4e / GSL At-will class powers ruining my archetypes

[Wrathamon]

I havent read the entire thread so many this has been said...

I made a Cleric Archer in 4e by making a laser cleric build and changing the fluff of the ranged attacks to "arrows fired from my holy bow"

It worked fine. I had fun. The rest of the group had fun. The game didnt break. I had my archtype.

[Wepwawet]

EDIT: Nevermind... I was just suggesting to move the thread to the houserules forum, because I thought this was another forum

Anyway, I'm amazed by the amount of text written, and the intransient opinions expressed

[Zustiur]

Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully

I still don't get how having two attack options with different effects mean less variety than having one attack options with no effect but dealing damage. THINK ABOUT IT!

Forget Basic Attacks. They don't exist. Name them "Reaction Attacks", triggered by powers, opportunity attacks and class features.

No. They exist. That's the basis of this whole thread. For me this all comes back to a preference on the quantity of wuxia. Basic attacks must exist to satiate a desire for believability (which for some, is required for fun).

Key point: One of the things I really detest about 4E is the premise that all characters are already heroes. I cannot stand this idea, because it pushes characters up to what used to be say 3rd or 4th level by comparison. I want my 1st level characters who aren't much better than commoners. Characters who have to earn their hero status.

Basic attacks are required to give that feeling of 'not much more than a commoner'. Moreover they must be used frequently, even into the levels where the characters have achieved hero status compared with 'the general populace'. At-Will powers being automatically better than basic attacks, to the point where you suggest pretending they don't even exist, ruins that feeling.

For a Fighter, At-Will powers can be like being able to make an (Improved) Bull Rush or use Power Attack every round, to translate these into 3E terms.

Yes... which you only get to have two of, for any character. And which you 'spam' every round. Compare with complaints about players/characters who spam disarm or sunder every round... It's ANNOYING and that detracts from the game.

Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart

I know I don't have a problem with that. To me, at-will attacks are the absolutely most basic thing a class can do. Anyone who knows how the fight in the slightest is using attacks like Cleave or Reaping Strike rather than swinging wildly(basic attack). Just like anyone who knew how to fight in 3e was using Power Attack, Combat Expertise, Cleave, Great Cleave, Two Weapon Fighting, Trip, Grapple, and the Full Attack action rather than doing a standard attack. I viewed these all as the at-will powers of 3e.

Did you have and use all of those at full competency at level 1? Or did your characters have to learn and improve them throughout the game? I prefer the latter method.

Characters start off as nobodys, and eventually learn to do cool things all the time.

In that same way, I view at-will powers for wizards as the absolutely most basic magic you learn when you study to become a wizard.

Those would be cantrips... Magic missile became a cantrip by that line of thought. See my earlier complaint about wuxia and starting off slow.

I used a bow when I was level 1 and 2. By the time I was level 3, I pretty much never touched one again. I'm just happy to skip the bow phase.

Whereas, I'm not happy to skip that phase.
It might help understanding if I point out that my various gaming groups never started above 1st level. And that throughout our attempts at 3rd edition, we never got beyond 6th level (due to life getting in the way). That formative stage with the bow is DND to me.

Normally, you use your at-will powers, because they are the bread and butter of your class. They are what define you as a Fighter and not just some guy with a sword.

Again, 'some guy with a sword' is where I like to start the game.
I would have liked to see formalized rules for 0th level or apprentice level characters being in the PHB or DMG. I got the opposite. Characters effectively start at 3rd level and move up from there. Not my cup of tea.

Originally Posted by Mallus

I tried this line of reasoning earlier and it didn't work. I'm still not sure why... it's so reasonable.

Reason requires a common ground to start from, which we appear not to have. We understand what you're saying. We just disagree based (primarily) on preference.


We're not saying that everyone has to play 4E in this manner. We're examining if it is possible to make 4E in to a game that Sadrik or myself would enjoy.

Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart

If he isn't suggesting it, then I am. I'm telling you that the vast majority of DMs out there don't have time to tailor encounters to their PCs. I'm also telling you that a number of them don't WANT to tailor encounters to their PCs.

We're not trying to tailor the game for those DMs. We're experimenting with tailoring the game for DM's like myself and Sadrik, and whose players enjoy the game so much more, because of that tailoring. Your comments along this line are essentially irrelevant. This thread is about an idea, and making that idea work as best as possible. About identifying the pit falls and mitigating them. Not about selling a product to the widest possible audience.

If you allow a character more encounter powers, then they are more powerful than expected. If you force them to use Basic Attacks for those 5 rounds than they are less powerful than expected.

Yes, and you went on to explain that... but you appear to have missed the question. You examined what happens if the mage uses a bow instead of scorching burst... You examined what happens if scorching burst is improved... But you did not examine what happens if both are true.
If you do both, how close to even is the end result? Can we take that premise and get it to balance close enough that the existing encounter guidelines work? Or work with a minor tweak?

Bear in mind that a number of gaming groups have halved hit points across the board, to speed up combat, without reports of this breaking the balance of encounters.

[Zustiur]

Originally Posted by WalterKovacs

However, they are going to be doing a lot of things that are different each time. Instead of doing the same "little" thing every round, they are using a completely different encounter power every oher turn.

Eventually. My preference is to have even less encounter powers (at low level) than Sadrik was suggesting...

And the "limits" of wizards only really existed at lower levels. Once a wizard hit a certain point, it was off to the races. This is sort of what is being proposed hear. Give the wizard a limit BUT make the fights short enough that the limit never comes up, or comes up rarely.

Yes, we're trying to restore the previous order, using a new core mechanic.

Ignoring the previous editions warlock ...

Agreed, I never even bought PHB2, so warlocks are out of that equation for me.

the ranger got their feat for free ... as a class feature. Rapid Shot/Two Weapon Fighting is basically a melee power.

I cannot argue with that. However I would point out that Rangers gained spells later on, which clearly are not martial equivalents of powers.

Since there are NO "powers" in 3.5 for martial types (until book of nine swords) there aren't going to be many cases of this. One example: Is the monks flurry of blows a class feature or a class specific power? It is class specific. It is an attack. However it would probably qualify as being a class feature. Either way though, it was something they could constantly do, that only they could do. It was part of what made them monks.

Again, no argument from me. However, I'd point out that their basic attacks were still used, particularly when precision was required.

Part of what made rangers what they were was their fighting style that either involved two weapon fighting ... which gave them extra attacks ... or archery powers ... that gave them extra attacks. Kind of like twin strike.

Yes. Rangers do seem to be the closest match between editions in that regard.

Magic users may not have had unlimited attacks ... they did however invest in magic items (and later reserve feats) that could make them effectively have unlimited magic.

That has always been play-group dependent. It will continue to be so.

Or, more often, they would force the entire party to rest whenever they ran out. Since it was daily based, instead of encounter based, it is a lot easier to do this. If you run out of powers IN an encounter, you can't just "give up and rest". However, if you are running low on dailies, you can stop before the next encounter.

Suits me.

So, while in the past magic users had limits ... in many cases players would just find ways of circumventing that. Part of that involves skipping the first few levels (not just for this reason, but also things like the sweet spot, HP ammounts, access to magic items, etc). Part of it involves loading up on "cure sticks" and other useful wands to give more resources over time. As time went on, magic items started to convert from charges to uses per day, and feats were added to give at-will options for magic users (reserve feats).

As mentioned in my previous post, my groups never skipped level 1. If anything we savoured it. Having to stop and rest frequently is part of how the story works for me. It's that 'scared of the next battle' factor, which is sorely missing at present in my games of 4E.

Because if you are doing the same thing constantly its going to remain difficult to keep track of?

No, because it's tedious, slow, and just plain annoying.

How is having more encounter powers, which each do something different, and unlike daily powers rarely have long term durations that much different. The ability you use once per fight (and is 1 of at least 3, up to 6 or 7, not counting utilities or dailies, etc) is going to be easier to remember all the details than something you use multiple times during a fight.

Remembering effects is not the issue I was seeking to remove. Repetition is.

Ignore that a number of at-wills are fire and forget as well, like twin strike, eldritch blast, magic missle, heck even some stuff like thunderwave, tide of iron, and things like that are also fire and forget. Giving people THP? Again, you right it on the sheet and voila, you just do a bit of extra damage. Give someone an immediate attack, move someone around, attack multiple targets, attack a non-AC defence, move before or after the attack, etc, etc, etc ...

While I'll concede that some of those you listed are just damage effects (and therefore of little consequence to speed of combat) others are not.
Thunderwave: Damage + push.
Tide of Iron: I can't find this one, but I'm sure it's not just damage.

Move someone? Yes. Do damage? Yes. Move someone and do damage? No. Not for actions you can repeat every round.

Only a few involve round long effects you have to remember, and which are comparable to a number of round long effects that are class features, like the fighter's mark, or the warlock's concealment, that provide the same kind of numbers you need to track. [Unlike mod'ing STR or DEX, you don't have to recalculate one value that in turn recalculates a LOT of values ... you are told directly what 'final' value is modified instead]. If you use the power often enough, and you know what the "special condition" is, you can easily know when it isn't going to matter.

Using the power 'often enough' is precisely what I'm trying to avoid. Less frequent use = More mystery. More mystery = More interest(ing). More Interest = More fun [for me].

I'm not going to say there isn't a case of "remember your modifiers" at the table during the sessions ... but continuous modifiers and feat based modifiers are just as easy to forget about.

Sure. Again, that's not the issue I'm trying to fix.

Ultimately, it would seem that if an at-will is being used say ... 3 times per fight, it's going to be easier to remember the math involved [including your encounters and dailies] than having no at-wills and more encounters. You have less to calculate for your basic attacks (except of course, their initial math is probably different than your class based abilities, and if you have powers with longer durations as you've suggested, you have to apply that math to these powers anyway). And, since you are never using the same "complex" power twice, you have to get used to more powers that recur less often.

Changing the calculations every round annoys me, and part of that is based on probability. I prefer bigger effects less often.
Take Righteous Brand and Bless as the examples from 4E and 3E respectively.
One gives a +2 to hit (assuming 14 str)... for a round, if your one ally can attack that given target during the next round. Which is a benefit of 1 in 10... that is, one in ten times you use righteous brand, it will convert a miss to a hit. So on average, you have to activate the effect 10 times to get any benefit out of it.
The other - gives a +1 to hit for the rest of the combat, or even multiple combats if they're close together. So once out of 20 rounds it will convert a miss to a hit... but you only activate it once to achieve that. In fact from 7th level, you can expect it to work twice (assuming a stupendously long combat) from one activation. That is, two converted hits from 40 rounds. But that's not all. It affects your whole party.

Taking the 'default' 3E party of 4 characters, that's one converted hit every 5 rounds (instead of 10), after activating the spell once (instead of 10 times). So bless is clearly 'more effective' than Righteous brand. That's fairly obvious. The 'balancing factor' involved is that you only get to cast bless a few times per day.

Now that I've shown the different mechanics and their results, imagine if bless wasn't more powerful.
Imagine if the choice was between bless and righteous brand, but they both worked out to one converted hit every ten rounds. But where the only difference was that bless was activated once, and righteous brand was activated every round.
THIS is the premise we're discussing. This is what I'm aiming for. Both are equally balanced, neither alters the way encounter guidelines work. Neither fundamentally alters the balance of the game. One must be spammed. The other is a once off but lasting effect.
I chose the lasting effect.
I believe that is what Sadrik is seeking also.

I leave it to Sadrik to confirm or deny my understanding of his intentions here, but what I am seeking is summarized below:

How do we alter 4E, so that it fits a less wuxia feel, with more single-fire-lasting-effects, and less round by round repetition, without altering the balance of the game and thereby upsetting the core mechanic?

I believe it is possible to achieve this by replacing most/all At-Will powers with more powerful encounter powers. What then are the pit falls of this? How should we go about it? Discuss.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Zustiur

I believe it is possible to achieve this by replacing most/all At-Will powers with more powerful encounter powers.

Sure, it's possible. But it'll take a lot of work to put any semblance of balance (both PC vs. monster and class vs. class) back into the system. A lot of work.

What then are the pit falls of this?

Did I mention it'll take a lot of work? The system as is assumes that PC groups can generate a certain amount of damage, and more importantly, certain kinds of damage plus rider effects like pushes, every round. It's going to take experimentation to figure out how to power up the encounter powers to compensate for that.

How should we go about it?

That's actually easy. Draft some replacement encounter powers and run test combats. A lot of them. Make sure you pick a wide variety of monsters, paying particular attention to those with resistances and abilities like conditional regeneration (ie incorporeal undead). Run mixed-type fights.

You probably won't get back to 4e's original balance, but you probably can get close. I think...

[Majoru Oakheart]

WARNING. There is a lot of math in this post. I apologize for that, but this is a complicated subject that can't be analyzed easily. That's pretty much the point of my entire post. That it isn't as simple as some people are making it sound.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

Yes, we're trying to restore the previous order, using a new core mechanic.

You are attempting to recreate the imbalance that 4e worked so hard to fix? Well, then it's no problem at all. Just change things and don't worry about the consequences. But it seems rather strange to take the carefully balanced 4e core and purposefully remove the balance. At that point, it really is easier to run 3.5e with some house rules to make it more like 4e than it is to houserule 4e to be more like 3.5e.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

That has always been play-group dependent. It will continue to be so.

It may have been play group dependent, but it was play group dependent in the same way that Fighters using weapons instead of their bare fists was play group dependent. The rules let you do it another way, but heavily encouraged one way. It is certainly possible that a DM said "Sorry, you can't buy wands or scrolls, you can't take reserve feats, I don't want my game to be some sort of fantasy game filled with magic. You have to be normal." But the game encouraged a heavily magical game. It always has.

But if you were already making changes to 3.5e to support this style and you didn't care about the imbalance caused then. I don't see why the solution needs to be more complicated than turning all at-wills into encounter powers and doubling their damage. Anyone with high strength or dex will hit with their attacks. No one else will except for their one encounter power per battle. Magic will become even more special because it won't be able to be used more than once per combat. Everyone will be ordinary until the higher levels.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

Suits me.

Once again, this reads: "I want the game to be exactly like 3.5e". If that's the case, I'm still failing to see why 4e is the better option.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

As mentioned in my previous post, my groups never skipped level 1. If anything we savoured it. Having to stop and rest frequently is part of how the story works for me. It's that 'scared of the next battle' factor, which is sorely missing at present in my games of 4E.

Fair enough. If you find an entire group like that who honestly doesn't like being more powerful better, then go with it. However, be careful not to project your likes and dislikes on your group. I've seen more than once when someone can just assume their group likes their way of playing more than any other simply because they've never asked them, they've never exposed them to other types of styles, or they just went with the group preference even though they were against it.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

No, because it's tedious, slow, and just plain annoying.
Remembering effects is not the issue I was seeking to remove. Repetition is.

While I'll concede that some of those you listed are just damage effects (and therefore of little consequence to speed of combat) others are not.
Thunderwave: Damage + push.
Tide of Iron: I can't find this one, but I'm sure it's not just damage.

Move someone? Yes. Do damage? Yes. Move someone and do damage? No. Not for actions you can repeat every round.

And now you've managed to remove one of the core tenants of 4e. It shows a lack of understanding of the problems 4e was trying to correct. Now, if none of those were problems for your group, fair enough. However, that's just one more part of 4e you need to reverse to get back to 3.5. Implying that it's still easier to start with 3.5e and work forward.

In case it needs explanation, the core of 4e is created around the idea that all the players are working together in the same game, toward the same goal in the same way. In 4e, this is lowering hitpoints. Any round you are not lowering the enemies hitpoints is a round you aren't contributing meaningfully to defeating the enemies. So, in order to do interesting things, you need to be able to do damage AND something else cool. Otherwise you're back to "I make a basic attack. I hit, I do 7, go."

That seems to be what you are trying to create, but one of the major reasons 4e was created in the first place was the remove that.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

Using the power 'often enough' is precisely what I'm trying to avoid. Less frequent use = More mystery. More mystery = More interest(ing). More Interest = More fun [for me].

The ultimate fun must be when you never get to use powers ever. Then they are so rare as to be the most interesting.

Keep in mind, if you are attempting to make the players more mundane, you need to remove the assumption that all commoners in 4e die in one hit without even having an AC. It was based on the idea that the PCs were heroes. In order to rebalance this, I'd suggest either giving all commoners the stats of a 1st level monster or reducing all PCs to one hitpoint so they can feel like a normal person.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

Changing the calculations every round annoys me, and part of that is based on probability. I prefer bigger effects less often.

Fair enough. You didn't change your calculations every round in 3.5e? Oh, right, you didn't make it over 6th level. That explains it. Not enough spells to change it all the time.

However, I can tell you this was much worse at even medium levels in 3.5e. The average combat for my fighter tended to go like this:

Precombat:
-Get Greater Magic Weapon cast on my 2 weapons. Figure out my new attack and damage modifiers.
-Get Magic Vestment cast on my armor. Figure out new AC.
-Have Heroes Feast cast. Figure out temporary hitpoints, attack modifier, will saves.

Combat:
Round 1:
-Get Haste cast on me. Figure out new attack and AC
-Get Prayer cast on me from a wand. Figure out new attack, damage and saves.
Round 2:
-Have Enlarge Person cast on me. Based on my new strength, figure out new attack, damage, and AC
-Have Righteous Wrath of the Faithful Cast on me. Figure out new attack and damage while remembering that it only give me a free extra attack when using a melee weapon, that it's extra attack doesn't stack with haste and that the bonus to hit and damage doesn't stack with Prayer. But I still get the save bonus from Prayer.
Round 3:
-Have Fires of Purity cast on me. Which adds extra fire damage on all my attacks. Add that into the total damage I'm doing.
Round 4:
No changes.
Round 5:
-Get hit by a targeted Dispel Magic that gets rid of Righteous Wrath of the Faithful. Recalculate attack and damage.
Round 6:
-Prayer runs out. Recalculate attack, damage, and saves.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

Take Righteous Brand and Bless as the examples from 4E and 3E respectively.
One gives a +2 to hit (assuming 14 str)...

This is a dangerous assumption. I've never seen anyone take Righteous Brand without having an 18 strength. So, +4. But, let's move on.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

for a round, if your one ally can attack that given target during the next round. Which is a benefit of 1 in 10... that is, one in ten times you use righteous brand, it will convert a miss to a hit. So on average, you have to activate the effect 10 times to get any benefit out of it.

If you are giving a bonus of +4, it's 1 in 5. Still, if it has no effect, you haven't lost the damage you did with the attack. It's an attack with a bonus.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

The other - gives a +1 to hit for the rest of the combat, or even multiple combats if they're close together. So once out of 20 rounds it will convert a miss to a hit... but you only activate it once to achieve that. In fact from 7th level, you can expect it to work twice (assuming a stupendously long combat) from one activation. That is, two converted hits from 40 rounds. But that's not all. It affects your whole party.

That's correct. In a group of 6 people, it gives an extra hit every 3 rounds or so. Assuming the average hit does 10 damage, your action just did 30 damage in a 9 round combat. And that's why it's unbelievably powerful in 4e balance terms. It allows you to get a huge bonus for just one action. 4e is balanced around an action economy. One action gets you X benefit. That's why there's all the repeating of actions. If you want the benefit again, you need to spend more actions.

Compare that to a Righteous Brand that adds +4 to hit. It adds 20% more damage to one attack(essentially), meaning that it does its own damage(let's say 10) and 2 more damage on someone else's attack for a total of 12 damage for one standard action.

Not only that, but Bless is swingy. If nobody misses by 1 it has no effect. If Righteous Brand hits, but its bonus is useless, you still did 10 damage with the hit.

The other thing to consider is that Bless automatically succeeds. Which is a no no in 4e philosophy. You don't have to make an attack roll to give the bonus unless it's a daily. Whereas Righteous Brand essentially reads: "You have a 60% chance to activate this power" simply by having an attack roll. Because of this, you need to factor that chance into the resulting damage. Which means it normally does 6 damage(60% of 10 damage), with the possibility of 8. Compare that to the 30 damage Bless did and you see how much more powerful it is.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

Now that I've shown the different mechanics and their results, imagine if bless wasn't more powerful.
Imagine if the choice was between bless and righteous brand, but they both worked out to one converted hit every ten rounds. But where the only difference was that bless was activated once, and righteous brand was activated every round.

So, you are basically saying, assuming an average 10 round combat, that we Bless should be about 14 times more powerful than RB due to the number of actions it takes. That's assuming they both had an initial hit in order to do damage. If you mean that RB still gets a 60% chance to do 10 damage PLUS giving someone else a hit once every 10 rounds while Bless only gives the hit chance, then I'll use RB every round rather than Bless, which would suck.

It's nearly impossible to balance these two effects. Bless has too much of a swing effect. On a good round where all 6 party members get a hit because of the Bless bonus, it does 60 points of damage in one round. Which is more than some of the highest level dailies. In a bad round it does nothing.

The thing with RB is that you know they can use it every round. So, it's going to hit 60% of all rounds for the whole combat(if that's all they use). If it has no effect, they have another chance next round. No big deal.

That's on of the reasons that nearly everything in 4e requires an attack roll and why there is at-wills. It is easy to measure the average damage of a fighter against a wizard if you know their approximate chance to hit and average damage of both using at-wills. If you know their average damage, you can also figure out the hitpoints the enemy needs in order to survive the number of rounds you want them to. And you can predict this no matter what the makeup of a party is.

On the other hand, if one class is doing attacks that always work(like 3e magic missile), or something that has extremely swingy effect, then the calculation goes out the window. One combat might end in 2 rounds due to the party being entirely wizards and able to auto hit with their magic missiles every round. While another combat might take 20 rounds because the party is entirely clerics with spells that don't actually do damage, they only enhance each other. That was one of the problems from 3e that was fixed in 4e.

[Sadrik]

Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart

I'm telling you that the vast majority of DMs out there don't have time to tailor encounters to their PCs. I'm also telling you that a number of them don't WANT to tailor encounters to their PCs.

I certainly don't think it should be a necessity. I think of encounters as a "what if" scenario. What IF there was a group of cultists planning to bring back their dark god. What IF a group of PCs decided to stop them. What happens? At the same time, I want my players to be able to play whatever the most fun is for them and not have to change the entire scenario around them. If I tailor the encounters to my group, it ruins the what if. It turns it into "What if a group of PCs ran across a bunch of encounters specifically designed for them?" Which isn't that much fun for me.

I've been running Living Greyhawk adventures for years without adjusting them to the party that was playing it. I've been running Living Forgotten Realms now for 6 months in 4e without adjusting adventures to the party. I've run published adventures in my home games for years in 3e and 3.5e without adjusting a single one of them to my party.

They don't need to be adjusted, and I'm not going to do unneeded work when there is laundry to be done, movies to be watched, books to be read, lawns to be mowed and so on. I think that the game system should be balanced enough so I don't have to. I also take offense to the fact that your implication is that I'm somehow a mindless computer because I don't adjust them.

Even if I was going to adjust them for my party...how do you adjust them? This is always the question I have when someone says, "You need to adjust for your party". If I have a wizard who uses 90% fire spells but has 10% of his spells as cold spells...well, is a creature with fire immunity but vulnerability to cold a bad idea to send at the party? What if is is Fire Resistance 30? 20? Is it worth it to make the wizard feel useless for a battle in order to allow the fighter to shine?

Sure, I could come up with answers to these questions, but they'd be guesses. Not based on anything other than a gut feeling of what they'd be able to handle. I could be(and have been) completely wrong when adjusting things. I've nearly killed off an entire party. I've made an enemy so easy that they died before taking an action. All while thinking I was doing the right thing.

Majoru Oakheart, I am going to agree with you. And disagree as well. From my DMing experience I have modify things when I thought they were dumb and convoluted. I have also ran straight through modules verbatim before too. I always try to add in different elements to spice them up. Lets face it running through an endless string rooms with combat encounters is not that interesting.

Where I really agree with you is most DMs (again from my XP) do just throw together encounters in a lets see what happens fashion. The take that and learn from it and begin to see weaknesses and strengths in the group and whether consciously or not they can plan encounters with that experience of how the party handled previous encounters. So I agree, not as formulaic in designing encounters that will deeply challenge the party maximizing their weaknesses and minimizing their strengths. But... the DM learns and adapts their encounters to suit the party and make for challenges, possibly throwing in a couple extra reinforcements or throwing that fire giant in knowing the fighters flaming sword will be less than helpful.

I understand if you are running the "living" stuff, mostly those lend the as per the book types of games, I don't think most gamers are limited in that way. And don't be offended by what I said about mindless computer bla bla bla. The living stuff should be played by the rules in the book because there are too many house rules out their and if one DM is doing it one way, then you can pretty much count on every DM doing it a different way and consistency is important for the players. Most D&Ders do not play "living" stuff so are more free to house rule things and mod encounters and stuff.

Originally Posted by Mallus

You probably won't get back to 4e's original balance, but you probably can get close. I think...

I am hearing you say that 4e is not a robust system that it cannot handle any change to its intricately fragile system and a single up tick or down tick will collapse the game. That is bogus. I argue your perfect balance never existed in the first place. I argue that this 4e balance that is always touted was a driving design factor but never materialized. A game by default never can be balanced. It is all a matter of how subtle you want the discrepancies to be. They are less severe than 3e, but it is still unbalanced. Balanced is achieved with no options - the same class, the same race, the same feats, the same weapons, the same everything even tactics. The closer you get to that balance the less interesting things become (IMO). The point is, I submit the game will not collapse with a change like this.

Originally Posted by Zustiur

I leave it to Sadrik to confirm or deny my understanding of his intentions here

I think you mostly have it.

[nightwyrm]

This arguement has been going on for ten pages, isn't it time for some empirical data? Go ahead Sadrik, remove at-wills from your game and post your game results.

It's obvious that no one is gonna be convinced by what the other side is saying. It's time for some actual playtesting and results.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by nightwyrm

It's time for some actual playtesting and results.

I recently suggested that. What I got back from the OP was a... less than constructive response.

[Majoru Oakheart]

Originally Posted by Zustiur

How do we alter 4E, so that it fits a less wuxia feel, with more single-fire-lasting-effects, and less round by round repetition, without altering the balance of the game and thereby upsetting the core mechanic?

I believe it is possible to achieve this by replacing most/all At-Will powers with more powerful encounter powers. What then are the pit falls of this? How should we go about it? Discuss.

Fair enough, a lot of my previous post already goes into a discussion of this. This is the post for those who didn't want to read through the last one.

Here's the basic summary:
There are two major problems with removing at wills for longer lasting, more powerful encounter powers:

1. Swingy Combat. If all powers still have attack rolls, then this method makes combats a LOT more swingy. If someone has one encounter power and misses, and it would have done 30 damage while their basic attack does 6(adjusted for probability of hitting), they've just extended the combat by 5 rounds.

The reverse of this is if everyone hits with their more powerful encounter powers on the first round, the battle ends really quickly with nearly no challenge at all and no resources wasted.

2. The Action Economy. What an action is worth in a combat. Long lasting effects have their effect in every round of combat. This means that they have the same effect as a power that lasts a round multiplied by the number of rounds they last for.

This also allows you to stack powers. Each round you get to add the effects of all powers you've used together for the entire encounter. And there's no way to predict how long an encounter will last anymore, due to how swingy it is. So, a +2 to hit might last 20 rounds and give you huge amounts of damage or it might last 1 round and do nothing. So, there's no way to tell how powerful it is. How do you balance powers against each other with no way of knowing how powerful they are?


These two issues, when combined mean that all the predictability that has been designed into the core 4e mechanics is thrown out. Since the goal of the 4e core mechanic is to add predictability to the game, I suggest that your goal is impossible. If remove at-will powers you sacrifice the core 4e mechanic.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Sadrik

I am hearing you say that 4e is not a robust system that it cannot handle any change to its intricately fragile system and a single up tick or down tick will collapse the game.

Then you should listen more carefully.

What I said was that the changes your suggesting will have a number of consequences, chief among them being invalidating the existing encounter-building guidelines, next being the intra-class balance. You'll need to make fixes and then test them.

A game by default never can be balanced.

Not a chess player I see...

[Parlan]

Originally Posted by Sadrik

This or something like it is a solution. But what you have proposed is just a shell game switching one at-will magical effect for another. I would rather they just have the bonus encounter powers, delete the at-wills and be done. It is a very simple fix, without the need of writing 20 or 30 new powers.

It's simple, but it's not a "fix".

1. Melee attacks are boring.

Maybe this suits your vision of a game world, but it's a step backward for me. A rogue getting to shift a couple squares into flanking position before striking, or a Fighter using Tide of Iron to push an opponent off of a bridge and into lava, that gives players options and makes encounters more interesting.

More interesting than having no options other than to slug it out toe to toe, "I missed. I hit, 6 dmg. I hit, 7 dmg. I missed..."

2. Magic Missile is Uninspired, but no Worse than 3e

I agree, it's a pretty boring At-Will. It's the magical equivalent of slugging it out toe-to-toe. However, Wizards have plenty of other options for At-Wills, ones that let them Push, Slow etc.

4e Wizards have some interesting At-Will options.

Still, MM is no worse than 3e. The argument that MM being more "special" because it could only be cast a certain number of times per day holds no water. It was cast multiple times in every encounter I've played in. Being cast half a million times in the course of a campaign instead of a million didn't make it any more "special" for me.

3. Increasing the Number of Encounter/Daily Powers won't compensate for the Lack of At-Wills.

Encounters/Dailies do, on average, 2W or 3W. Since the ability modifier only gets added once, this means that Encounters/Dailies only increase the damage by 50%-100% or so. If they hit.

That's not going to shorten the length of encounters in any meaningful way, when opponents have more HP.


In short, I don't see how the OP's proposals do anything but make the game *less* fun.

If I want less fun, I could just go back to RL.

[Cadfan]

Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart

Compare that to a Righteous Brand that adds +4 to hit. It adds 20% more damage to one attack(essentially), meaning that it does its own damage(let's say 10) and 2 more damage on someone else's attack for a total of 12 damage for one standard action.

Its more than that, actually. 4 is 20% of the distribution from 1 to 20, but what you seem to want to calculate is increased damage per round. And since the attack that's being boosted by Righteous Brand already has a miss chance, you have to factor that in.

Lets say you hit with Righteous Brand. You grant +4 attack to someone who was previously hitting on a 9+. Now he hits on a 5+. Previously his expected damage was .6*X, now its .8*X. That's a 33% increase.

Originally Posted by nightwyrm

This arguement has been going on for ten pages, isn't it time for some empirical data? Go ahead Sadrik, remove at-wills from your game and post your game results.

It's obvious that no one is gonna be convinced by what the other side is saying. It's time for some actual playtesting and results.

This conversation isn't about the actual game. The people trying to change 4e aren't actually playing it. They just want to armchair debate how things ought to be. Which is fine. That's the perspective from which I've been engaging in this thread as well. I mean, I actually play the game, but I've been treating this thread as a gameplay-experience-free zone. Its all good fun, even if its pointless. Its the internet.

Overall I have some sympathy for a desire to make characters diversify outside of their general shtick a little bit, particularly by adding non magical combat options. I disagree a bit with Sadrik on what the point of doing that is: I'd rather have a character who can competently fight with both spells and nonmagical melee combat and accomplishing different things with each, so that the player embraces both as interesting options. He'd rather make nonmagical melee combat something that spellcasters have to do whether they like it or not, and force them to begrudgingly invest exactly enough resources in it to survive until they learn enough magic to stop caring. As a result, he prefers to take away at will powers so that basic attacks will have to be used once limited use powers run out. I'd rather diversify at wills or add in melee encounter powers so that characters can do whatever they prefer for a given situation.

I just think its nuts to claim that the game is lacking options because the basic attack isn't a strong choice. Its pretty obvious to anyone paying attention that your at wills for your melee classes are just basic attacks upgraded with the sorts of things that existed in 3e as feats. By making them powers instead of basic attacks augmented by feats they prevent them from stacking, making the system as a whole more resilient to breaks and power creep.

[nightwyrm]

Originally Posted by Mallus

Not a chess player I see...

Well technically, white has a minor advantage since it moves first....

[Majoru Oakheart]

Originally Posted by Sadrik

Majoru Oakheart, I am going to agree with you. And disagree as well. From my DMing experience I have modify things when I thought they were dumb and convoluted. I have also ran straight through modules verbatim before too. I always try to add in different elements to spice them up. Lets face it running through an endless string rooms with combat encounters is not that interesting.

We have fun with dungeon crawls now and then. I modify things when I think they are dumb. I just have a high tolerance. I almost never think something is dumb. New elements are always fun. I'm certainly not knocking people who modify their adventures. If you have the time, go ahead. But, the way you were making it sound was that a game system doesn't have to work, because you'd modify your game around any problems. I think a game system should just work without modification.

I understand that you can guess and get it "mostly" right. But I'd prefer not to guess at all.

Originally Posted by Sadrik

The living stuff should be played by the rules in the book because there are too many house rules out their and if one DM is doing it one way, then you can pretty much count on every DM doing it a different way and consistency is important for the players. Most D&Ders do not play "living" stuff so are more free to house rule things and mod encounters and stuff.

I have the freedom to change things in my home game. I don't, because I like consistency as well. And Living Forgotten Realms encourages people to modify the encounters if they think it'll be more fun. We just don't allow changing of the rules. I prefer to be able to move from game to game without learning new rules all the time. I prefer to know my powers will work the same way each time I use them, even if I switch DMs.

I work my home games the same way. The rules are never changed, but the encounters are where I get to make things up and make things interesting.

Originally Posted by Sadrik

I am hearing you say that 4e is not a robust system that it cannot handle any change to its intricately fragile system and a single up tick or down tick will collapse the game.

This is correct. More than any previous edition, 4e has had a LOT of math and probability theory put into it. I'm not on the design team. I'm just pretty good at math. But there was no math behind 3e(or at least, not much). It was pretty much completely random. Changes one way or another didn't affect things much because there was no way to really see what effect the change had.

The math behind 4e reduces the factors involved to a couple of easily predictable numbers. Since they are so predictable, other portions of the game can depend on them.

As a rough example. In 3e, a PC could be doing 1 damage a round or 100. No real way to tell. They might have decided to play a halfling with 6 Strength who attacks with a dagger for 1-2 damage per round. They might have decided to play a half-orc barbarian with Power Attack who has a +1 weapon at first level who does 46 damage on a crit. How long does a creature with 18 hitpoints and an AC of 16 last for? No way to tell. Might as well just make up numbers that looks sort of correct and see what happens.

In 4e, the average plus to hit is +6 at 1st level. The average enemy has a 15 AC. The average damage is 8 damage per hit. With a 60% chance to hit that means each character does 5 damage per round. We assume 5 characters. So, 25 damage total per round. If there are 5 enemies, each has 30 hitpoints, then the combat should last 6 rounds. We want the PCs to win an average fight with no one dying. A character has and average of 25 hitpoints on average. We want the total damage of the enemies to be around 62(hitpoints of 2 characters plus 2 healing surges). The average AC of a PC at first level is 16. If we give the enemy +5 to hit, they'll hit 50% of the time. Assuming we that one enemy dies in every round after the first, that means they get 20 attacks total. That means each enemy should do an average of 12 damage on an attack when it hits.

And there you have the main formula for the math in 4e. Due to the randomness of die rolls, character choices, monster choices and types, the rest works itself out. The individual numbers don't matter since we can accurately predict the average. However(and this is key), the only way the math continues to work is if we don't let people get too far away from the average. 4e lets people get between +4 and +8 to hit at first level(without going to extremes). If there are people with +0 to hit in the same group as people with +10 to hit, the difference is too great to determine the average accurately. Since you can't do that, you can't determine what the AC of the enemies should be, which means you can't determine their hitpoints nor their attack bonus nor their damage.

The whole house of cards falls apart.

This is what happens when you force someone to make melee attacks with their 10 strength with a +2 prof bonus quarterstaff in an average round instead of their 20 int vs Ref Magic Missile(average 1.8 damage per round vs 6.5). This is basically 5 damage less a round. Assuming the same 30 hitpoint creatures, it means an extra round of combat. If you have 2 casters in your group, it means 2 extra rounds of combat. Now, remember how we balanced the damage the enemy did so it wouldn't kill anyone in 6 rounds of combat. Well, now there's 8 rounds of combat. The enemy does 12 more damage(on average) during those 2 rounds. Which is just enough to be the difference between someone living and dying.

Really small differences create large problems in 4e.

[Sadrik]

Originally Posted by Mallus

Then you should listen more carefully.

What I said was that the changes your suggesting will have a number of consequences, chief among them being invalidating the existing encounter-building guidelines, next being the intra-class balance. You'll need to make fixes and then test them.

Ah, so if guidelines are now skewed slightly from this change then now the game will not function?

My personal opinion is that this change won't alter the guidelines for encounter design.

Invalidating intra-class balance, what is that anyway? Are you saying that the classes are so balanced as written that altering that mix would be detrimental to playing said game?

Originally Posted by Mallus

Not a chess player I see...

And I know you are not...

[Sadrik]

Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart

I'm certainly not knocking people who modify their adventures. If you have the time, go ahead. But, the way you were making it sound was that a game system doesn't have to work, because you'd modify your game around any problems. I think a game system should just work without modification.

Of course a game has to work. But that is not the only factor a game has to be fun too. Most DMs modify what they play I would venture. Others may alter it more than others.

Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart

I understand that you can guess and get it "mostly" right. But I'd prefer not to guess at all.

Yes, nothing is ever perfect it is good enough.

Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart

This is correct. More than any previous edition, 4e has had a LOT of math and probability theory put into it. I'm not on the design team. I'm just pretty good at math. But there was no math behind 3e(or at least, not much). It was pretty much completely random. Changes one way or another didn't affect things much because there was no way to really see what effect the change had.

The math behind 4e reduces the factors involved to a couple of easily predictable numbers. Since they are so predictable, other portions of the game can depend on them.
The whole house of cards falls apart.
Really small differences create large problems in 4e.

First, effective analysis. 3e - damage was more variable, 4e has more average damage. The example of 10 STR guy attacking with a staff is perfect for accentuating your overall point but it fails to see the role that a player with a 10 STR character is trying to fill with their character. If you have a 10 STR character do you really expect your character to be good at attacking with a staff? I don't think so. The expectation should be that you are not effective at doing that. So where this was effective analysis it was simply pointing out that a 10 STR guy is not very effective at fighting.

Assuming the 10 STR guy is a Wizard, the player is mostly a ranged character so can attack with their powers at range if they wanted to focus that way. If they wanted to use a bow (or throw shuriken ) or wield a sword the player would create their character with a mid ranged DEX or STR or both. That character concept is so completely sub-par in the current rules. It is almost pointless to even consider one because your at-wills are easily superior and work off your single uni-bloated stat. This is what this whole thread is about.

Speaking toward your point, the math is their and I believe it to be much more robust than you do. I don't feel removing at-wills will alter the game in a negative way. This does need testing and I concur with several posters with that sentiment. I will try and get some of my own "math" together and post my findings.

[Cadfan]

Rumor from rpg.net: Feat: Melee Training. Use stat of your choice for basic attacks.

Everything I wanted in terms of making melee viable for non melee characters. Won't make other people happy, but from my results-based orientation, that's all I need. I can build the rest with existing feats and powers.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Sadrik

Ah, so if guidelines are now skewed slightly from this change then now the game will not function?

The changes you're proposing will do more than slightly skew things. They're a significant redesign of a core part of system.

Look, I'm trying to help you out here. I raised a number of specific issues, but all you seem to do is want to argue (without actually addressing any specifics). Do you want to discuss design or not?

edit: BTW, glad to hear you're going do some testing. Best way to proceed.

[Sadrik]

Originally Posted by Cadfan

Rumor from rpg.net: Feat: Melee Training. Use stat of your choice for basic attacks.

Everything I wanted in terms of making melee viable for non melee characters. Won't make other people happy, but from my results-based orientation, that's all I need. I can build the rest with existing feats and powers.

I don't like it. It gives everyone the exact same chance to hit (minus proficiency, magic items, feats and powers).

A fighter should not attack as good as a wizard. Sorry I think that diminishes the fighter. Outside, of that this feat gives almost no effect to the standard game. As argued, "basic" attacks are the at-will powers and true basic attacks are only used when triggered by a specific event. This virtually makes this feat useless. I attack you with my CON??? This does follow with Iron Heroes. Was this a rumor for being in PHB 2 or something?

Why use any of the DMG page 42 stuff when you can simply use an at-will?

Why are the martial at-wills simply not covered under that chart? Throw in a couple of other effects on it like push 1 square etc. Instead we have at-wills that force a player to "spam" the two at-wills they do have.