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Message: <blockquote data-quote="comrade raoul" data-source="post: 3322909" data-attributes="member: 554">These are interrelated, actually. A new edition should address lasting, pervasive structural weaknesses in the current rules. Here are three changes I think of as especially important. <ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Defense bonuses. The fact that attack bonuses basically scale with a character's level, but defense bonuses don't has two harmful effects as a character's level increases: it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid melee damage, and a character's survivability is increasingly dependent on her equipment. Adding defense bonuses easily eliminates both problems, and helps facilitate...</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Reduced dependence on magic items. This is a standard criticism for a reason. I don't think anything in the current rules is a larger impediment to players' sense of agency in the game world and identification with their characters rather than their equipment. Stripped of her magical equipment, a character should never be significantly less effective than a fully-equipped version of herself two or three levels lower.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Elimination of "necessary" character functions. Any configuration of character classes should yield a functional party, even if that party is suboptimal and not especially interesting. Necessary but unromantic dungeoneering activities--like the healing and environmental manipulation traditionally handled by clerics and rogues, respectively--should be modeled with a version of the skill system available to all classes.</li> </ol>I'd also like to see a change in the way the books are presented and distributed. The core rules might still include three books, but rather than having a Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual, I'd like to see books organized around low (1st to 5th), medium (6th to 15th) and high (15th+) level play, with information for players and DMs in each book. So the low-level book could have most of the core rules, character classes, basic gamemastering information, and low-to-medium CR monsters; the medium-level book would have all the prestige classes and most of the feats and spells (including all of the more complex ones); while the high-level book might have information about politics, mass combat, artifacts, high-level spells, and the toughest monsters (old dragons, the tarrasque, demon princes, etc).</blockquote>

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