Mustrum_Ridcully's page

Psion wrote:

Something like reserve feats to make nuissance encounters less draining and let wizards feel they are contributing when they don't want to pull out "the big guns" would not be unwelcome, though. Trying to change to 4e "per encounter" wholesale, on the other hand, would be. I consider the "immediate power versus long term power" aspect that existed from 1e-3e to be a fundamentally viable balancing strategy.

"Per Encounter" wouldn't be ideal, but perhaps with some sort of recharge mechanic, a division between "combat" spells that are quickly used and "utility" spells that are more permanent features, or even things like Reserve Feats.

As far as I understand it, the 4E "per encounter" is a "recharge" mechanic - take 5 minutes of rest and go on. "Per Encounter" is actually more a descriptor of the philosophy then the actual implementation.

That aside:
Recharging all spells in one encounter is probably horribly unbalanced.
One idea might be: Casters can gather "spell tokens/points". Spend a swift action, gain one token. Spend a move action, gain thre token, spend a standard action, gain five spend a fullround action, gain seven. You can only use one kind of action to gain tokens.
Casting a spell requires tokens worth twice their level. So, casters can continue to cast spells and build up tokens, until they finally release one of their "big guns". Or they build up a lot of token in the first round, to make a "big boom" at the end. The question is how you avoid people "charging" up. But maybe you don't need to - just limit max token by caster level (maybe 2 x caster level, so a caster can always begin combat with his highest level spell, and then has to build up again).

The exact token cost and gains might need some considerable fiddling, but it's an idea.

But for "real" backwards 3.5 compatibility, I think only Reserve Feats are a real option. You change too many assumptions otherwise.

My take on this would be:
Either use the SAGA / 4E approach fully, or stay with skill points. This system is useful for NPCs, _but_ it does nothing to address one of the greatest weaknesses of the skill points - the ever-expanding gap between untrained, trained and synergizing, skill focussing, Warlock or Bard spell boosting, magical item improved skill.
If that is not the goal, keeping the benefit of flexible skill point allocation seems a lot better.

I would try to use the Iron Heroes approach with skill groups or simply add more skill points per level to all classes. Unifying a few skills can help, too.
And remove cross class extra cost. Limiting the max by level for cross-class skills is enough, and you have less problems backtracking your skill allocation over multiple levels and classes.

What I would find interesting, since Perception now covers all senses: Give racial abilities and feats that boost these skills. Orcs and Gnomes could get a racial +2 (or +4 / +5?) bonus to Scent. Set the DCs high enough to ensure that basic tasks can be done by anyone, but the real interesting stuff (identifying a person by smell, detecting invisible opponents) requires a high skill value.