D&D 4E What would you want to see in 4e?

[Zimbel]

Preference = homebrew?

<note: comments shortened for brevity>

1) Re-vamp the magic system. I think that this should be a primary target for 4e; even 3.5 has only mild tweaks from 1st ed AD&D.
2) Change Armor. Specifically, there should be multiple effective armor choices for mid-high level characters.
3) Re-balance the classes (or the equivalent of classes).
4) Design for the full extent of each class.
5) Design the creatures around the characters' (abilities).
6) Remove attribute scores. Modifers are sufficient for play,
7) Expand skills. Specifically, expand their usefulness, and make them not as easy to ignore with the use of spells/magic.

Let's see.. in the most recent game I ran, I used exactly none of my suggestions above. I used quite a few other rules, including ones from AU, UA, Chaositech and Cry Havoc! I will conceed that I've written something for #1 (magic system where the balance is in points/round, not /day), but even if I thought it was perfect, I wouldn't recomend it for core D&D - it's a huge change to all spellcasters, and to magic in general.
Frankly, I'm happy to leave my preferences for a game as my preferences. If I want a particular class/spell/other small to moderate game element, I'll build it (or use someone else's). If I want to use psionics, I will. I'm more interested in a good re-design of the game itself than its having particular rules that I can insert easily all by myself.
I'm not paying a professional game designer to remove the multi-class restriction on Paladins. I'm paying them (indirectly, buy purchasing their products) for work that I can't and/or don't have the time to do.

Personally, I'm more curious as to what the PH 2 will have in it than 4.0

 

[Zimbel]

The Shadow knows...

<much snippage for brevity>
1.) Miniatures once again optional.

2.)Get rid of the 3.5 weapon sizing rules.

3.) Give magic it's power back. In 3.5 many useful spells were sacrificed on the altar of "game balance".

#1 Amen. Of course, every group I've played in treats them as optional (even in 3.0/3.5), particuarly for minor combats.

#2 Actually, these were in 3.0, as well, but they were in the MM, not the PH. Again, I agree with you - weapon sizing should be an optional rule, largely for dealing with unusually sized creatures.

#3 I have to disagree with you here. Having played a high-level major spellcaster, I found it very disturbing to discover that around LV 17 or so, my PC had roughly the strength of the other 5 members of my party. I think that the power curve for spellcasters should map more closely to frontliners- more useful at low levels, less overwhelming at high levels.

 

[Aldarc]

Classes/levels
Hit points
Armor class
Armor affecting your chance to be hit, not reducing damage
Vancian magic
Alignment (with two different axis': good-evil and law-chaos)
Saving throws
Six ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma
Gelatinous Cubes

Sounds like you will be content no matter what the edition is.

 

[Kapture]

Of course-- our individual homebrews are how we think D&D should work in the first place, after all.

There's a number of my house rules I've left out of this list, though. While I think they work better, I can see how the core rules might be better for not including them.

Oh, yeah. Sure. I'd love DND to be my homebrew. But there are a lot of homebrews out there. I might not want it to be somebody elses.

The core rules are better for not including alot of stuff. A point based spell system, for instance, would alienate casual players. Spells already have too many choices involved to be simple. Plus, a generic spell system would get rid of the flavor that the core rules have. I'm not a big fan of DND for DND's sake, but still and all, I don't play GURPS because it's too non-specific. Armor as DR doesn't strike me as any more realistic that armor as hit avoidance. Especially in the context of continually escalating hit points.

3.0 was a big improvement on DND. I think the designers went a long way towards balancing the utility of a modular system with whatever DND is, but more genericness would hurt the game more than help it.

I dread 4.0. The expense, the learning curve, transfering my campaign over again, figuring out which parts of the rules need to be tinkered with. In any case, 3.0 incorperated elements of some 30 years of evolving design. If there is a fourth edition, I think it should probably be virtual reality.

I say play with what you have and post or publish it for the convenience of other players.

 

[Kapture]

#1 Amen. Of course, every group I've played in treats them as optional (even in 3.0/3.5), particuarly for minor combats.

You know, there were so many more arguments about what you could do in a round before the grid.

 

[Kapture]

The return of hot elf babes. No more of this looking like a grey extraterrestrial.

Yeah, they look too much like supermodels, now. They need a little fat on them. And glasses.

Mmm. Chubby elf bookworms.

 

[Renton]

Revamp the core classes to be more in line with d20 Modern. I'm assuming 4e will still be a d20 based system. So rather than fighter as a core class, take levels in stong/tough/fast hero to suit the flavor fighter you want to build.

Couple that with prestige classes that are nicely plug and play, ie good rules for building balanced prc's.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Actually, stealing another concept from Green Ronin, I'd like to see a codified system for creating PrCls.

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

A 2012 Printing Date

 

[The Grackle]

B. If there are to be races which are more powerful than the "baseline", then they need to actually be more powerful than the baseline. All playable "monster" races should have "Level Adjustment"-type abilities firmly tied to racial Hit Dice - in essence, there should be monster classes with Hit Dice at every level, not every two or three as they are now. This necessarily entails a redesign of these races' power, but that's no big deal - drow have always been more powerful than normal elves, it's just that Third Edition quantified that power into level equivalency. What I'm proposing is true level equivalency.

This is the big one for me. They need to sort out the CR, LA, ECL, & HD business and just have a Monster Level. Monsters should be revamped w/the consideration that people will be playing them.