Once per day non-magical effects destroy suspension of disbelief

[Zurai]

4E has a progression, too. At 1st level, you have 1 daily ability. At 5th, 2; at 9th, 3; at 20th, 4. Not counting Utility dailies, which could add anywhere from 0 to 7 more.

 

[GnomeWorks]

4E has a progression, too. At 1st level, you have 1 daily ability. At 5th, 2; at 9th, 3; at 20th, 4. Not counting Utility dailies, which could add anywhere from 0 to 7 more.

If you see it as sensical, cool. Do what works for you.

I don't. I see 3.5's few instances of "daily" abilities as slightly more sensical, but in trying to figure out why 4e bothered me, I found that the few 3.5 abilities that were vaguely correspondent also bothered me a bit - not as much, but they did.

It really does come down to how you interpret them. I can rationalize a few of the 4e martial dailies as being sensical, but there are still a good number (Split the Tree, for instance) that just don't make any sense to me.

 

[Zurai]

there are still a good number (Split the Tree, for instance) that just don't make any sense to me.

You can do Split the Tree at-will: it's called Twin Strike. Split the Tree just does more damage with a more limited target selection; call it "and Lady Luck smiled as both arrows buried themselves deep in the enemies' flesh".

 

[jdrakeh]

My take:

"Daily" abilities are not daily because they are abilities that you can use once per day.

They are daily because they are the sort of abilities a hero uses once per episode.

I'm not certain that we even need to justify the 'once per day' aspect in this manner. D&D is a game. The idea of 'once per day' powers makes perfect sense of a game.

 

[Wyrmshadows]

Ok, forgetting my old sig..which though a brief source of amusement... in no way detracted from my overall point which is that too much abstration and gamism can turn a RPing game into a board game by sucking the believability and immersion out of the gaming experience. For those who thought they scored a victory of some kind because of my previous sig, my sig has been changed so find your humor at my expense elsewhere.

Onto the barbarian's rage example. In this case I will quote myself from another response on another board:

A Barbarian's rage depends on accessing deep inner reserves of psychic ie. mental/emotional power that would drain him/her greatly after its use. The rage ability of the barbarian is based on the historical berserker and not just an issue of getting angry. Historically speaking, berserkers were a terrible sight of frothing madness...this is what the barbarian is based on. Thus rage is sensibly limited to a certain number of times per day to reflect the difficulty of tapping one's deep reserves.

Ok, onto daily exploits:

Here's a smattering of daily powers.

Brute Strike Fighter Attack 1
You shatter armor and bone with a ringing blow.

Comeback Strike Fighter Attack 1
A timely strike against a hated foe invigorates you, giving you the
strength and resolve to fight on.

Crack the Shell Fighter Attack 5
You break through your enemy’s armor and deal a painful bleeding
wound.

Dizzying Blow Fighter Attack 5
You crack your foe upside the head.

Thicket of Blades Fighter Attack 9
You sting and hinder nearby foes with a savage flurry of strikes
aimed at their legs.

Dragon’s Fangs Fighter Attack 15
You strike twice in rapid succession.

There are more from other classes of course but these will serve as an example.

Such exploits are nothing like a barbarian's rage ability because they aren't based on the character's inner fury/chi/etc. but instead are based on circumstances of the battle such as an opening appearing in an enemies defenses or an enemy making a fatal mistake allowing the fighter to take advantage of the situation. None of these exploits are explainable, in regards to versimilitude, in the same manner as a barbarian's rage.

At level 5 mysteriously ONE opening will appear in your enemies defenses that will allow you to bash them upside the head. Unfortunately such an opening will appear only once every 24hrs thus say the gods of battle.

or

You draw upon great inner reserves of power to cause an enemies defenses to fall so you can wack him upside the head. So draining is the effort involved in wacking someone upside the head that you are physically and emotionally drained for 24hrs.

IMO either is exceptionally silly if one is using the rationale of "inner reserves" or of rare circumstances. Even if there are 10 battles that day in which you fight 30 enemies, you will only get one opening to hit them in the head ie. dizzying strike.

Can anyone actually tell me that these abilites are anything like a barbarian's rage when one looks at the fundamental assumptions regarding the circumstances involved in using such abilities?



Wyrmshadows

 

[charlesatan]

A Barbarian's rage depends on accessing deep inner reserves of psychic ie. mental/emotional power that would drain him/her greatly after its use.

I checked d20srd.org and that particular "fluff" isn't in the mechanics. That's a fluff attached by us as readers/players. There's nothing stopping us from attaching that same mentality to the powers in D&D 4E. In my opinion, it's more of a matter of shifting one's paradigm rather than a lack of "rationalization".

Brute Strike for example can be accessing deep inner reserves from one's psyche. Why else would it deal so much damage compared to your other blows? From a narrative point of view, this doesn't even have to be conscious decisions on the character's (but not the player's) part. Maybe it's a sudden surge of adrenaline caused by an external stimuli (seeing an ally get wounded in battle) or simply a fluke of battle (the opponent revealed an opening).

 

[Mallus]

Onto the barbarian's rage example. In this case I will quote myself from another response on another board:

A Barbarian's rage depends on accessing deep inner reserves of psychic ie. mental/emotional power that would drain him/her greatly after its use. The rage ability of the barbarian is based on the historical berserker and not just an issue of getting angry. Historically speaking, berserkers were a terrible sight of frothing madness...this is what the barbarian is based on. Thus rage is sensibly limited to a certain number of times per day to reflect the difficulty of tapping one's deep reserves.

Wyrm, you just did a wonderful job justifying Rage. Nice work. What stops you from doing the same with 4e'ss martial dailies? You've just shown us that you are perfectly capable of adding your own fluff to the given mechanics in order to make them more palatable. You are willing to do the work required to suspend disbelief.

From a game perspective, rage, martial dailies and previous edition spell slots all amount to the same thing; finite daily character resources that are used/managed during play. And they all finite for the same reason; game balance. There were always places in the game where the game priorities asserted themselves. This isn't anything new to D&D.

 

[fuzzlewump]

Yes, it's arbitrary, I'll grant you that. But it still improves with experience. That, to me, says that it's not the same kind of thing.

To be clear, is it being able to use an ability more over the course of an adventuring career what creates the appearance of truth in your game? If so, you can feel free to gain Brute Strike again at level 5, at which point you will be able to use it twice per day. The wording in the PHB is that at level 5 you "learn" a daily power of your level or lower. In this case, you'd be learning how to do it more than once because you've become higher level fighter. This satisfies your reasoning of the barbarian being able to use rage progressively more times per day.

If improving over the course of levels means that the ability becomes better, this is shown in a couple of ways. For one, you add half of your level to the attack roll in order to hit with a power. So, the power has the greater chance of connecting and has therefore improved, as hong pointed out earlier. Also, by level 5 you'll have increased your strength by 2. This adds 1 more damage and 1 more attack. So at this point, the attack has improved by doing more damage and being easier to hit with, as well as being able to use it more than once.

An alternative to gaining brute strike twice is making the new daily power you choose the evolution of the ability. Dizzying Blow does 3[W] damage and is reliable just as brute strike but immobilizes on top of that. So, you can do your awesome exploit twice per day and one of them happens to hit them so hard that your enemy can't even move afterwards.

The tools are certainly there to make the game appear true to you, or in otherwords, the line you drew in the sand doesn't actually exclude you.

Can anyone actually tell me that these abilites are anything like a barbarian's rage when one looks at the fundamental assumptions regarding the circumstances involved in using such abilities?

Yep:

Daily powers are the most powerful effects you can produce, and using one takes a significant toll on your physical and mental resources. If you’re a martial character, you’re reaching into your deepest reserves of energy to pull off an amazing exploit.

Not only can your rationale be applied to martial powers just as easily as rage, but the writers of fourth edition already did. The openings/luck thing is actually a creature born here, the idea of inner resources is core 4E. So yes, the abilities you listed are just like the barbarian rage you envision.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And then explain to me why my character can't be the star of the entire series like in the Harry Potter books or LotR.

Your DM hates you?

My player characters are definitely the stars of the campaign.

 

[vagabundo]

At level 5 mysteriously ONE opening will appear in your enemies defenses that will allow you to bash them upside the head. Unfortunately such an opening will appear only once every 24hrs thus say the gods of battle.

or

You draw upon great inner reserves of power to cause an enemies defenses to fall so you can wack him upside the head. So draining is the effort involved in wacking someone upside the head that you are physically and emotionally drained for 24hrs.

IMO either is exceptionally silly if one is using the rationale of "inner reserves" or of rare circumstances. Even if there are 10 battles that day in which you fight 30 enemies, you will only get one opening to hit them in the head ie. dizzying strike.

Your looking at it all wrong.

Would it feel better to you if you could only access martial dailies on a roll of a natural 20, rolled once per encounter? Or a natural 100 rolled once per turn?

This takes into account how hard it is to pull of the daily attack powers and the randomness of battle. Then lets say that this works out to be once per day (avg number of encounters, blah fudge blah). Some days the fighter will be able to do two or three of his big "Daily" attacks and someday will get none. BUT on average he will get one of these big attacks per day.

I know some people would prefer this method, but players would lose some of their control, and some fun, they have by being able to say when this, lucky set of circumstances, happens in a battle. I feel it is a good compromise between the two sides, gamist and believability.