I like how you went through and did a lot to remover taxes on characters, whether it be feats, skills, or wealth and I've always felt Precise Shot was, with Point Blank Shot as its prereq, a two feat tax on ranged characters to become effective in combat. Mind you, I like Point Blank Shot, I just don't care much for Precise shot. I understand this may just be a difference of opinion and preference when it comes to the cost of certain combat styles though, so I can understand why you may prefer keeping this in.
Thanks for the comments dragon. I agree with you on the ranged feats but changing PBS was probably beyond the scope of TB.
That said, we did do a few things to improve ranged characters. We expanded the list of ranger bonus feats and gave him a few more. We also removed the AC bonus an enemy would get if it's an ally granting him that cover. That plus firing into melee would have been a cumulative -8 penalty.
The only real problem I have with some of the combat maneuvers is that they still provoke opportunity attacks, and this mostly comes down to a sort of implied feat tax, because in my eyes the various Improved [Maneuver] feats combined with the opportunity attacks creates a situation where people might never use them unless they have the feat, which to me at least leads to people only using regular attacks. Again, maybe I haven't looked into this enough myself, but this is my impression given a first glance.
Again, somewhat agree, but we didn't want to massively change the maneuver system, other than the base mechanic (although Wulf did rein me in originally...)
Requiring a feat to negate the AoO is certainly a "tax" of sorts but going the other way - removing the AoO from the maneuvers altogether - would sway them towards the "too powerful" side of the scale.
The new combat maneuver system, coupled with action points, makes them pretty powerful. Again, instead of making a lot of direct changes to the system, we improved them in other places: the monk and rogue have access to some Improved bonus feats, the monk's gets a bonus to his attack rolls, and the fighter's Expert Weapon Proficiency allows his to perform maneuvers with different weapons.
The first is a warrior-mage class in the same vein as the other "half-caster" warrior classes, the ranger and paladin. The only reason I say this is because this is personally my favorite archetype, and until 4e, D&D has never really done this archetype any justice, in my opinion at least.
I mentioned some possible new class archetypes but it's low on the list. Our main goal was to reduce the need for new classes and prestige classes by removing multiclassing restrictions and improving multiclass casters. Our philosophy is to encourage multiclassing, not discourage it.
Play around with some multiclass combinations - I think you'll be surprised at what you can create. Combos with paladin, ranger, sorc, wizard, and bard (including pal/bard, which is now possible), yield some interesting results. Even a fighter with a few caster levels and the Swift Spell feat is certainly viable.
The only other thing I'd love to see is more feats. Lots more feats. Specifically higher level, 'advanced' combat feats, something that builds off the various improved combat maneuver feats. I also think it'd be neat if there were some feats that built off of the save boosting feats (lightning reflexes, iron will, and great fortitude) giving some interesting abilities thematically linked to each feat.
Wulf and I certainly have discussed something like this. Consider it "on the list".
