Too many silos?

[Oldtimer]

In the preamble for 4E we learned of the thing called "silo". Character abilities are divided into distinct silos that you can't switch between.

As the game was published we found that Powers were divided into four silos (aka A/E/D/U). But I have been thinking lately... why divide Encounter attacks and Daily attacks into different silos?

Putting At-Wills to the side for one moment - I could see a design were your list of odd level powers is a mix of Encounter attacks and Daily attacks. The same way that Utilities of any level is a mix.

That way, if you prefer a more traditional wizard, you could choose only daily spells. If you can't stand daily powers for your fighter, you're free to get only encounter exploits.

It seems like a cool idea (even after a few weeks of contemplation). Needs a lot of work to balance, but I don't see any inherent problems with it. The only thing would be that the whole group could stock up on dailies and nova one fight per day. In theory.

Comments?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Essentials split encounter from daily powers (eg banned daily powers) from the martial classes. However, E-casters still have daily powers.

I think WotC wanted to get away from nova-ing and excessive daily management. Playing a wizard without enough daily spells to cast in a day was no fun in low-level pre-4e D&D.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Unfortunately, that one thing is huge. Staying away from the five-minute adventuring day I think was a huge design goal of 4E, and not exactly reached. I think it will be a bigger goal for D&D Next. I think any such change like this might be balanced we consider redefining what a "day" is. Say, by calling it something like a "chapter" such that the PCs only regain such powers after a certain period approximating about 4 encounters, but is story-induced by the DM. So, for a challenging chapter, the DM could make it 5+ encounters, or whatever.

 

[the Jester]

IMHO you are completely misidentifying where the silos are.

At will, encounter and daily aren't silos.

The silos are attack powers and utility powers.

 

[Spatula]

Well, there is a resource silo for the AEDU classes between at-will, encounter, and daily attacks. It's one that is necessary, I think, given the structure of 4e. If a character could select all daily attacks, which are stronger than other powers, then the character gets X rounds of "going nova", which could be all the combat rounds in a day. Whereas the regular AEDU classes get 4? daily attacks, max, which is only going to cover 1 combat.

 

[Oldtimer]

IMHO you are completely misidentifying where the silos are.

At will, encounter and daily aren't silos.

The silos are attack powers and utility powers.

Yes, that's what I think they should be as well. But since you can't exchange a daily attack for an encounter attack, they seem to be in different silos too.

 

[Voadam]

The original concept silos were attack and utility powers as Jester mentions. They unfortunately did not go far enough in the concept. A bunch of utilities were combat useful non attack combat powers and a bunch were for out of combat stuff with no combat uses.

 

[Larrin]

I think that re-ordering the "attack" silo so that you can pick and choose whether your level 3 power is daily or attack is a perfectly legitimate modification to want to want to make. Considerations I would suggest are:

1) There is some magical "Impact per day" value that you should aim for, where damage means effectiveness, including healing, control as well as actual damage

2) at wills and Encounter powers represent a constant level of damage (impact) per encounter, Dailies imply a significant bump to one encounter.

3) What this might mean is that a daily power you take instead of an encounter would try to take the "Impact per day" of that encounter power and lump it all at once, while an encounter that replaced a daily would be taking that 'bump' and distributing it over several encounters.

Just doing some "hand waving math" I'm thinking this is a bad idea: generic level 1 encounter does 2W+effect, to replace its 'impact per day' (assume 4 encounters, 75% chance to hit) thats a 6[w] power (half on miss) plus effect, which is around epic level power-wise. Conversely a level 1 generic daily is ~3W+a bit of effect, divide that by 4, and you have an encounter that's weaker than an at-will. I think a one-to-one replacement is tricky at best.


Moving on:
3) The classes that drop dailies don't replace them with other powers, instead they get some little often passive bonus to damage or other class resource. The idea behind this is that daily "bump" gets smoothed out over the encounters not via powers, but on every attack.

4) The classes that 'drop' encounters (psionics) replace them with at-wills and power points that can improve those at wills on an encounter basis (so its not really all that much like droping them, oh well) They get diversity and choice, rather than a sudden daily bump.

6) A good daily utility is never a good as a good encounter utility, over the course of a whole day. The only reason to take a daily util is because they ONLY have dailies at that level, or the encounter ones are terrible, OR because while over the course of a day it may not be as good, its super good at the moment in time you need it (surgeless healing, or something)

My conclusions: the daily to encounter conversion ratio isn't such that they are interchangeable. To make your attack silo a pick and choose of dailies vs encounters is going to be rough balance wise.

my best solution: make several tracks: the normal encounter-daily way. all encounter (with some passives to make up for the daily bump), one does just dailies (probably many dailies and maybe a few extra at wills), one does mostly encounters with maybe one or two pretty sweet dailies, etc. You can probably even draw them all from a common pool of encounters and dailies, but the way they add up (ie the number of each you have, when you gain them) will be different in each case. Making it a choose as you go buffet is going to be a VERY rough balancing act.

 

[M.L. Martin]

The original concept silos were attack and utility powers as Jester mentions. They unfortunately did not go far enough in the concept. A bunch of utilities were combat useful non attack combat powers and a bunch were for out of combat stuff with no combat uses.

I'd be sorely tempted to resilo a 'New 4E''s powers into Attack, Defense (non-attack but combat-useful) and Utility, myself. And make Skill Powers core.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I'd be sorely tempted to resilo a 'New 4E''s powers into Attack, Defense (non-attack but combat-useful) and Utility, myself. And make Skill Powers core.

That'd be neat. Skill Powers would be utility, I assume. And where would rituals fit? (In a way, that's a kind of silo'ing.)