Square system, round game

[bloodtide]

Thematically, the game is supposed to be largely about internal strength and things not being what they seem. The former goal is impeded by the heavy gear-dependence imposed by the system,

So the characters have a lot of stuff? So what? Say they each have ten magic items, as long as they don't have 10 rings of wishing, then they won't have stuff for every conceivable thing that might happen. Try not to think of magic items as 'external', but more 'internal' parts of a character.

and the latter by how the system forces characters into fixed roles and cripples anyone who tries to change the trajectory of their character's development mid-game.

Not true. You can make a character any way you want too. When you say 'cripples' your sounding like a min/maxing roll player. There is nothing wrong with playing an archer with a dex of 11 or a wizard that is bad at casting spells.

The combat-oriented nature of the game also makes it very difficult to have the players suffer any direct failures that don't result in character deaths, which puts me in a position of having to choose between short-changing the competence of NPCs and removing narrative tension, or risk losing the people who are supposed to be the main drivers of the plot (the PCs).

Any drama needs to have loss and/or failure, or it's pointless. If the good guys can just blink and save the day, why bother playing?

Other then death, you have three big failures to use in the game:

1.Loss of stuff. Simple enough, the magic sword breaks or the ring falls into a volcano or such.
2.Afflictions. Things such as curses and magical effects.
3.Drama stuff. Sure they can kill Mr Bad, but if he kills princess Joy first, then it's a failure.

Mechanically, the default economy assumed by the D&D system, wherein adventurers routinely carry around the net worth of entire towns on their person, thoroughly breaks my suspension of disbelief as a worldbuilder. It also feeds the players' sense of entitlement towards magical gear. The high power level of the magic system is also a problem, especially the availability of resurrection magic, since the ways in which death and the afterlife function in my setting are one of the two most important things about it (the other being divine politics). Also, in this setting all spellcasting is divine in nature either directly (clerical magic, shamanism) or indirectly (scholarly magic learned by solving riddles left by the god of knowledge). This makes it an external power source, something which, while useful, I do not want players to have as their sole source of ability. Within D&D however, if I take away the cleric or the wizard's magic they have little to no ability to achieve much anymore, since the system encourages hyper-specialization to such a degree.

This is a common problem with many players, and most feel the answer is to go 'low magic'. The idea is that a 'gritty, dirty setting is better. But I have a better way to go.....go high magic. This very nicely balances things out. The characters might have tons of magic stuff, but so does everyone else. Even just giving the world common access to low level magic is great.

Why not change the way raising the dead works? Sure the PH says 'snap your fingers' and your alive...but you can change that.

And Divine Politics....make them more active in the world. My gods are, and it works out great.