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Message: <blockquote data-quote="A'koss" data-source="post: 1968081" data-attributes="member: 840">How I'd tackle the 4th Edition.I seem to have missed this thread - time for cast Resurrect Thread! While I would keep many of the core 3e mechanics - d20, Skills, Feats, Spell breakdowns by Level, Level-based Advancement, Hit Points and the 6 ABility Scores, I would tackle remaking the game with serious eye on game balance - particularly at higher levels. I would start with a new philosophy - How long should a challenging encounter last at any given level? That means no more "one hit wonders", no more game fubaring magic and I would greatly reduce the growing disparities in the game between the various classes. Disparities in AC, HP, Saving Throws, Skills and Attack Adjustments. At higher levels, to challenge one character often means that a weaker one is in serious trouble or even one-round roadkill. No more - a fully healed party can expect to last a good number of rounds against a challenging enounter.  I would tailor the game towards allowing more "cinematic" experimentation, allowing for longer combats at higher levels. A fully healed party (of at least moderate level) should have the opportunity to try all kinds of crazy tactics and cinematic stunts without worrying that failure will be immediately rewarded with death. I would mold the game so that power escalation would be more predictable at all levels, especially high level gaming and keeping an "opening" for epic level advancement.  Magic would be toned down in power at the higher end of the scale, but I would love to incorporate a spell point system which would allow greater flexibility and simply more spells to cast for Wizard players to compensate. A wizard, in my mind, is all about the magic - he should rarely have to resort to conventional weaponry. But at the same time, his magic should not overshadow what other classes should be able to do at that level. I would change most of the combat spells so that they required some kind of attack roll in order to succeed or to have the maximum effect. You hurl fireballs and lash out with a lightning bolt. Again, magic would be toned down in such a way the damage output would be lessened, but compensated by the fact you can cast spells more often... That, to me, is a big part of the fun of playing a wizard - throwing magic left and right in a big cinematic battle. With a lot more attack rolls for spells, you have the opportunity to score critical hits which I think just adds to it. Will Save Effects... I would institute something like Resolve Points, which I posted here not too long ago. In a nutshell, Resolve represents a characters ability to resist mental attack, fear, horror, torture, energy drain or do something extra-heroic (like hero points). In my low-magic game I tied it into many feats and character abilities which provided a natural balancing factor. You don't use too much or Resolve goes down and you become more suseceptable to Resolve attacks. That takes care of the Save or Nerf spells and effects. Hit Points... They would be static for PCs by default, but with the option to roll if you really wanted. The reason being that HPs play a huge roll in game balance and in order to have a more predictable (and therefore DM-manageable) game, you need to control this. I would compress the numbers between the classes, bumping up the low characters and provide more HPs at 1st level. Con bonuses are the biggest problem at higher levels - so they gotta take it on the chin. Even small Con bonus differences at higher levels translate to huge HP disparities between the classes. Con's gotta do something different other than provide bonus HPs - perhaps increasing the character's healing rate (even magical) and other misc. effects. Stat disparities can be problematic at higher levels in other ways - it doesn't need a heavy hand, but perhaps characters should get +1 to all stats at every X levels. That would help level things out. I would also remove stat influences from spell saving throws - just have a static mechanic with feats that would allow you to give a small boost to specific classes of spells. No more prestige classes and feat stacking that allow you to create virtually unsavable spells. Classes... I've touched upon Wizards already and how I'd reduce the disparities between the classes. I'd also like to see more customizability and unique abilities amongst the classes. Fighters for example, they have the flexibility, now I think they deserve a list of Fighter-specific abilities to choose from as well. The same goes for the other classes - provide more options so that not all paladins are carbon copies of one another. Perhaps one focuses on healing more, another in turning, another in demon-slaying... Combat... Make combat more flavorful for the fighter-types. Wizards have all their neat spells, fighter-types should have multi-round tactical options, cinematic fighting styles and squad-based tactical options. I would change the current iteritive attack scheme so that each character has *one* Base Attack Roll. If you want to make multiple attack, you choose to do so by taking a cumulative -4 penalty to all attacks (for each additional strike). That means if I have a BAR of +20, I can make two attacks @ +16 each, three attacks at +12 each and so on. This reduces the number of useless attacks at higher levels and allows the player to choose from making a small number of accurate strikes - against a powerful dragon perhaps, or making more, innaccurate ones - say against low level mooks. Probably enough for now... Thoughts? A'koss.</blockquote>

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