Attempting to fix fourth edition

Assessing some of the frustrating aspects of playing 4th edition D&D led me to think that maybe I could fix them. I spent a fair amount of time on En World and other websites collecting homebrew rules.

The biggest issue was that combat dragged on and became a sort of chess game. Players would spend to long looking at their list of skills and deciding what to do next. Everyone seemed to have too many hit points. It was fun the first couple of times, but I started to feel like we were playing two games.

The first game was ione in which we role played. We had skill sets that created a sense of accomplishment when overcoming challenges. There were risks involved because the players had to roll against difficulties to overcome challenges. They had to be creative to use their skills effectively when confronting challenging situations.

There was one point in the campaign where the characters were helping a group of people construct fortifications for their village. Someone could help by researching "how to build fortifications" in the local library, while someone else would spend their time gathering wood. It was kind of hokey and unrealistic, but it was at least creative and enjoyable.

I had very few problems at first with this aspect of the game. I tried out some skill challenge sessions with three of my friends on two separate occasions, and it worked out pretty well. The problems were associated with the second "mode" of the game.

Whenever the characters got in to a battle situation, I began to feel like we all put down the role playing game, pulled out a battle mat, threw down some figurines, gathered our special move cards and began playing a tactical wargame. The special attacks were reminiscent of the fighting moves in video games, ie "I press left, left, right, right to activate my special flying kick."

The battles began to take up most of the time in sessions. When I tried to run a campaign, my players groaned as soon as a battle situation was introduced. Thus, I decided this is what had to be fixed.

I considered making enemies have half of their hit points or just turning all of the combat into a skill challenge, but I realized that this wouldn't fix the problem because most of the advancement in fourth edition was focused around gaining more powerful combat abilities.

I finally gave up and decided that fourth edition just wasn't for me.