Discussing 4e Subsystems: POWERS!

Powers

We’ve talked about a lot of subsystems, but no other defines 4th edition as much as the powers system. When people think 4th edition, they think powers. Some love them, some hate them, and now it’s time to take a look at the system and see how it ticks.

The evolution of Encounter Powers
At-will powers in the form of regular attacks have been around forever, and the wizard’s array of spells is the very definition of a daily power. While not completely unique to 4th edition, the idea of allowing abilities every fight, but only once per fight, has become a cornerstone of the system.

In my opinion, it is an attempt to fix one of the issues of 3rd edition. In 3rd, designers gave some classes all at-will abilities (fighter), some all daily (wizard), and some a mixture of both (paladin). It was a solid way to create differentiation between the classes. The designers designed the balance of the game around 4 encounters per day, at this point, both the fighter and wizard types would get a good array of actions, and it gave DMs a baseline for which to balance their encounters.

It was a great idea, but as we all know sometimes theory and reality don’t always mix too well, and that’s what happened in this case. Players, bless their hearts, often like to “win” as much as possible, and they figured out the best way to do that was to “nova” through their abilities, destroy their enemies quickly, and then rest up to adventure another day.

The 4 encounter per day model went down to 1 or 2 per day. DMs were forced to come up with story ways to keep their players adventuring, which works some of the time, but even the best DMs didn’t want to do that every time. As the number of encounters per day grew shorter, classes that had powerful daily abilities dominated more over classes with all at-wills and parties in general were able to handle very tough encounters easily. In short, a party’s greatest ally was the number of naptimes it was afforded.

The solution to this was to increase the reliability of abilities. Abilities could be used more frequently throughout the day. Players could not nova as easily as they could before, and powers they expended would be returned for the next fight. It was no longer a question of if a character used an ability, but only a question of how. As such, the balancing of encounters became easier, and players no longer had the strong incentive to rest all the time. Overall, an elegant solution to the problem.

A look at 4e’s focus on “combat powers”.
In 3e, just as there was a gap between daily users and at-will users, there was also a discrepancy between users focused on combat abilities and those focused on non combat ones. In a fight, a wizard who prepared all utility spells wasn’t the best ally, just as a fighter designed for combat couldn’t do much in the negotiation scene. For some groups, this wasn’t a problem. The fighter got involved when there was combat, and sat quietly (or fell asleep in my group) when there was not. For other groups this caused tension, such as when a player would cause a fight in a social scene because he was bored with the scene and wanted to fight. The designers of 4e designed the system so that everyone could fight and that everyone could participate in other scenes at least in part.

There’s been a lot of criticism about 4e’s focus on combat, and I think some of it is unfounded. If you look at 3e classes, the fighter, rogue, barbarian, paladin, and ranger’s abilities were nearly all focused on combat. Sure the paladin had his mount which you could roleplay with, but in general, class abilities were designed around kicking butt. A rogue could focus on skills, but his class abilities were all geared towards destruction. Only the spellcasters could strip away their combat potential and turn it into noncombat power by their selection of spells.

We already see in 4th the use of utility powers to give players noncombat options to play with. Rangers can boost their ally’s skills, rogues can become even better at stealth, warlocks can develop silver tongues, etc. The new splatbooks are bringing back options like the ranger’s animal companion, and we will likely see a return of the paladin’s mount. I hope to see the idea pushed forward with more classes, allowing the fighter to use intimidate to gain advantages, allowing a wizard to gain benefits with rituals or the like, etc. I’ve said with many things in 4e, we just need a few more options to tear down some of the complaints thrown around.

The Failures of the Power System
In general with my analyses on 4th, I have been positive. However, there are several aspects of the power system that I think will be mistakes in the long run.

The Reliance on Hitting for Powers
It says it all in the name…”attack” powers. The vast majority of 4e powers require that the person be kicking the crap out of things for the mojo to happen. From a flavor standpoint, that can seem a little odd for certain effects that also give blessings or healing. From a mechanics standpoint, it puts a lot of pressure on players to get a high attack bonus.

Further, it can cause issues in fights that have a lot of missing. A common complaint on the boards is how long solo fights can take. I’ve had three big,big fights in 4e now. Two of them went just fine, the third one ended in a boring slug fest. The difference was in the 3rd fight players missed with a lot of their big powers, which has a cascading effect on the battle. In 3rd edition, a fighter never lost his power, every round he would pump out consistent, reliable, big damage. If the wizard blew his big spells, you could trust the fighter to rip through the monster’s hitpoints. Sure it wasn’t the best way to beat an enemy, but it worked well enough even at high levels. Further as spellcasters ran out of the big guns, they could start using lesser effects or more buffs to help the melee guys. In 4th, players start out with big damage and that drops the longer combat goes. And in 4e you don’t have a lot of powers you can toss out in one fight, you quickly run out. The more they miss early on, the longer the combat goes, and the more “mundane” the action becomes as they are forced to rely on at will powers.

Fortunately, this issue can be corrected in the future with more powers that have “effect” entries. Or simply powers that do more than half damage on a miss. A lot of times with a daily I could care less about the damage; I want the powerful side effect, etc.

The Rigid Power Structure
I like the at-will, encounter, and daily distinction for powers (especially the color coding!!). But I really dislike how hard coded each entry is into the class system. When I’m 3rd level, I get an encounter power, no compromise. I get two at-wills at 1st, and no more at will attacks, etc.

Now, there is some good reason to put a bit of rigidness into the system. As I opened this article with, there is a danger with giving a class too many daily abilities and not enough reliable encounter or at-will powers. So I wouldn’t want to give players the option of trading in at-wills and encounters for dailies. But the reverse isn’t true. If a player wanted to pick up another encounter power at 5th (trading in his powerful single fight ability for a more regular ability) I don’t think that would cause any problems. After all, the best friend to a DM is consistency, the more consistently a player makes his abilities, the best the DM can plan his fights. I figure, if its okay allowing a class to pick between at-will, encounter, and daily powers with their utility powers…then why can’t we add a little spice in the choice of attack powers?
I do think we could see some power design in the future that blurs the line more between the 3 power types, just like healing word is an encounter power you can use twice. You might see a daily that you can use twice per day, or encounter powers you can use at-will as long as certain conditions are met.

The other thing I hate about the rigid power system is that players get only one power choice at any given level, with no real ability to change that save for retraining at the next level. This is probably the biggest issue veteran spell casters have with 4th edition. We all can acknowledge that the wizard needed a tone down, but now there is almost no choice per day on abilities, and that is a serious loss in versatility.

From a mechanics standpoint, this change also creates a huge balancing headache with powers. If a player only has a choice of one power, which power is he going to choose? The answer is simple…the best one! And to most PCs, what is the best ability they could take? The answer is something that is useful in a lot of scenarios…aka a strong, versatile power.

You are already seeing this phenomenon on the boards. There are tons of threads detailing the best powers at each level, and the polls show that players are often in high agreement on what the best powers are. This will continue to be a problem that plagues 4th edition. If a player is given the choice of 3 powers, he is going to take the best, most versatile power as his 1st choice, then probably more of the same by his 2nd choice. However, by that 3rd choice, players are more willing to branch out and pick a power that is more specific. For example, maybe there is a power that is flat out awesome against giants but not that great otherwise. Unless the player is in a giant infested campaign, he is not going to take that power. However, if that’s his 3rd choice, he might pick it up. After all, he can choose his versatile power most of the time, but if he’s going up against an army of giants for a few sessions, he is more than happy to choose his giant slaying power. This is what you often saw with wizard’s in 3rd edition. Most wizards would often prepare a color spray or a magic missile every time, but might fill that final slot with a tenser’s floating disk.

Ultimately, this is probably my biggest issue with 4th edition, and I do think it’s going to continue to be a black spot for the game.

Balancing of Powers
As I said in the last section, 4e has a problem with players picking the same powers over and over again. Part of this is the choice of one power, part is the limited number of choices we have in the core books, and finally it’s the fact that many powers seem very poorly balanced with each other.
I’ll give a quick example, the 5th level fighter’s daily, Rain of Steel. To my mind, this is the only fighter daily worth considering. I can have a daily that lasts all fight and does automatic damage, or a daily that might do some damage and a status effect for a round or two.

This seems to be a chronic problem with the core powers of 4th edition. At any given level, there is almost always one power that rises to the top, and becomes the automatic pick for anyone playing that class. While I wish the designers had done better in this department, I think there is a lot to learn from the choices players are making in regards to powers. For example, here’s a brief list of what I’ve observed about player choice of powers.

1) Status effects over damage. In general if you have a power that does damage vs a power that does less damage and has a rider effect, the second one wins. I think it’s the fact that the damaging powers don’t do enough damage, the difference isn’t that great, and the rider effects are often a lot of fun.
2) Dailes – All fight or no fun. The best daily’s are consistently the ones that last all fight. Which would you rather have, a great attack that lasts one round, or a decent one that lasts 6 or 7 rounds? This is very prominent with utility powers. In general, encounter utility powers are better than dailies in my opinion, except for the dailies that last all fight. Those I actually consider.
3) Effects rule the roost. If I have a power that does something great on a hit, or something that will always give me an effect regardless of hitting or missing, the effect one usually wins. Players don’t want to waste their actions, and powers that always give them something are very popular.

Conclusion
As you can tell by the article, the power system is one of the most disappointing to me so far in 4th edition. Not for its basic design, I think the concept of them is great. But they could have been so much…more, and unlike some of the issues I have with 4e, I don’t know how much can be corrected with splat books.

Dude, you rock. From elsewhere in Atlanta, I raise a toast to you, and hope that all your insight sticks with me if I manage to get a 4e freelancing gig.

Although I agree with your general sentiments regarding powers and their current unbalanced nature I disagree with your statement that players will always get the best power. Flavor does factor in this equation and on more than one occasion I've seen powers which would have proven to be the most optimal choice at that moment disregarded in favor of powers more in line with their character concept.

I think that as long as powers have a flavor distinct enough without them being underpowered to a degree which would cripple the character, people will continue to make sub-optimal choices to follow their character's concept. My hope is that WotC will reign in the power creep so that PHB powers keep being interesting choices so as to add to the available choices instead of making them uninteresting/useless.

Besides that, thank you for these interesting pieces. Every one of them adds to my understanding of the game and more importantly makes me question my own (sometime false) assumptions.

Both roleplayer and hack n' slay styles of play benefit from power gaming as power gaming over comes obstacles easier, which leads to success for both play styles.

Power gaming is just the ultimate form of character building/ gaming playing efficency and it is found in both groups. I think power gaming tests the boundries of a game system. From my experience, the players that choose knowingly a weaker option because it fits their concept, verses making a superior option fit into that concept, are less common. Thus, I agree with the original poster and would say that your experience is not what most groups are doing.

Regardless, game balance is built around power gamers pushing a system trying to break it.

I think that while there are often winners at each level of powers, there are often other considerations (besides just flavor). Namely, building a set of powers that works well together. I don't think that picking the 'best' option at each level will leave the character with the ideal overall set off powers.

For example, let's look at a sword wielding fighter, at say level 13 (because you end with 2 weapon based powers at that level, and I'm running a game at that level so I know those options better). Sword powers tend to emphasize multitarget effects. Swords are also accurate weapons, but have weaker Ws than other weapons of the same type. So I might be looking at Sweeping Blow, Come and Get It, and Storm of Blows, and decide that my characters needs some high power attack to handle solos or elites. The auto hit is good, but they'll already be hitting more often. So while Rain of Steel is generally the best, it also overlaps with the character's normal strengths perhaps too much. Or someone who fights with a spear or flail might value the AC penalty from Crack the Shell rather highly, since it can lead into a better Rain of Blows. Some overall builds and paragon paths will also value powers slightly differently. I don't think Fire Shroud is all that hot compared to the multitarget Immo on Ice Rays - on the other hand, a low level orb wizard might love it since it gives him something else to use his save penalty on.

And that applies to the whole group too. If a group doesn't have a wizard, other people might find it worthwhile to emphasize area attacks in their power selection, even if other attacks might normally be prefered. In a group without a healer, Come And Get It, so powerful for normal tanking and area damage, becomes a huge risk since spreading around damage makes people's second winds go farther. And powers that add to AC or do self heals look better.

Ideally, the wholes of both the character and the group should be greater than the sum of its parts. I don't think that the overall best power will always work best in any given context. There are often a few clear winners at each level. But in many cases, the losers aren't so far behind that they wouldn't be worth taking for some contexts. And you generally hear complaints when there are obvious suckers (take all the comments about Cloudkill or pre-errata Shadow Wasp).

It says it all in the name…”attack” powers. The vast majority of 4e powers require that the person be kicking the crap out of things for the mojo to happen.

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I think this stems from a common 3e gripe when playing clerics - that you typically had to agonize over whether you should buff, attack, heal or cast an offensive spell, because you had so many options open to you, but only so many actions that you could take at any one time.

So 4e tried to let players eat their cake and have it too. Now, you can attack, buff and heal all at the same time. It should be an intentional design goal, rather than an oversight, IMO.

Runestar said:

So 4e tried to let players eat their cake and have it too. Now, you can attack, buff and heal all at the same time. It should be an intentional design goal, rather than an oversight, IMO.

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Thats not completely correct. Its not "you can attack, buff and heal at the same time", but most of the time "You have to attack in order to buff and heal".

Stalker0 said:

A look at 4e’s focus on “combat powers”.
In 3e, just as there was a gap between daily users and at-will users, there was also a discrepancy between users focused on combat abilities and those focused on non combat ones. In a fight, a wizard who prepared all utility spells wasn’t the best ally, just as a fighter designed for combat couldn’t do much in the negotiation scene. For some groups, this wasn’t a problem. The fighter got involved when there was combat, and sat quietly (or fell asleep in my group) when there was not. For other groups this caused tension, such as when a player would cause a fight in a social scene because he was bored with the scene and wanted to fight. The designers of 4e designed the system so that everyone could fight and that everyone could participate in other scenes at least in part.

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I agree with everything you said, except this sentiment.

There is no excuse for a disruptive player. If you know you are going into a game that isn't all combat and you like all combat, you picked the wrong game to play. Likewise a group that doesn't devote solely to combat is also one you shouldn't join.

Blaming fault on the system, or a game designer trying to make something other than it is for a few that don't get it is not the answer.

D&D happens to have two parts. The combat and social parts. If you only like the combat you have two choices:

1- Don't play D&D. Pick a wargame of some sort.
2- Don't join a group that doesn't focus only on combat, but find one that matches your playstyle.

No matter what the designers try, their will always be people out their that dislike the social, or just prefer combat. That's fine, just get with other people that like the same, rather than cause problems with a game because you screwed up picking the game to play or group to play with.

I have no sympathy for people playing the wrong game or with the wrong group and ruining other people's fun because they failed to look before they lept.

One addition to the powers that you failed to mention, is they are all too static between the classes. (Maybe you mentioned it and I missed it)

They are pretty much the same thing, no matter what flavour you put on them.

Powers pretty much dictate the classes adn their roles, and there are so few that really separate the classes, such as those of utility use. I don't really know what utility power a fighter could have as the melee classes are mainly for combat, but this is something I have been trying to figure out, and would guess game makers have to, for years. As many have said the powers boils down to only a few things:

-Damage
-Damage+Effect
-Effect

Zzzzzzz

They get boring fast, and even relying on the at-wills seems to take anything else like normal attacking out of the game as it is so focused on the powers and getting the best bonuses with feats to use during the powers.

It really is a system built for combat.

What kind of utility power could be made into an encounter power, where there is no "until the end of the encounter"?

It just seems a bit silly. Time durations were not the most fun to account for, but they provided usefulness, and now people still want to know how long something lasts.

Even levitation and flight seem a bit off in how short they last its like it isn't even really magic in some of the powers. They were made with use in combat in mind, rather than just use, for anytime.

Powers is a screwed up system to have come into creation, furthered by the attempt to balance things out.

These subsystem critiques are very interesting to read and thought provoking.

Lots of good stuff - and run out of rep for Stalker0!

Well, have to agree with most points and it sort of fits the general image I get from 4E: The basis is solid, but the execution is sometimes flawed - the idea of the power system is nice, I don't even mind the rigid structure, but the powers themselves show imbalances and are sometimes less inspired in their execution.

The biggest problem is that these things are written into the corebook, making positive developments easily something like power creep.

The barbarian, for example, while not power creep, shows nice elements how to make the power system more varied and interesting - and gets rid of the one-shot dailies by introducing the various rages.

But such comparably innovative system will always remain "splats", as the core books are printed facts.

Cheers, LT.

Derren said:

Thats not completely correct. Its not "you can attack, buff and heal at the same time", but most of the time "You have to attack in order to buff and heal".

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This isn't really true. There are plenty of powers that allow you to heal and buff without ever having to hit anything at all.