Balance question: Replacing Dailies with Encounters

[Nemesis Destiny]

Mechanically they're just daily-strength powers usable once per encounter but only when bloodied. I ripped them straight from the rulebooks, and then refluffed and tweaked them to match each PC and my own sensibilities. (Death to trivial, short-term conditional modifiers!) What about them would you like to know?

Just examples I guess, so I have a better idea of what you mean.

 

[Breaks]

Overall it sounds good to me, and I do not see any huge problems.

Some classes, like the barbarian, would need tweaks as they rely on their dailies for their main class features.

erm...

From any sort of optimization standpoint, barbarian rages are almost universally a horrible waste of a standard action that would have been much better spent on one of their phenomenal encounter powers or charging.

so barbarians would probably benefit from this change, though i'm not sure there's enough rounds in most combats to actually use all of the resulting encounter powers, if, again, anyone at the table is even sort of optimized.

 

[Samurai]

I've considered just up and making daily powers encounter, because I hate daily resources. HP/Surges are what I'd like to deal with at most. I'm afraid it'd be too big of a power jump, though.

I ran 4e Encounters for a long time, and unlike stories I've heard of some other Encounters games, we had new or different players practically every week. This meant that it made no sense to punish returning players by saying "You can't use your Daily, you used it last session" while the other half the party was under no such restriction. And trying to remember which powers someone used 2 or 3 sessions ago, when they missed a session or tried out a new character for a session was an unnecessary burden. So we always played where you got all Dailies each encounter. Similarly, Healing Surges were irrelevant, as were Milestones. (Everyone got 1 Action point per encounter). To make up for the increased power, I buffed up the opposition in various ways, from adding a few more to their numbers, or doing more damage/attack, etc. If the group was short on players that week (only 3 showed up, for instance), I didn't do that, I either kept them the same or slightly weakened them (less than I would have had to do if they had few/no Dailies or Action pts to use, though). Because of the unique situation of new and different players every week these changes were more a necessity than a choice, but it worked for us.

 

[davep123]

Just examples I guess, so I have a better idea of what you mean.

The three priorities for my bloodied powers are:
(1) Making them a spectacular example of the appropriate energy type for the character (the PCs are all magic-based and have themes)
(2) Since the PC is bloodied when he/she uses it and therefore in trouble, giving the power a defensive or healing aspect in addition to the offensive
(3) If possible, have it reinforce the PC's overall role (defender, controller, etc.)

Here are a couple of examples:

Deathly Aura
Standard action
You gain 10 + INT temporary hit points. Until the end of the encounter, any enemy that starts its turn adjacent to you takes 1d6 + WIS necrotic damage.
When you are in great pain, you can suffuse your body with writhing necrotic energy. While this energy bolsters you, you can also use it to rake any nearby enemies with black necrotic tendrils.

Storm Conduit
Standard action
Attack: CHA vs. Reflex
Blast 3
Hit: 3d10 + CHA lightning damage (half damage on a miss)
Effect: Whenever an enemy hits you with a melee attack they take CHA + DEX lightning damage and you may push them one square. This effect lasts until the end of your next turn, but may be sustained with a minor action.
When you are in great pain, you can use it to fuel an enormous burst of electrical energy, transforming your body into a living vessel of crackling blue-white lightning. You eject most of this pent up power in one devastating blast. However, with sustained effort you can keep some of the energy coiling around you, so that it shocks anyone touching you or striking you in melee.

When their PCs are badly hurt, my players certainly enjoy being able to turn the tables by busting out those bad boys.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Cool stuff! I like it. Thanks for sharing

 

[davep123]

Cool stuff! I like it. Thanks for sharing

You're welcome. If you decide to use something similar in your game please let us know how it goes.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Will do!

 

[Manbearcat]

For the most part, this would be fine. The only classes that would be primarily affected are the Controllers who get a significant portion of their power with Sustain Minor effects (primarily Summons and Zones). These classes would need to get compensated via class features in some way; this is basically be the Wizard (Summons and Zones) and Druids (Instinctive Action Summons). The other classes, even those who are expected to take a stance now and then via dailies, would likely be just fine. However, if your combats last ~ 5 rounds then you would run into issues once your sitting with 6 encounter powers. You would have a scenario where your Encounter-based arsenal exceeds its demands. Further, you run the risk of muting the need for At-Wills, unless the character builds specifically to augment an At-Will (which in that scenario, it may nullify its Encounter-based resources!).

I changed the Bladesinger to do just what you're talking about and posted it here. The version of the class at our table has considerably greater Striker throughput from Encounter to Encounter while its Control capability was moderately stunted. However, the class still uses its At-Wills every round as its Encounter powers take advantage of its At-Wills.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I changed the Bladesinger to do just what you're talking about and posted it here. The version of the class at our table has considerably greater Striker throughput from Encounter to Encounter while its Control capability was moderately stunted. However, the class still uses its At-Wills every round as its Encounter powers take advantage of its At-Wills.

I like your take on the Bladesinger. Do you have a version written up in pdf or similar?

 

[Manbearcat]

@Nemesis Destiny Negative, no PDF. Literally just copied and pasted that from the Word doc on my hard drive.