Oh! Yes, I agree completely.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Drohem;264917If you miss on an attack roll with a Encounter or Daily Power, then the power is not wasted.

Quote from: Drew;264923That's a good one. Give all powers the 'Reliable' tag, and give those that already have it some additional benefit (e.g the power is not considered spent on a critical).

It not only ganks a keyword, but a couple of different types of magic items. If PCs are missing too much with their dailies, then they need to work to more effectively set up situations where they hit (they may need a controller, or to set up combat advantage more effectively, or to pick up items that will give them minor situational bonuses that they then use for their dailies).

Quote from: Drew;264923Give all powers the 'Reliable' tag, and give those that already have it some additional benefit.

That would be seriously overpowering...expect it as standard in 5e.  However, I have seen some groups allow the recharge of an encounter power by spending an Action Point.   That's still pretty powerful, but not overwhelming.  

Having run lots of 4e, I see people missing with Dailies mostly because they do not study the battlefield and plan out their tactics by talking to each other.   Why spend a Daily when you don't have a good idea about the foe's defense?   Try out a couple of at-wills to get a feel for the beastie.  Use your Knowledge skills to get a bead on it.  And most importantly, get combat advantage so you get the +2 before throwing down the Daily.  

I met a guy who only plays Elves because he wants that Elven Accuracy reroll to make his Dailies semi-reliable.   I expect to see Feats and Magic Items that give Encounter powers a recharge die roll for players.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;264873I would remove the casting cost of most rituals.

In a similar vein, adjust the time (some shorter, some longer) for the rituals.

--Mike L.

1-1 diagonal movement, and associated "squaring" of areas.

Seriously, if the battlemat has one job in my world, it's representing the game world. With such a gross abstraction, I feel like "why even bother?"

I'd combine Powers, Rituals, Feats, Class Abilities, and Race abilities into a single category of Advantages which would only affect each other if affecting another Advantage was what they did.

You could still get them from different places but they'd all fall into a structured and balanced framework and there'd only be a single alphabetical section of descriptions/ rules.

As a matter of fact do that and turn the minion rule into 1 or 2 hp per hit dice instead of 1 hp and it would likely be one of my favourite games.

Sadly these two flaws drop it well below Fantasy Wargaming on my to play list.

Quote from: David Johansen;265303[/snip]
 and turn the minion rule into 1 or 2 hp per hit dice instead of 1 hp
[/snip]

Fracking great idea!  Consider this nabbed for my 4e House Rules.

Spellcasters use Int for Initiative. Seriously, why isn't this standard?

I'd take out it's current skill system and put in Star Wars Saga's

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;265113It not only ganks a keyword, but a couple of different types of magic items. If PCs are missing too much with their dailies, then they need to work to more effectively set up situations where they hit (they may need a controller, or to set up combat advantage more effectively, or to pick up items that will give them minor situational bonuses that they then use for their dailies).

All true, but mitigating the whiff factor remains a strong lure. Even after stacking circumstances favourably it's still possible to miss, thereby blowing a resource that will take (in the case of dailies) an extended rest to recover. It's the only piece of 4E's design that seems opposed to the general philosophy of play. Executing cool, cinematic maneuvers via mechanically interesting effects - that aren't instakills - is how the game presents itself, and I consider whiffy powers to be the antithesis of that. Damp squibs in an otherwise satisfyingly loud box of firecrackers.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;264873I would remove the casting cost of most rituals.

Ditto.

My second choice would be to let the wizard store more spells in his spellbook (I've written detailed rules for that).

Quote from: jswa;265018First, I'd change the core assumption that the PCs will never run into a combat challenge that that can't handle.

That's not actually the case - the DMG says that the PCs should occasionally encounter thigns which are too tough for them to fight, it just doesn't feel the need to devote much time to saying more than that and instead focuses on scaling those fights which are supposed to be easy, average or tough.

Quote from: Spinachcat;265151Having run lots of 4e, I see people missing with Dailies mostly because they do not study the battlefield and plan out their tactics by talking to each other.   Why spend a Daily when you don't have a good idea about the foe's defense?   Try out a couple of at-wills to get a feel for the beastie.  Use your Knowledge skills to get a bead on it.  And most importantly, get combat advantage so you get the +2 before throwing down the Daily.

Wisdom! The change from 3E to 4E has a few more subtleties than some people are realising just yet - it is a much more team focused game which doesn't usually reward the "shoot first, shoot last" tactics of earlier editions.