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[justanobody]

Originally Posted by Phaezen

Originally quoted from this article:

Spotlight Interview - Martial Power

A winning argument, too be sure. However, if you were to look at the paragraph after the one you quoted:

Martial power comes from the innate skill and training. IN the same way the abilities of a skilled performer (acrobat, gymnast, olympic athlete, stunt artist, musician, etc, etc, etc) may appear magical and beyond the abilities of the common man in the street. From paragon tier onwards, the powers do start gaining a bit of a extraordinary or supernatural feeling, but then again at these levels your hero is more than a mere human.

Phaezen

But it does look and feel magical. It looks like a spell list. It feels as though there is something that causes you to only be able to perform these stunts other than skill or ability.

Again take Crushing Blow. Why in the world can it only be done once, if skill and training in doing so was so the reason for further "access" to this power source, that over the time while they were so able to learn new powers, that require more strength and such that they were not able to increase their endurance to lift the hammer over there head but one time?

That wreaks of Vancian casting for all classes, which is founded in magic.

So the only way to explain out this arbitrary restriction is that the powers are magical in nature, and each person only has so much magical energy in their "power pool".

Add onto that that you can only ever learn 4 of each of the powers, 7 for utilities, and only two bolstered basic attacks in the form of at-wills.

Let alone just the fighter, but it makes them seem less consistent in being able to do anything, and the powers are not that grand when they happen, and become redundant for the fact that you are limited by Vancian casting as to how many you can do within a given time, that is not bound by any of your physical abilities such as your strength, intelligence, etc.

If I place myself into the position of a character, I would be questioning why this is so. As a player it just seems too wonky even knowing why it is so that it has to be explained off just as some balancing act.

Could an acrobat not perform the same trick twice?

Tumble to the left of the stage, oops cannot tumble back because you are out of uses, so you better quick walk over there for the next trick.

That is what training is all about to gain not just more abilities, but more use of the abilities you already have.

This is lost in the martial powers, and the entire powers system.