D&D 4E Things 4E Did Well & Should be Kept in Some Form

[SKyOdin]

Previously posted in another thread, but worth repeating:

1. Powers For Everybody
Every character should have options beyond "I make a basic attack." You should not have to play a spellcaster to unleash a more powerful attack or trigger some beneficial effect when you need it.

2. The Encounter Power
There should be encounter powers to straddle the middle ground between vanilla at-will abilities and more significant daily powers.

3. Healing Surges
Healing surges ensure that healing powers generally keep pace with character hit points as they go up in level. As a reserve of endurance that usually goes beyond what the PCs can bring to bear in any single encounter, they also enable multiple encounters per day while retaining the possibility that PCs could be dropped in any encounter. Possibly, they could be reflavored and renamed as hit point restoring powers instead of healing surges, e.g. instead of having 12 healing surges, a paladin could have 12 daily uses of cure light wounds.

4. Skill Challenges
Skill challenges provide a structure to supplement the normal free-form approach for resolving non-combat challenges that are more complex and require more than a single skill check. Perhaps they could explicitly be made more flexible - for example, the DM could award multiple successes and even automatic successes for good ideas.

I was going to post pretty much this.

While the biggest problem of 4E was the overly constrained design of the power system, the idea that every class should have powers is definitely its strongest idea.

 

[Raith5]

I actually find 4th ed a really simple and quick game to play at the table (far easier that 2nd or 3rd editions IME). This is because

* standard/move/minor breakdown really works
* Surges make healing easy
* Powers are easy to list on my character sheet. I rarely have to look at the books.
* static defenses make combats pretty simple (But I still reckon 4th monsters have too many hp)
* no save or die - so players can play more (but I reckon there is too much action denial stuff in heroic tier)
* resource management - especially with encounter powers - is pretty clear (Sure by mid paragon I sometimes forgot that I have a certain power, but that happens in real life too!)


The fact that classes are relatively balanced means that every character contributes, and the existence of roles means that teamwork is an important part of 4th ed.

As an aside, I also like the new cosmology and the new races.