What is, by consensus opinion, obviously broken?

[Neonchameleon]

I thought that wealth de facto was tied to tiers with the astral diamond issues. But you don't need a fortress to be paragon or epic level. (I'm working on a modern day action movie style reskinning for 4e where instead of cash you gain influence and you can spend some of that on equipment (I'm waiting for the Brawler Fighter in MPII before going much further)).

 

[crash_beedo]

Money as a skill? Or at least working vaguely that way? If you want to buy something, roll your Wealth skill against an items cost, and if you succeed you get it.

Yes - exactly - money as a type of skill. Leaves the parcel system intact for adventurer wealth but lets one address mundane items, cost of living, and worldly possessions in an external system.

 

[ExploderWizard]

As long as the rules of the game are so tightly designed and complex they will be "broken" in some sense and will need constant tweaking, tinkering and fixing anytime something new is added.

Overblown complex rules systems will always break simply because there is more to break. This combined with a shift in philosophy over the years that has made the letter of the rules (the almighty RAW) more important than the spirit of the rules will make any game of this type perpetually broken.

A roleplaying game isn't a competetive exercise and a ruleset that recognizes this and includes allowances for the people that actually play as part of the game rather than just a consumer of it will be more stable and satisfying in the long run.

What is obviously "broken" then is the massive rules structure as a whole. It is a dog that will never succeed in catching its tail.

 

[S'mon]

You could take a leaf from the real middle ages, where soldiers and other retainers very rarely if ever got *paid*! They got food, shelter, weapons, clothing from their lord, who obtained those from other retainers or as tax from vassals. In 4e it's quite easy to say that the mundane economy is largely non-monetary - maybe measure it in 'bushels of wheat' or something else other than gold, or just handwave as necessary.

Real gold can be used to hire trained mercenary companies, Italian City State style, but those guys will be *darn* expensive because they operate on the 'adventurer economy'. Your regular retainers and levies don't get paid gold, though; numbers are limited by other factors including personal loyalty, population base, the amount of wheat in your graineries, etc.

Stop thinking like (post) industrial age people, think barbarian-turned-feudal, and it gets a lot simpler.

 

[Garthanos]

Yes - exactly - money as a type of skill. Leaves the parcel system intact for adventurer wealth but lets one address mundane items, cost of living, and worldly possessions in an external system.

The more things change the more they stay the same, Hand waving every day expenses was a fairly broadly applied house rule I seen all the way back in AD&D.

Weirdly its actually has a bit of realism to it... Medievals hand waved money based on social class... things like rules for hospitality and similar were analogous to this. For modern folk its sort of like credit... rich enough you don't need credit... you have loads of it, your credit rating follows you independent of your fluid cash.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

5E designers take note, these will be the items you will want to mock and deride in the 5th Edition Announcement Video.

All joking mostly aside:

Things 5E should redesign / reconsider

• Rituals: Rituals are a hideous abomination. There is a simple way to redo them: pick two, cost, quality, speed. If you pick speed and cost, quality suffers. If you pick cost and quality, speed suffers. As they stand now, they are all expensive and time consuming.
• Magic Items: Core magic items are simply boring. Scrap the +X and a property weapons. If the system needs a +X item bonus for attacks and defenses, make that part class not a demand on the DM to pass out items. A character isn't entitled to a +3 weapon at 15th level and the math shouldn't demand it.
• Multiclassing : 3E multi-classing was a thing of beauty. In 4E it just seems tacked on and poorly thought out
• Non-Combat Abilities: You need more then skills and rituals failed to cut it. Utility powers could have been the answer, but if you mix combat and non-combat utility powers, players are going to take the combat ones
• Combat Balance: We went a little overboard on the balance front in 4E. It is fine if every member of the party isn't a rock star in combat. Have the design space available for players who want to make a lover and not a fighter.
• Conditions: Way too many conditions to keep track of, especially at higher levels.

Things that 5E should keep

• Push, Pull, and Slide: I'm a big fan of battlefield movement and these mechanics are the crown jewels of the system in my eye.
• Healing Surges: I like these for a heroic game. I'd like to see rules for not using them if I want to run a gritty game (right now, to run a grittier game, I'm looking at older editions)
• Action Types: Move, Standard, Minor, Immediate, Opportunity; these all work well and present a well defined system for performing actions.

The big question: The Power System
I doubt that this will be dropped in 5E. However, it should be considered and the reason is simple: Resource management is interesting. But that's another post I think

 

[Aberzanzorax]

4e, IMO doesn't really have "broken". It's a system designed to eliminate "broken".

As such, there has not been enough focus (as evidenced by most/many of the responses in this thread) on appropriateness.

Fear of "broken" has lead to, for example, the magic item "daily". This makes no sense to me...and I find it inappropriate, feeling far more like a game rule than an element of a game.


I'd change many of the things ppl have suggested. (Love the wealth by tier). Here's my suggestion on magic items: each player can choos a basic "implement" type weapon. E.G. My wizard chooses staff. Treasure will include various "enchants" like dragon's blood, aboleth slime, undead dust, etc. As we level, I can make my weapon "level up" using these items. This can address the "you need this item bonus by this level" issue. So such items would have room for various enchants/customizations. RARELY, another such item may be found (perhaps "scheduled" to be found once per tier??).

Then, all found magic items will be PURE flavor. No combat bonuses at all. Crystal balls? Sure. Bag of holding? Yep. Figurine of wondrous power? ok.

 

[Phaezen]

The only real issue I have with 4e currently is "Untyped" bonuses which can cause unintended stacking issues. If they could be errated to being "Feat", "Class", "Race", "Item" or "Power" as required to close that loophole things would be allot better.

 

[Dausuul]

I'm going to guess that skill challenges will actually be largely the same - they'll just be presented differently. In the long run, they aren't so much a mechanic as a way to work with non-combat skills in a structured way.

Man, I hope not. Skill challenges strike me as a very "rough-draft" project; D&D's first attempt to create a cohesive structure for noncombat encounters. I applaud the project's goals and I think it worked out reasonably well for a first try, but there are a lot of problems with the system as it stands.

Anyway, to the OP's question, and trying to focus on things I have seen generally criticized in the community rather than things I personally dislike...

• Too many fiddly bits to keep track of in combat. Each individual fiddly bit is easier to track than the fiddly bits in 3E, but there are so many more of them that it's a wash at best.
• The magic item rules are clunky, magic items themselves are bland, and nobody likes magic item dailies.
• Rituals are a good idea but implementation is... lacking something. This is a widespread sentiment and I agree with it without being able to put my finger on quite what. Others have cited casting times and component costs, and there are cases where the casting time should probably be scaled down some, but I don't think that's the real problem. Rituals just don't have... pizzazz.
• Combat can easily degenerate into a grindfest.
• Minions are overcosted - XP value too high for the threat they present. (Interesting tidbit here; I crunched the numbers and found that minions' listed stats are appropriate to their XP value according to the core math. The problem is all the powers and abilities that toss out tiny amounts of damage as an afterthought; damage that would be insignificant to a normal monster but is enough to "pop" a minion.)
• Multiclassing is crap. (I suspect it will be replaced lock, stock, and barrel with the hybrid system, which works much better.)
• V-shaped classes considered harmful.
• Inconsistent application of bonus types. If a power provides a bonus, it should be a power bonus, always. If an item provides a bonus, it should be an item bonus. If a feat provides a bonus, it should be a feat bonus. You should never have to go digging to find out if a given bonus is stackable or not. Of course, if there weren't so many fiddly little bonuses, this would be less of an issue...
• Either Expertise is brokenly overpowered at high levels, or high-level characters without it are weaksauce. The community is divided on which is the case (I originally believed the latter, but am starting to reconsider as my PCs advance through Paragon), but either way it's a problem.
• DDI lacks support for house rules and homebrew stuff.
• The tiefling's tail needs to be hacked off, made scaly, and stuck on the dragonborn.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

What's the matter with Rituals? I can see the problem with Magic Items and Skill Challenges, but I don't see what the issue with Rituals is.

Well, beyond RAW making a +8 due to Aid Others practically an automatic by mid-Paragon.