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

[Storyteller01]

For 3e fans I don't see any drawback. All your 3e books will still exist and what's more you'll be able to buy the ones you don't own cheap. Wizards were going to run out of things to make into feats and PrCs pretty soon anyway. 4e will be an additional option. Something to try or mine for ideas. What's the downside?

OGL will most likely be non-existant for 4th ed, forcing me to buy WotC products if I want to play the system at all. Even when those OGL companies are better at game design then WotC (just my opinion, but it's valid).


That the current OGL companies most likely won't continue making 3rd ed stuff, as the market will dwindle to nothing when it's deemed unofficial (I'll miss future X crawl sourcebooks).

 

[jim pinto]

- inclusion of spellcasting and BAB into skills
- serious consolidation of skills
- simpler rules (grapple, counterspell, aoo in particular)
- no rolling for hit points per level
- simplification, unification, and stacking of bonuses, damage reduction and energy resistances (get rid of bonus types, get rid of DR types, let it all stack)
- unification of saves, initiative, and AC
- shorter character blocks (cut them in half and I'm happy)
- no alignments, replace them with something else like personality traits or allegiances
- I'm cool with 4 ability scores but that will never happen so no point in asking for it

i agree with all of this

add to this, a simplified social interaction system that allows anyone to derive a quantifiable bonus to gameplay simply by "asking around."

this is an extremely complex idea to explain (but easy to use)... that i've addressed on my blog very recently

 

[Nebulous]

Radically different options for magic systems, above and beyond the Vancian. There's so much good stuff out there that can make an excellent addition/supplement to core D&D.

And i really like how SW Saga makes your skill bonus equal to your level, and you specialize with feats. Much simpler and less bookkeeping with skills.

 

[Szatany]

this

 

[Razz]

A 2020 release date.

I can actually live with that.

I'd have a much happier life with no 4E at all ever to exist, and just add, fix, expand, and tweak existing 3.5E rules, but a 2020 release date of 4E sounds spectacular!

 

[WarlockLord]

Kill the arcane/divine divide. Have ONE spellcasting class, that can throw off a variety of effects. You can call it whatever you want, but I see no reason that wizards can't heal, clerics can't fireball, necromancers can't turn undead, and so on.

Get rid of prestige classes and class features (except a spellcasting class, a skill monkey class, and a warrior class. Like the generics). Make the abilities feats or feat trees, like GURPS.

Let 'Vancian' magic die. Vance's books are great, but I doubt he intended to hate our wizards, clerics, druids, and archivists. Do something like the Unearthed Arcana variant spell point system, where you pick your spells you can cast with points.

Why aren't there rules for drunkeness?

More cool core races. Make drow, planetouched, goblins, orcs, kobolds, and hobgoblins balanced +0 LA core races.

Make psionics core.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Lanefan, I gotta disagree with a lot of what you asked for. I think it'd be a mistake to mechanically code for roleplaying, and a mistake to count on players to accept balance differences and handle them in a mature way.

Instead, I think the game should have the same extreme attention to balance and playability as a computer game would. Give the ethereal D&D 4E game a strong foundation of clear, concise, balanced rules and rolls. Let the players fill in the RP and motivations, or not, as they wish--that part of the game is optional. Sound mechanics are not.

-z

Oh, and add another vote for no arcane/divine divide.

 

[Felon]

1) More flexibility & variety- mostly in the form of "cafeteria lists" of abilities unique to classes from which players choose each new levels, like the 3.x Rogue....IOW, it works much like the "cafeteria list" class option noted above.

Can't say I'm a big francophile, but the term "a la carte" does beat the pants off of "cafeteria list".

"Tree" is an even better term, as it is rather well-established in the lexicon.

 

[Felon]

Personally, I'd like spells to be less of an arbitrary crap-shoot where one spell is hands-down better than another of its level (or even a level higher). IMO, cleaning up the spell system is reason #1 to desire a new edition.

Revise the schools of magic so that they're actually meaningful. For instance, conjuration brings forth an effect from somewhere else far, far away, whereas evocation brings forth an effect from out of nowhere at all--what an utterly meaningless distinction! Abjuration can give you stony skin, can dispel magic, can protect you from the elements, can create explosive runes, and can lock your door, while transmutation can also achieve very similar effects, such as toughening up characters and altering objects. I'd say drop those two schools, and come up with one for manipulating magic and other forms of energy, and another for altering matter.

I'm a big of fan of taking attacks of opportunity back to the drawing board. They originally envisioned as a way of discouraging certain player tactics, but thanks to feats and skills like Concentration and Tumble, players can often engage in those tactics to their hearts content. These days, AoO's are just another set of rules the players can exploit to questionable ends, such as endlessly trying to think of ways to make the enemy prone.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

For 3e fans I don't see any drawback. All your 3e books will still exist and what's more you'll be able to buy the ones you don't own cheap. Wizards were going to run out of things to make into feats and PrCs pretty soon anyway. 4e will be an additional option. Something to try or mine for ideas. What's the downside?

The downside is that going much further will take away pretty much everything that makes D&D, D&D. There are certain things that simply are D&D - classes, levels, hit points, etc. Take those away, and it's not D&D anymore, and probably encroaches upon another game that already exists and does it better. I didn't see much call for, say, GURPS, RuneQuest or Warhammer to be totally different systems with their current revamps. I don't see why D&D would have to be totally redone, either. Those who want to play a totally different game should play a totally different game. There really are a lot of them out there, and many of them are very good. Plus I dispute that people wouldn't buy a "3.75e," especially if it cleaned up the problems that have been unearthed and presents the game in an attractive, accessible format.

What I'd like to see in a 4th edition of D&D:

A truly basic version of the game. Include it at the beginning of the core rulebook, and layer complexity on top of it in succeeding chapters. That way players can choose their level of complexity with an option to go up or down on the scale. Release the basic version as a complete, standalone, inexpensive game to satisfy those who are looking for a quick, beer & pretzels RPG.

More optional rules, such as those found in Unearthed Arcana (action points, defense, etc.), placed in the core rulebooks.

The Warlock - it covers an archetype in comics and movies that really hasn't been covered well in D&D before.

That's all I can think of at the moment.