4e Fan Creations and House RulesWorking on variant powers? Statting up a PC race or your version of a monster? Creating or converting an adventure? Put it here!
I'm sure there are some general guidelines, but no hard rules, although there should be. I haven't put all the powers into formulas but I tend to go with the rule 'If everyone wants it, then it's broken'.
Some general concepts I tend to see with powers, most are obvious and I'm sure everyone sees the same. At-will powers deal 1d10 like most big weapons. Now they deal less and less when adding things, such as slow, mark, or can be used as basic atk. Utility powers do not deal damage, and they should not IMO. Dailies follow At-will powers generally. I'm thinking the fighter 1st level 3x+str damage followed by the less damage and more other things like push+2xdamage, 1xdamage and sustain minor, etc.
I guess you would need to try out new powers with the understanding among your players that you can lower the power of the power or raise the level after playing with the new power.
is there any formula to creating powers in 4e or is it simply guess work?
WotC haven't released any guidelines although I'm sure they have a design doc internally. They would much rather sell you a bunch of new powers than teach you to create them yourself.
WotC haven't released any guidelines although I'm sure they have a design doc internally. They would much rather sell you a bunch of new powers than teach you to create them yourself.
By that logic why did they publish monster design guidelines?
Lets actually look at this in a fairly logical fashion. A hard and fast set of numeric rules for power design would be pretty iffy. Its not really all that hard to create a basic vanilla attack power and any published guidelines for that would be so trivial as to hardly need stating (as demonstrated by the fact that they've already been pretty much stated in this thread already). More complicated situations or powers which don't mainly do damage and place a status condition really aren't going to be quantifiable in the same way and I don't see how you could write useful guidelines for them that didn't amount to a compendium of all the design principles of 4e. On top of that the main reason why homebrewed powers create problems is either unintended synergy with other powers/features/items/feats/etc or poor wording. Both of those can't really be addressed by guidelines and are just the hazards of homebrew and need to be addressed by the DM using the power.
The final real question is "why do you need to homebrew powers?" There are now what 18 (at least) complete published classes, each with between 120 to 300 powers or a total of something approaching 4 THOUSAND published powers (and if anything this is a conservative estimate). I find it hard to imagine in all those 4000 powers you can't find what you want in terms of mechanics. I guess its POSSIBLE, but chances are whatever power you want to create has already been written and all you need to do is steal the mechanics and do what you want with it.
The best guidelines for creating powers really are the existing powers themselves. I think similar arguments apply to items too.
I'm sure there are some general guidelines, but no hard rules, although there should be. I haven't put all the powers into formulas but I tend to go with the rule 'If everyone wants it, then it's broken'.
Well there is another option ... if everyone want's it... everyone should have it... see expertise feats.
Well there is another option ... if everyone want's it... everyone should have it... see expertise feats.
Right you are, I agree with you there. I just do not know if that agrees with homebrew powers, and if it does, where does it start to not be more or less "standard". Not sure if "core" would be a better word.
I imagine that any power design guidelines would have to be unique to a given class.
I don't think you could create a serious generic power design document for the same reason that you couldn't just take a random Sorcerer power, slap it onto the Warlock's list of powers, and call it balanced. They're both strikers, but their features and flavor are quite different.
By that logic why did they publish monster design guidelines?
There are now what 18 (at least) complete published classes, each with between 120 to 300 powers or a total of something approaching 4 THOUSAND published powers (and if anything this is a conservative estimate). I find it hard to imagine in all those 4000 powers you can't find what you want in terms of mechanics.
Monsters don't have to be as balanced as powers. If a monster is broken, the brokenness lasts a session. If a power is broken, it can last the campaign.
And while there are thousands of powers, when you consider that you only get the ones related to your class, you only get the ones in a certain level range, and in many cases some powers are so good or so bad that it limits the pool even more. So new powers is always welcome to me.
Some barbarian powers transition just fine. Most of the low level ones, even. I don't know the high level powers well enough yet.
There are a couple obvious exceptions, sure - Vault the Fallen is just a bit too good to casually slap onto Fighter. Avalanche Strike, otoh, is already near duplicated in a paladin 1st level power.
Course, some of those exceptions even barbarians shouldn't get. (Yeah, I'm looking at you Storm of Blades)
Monsters don't have to be as balanced as powers. If a monster is broken, the brokenness lasts a session. If a power is broken, it can last the campaign.
And while there are thousands of powers, when you consider that you only get the ones related to your class, you only get the ones in a certain level range, and in many cases some powers are so good or so bad that it limits the pool even more. So new powers is always welcome to me.
Well, I suppose its true, a badly designed monster may be less of a problem than a poorly thought out power.
My point about thousands of powers is that there is really very little reason why a power from one class can't simply be ported to another class. In a minority of cases it may require a bit of retooling due to some specific mechanics tied to a class feature or such, but the vast majority of powers don't have that problem. Obviously a good percentage of powers aren't thematically appropriate for a given target class, but that still leaves you with a LOT of choices. Probably enough that in the majority of cases it can be used as-is. In other cases it may require a slight amount of tweaking, changing of keywords or maybe even a small power adjustment.
I figure it this way. Every class that has a power book covering it has roughly 8 powers of every level. Supposing for the sake of argument you needed a new Wizard Encounter Attack Power Level 1. Just looking at the most likely sources you have 8 warlock, 8 sorcerer, 8 bard, 8 cleric, and 8 invoker powers that might potentially fit mechanically. That's 40 to choose from and there is no real reason to suppose that the other dozen odd classes have nothing to contribute either. I think in the vast majority of cases you'll find something VERY close to what you want. A switch of power source (possibly), class, maybe drop or alter a feature based mechanic, maybe change a keyword or two, write some new fluff, and you're in business.
Honestly at this point it would be pretty difficult to propose a new power and it NOT to have mechanics nearly or entirely identical to something out there already.
The main exceptions I would expect would be something like a summons where the details of what is summoned probably needs to be figured out, but that should be a pretty straightforward swap in terms of the spell itself and even here the chances are you can do a very simple reskin of an existing summons.
It's really not that hard to think of powers that don't match others... but that have _some_ similarities? Sure.
If the 'blood' powers you're looking for cost hp to use or something like that, you might want to glance at some of the Malediction Invoker powers to start with... otherwise, look for powers that are close enough then just change them slightly.
Like, you want a spray of boiling blood that blinds people? Blinding Barrage, pick a damage die, add a slight hp cost and bump it the tiniest bit if you want. Daze? Color Spray. Pools of blood pulling enemies down? Grease...
see expertise feats.
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