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IMO if they were smart they would take some pages from the Dragon Age rpg.

Instead of powers for martial characters have some talents/feats for customization (not the thousands that they have now), but include a stunt system (see the Dragon Age game for how to do this well) to allow for some interesting tactical decisions without needing thousands of powers to do it with.

For spellcasters keep a few at will type abilities, but implement a mana point type system for other spells (instead of spells per level). Make sure those spells are cool and flavourful without being broken as so many of the 3E spells are.

Keep a level of hp closer to 4E, as 3E characters are IMO too fragile at low levels. If I were designing the game, I'd probably take a page from Star Wars Saga. Instead of just having hp, I'd distinguish between wounds points and hit points. Hit points would be very fast and easy to heal from, but wound points would take longer periods of time to recover from (though you would only take wound damage in certain situations- like from crits or certain types of damage). To keep it simple for dms most monsters would still only have hp. Wound points could be an optional feature for groups that want to run a grittier style game.

The numbers for attributes don't really do anything anymore, so I'd pull a page from M&M 3E on that one and make the bonus or penalty the actual attribute score.

Make magic items flavourful and interesting, but not necessary to having a playable and fun character.

Make combat dynamic and fast, and find a way to get rid of square counting on a battle map. Maybe movement rules that are more like a FATE game with zones or the 3E warhammer game with engagements and relative distances (short, medium long etc.).

Jan 11, 2012 -- 6:07PM, PH_dungeon wrote:

Warhammer is fun and I like, but I find it very component heavy, and dice pools can sometimes bog a game down.

Oh dear lord do I agree about it being component heavy. Set up and tear down time are rediculous; getting the game ready is a nightmare. However, during actual in game play I think they help. Not having to constantly ask how much mana the mage has (I can just look at his pool of mana tokens), or how many woulds a character has (I can look at his pile of wound cards), or what actions a character has used (I can look at the timing tokens on their used actions), or what stance a character is in (I can look at his meter) seems to keep down metagame chatter. I mean, the action cards of WFRPG 3e and 4e are not so different, but for some reason WFRPG seems to stimulate a lot more narration.

And I just love its dice pool mechanic. Having a character trip over a coffin, slide across the floor, and kill the BBEG by accidentally falling into him and stabbing him with the pointy end of your sword, all because the success came completely from your white luck dice and you rolled a chaos star, is awesome. 

But yea, those two aspects of the game might not fit so well with D&D culture.  

Jan 11, 2012 -- 6:07PM, PH_dungeon wrote:

It is probably a little too gritty to be core D&D, though have some option gritter rules would be a great addition to 5E.
 

I agree again.

Jan 11, 2012 -- 6:44PM, Cyber-Dave wrote:

Jan 11, 2012 -- 6:07PM, PH_dungeon wrote:

Warhammer is fun and I like, but I find it very component heavy, and dice pools can sometimes bog a game down.

Oh dear lord do I agree about it being component heavy. Set up and tear down time are rediculous; getting the game ready is a nightmare. However, during actual in game play I think they help. Not having to constantly ask how much mana the mage has (I can just look at his pool of mana tokens), or how many woulds a character has (I can look at his pile of wound cards), or what actions a character has used (I can look at the timing tokens on their used actions), or what stance a character is in (I can look at his meter) seems to keep down metagame chatter. I mean, the action cards of WFRPG 3e and 4e are not so different, but for some reason WFRPG seems to stimulate a lot more narration.

And I just love its dice pool mechanic. Having a character trip over a coffin, slide across the floor, and kill the BBEG by accidentally falling into him and stabbing him with the pointy end of your sword, all because the success came completely from your white luck dice and you rolled a chaos star, is awesome. 

But yea, those two aspects of the game might not fit so well with D&D culture.  

Jan 11, 2012 -- 6:07PM, PH_dungeon wrote:

It is probably a little too gritty to be core D&D, though have some option gritter rules would be a great addition to 5E.
 

I agree again.

As a dm I have enough of my own stuff to keep track of, so I never bothered to pay much attention to things like how much mana a PC has. I trust the players enough that they will be on the up and up about tracking that sort of thing on their own, and if there is the occasional unintentional slip up, no big deal. At the most I'll occasionally check to see just how injured a player is, but I don't really even worry about this all that much. Consequently, the tokens and stuff aren't really that important to me as a dm. However, I do confess that I find the wound deck and insanity decks fun. I just don't get much of kick of going through stacks of action cards to pick out something for my character. I really enjoy the simplicity of the 1-2 page character sheet (without a bunch of cards and other weird stuff to go with it). Similarly, the 8-10 page long 4E character sheets, while fairly well organized and useful, were a little much for me.