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As WotC begins to think about how they want the new D&D to look, here are my observations and suggestions for the three most important things about 4E that I would change:

1) Base hit rate needs to be much higher.  I'm pretty sure most players would agree with me here.  I don't know how the designers arrived at the conclusion that missing the target 50% of the time would be considered fun or heroic by the player base, but it's just plain wrong.  You don't read stories or see movies where the epically gifted swordsman or archer strikes true ... meh, about half the time.  Missing makes the player feel rotten, it drags out every combat much longer than needed, and it just plain sucks the air out of the room.

A basic hit rate of 75% would be just about right.  It would leave room for improvement through feats, powers, and items, but the player would not feel gimped without those things -- or at least you'd need a lot less of them.  For example, you would feel okay about skipping Expertise if you have some sort of encounter power that can turn a miss into a hit, or at least grant a reroll.

Also, widening the accuracy gap at higher levels is not really a good idea.  In fact, I'd make monster defenses fairly consistent across all levels -- with a maximum variance of plus or minus 5 or so -- and at the same time remove the level-based component of the players' attack roll.  This is not a number that should change based on level, so why make it so?  Make monsters (and players) tougher by giving them more hit points and deadlier attacks, NOT by making them impossible to hit.  A thick-skinned troll can have a higher AC than a goblin, but a level 15 troll's AC should not be much different from a level 5 troll's.  (The level 15 troll should have more HP, better regeneration, and stronger attacks.)


2) Treat magic items as what they are: an aspect of character advancement.  In previous editions, it cost a wizard XP to create magic items.  There was a solid reason behind that: magic items make your character better by giving you extra powers.  I propose that in the next edition, this should be addressed.  Once you acknowledge the truth of what I just said, several options become available, and all can be presented for a DM to choose from as he or she designs a campaign.

A) Create a separate "bank" of XP that players can use as they see fit to "find" magic items in lairs.  Basically, whenever you hand out normal XP, you also hand out an allotment of item points.  At certain points during the adventure, you mention that magical treasure might be present.  At that point, a player who has saved up enough item points can use a sort of narrative fiat to announce, "I look in the chest and find ... Acrobat Boots!"  The point value of Acrobat Boots is deducted from the player's item point total, and she walks away happy.  Alternatively, you could use this same sort of fiat to turn mundane items into magic ones or improve existing magic items through heroic effort: "A divine light shines upon my flail, and it is filled with the power of my herioc deeds!"  Obviously, this option is for DMs who want their players to control their own item-based character development.

B) As above, but the DM keeps track of the item points and places treasure as normal.  The main difference between this and the current (4E) system is the separation of item points vs. gold value.  This is because money is used for things that do NOT improve your character's combat ability -- paying for mundane goods and services, mounts, real estate, hiring retainers, etc.  In this option, the DM controls what items appear in the campaign and when, but it acknowledges that those items do not fill the same role as money -- they are a form of character advancement.

These methods are two ends of a spectrum -- a mix or blend of the two can be used to suit the style and tone of your campaign.


3) Better integration of rituals.  I like the basic idea of rituals -- it was a good move, separating them from combat abilities.  However, for some reason, I feel like they are now too separate.  Too many classes and subclasses don't have automatic access to them.  The component thing is a little forced and a pain to track.  The ritual book rules are a little unwieldy.

I would continue the trend I've seen recently of making the caster use healing surges.  Remove components entirely, except in certain rare cases.  Give all caster-type classes automatic access, and don't let other people use them (i.e., eliminate the feat).  Allow some rituals to have a lasting minor combat effect.  (This is okay because you are using healing surges to cast them.)  Allow party members to donate healing surges to the casting cost.


Anyway, those are my Big Three.  I'm sure other players have other things they care about just as much or more, but I'm betting the accuracy thing is probably up there for a LOT of people, and I hope it gets addressed.  I really do see it as 4E's biggest flaw.


*** Here's a bit I've moved to the end because it's less about rules and could easily be implemented right now.

Bonus Advice (not rules based): Improve the quality and usefulness of accessory products.  Enough with the dungeon tiles.  They are difficult to store and organize and a pain to use.  I would much rather buy a pack of 4 to 6 double-sided maps than add to a collection of tiles.  Most of the time my group doesn't even bother searching for tiles with the right "look" anymore; we just plop down some rooms of approximately the right shape and go.  What would be ideal would be map packs as mentioned above, plus (sold separately) small 1- to 4-square tiles (or even models) for things like furniture, barrels, and difficult terrain.

On a similar note, it would probably be wise of you to bring the quality of your painted minis up to par with those of a certain other company.  I know in my heart that this is a "path" you want to "find."

For me, the three things that need to change are:

1- make sure that there is full integration with online tools. CB, VTT, AT. This is crucial. I have been waiting since the beginning of 4e to use these completely and properly together.  

On the tools topic, I would like to see the tools not sandboxed into silver light. Use HTML 5! And other ccross browser standards. I also don't need to make custom items or monsters. That's something that can be added after everything works.

2- l love the idea of skill challenges, but always have a hard time implementing them. Hopefully this can be fixed. 

3- Make the tools more open, and usable for the community. An API would be awesome, so we can make cool applications to access info, etc. 

Jan 9, 2012 -- 9:13AM, Tedium wrote:

Considering the only thing gold is normally spent on in a campaign is magic items, I don't see all that much difference between 2) a) and what we have now, aside from a relabelling of terms.

I somewhat agree, and that is actually the core of the problem.  Player characters SHOULD have reasons to spend money on things other than magic items, and I think it's very unfortunate that the game has evolved to its current state.

The insanely high prices of high-level magic items in 4E are just plain crazy.  They totally eclipse any other possible monetary transaction you could make in the game.  So hand-in-hand with my above idea, I would also greatly reduce the amount of monetary treasure spewing forth from those monster-piñatas.

Have another look at the list of things I mentioned that players could be spending money on.  Mounts, real estate, retainers, goods and services.  Add to that things like temples, laboratories, libraries, smithies, training grounds, etc.  These are all things that can have a great impact on characters' lives, but without directly making them better in combat.  I feel that characters need something to aspire to other than being better at fighting, and these are some goals that could be a LOT more attractive to players if they were not always saving up for the next tier of magic items.

Even ritual components -- people in my campaigns hardly ever use rituals because they'd rather spend the money on magic items.  Now, I personally think I should add a #4 to my list of Big Three -- Rethink Rituals.  However, I have a feeling rituals would actually be a much bigger part of the game if players didn't have to dip into their character advancement fund in order to use them.

I want magic items closer to what they were in 3.5 thematically, not mechanically, a tool that you could fall back on when you were in a tight spot or a trick that could suprise your opponent, but not something you had to have in order to succeed, with the exception of the obvious, you are about to take on flying enemies so having equipment that enabled you to fly or ranged weapons kind of thing.

I want wizards to cast more like a mage or shaman in Shadowrun, once you learn a spell, you can cast it at any time, you just have to roll to cast and then roll to deal with the drain that the spell put on your body, if you tried a high level spell too often then you would take some serious punishment and pass out, but you could cast any spell you know at any time.