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

[shadow]

- Get rid of the focus on miniatures and "battle grids". This is unlikely to happen seeing that the collectible plastic miniature are WotC's big cash cow now.

- Optional rules for alternative magic systems - something other than the Vancian "fire and forget" magic.

- Elimination of the artificial dichotomy between arcane and divine magic. I never under stood why powerful archmages can't cast a healing spell? Of course this is sort of a "sacred cow".

- Less reliance on magical items and treasure. Right now the RAW assume that character get loaded up on absurd amounts magical trinkets and goodies.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

-- No more Divination as the Red Headed Stepchild of spell schools. Its equal to all others. Seriously, if you can see into the future, why arn't there dozens of really cool combat spells?

Hrm, that's an interesting thought.

Have every school of magic have some means of inflicting harm on targets, including Abjuration and Divination.

Brad

 

[Szatany]

- Less reliance on magical items and treasure. Right now the RAW assume that character get loaded up on absurd amounts magical trinkets and goodies.

It could be done by something like this: each character can control magic items worth 1 magic point per level. Each item requires a certain number of magic points in order to work. That way a 13th level character can use, at one time, up to items worth 13 points total. That means that no matter how much stuff character has he won't be overpowered because of it. And if you make item costs high, it will automatically make the game ress reliant on magic items.

 

[TheCrazyMuffinMan]

It could be done by something like this: each character can control magic items worth 1 magic point per level. Each item requires a certain number of magic points in order to work. That way a 13th level character can use, at one time, up to items worth 13 points total. That means that no matter how much stuff character has he won't be overpowered because of it. And if you make item costs high, it will automatically make the game less reliant on magic items.

One can constrain treasure awards or jack up magic item prices. Magic items tend to be rather expensive to begin with, and this makes them rather vulnerable to this kind of constraining. Your idea works well too.

 

[MrFilthyIke]

Mostly D&D 4: Saga Edition

Albeit, not everything from SW:SE but much of it. Some of the rules as is do not reflect the flavor of D&D in general, but the basic mechanics and philosophies are teh roxor.

What they said.

 

[Eldragon]

Hrm, that's an interesting thought.

Have every school of magic have some means of inflicting harm on targets, including Abjuration and Divination.

Brad

I'm not so much advocating that every school does some sort of harm on targets, but that every school should be treated equally, and be equally effective in combat situations.

Divination could have spells like this: Lesser Insight, Duration 1 Round/Level, Benefit: The spell lets you see a few moments into the future, giving you a +4 insight bonus to attack rolls and saving throws.

Its not damaging per se, but very useful.

I Agree that Abjuration has many of the same problems as Divination. Just not useful enough in a combat oriented game.

 

[TheCrazyMuffinMan]

I Agree that Abjuration has many of the same problems as Divination. Just not useful enough in a combat oriented game.

There's another suggestion: Give equal weight to noncombat concepts, so the diviners and abjurers can have their day.

Make non-combat situations as detailed and exciting as the combative ones (or is that more of a case-by-case campaign thing?), so that one could easily play a game where certain characters (rogues, pure spellcasters and bards leap to mind) could progress well without even entering combat once. To really seal the deal, make detailed base classes that fail at direct combat, but absolutely shine elsewhere (diplomats, merchants, builders, strategists, a skill-monkey class, and so on).

 

[Nightchilde-2]

What they said.

Throw my vote in for D&D Saga Edition as well.

 

[Hjorimir]

I'm with the D&D Saga Edition crowd.

 

[drothgery]

I'm with the D&D Saga Edition crowd.

Same here. I mean, obviously it wouln't be a straight port (magic, armor, class granualirity, skill granualirity, and magic items are all going to be sticking points that will take some work to get right for D&D), but a D&D4 that's about as much like SW Saga as D&D 3.x was like the old Star Wars d20... sign me up.