D&D 4E [4e Clone] Eliminating the 5MWD without APs?

[C4]

This pertains to my 4e clone in progress, Points of Light.

I've stumbled across a way to eliminate the 5 minute work day without action points, and I'm curious if you'd consider it a net gain:

Just because I thought it was cool, among the daily attack powers I've written to date -- which include level 1 dailies only -- none are actually attacks. Martial dailies are stances, divine dailies allow a PC to take on the visage of his deity, primal dailies are species-specific polymorphs, and elemental/arcane dailies allow a PC to manifest some otherworldly aspect. (I think I'll change the elemental dailies to be summoning powers, but that's not really relevant here.)

These stances and stance-like dailies give a PC more bang for his buck than the traditional kind of 4e daily attack, so to speak. But, and here's the important part: Multiple stance-like dailies can't be used at once, so players wouldn't be able to nova if every daily 'attack' in the game were a stance-like power. In other words, no 5MWD even without APs...at least after 4th level.

So what do you think, is the loss of APs worth a game full of stance-like dailies? Would that be flavorful and fun, or would you miss APs and/or traditional 4e daily attacks?

 

[Balesir]

Well, just personally, I like APs and wouldn't see a need to remove them. That wouldn't actually be neccessary to enact more stance dailies, though, would it?

The dailies mentioned sound cool, but I can think of issues. The main one that jumps to mind is that controllers tend to get their real "terrain altering", game changing effects as daily powers. Things like walls and clouds. Of course, these tend to be "sustain minor" already - but it would be a shame to lose the few that aren't (and are balanced not to be).

 

[TwoSix]

From a balance viewpoint, it works just fine, certainly better than core 4e. From a tactical standpoint, I don't think the ability to use 2+ dailies in a combat was a real factor in enjoying 4e's tactical combat. I'm looking at this now purely from a conceptual/narrative viewpoint.

Primal polymorphs - works great, obviously you can't take two forms at the same time.
Elemental summons - easy to flavor why you can't have two at once, so sure.
Divine "visages" - same logic as primal polymorphs, so sure.
Arcane dailies - depends on what they do, since arcane is, sadly, much less defined than the other types of magic.
Martial stances - not as much a fan. I have no problems with martial dailies in general, but I usually narrate them as opportunities arising or a burst of effort. A stance runs counter to that narration.

Might a simple rule that all dailies have a sort of "shared cooldown" work just as well? Once you use a daily power, you can't use any other daily power without a short rest?

 

[Jester David]

There's a couple small issues I can think of.
First, boss fights. Sometimes you just have a long adventuring day that culminates in an epic fight where everyone novas. There's the problem of having this cool power and not being able to use it.
This is echoed in adventures that only take place in a day or only have a second combat. You have two really cool powers but no way of using both.

Secondly, unless you're making the Daily powers into Encounter powers you're also losing a lot of flavour. Mostly in spells from past editions.

 

[keterys]

Almost every power that is just a "big occasional hit",such as Fireball or Brute Strike, shouldn't be a daily. Stuff like Form of the Winter's Herald and Quicksilver Stance? Sure, now that's a daily.

P.S. best part is that Fireball and Brute Strike _are_ encounter powers if you look carefully enough.

 

[C4]

Arcane dailies - depends on what they do, since arcane is, sadly, much less defined than the other types of magic.

My arcane classes are much more defined than they ever have been in D&D. Thematically, they're like the sorcerers and warlocks that we're all familiar with -- characters born with innate magic, or those who've been granted powers by arcane entities. Mechanically, they're all about illusions, enchantments and oddball effects like teleportation. Definitely the controller-y-est of the power sources.

 

[Raith5]

C4, I like your take on dailies but I dont think you need to remove APs. We often use APs in non-combat contexts (especially in skill challenges) or to do other things in combat. In fact I think AP should be a encounter resource.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think there was a reason the Barbarian had the ability to channel his rages into a powerful attack.
Maybe it's not actually needed. I know that I occassionally like the ability to have additional powers at my disposal when a situation gets hairy, and as a DM, I can intentionally create such situations where the players need to spend all their resources.

The biggest problem might be that I don't generally like to play long dungeon delve sand one encounter per day works neatly for me - but that leads to every encounter - if it's supposed to be really exciting at least - needs to expend all those resources.

So it's a difficult thing to get right, and maybe there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution.

One approach could be that Dailies become special encounter powers:
- You can use exactly one of them per encounter.
- Once per encounter, you can also exhaust an encounter power to use an available Daily instead.
- A Daily only recovers after all the other dailies have been used, too.
=>
- When you have encounter-lasting dailies, you won't generally use the 3rd option.
- When you have short-term dailies, you might be interested in using the 3rd option, but you sacrifice another tactical option (that usually would be weaker, but in some situations, will not be, but either way, this is not as powerful as using a daily and the encounter in the same encounter.)
- You have a strong incentive to use your Dailies to regain new ones.
- But spending a Daily still means not being able to use it in a situation where it could be more useful, still making it important to deliberate the situation.

Special abilites and additional rules, as usual, may allow to break the above rules...

 

[WhatGravitas]

One approach could be that Dailies become special encounter powers:
- You can use exactly one of them per encounter.

What would be intriguing is balancing the game around that assumption: get rid of the concept of "adventuring day" entirely and allow full heal-ups after every encounter (similar to gamma world).

Then, at-wills are what they are now - simple attacks with moderate impact, encounter powers are all powers with effects lasting one turn and "dailies" are powers with multi-turn impact.

I'd also say that zone-like dailies and encounter-long debuffs should not be lost - they're great fun as controller.

 

[TwoSix]

My arcane classes are much more defined than they ever have been in D&D. Thematically, they're like the sorcerers and warlocks that we're all familiar with -- characters born with innate magic, or those who've been granted powers by arcane entities. Mechanically, they're all about illusions, enchantments and oddball effects like teleportation. Definitely the controller-y-est of the power sources.

Bravo, I like that a lot.