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I certainly wouldn't bother putting a 14 into a melee stat, even with your rules. It's still better to throw all my encounter powers then delay the rest of the combat. Because attempting to hit with +5 to hit at first level for 1d4+2 damage is kind of dumb. Against creatures with 16 AC, you only have a 50% chance of hitting for an average of 4 damage.
I agree, it is still more beneficial to focus on your powers and not on basic attacks. However, it does give the option to focus on basic attacks and I think that opens up a whole new avenue that is not there in 4e currently.
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Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart
That's the problem with using the core of 4e to do what you want. The core of 4e assumes EVERYONE is attacking with a stat that is 16+. The average actually assumes an 18 with + or - 1 being acceptable.
And that's at 1st level. Unless you put a point into strength every time you get a choice for leveling, any attacks you make with strength fall farther and father behind.
The math is so well balanced that anything more than a point or two off the average and you might as well not bother.
So you are a proponent of:
The concern is that if this fundamental is altered, it may collapse the game and no one will hit or do a proper amount of damage to contribute in a meaningful way.
Fair enough, I don't think it will be that drastic, again the wizard is not supposed to be as good as the fighter, if it were that way then it would be a problem.
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Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart
I actually think it would be easier to house rule 3e to do what you want than to force 4e to go there.
I don't. First of all, getting rid of the at-will powers is easy. Doing what you propose is rewriting 3e.
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Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart
Unless you mean something different by "core". Do you mean the math behind all the monsters and players?
Yes, I mean the core fundamental mechanics that make the game work. +1/2 level bonus, how skills work, stats, experience and encounter design, easy to prep and stuff like that. Those in my mind are the core mechanics to the game. Sub-systems on top of that include classes, powers, magic items, etc. Anything that you could easily take away is a sub-system. For instance you could easily take away classes and throw in some generic template that gives you 4 skills and that is it and play the game. I don't think that would be very interesting but it would be playable.
Out of the core mechanics I think I only have one problem (stat polarity), out of the sub-systems I have a few but sub-systems are easily fixed core mechanics are much more difficult.
As far as removing the at-wills and adding 2 more encounters at 1st level, that is a snap. Does it open up more archetypes of characters more easily? Yup. Does it make the wizard and to a lesser extent warlock less powerful? Yup. Does it give you more a D&D feel? Yup. Does it utilize the superior core mechanics? Yup. Does it allow for a less magical, less wuxia feel for the game? Yup.
The At-Will/Encounter/Daily seperation for powers are part of the core mechanics for 4e.
See my previous post.
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Originally Posted by WalterKovacs
Your changes forces every class to have STR or DEX as a secondary or primary stat (making classes without STR or DEX as a primary lose any builds other than X + STR or X + DEX, and you pretty much HAVE to go with 16/16 for those stats so they can both be decent attack stats).
Everyone is not supposed to be perfectly in sync, A wizard is supposed to be worse than a fighter at fighting. I am ok with that happening. I also still think that the wizard will still invest heavily into his INT.
Classes this change does not affect:
Fighter
Ranger
Rogue
Warlord
Classes this change affects a little:
Cleric
Paladin
Classes this change affects more:
Warlock
Wizard
The first group will function as normal with very little change to the way the character was designed.
The second group's classes both have STR as one of their primary stats, so the player can choose to be really good at basic attacks and their STR based powers at little cost or become better with their other powers at the cost of not being as effective with their STR powers and basic attacks.
The last group is a little different 1/2 of their powers are not based on STR or DEX so they have to make a choice between powers or basic attacks, I think that they always choose powers, but there is on option for melee warlocks and wizards. I actually think it would be pretty cool to have a warlock with a big weapon cursing and blasting away with their weapon possibly selecting a multi-class feat to pick up some fighter powers. If I had EB, it would be sub-par to do that.
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Originally Posted by WalterKovacs
Also, on book of nine swords: They all had ways of regaining their powers. They had a number of encounter powers, but they always had a way of getting back all the encounter powers. It basically meant 1 turn of "basic attacks" before going back to encounter powers again. The one thing you may like about it is that it forces each character to use EACH of the powers before they can use the same one again.
Ew, nice idea. Recovering powers during a fight could be a way to make the wizard more viable. That way they just recover powers, hang back and blast away. Recover and then blast some more. I have no idea how to exactly make that work. But it is a definitely viable solution for improving the wizard over just giving them bonus damage. It could be a wizard feat, though.
one of the things behind the OP's original ideas is that having magic-based at-wills e.g. Magic Missile simply puts too much magic in the game; hence, a desire to reduce such. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.
You are right on the money. That one thing that gives 4e its flavor, is the at-will powers. If you would rather have a feel like the previous versions of D&D remove these at-wills and you should arrive somewhere near that.
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Originally Posted by Lanefan
If removing at-wills causes concern that combats will grind even longer, there's a simple solution: reduce everyone's hit points
Grind is a problem by the RAW not just with this tune up, but it is a very easy fix as you have remarked.
I'd just like to add that the difference (in classes to hit bonus) was always that big.
This is why I fond it interesting that everyone is coming out of the woodwork arguing that the attack bonus for a wizard should be just as high as a fighter with their vanilla attacks.
So how soon is this change going to be implemented (looks like your mind was made up many pages ago so it's only a matter of time)? I'm curious to hear how no at-wills/more encounter powers works out in play!
If "Magic Missiles" and similar obvious magic is too magical and makes magic seem trivial and boring, why not change the at-wills of wizards (and warlocks and other casters too, I guess, but I'll focus on wizards for now) to make them less blatantly magical?
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.
This is why I fond it interesting that everyone is coming out of the woodwork arguing that the attack bonus for a wizard should be just as high as a fighter with their vanilla attacks.
Because, unlike in previous editions, he need to make those vanilla attacks in your proposal.
A 3E 5th level Wizard had a magic missile that dealt 3d4+3 damage (auto-hit)or a Fireball that dealt 5d6 damage (half on a save) in a 20 ft radius. (And not just one of each of these spells) The Fighter only had his melee attack at 1d8+6 damage (no damage on a miss).
The 4E Wizard modded by you has a Fireball that deals 3d6+4 damage, or one Bigby's Icy Grasp that that deals 2d10+4, once per day, and a Acid Arrow that deals 2d4+4 and 5 ongoing acid damage.
But the Fighter has, besides his 1d8+6 damage attack also a 2d10+6 attack that is guaranteed to work at some point and give him hit points back, and a 2d10+6 points of damage attack that deals ongoing 5 untyped damage.
Even if we ignore for a moment the dailies and replace them with extra encounter powers, not much changes - a Wizard might get more area attacks, but these deal less damage than the Fighters attacks, and an area attack is only useful if there are even enough enemies in a radius. Having 3 Fireball-like spells per encounter might turn out useless once the enemies have figured out you have it and flank the party and otherwise spread out.
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Also late to the thread but reading through it this also occured to me. If the at wills are a problem then why not change the at wills to something more acceptable?
If that is no good then I think an encounter power recovery should be considered to encourage people to play caster types. Otherwise, it would be better to play a fighter/caster multiclass and dip into the caster encounter and dailies via feats than go for a straight caster, especially wizard.
Something that keys off of "spells" that way both the warlock and wizard, both the hardest hit, would be able to do things with their non-bloated DEX and non-bloated STR.
I don't think the warlock is that far off form being decent, give them a bonus "reserve feat" that I will be writing up for the eldritch blast power as a class feature. They should be fine.
The wizard could then have a feat that keys off of their "spellbook" class feature and gives them a recharge of an encounter power every once in a while during an encounter. Standard action? does that seem reasonable or should their be more cost? AP?
So how soon is this change going to be implemented (looks like your mind was made up many pages ago so it's only a matter of time)? I'm curious to hear how no at-wills/more encounter powers works out in play!
We are playing in a pretty big game 7 players and I am not currently the DM, that will shift to me at the next option to and the current DM will become a player. I'll institute it then. I also, am pretty excited to try this out. I think it will really make the game better and bring a nice D&D feel.
Because, unlike in previous editions, he need to make those vanilla attacks in your proposal.
This is true, before when the wizard attacked it was usually with a touch attack or they need to make a save and those generally favored the spell caster. So having a good BAB was not that important.
Contrasting that point to this change, we have a wizard who has an 18 INT whose powers all go off of that. The wizard starts with 3 encounter powers and a daily picks up a utility power at 2nd and continues adding powers. The wizard is not limited to what a 5th level 3e wizard can do in a day - he can do way more! This is advantage 4e.
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Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully
damage
This rather eloquently illustrates how the 4e wizard is underpowered. As far as I am concerned they were already underpowered. So, adding anything to them to boost them up is almost a non-issue in this context. Adding something to spellbook class feature to recharge spells or giving them a bonus damage die to all of their spells both seem like good ways to go.
The wizard could then have a feat that keys off of their "spellbook" class feature and gives them a recharge of an encounter power every once in a while during an encounter. Standard action? does that seem reasonable or should their be more cost? AP?
I have no comment on the warlock, I have not seen them enough in play to really comment. The restoration of eldritch blast seems ok. For the Wizard, I would go with standard action recharge. Wizard powers in 4e tend to be hit or miss and if recharge is too hard then playing a wizard could become an excerise in frustration.
I would also chime in that in the wizard Dailies need more oomph. They will miss quite often so when they work then need to work well.
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I'm kind of surprised that, having settled on everyone having at-will powers, they didn't come up with some non-spell powers for Wizards. Why couldn't they have at-wills that affected crossbows or daggers or whatever? Maybe a dagger attacks that adds Int to damage and causes the enemy to take -1 on defenses if he doesn't step back next round, or something. I don't see any reason why a Wizard couldn't secondarily have powers related to crossbows or darts.
I'm kind of surprised that, having settled on everyone having at-will powers, they didn't come up with some non-spell powers for Wizards. Why couldn't they have at-wills that affected crossbows or daggers or whatever? Maybe a dagger attacks that adds Int to damage and causes the enemy to take -1 on defenses if he doesn't step back next round, or something. I don't see any reason why a Wizard couldn't secondarily have powers related to crossbows or darts.
Well, one of the nice things about 4e is that there's plenty of design space to add those, should you wish to do so.
I think giving them a melee at-will would be a neat idea, maybe tying it to Staff Mastery.
As far as removing the at-wills and adding 2 more encounters at 1st level, that is a snap. Does it open up more archetypes of characters more easily? Yup.
The thing many have pointed out though, is that it really doesn't. It adds new archetypes, but it also ruins existing archetypes ... unless you implement fixes that make it so that a character never has to actually use their basic attacks, otherwise that archetype is gone. The archetype for wizard is: Wizard with a melee weapon, wizard with a ranged weapon, wizard that cowers when out of spells. Warlock has warlock with a knife, warlock with a thrown knife ... warlock that cowers when out of spells.
People talk about how the at-wills make classes seem the same. The weapons are all very similar, just different ways of having either +2 or +3 to hit with the damage die being close to each other as well. So a wizard with a quatterstaff isn't that much different mechanically than a wizard with a scythe. And, even if the respective weapons seemed cool, they would stop being cool once you ended up having to use them when your spells run out.
It just seems odd that the goal is to get rid of at-wills to make them have to use basic attacks ... but then you have to make it so that they never really will be making basic attacks (unless they want to), in order to make it balanced in the 4e system.
actually i could live with a class with very weak at-wills which are solely used to fullfill its role and relying on base attacks and strong encounter/dailies...
One of the problems with this is the option of multiclassing. A class with "good" at-wills and weaker encounter/dailies will steal powers from the class with more powerful encounters and dailies that balance out the weaker at-wills.
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.
Except the powers I suggested had no visible effects and could just as easily be described as "smart fighting" or whatever you prefer, instead of "magic".
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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.
Allow me to present an analogy, just in case anyone hasn't got it already.
Chocolate is special.
If you have chocolate with every meal, it will cease to be special.
Like Sadrik, I have toyed with the idea of removing at-will powers in some manner. I find all their finicky effects to be a significant factor in battle-grind. Particularly for martial characters, but also for some of the others. Removing at-wills probably won't speed up the combat in terms of rounds, but it may speed it up in terms of real elapsed time. Less counting of when effects start and stop, and all the tiny bonuses or penalties that they inflict, more getting on with the job of actually fighting.
The way I envisioned the changes is as follows:
Melee characters (defenders and strikers): Have no at-wills. Each at-will power becomes an encounter power, and may get improved to reflect that fact. Melee characters may or may not get additional encounter powers per encounter, this is to be decided by actual playtest.
Spellcasters (wizards and warlocks): I think warlocks would remain fairly much as they are. Wizards however would have their at-wills converted to encounters, be able to use a greater number of encounter powers per battle, and be able to learn ALL spells. They would still have to choose which spells they prepared each day, but they'd go way beyond the limit of spells known that is normally imposed by 4E.
Leader/healer types: The ability to heal someone should never be tied to your ability to hit someone else. I would remove cleric at-will powers altogether and boost their ability to heal instead. Personally I'd remove warlords altogether, so I'll skip class that for this discussion.
So apart from the warlock's at wills (mainly eldritch blast), there are no at-wills in my model. While I fully realize my model is not balanced to the same degree as 4E, I feel it is much more pleasant starting point to work from. Balance from there on would be handled by how many encounter powers each class had available, or in how powerful they are.
Personally I'd also make other sweeping changes if I were to run 4E, like halving all HP. But this discussion isn't about me.
Were I in the same location as Sadrik, I'd volunteer to test his version, but I'm on the other side of the world. Nevermind.
Allow me to present an analogy, just in case anyone hasn't got it already.
Chocolate is special.
If you have chocolate with every meal, it will cease to be special.
I think this reasoning is very flawed.
Its not about how interesting the individual powers are, viewed in a vacuum. Its about how interesting the character as a whole is, viewed in total. Having things that you can do whenever you like makes your character, overall, more interesting. Reaping Strike might not be as awesome as an at will power in comparison to how awesome it would be if we enhanced it and made it an encounter power, but so what?
Right now my human fighter has a suite of three at will attacks. Each individual power might be cooler as an encounter power, but my fighter is cooler as a guy who can choose between three different tactical effects at any given time than he would be if he couldn't. And its more important that my character be cool than that his attack powers be cool viewed in a vacuum and unconnected to him.
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