Only thing I don't like so far: Power Replacement

[Ziana]

So far, I'm really liking 4E. It's renewed my interest in playing pen & paper D&D, after many years of only encountering it via games such as Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

However, one thing is rubbing me the wrong way at this point: at levels 13 and up, you don't actually learn new encounter and daily powers. You replace existing ones.

Now, I really appreciate the "retraining" feature in 4E; this was something 3E didn't have until the PHB2 was out. It means you can pick powers and feats that sound good, but aren't locked in by bad decisions.

Retraining feature aside however, in terms of your character growth, it makes little sense as you develop and grow more powerful that you'd forget how to do something that served you well for many months. When learning new higher level powers, it makes sense that you'd add on to your body of skills and knowledge; not that you'd forget something that you know and have valued up until now.

I understand the need to balance the players against their enemies. But monsters don't get these arbitrary limits: their random regeneration of powers means you can see them use theirs more than 4 times in an encounter. And as powerful as encounter and daily powers may be, it doesn't seem overwhelming to continue increasing the number and/or variety of powers available to them.

This sort of thing is of course easy to houserule. You could either let the player simply increase their total available powers, or you could limit their daily use of powers to 4 and 4, but let them pick from all the powers they know on the fly (without making them forget earlier ones). But it strikes me as a flawed design decision, arbitrarily limiting characters to 4 encounter and 4 daily powers total, all the way up to level 30. Especially when new support books come out introducing new powers and abilities, there seems little room to "fit them in", when players power slots are already so limited.

 

[Karui_Kage]

It makes perfect sense, imho. My most recent math class was Calculus-related. I remember a lot of Calculus application stuff. Ask me about the old sin and cos from high school though? I draw an instant blank.

We don't remember everything as we get older, we remember what we've used most recently. Similarly, I remember quite well how to code in C# (recent) but can't recall even my most basic Spanish (which I took 2 years of in HS).

 

[the_redbeard]

So far, I'm really liking 4E. It's renewed my interest in playing pen & paper D&D, after many years of only encountering it via games such as Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

However, one thing is rubbing me the wrong way at this point: at levels 13 and up, you don't actually learn new encounter and daily powers. You replace existing ones.

Now, I really appreciate the "retraining" feature in 4E; this was something 3E didn't have until the PHB2 was out. It means you can pick powers and feats that sound good, but aren't locked in by bad decisions.

Retraining feature aside however, in terms of your character growth, it makes little sense as you develop and grow more powerful that you'd forget how to do something that served you well for many months. When learning new higher level powers, it makes sense that you'd add on to your body of skills and knowledge; not that you'd forget something that you know and have valued up until now.

I understand the need to balance the players against their enemies. But monsters don't get these arbitrary limits: their random regeneration of powers means you can see them use theirs more than 4 times in an encounter. And as powerful as encounter and daily powers may be, it doesn't seem overwhelming to continue increasing the number and/or variety of powers available to them.

This sort of thing is of course easy to houserule. You could either let the player simply increase their total available powers, or you could limit their daily use of powers to 4 and 4, but let them pick from all the powers they know on the fly (without making them forget earlier ones). But it strikes me as a flawed design decision, arbitrarily limiting characters to 4 encounter and 4 daily powers total, all the way up to level 30. Especially when new support books come out introducing new powers and abilities, there seems little room to "fit them in", when players power slots are already so limited.

There's a few different answers to this.
The first is playability. Replacing powers keeps the choices of the players (and what the DM has to be prepared for) at a manageable level.

Second reason: reconceptualize the replacement. You're not 'replacing' one power with another - you're improving it. You're not learning a new sword strike so much as being more deadly and effective with it. Obviously this analogy works better with martial powers than with spells (and yes, as a lover of 3.5 wizards with voluminous spell books, I feel you some.)

Finally: you don't replace your more unique situational utility powers.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Another possible way to reconcile yourself with replacing powers is that the new power isn't actually something new - it's an improvement of the old skill.

Of course, the sensicalness of that depends greatly upon what power you're taking and what's being replaced...

Grr, ninja'd.

 

[Zsig]

I kinda see it more like a "work in progress" sorta thing.

For example, when you get to lvl 15 and replace a wizard power, instead of treating it like "forgetting" a spell and learning a new one, treat it as if the spell evolved into something better, Freezing Cloud becomes Wall of Ice or Blast of Cold. The same would apply to the other classes.

Of course, this reasoning will not work everytime... but you could for example justify that you're not using the "forgotten" trick because you're still working on it to make it better.

Edit: ninja'ed

 

[LowSpine]

I'm completely with the OP.

They did it so you don't have to shuffle through tons of options. It is a resource management issue.

Stuff that.

D&D is a geek game. I'm a geek. Geeks eat resource management for breakfast.

Having a tiny little list of options is plebian. That is the real reason. It is so a new moron pleb player doesn't complain that they don't understand it and not play.

This way they get more players, which is not a bad thing in itself, but it ends like when you watch a simple film like the matrix and it ends ruined because some moron doesn't get it and you end up having to talk over the entire film trying to explain every single thing that is happening second by second. Then at the end they still end up saying "I still don't get it," and you want to smash their face in.

And relax.

 

[Rykaar]

Hmm...I wonder if it really breaks much of anything to just continue to allow all the old encounter, daily, and utility powers. In other words, you simply gain new ones, so at 30th level you'd have 7 instead of 4 (I think I did the math right)

I guess they'd be better than at-will, but significantly better compared to the power of higher level abilities? Not really. In most fights at that rarified level, I doubt they'd all even get used in a single non-boss encounter.

I actually thought about letting characters pick up a 3rd at-will at 11th level and a 4th at 21st. Again, not really sure what this would break, and at that point if the player even has to read the description of the power to use it, they have damaged memory.

 

[Ahglock]

My answer is to this issue which bothers me as well, is I will allow players to use old encounter abilities and dailies as stunts, while keeping there per encounter or per day status. You are a little bit rusty at using it, but you can pull it off if you need to.

Martial stunts will use the athletics or endurance skill, users choice.
Arcane stunts will use the arcana skill.
Divine stunts use the religion skill.

DC I have not come up with yet, but I'm thinking 20+level of power.

I'm temped to use a similar mechanic to allow people to re-use powers in the same encounter/day, and even use powers from there class they have not learned.

Honestly the per encounter/day mechanic with a limit set at 4 each bores the heck out of me. We've started a game, and its the same thing every time round one I use my encounter ability. BLeh, 3e wasn't a marvel of options for most classes but 4e seems to limit things at 4/4 because they want to promote some kind of less options is more philosophy.

 

[bardolph]

I'm completely with the OP.

They did it so you don't have to shuffle through tons of options. It is a resource management issue.

Correct. It's a resource management issue. However, it's not just about limiting the number of options, it's about limiting the total number of powers usable per encounter.

4e is designed so that, no matter what level you are, you always have the possibility of running out of juice.

And I much prefer the "Encounter/Daily" system over using fatigue or mana points. Besides, it encourages variety, since you also can't learn multiple copies of the same power.

Stuff that.

D&D is a geek game. I'm a geek. Geeks eat resource management for breakfast.

Having a tiny little list of options is plebian. That is the real reason. It is so a new moron pleb player doesn't complain that they don't understand it and not play.

A 1st-level character in 4e has 4 powers (including 2 at-will), plus at least 1 feat and class abilities, and an action point. This actually give a pretty broad range of options - I find characters at the 1st level much more interesting in 4e than in 3e, to be honest.

At 11th level, it's twelve powers (including 2 at-will), plus Paragon abilities, 7 feats, 2 actions points, plus whatever nifty gadgets they've picked up along the way.

That's quite a lot of options. Also, since 4e powers are designed to be synergistic with other classes, a party of 5 characters can become an extremely complex beast.

As far as geeks "eating resource management for breakfast," it's not resource management if you have no danger of ever running out, which is usually the case with even moderate-level 3e characters, since Magic Items and Spells tended to accumulate out of control.

 

[Samurai]

How about a feat?

Never Forget Your Roots - Take this feat when you are given a chance to Replace a lower level power with a higher level one. You do not forget the lower level power. The higher level power is gained in addition to your current power, not in place of it. This feat may be taken multiple times.


(If you want, you could limit how many times... a flat number like 3 or 4 times, or maybe base it off your Int bonus).