I've been reading quite a bit on the forums about just how boring the magic and combat systems are in this game.  And, sadly, I have to agree with most of them.

I couldn't really put my finger on why until the realization hit me (and many others, I'm sure) that the element that these two boring and flavorless systems share is the 1DN resolution system. 

That one design choice means that all attacks and all defenses look precisely the same save for their scalar value.  While this choice may have had quite a bit of value to an AI coder, it means that all spells and weapons lack any sort of character.  You can't fix it by fiddling with the distribution of the underlying random variable.  Lack of variety in describing the efficacy of a particular attack or defense makes combat and magic feel like an afterthought.  Focusing on the addition of "unit special abilities" of the 1DN variety and adding more spells of the 1DN variety will fix nothing, and ultimately detracts from the unavoidable conclusion: pure 1DN is unfixable and must go.

MoM was wildly fun with the simple additions of two metrics that were separate from the attack/defense roll.  These were spell resistance and damage rating.  You had 5 basic numbers for each unit for combat (Attack, Defense, Damage, Health, Spell resistance) rather than 3 (attack, defense, health).  This allowed for fairly nice variation of initial stage units ("flavor") without having to introduce any "specials," (even though MoM did this in spades).  It also allowed for a wider variety of meaningful combat buffs that made each spellbook feel like it had flavor.

Combat needs a few more numbers to describe it.  At least add a separate damage rating, for Pete's sake.  How about it, Brad?  I really want to like this game more.