What game mechanics do you like?

[Ridley's Cohort]

I find the "magic battery" model very... unmagical and modern in tone.

You are implicitly assuming something silly like "spell points". Yuck.

A more modern game design approach is have casting magic induce fatigue. So I can just keep casting until I drop unconscious if I really want.

That opens my entire spell list to be cast at any time, and is a huge boon to those players you mentioned that have trouble deciding what spells to choose. They are always allowed to cast any spell they like ... if they are willing to pay the price. (Fainting in the middle of combat has an obvious enough downside.)

Personally, I do not see spell slots to be all that different from magic points. But I am not a Vance fan.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Favorite mechanic: Feats. It really uses the positive aspects of a level-based system in a way that is both fun to play and intuitive to use.

The multiclass rules are pretty good (and a VAST improvement over what cam before). I think they could use some polishing with respect to frontloading issues.

 

[Voadam]

Ridley, you mean with +2 strong saves and some class' first level abilities (Ranger/Monk)? I agree.

 

[mmadsen]

The multiclass rules are pretty good (and a VAST improvement over what cam before). I think they could use some polishing with respect to frontloading issues.

In fact, it cleans up a lot of things to spread "first level" out over four levels. It means that max skill ranks equal level, it means that Saves don't need +2 at first level, it means that Feats and Special Abilities can be spread out a bit, making that first level of multiclassing less jarring, etc.

Starting characters at fourth level also means that they can start multiclassed without special rules, that they can have NPC levels for background, etc. -- but we have to amend the one-hit-die-per-level concept a bit for it to work.

 

[mmadsen]

Critical hits
They're a really big thing in my games.. the joy of scoring a critical in a difficult encounter. A few lucky hit's can really make or break the encounter. (For good or worse, from a DM's point of view.)

I enjoy Critical Hits too, but I wish they weren't quite so rare. As they stand now, they feel like an anomaly whenever they pop up. I'd prefer mechanics that let high-level heroes score crits on a regular basis against lesser foes.