Options
Make simple options for at least some classes in each major role or power source. Something like the Essential classes like the Slayer or whatever. There needs to be a simple fighter and a simple wizard at the minimum in my opinion, because both are strong archetypes that appeal to many people, even if they aren't interested in highly complex stuff. But I want no class to be locked into this style.
For my Star Wars game, the classes didn't have roles, the player chose a role (and I only had Controller, Leader and Defender roles. I ditched the Striker role,, because I felt it might end up being too seductive) and each role has some fixed role abilites, and powers had riders based on your role.
For my Arcana Evolved approach, the classes do not have a fixed role: instead, you choose a path inside that class that has a role. Magisters can be Sophists (Strikers), Arbiters (Controllers) or Instructors (Leaders), Mage Blades can be following the Conquering Blade (Striker) or the Shielding Blade (Defender) path, Akashics can focus on Secret Memories (Strikers) or Guiding Memories (Leaders), Warmains may be Avengers (Striker), Caretakers (Defenders) or Overseers (Leaders). This might lead to less classes and some classes being turned into class specializations. Of course, in this scenario, I also use generic power lists.
