At-will class powers ruining my archetypes

[Majoru Oakheart]

Predictability, in a game essentially based around random rolls of dice, equals boredom.

I agree, you certainly want some randomness, but it's a sliding scale. The more randomness you have, the less strategy and tactics mean and vice versa. If the best laid plans have a 50/50 chance of succeeding and the worst laid plans also have a 50/50 chance of succeeding, then it doesn't matter what your plans are. Even WORSE is if your best laid plans have a 5% chance of succeeding because of how random the game is and the worst laid plans have a 90% chance of succeeding.

It's the difference(to use a non-D&D analogy) between the board game Diplomacy(which has no dice at all and which has only a couple of basic rules that are easily predicted) and Fluxx(In which you don't even know what the rules are going to be each round and any player could win first turn randomly).

Most people will tell you that Diplomacy is HEAVILY determined by the strategy and intelligence of the players involved. Each move you make must be heavily considered because one bad turn can lose you the game. Fluxx is so random that you can win the game without even realizing it. It doesn't matter what you do during your turn, since what you do has nearly no effect on winning or losing.

I like BOTH games. But I like them for different reasons. Sometimes it's fun to just play a bunch of random cards and have fun with whatever happens. Other times, I like to challenge myself to try to out think other players without the dice giving the game to my opponent despite coming up with the better plan.

I don't think D&D should go to either extreme. But I think the game was TOO far on the randomness side of things in past editions. Now your choices really matter. Pre 3e, I wouldn't care if someone was playing the Gnome Fighter with an 10 strength. It wouldn't matter that much to our chances of success.

 

[Cadfan]

Pre 3e, I wouldn't care if someone was playing the Gnome Fighter with an 10 strength. It wouldn't matter that much to our chances of success.

Gnomes rarely affect your chances of success.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Gnomes rarely affect your chances of success.

LOL. Sure they do...it's normally for the worse, however.

 

[Gimby]

If the design has been micro-managed to make it so fine-tuned that some relatively minor changes throw the whole thing out of whack, I humbly suggest that the design is too fragile. (and to think I used to maintain 3e was bad for this...yikes!)

I think the fine tuning has been overstated a little, but the point is that for encounter building guidelines to be of any use, its got to be possible to predict the capabilities of the party.

A simple example would be two high level 3e parties, say 17th. Both parties are built on the same point buy, have wealth spot on the wealth by level guidelines and access to the same splatbooks.

Party A consists of a Fighter, a Monk, a Paladin and a Soulknife.
Party B consists of a Cleric, a Druid, a Wizard and an Artificer.

Party A spent their wealth on Cloaks of the Manta Ray, Rings of Regeneration and Stone Horses.
Party B spent their wealth on the Big 6 and Metamagic rods. They also got the Artificer to make them so they effectively have twice as much.

Any encounter that challenges Party B will splatter Party A in short order, conversely one that party A will find challenging will be steamrollered by Party B.

Now, if the players move tables such that the Soulknife and Druid swap parties, we have a different problem - the Druid will dominate Party A, while the Soulknife will barely contribute to party B.

Now, if you are happy with tailoring encounters to your party and your players are happy with widely varying power within the party then thats great - you don't need to worry about inter- or intra-party balance and can make really any changes to the system that you want.

The point of the mathematical basis of the system is so that you can have encounter building guidelines, that its possible to design new classes and abilities that are in line with the old ones and to ensure that all characters and hence players remain relevant at the table at all times. The more you diverge from the system assumptions, the harder these things are to maintain.

If you do make the changes that have been suggested in this thread, the game won't suddenly stop working, any more than 3e somehow couldn't be used to run both Party A and Party B. Its just that the DM will have to do more work to ensure that the encounters remain interesting, as now the encounter building system will not produce reliable results.

Even with the changes suggested however, I don't think the game would break that much - the core assumptions of +1/2 level to rolls and so on would remain, so the capabilites of the party would not be massively changed (particularly if you are generally using Str or Dex based classes in the first place - then it would hardly change at all). I'd not expect as massive a divergence as would be seen between Party A and Party B for example.

Predictability, in a game essentially based around random rolls of dice, equals boredom.

Predictible for the players? Yes, I agree. It should be predictable for the DM however, so that you can plan a climactic battle and not have it ended anticlimactically in the first round, or so you don't accidently TPK your party on what was meant to be a filler fight.

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I think one thing to note about balance arguements is that you'll still get them no matter how close you get - from WoW for example, where the difference between best and worst is of the order of 10% or so to Exalted, where one character can be orders of magnitude more capable than another. The changes discussed here are likely to cause a variation of somewhat less than 20% or so in capability, so its robuster than it sounds.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think one thing to note about balance arguements is that you'll still get them no matter how close you get - from WoW for example, where the difference between best and worst is of the order of 10% or so to Exalted, where one character can be orders of magnitude more capable than another. The changes discussed here are likely to cause a variation of somewhat less than 20% or so in capability, so its robuster than it sounds.

I agree with almost everything you've said. Still, the difference between the Wizard who decides to put a 12 into their STR or DEX and is using a staff or bow(+3 to hit) vs the Fighter who puts a 20 in his STR and has a fullblade, longsword, or greatsword(+9 to hit) is a difference of 30% just to hit. It's bigger than that in average damage per round. It also causes even weirder problems that are harder to quantify(AC and REF of wizards goes down due to putting points in STR instead of INT).

You are right that it won't cause the huge problems that exist in some other games or some previous editions. But when the difference between the average character is 5-15% then someone who is 30% different seems really far out.

 

[Gimby]

You are right that it won't cause the huge problems that exist in some other games or some previous editions. But when the difference between the average character is 5-15% then someone who is 30% different seems really far out.

Right, but its the difference between the 10 strength gnome fighter and the 18 strength half-orc fighter we are looking at, not the difference between the 10 strength gnome and CoDzilla. Its a relatively large difference, not an absolutely large one.

 

[Katemare]

I'm not an expert on 4E (quite otherwise, actually), but I've been following the thread for some time and got an idea. The problem is that magic doesn't feel magical when you can hurl it easier than shooting a gun, right?

So, you can keep combat mechanics intact, but add some minor magic-realism crunch. Such as readying spells for 1 round prior to combat (that would affect only surprise encounters, but adds some meaningful flavor) or requirement of holding a magic component, which must be replaced or refreshed every week or so. Or via ritual. That way mages have a minor drawback to take care of and to feel that their magic is justified, special, but balance is almost the same.

 

[CleverNickName]

I don't play 4E either, but I have been lurking in this thread for a while. I'm not sure how these at-will powers are intended to work in 4E, but I get the impression that they are supposed to be "swords by another name." Meaning, something that you can use all day and be moderately effective with, while saving your "zowie" attacks for special occasions. Is that pretty much how they are supposed to work?

If so, why couldn't you just add some extra oomph and bump them all up to "encounter" abilities, and let the characters use mundane gear and skills for their at-will actions? In 4E, it seems like "magic missile" is just another way of prounouncing "light crossbow" anyway.

But like I said, I'm not very familiar with (or fond of) the 4E mechanics. This could very well make the wonkiness even wonkier, so feel free to school me on the subject.

 

[nightwyrm]

I don't play 4E either, but I have been lurking in this thread for a while. I'm not sure how these at-will powers are intended to work in 4E, but I get the impression that they are supposed to be "swords by another name." Meaning, something that you can use all day and be moderately effective with, while saving your "zowie" attacks for special occasions. Is that pretty much how they are supposed to work?

Yes, this is pretty much how it's suppose to work. The 4e paradigm for caster is that "casters should never run out of magical effects, even though the one that don't run out are just minor effects", thus the magic missiles that you can shoot all day.

Sadrik's PoV is that all magical effects should be extra special and something you can run out of and when the wizard runs out of magical effects, he should be happy to go from caster to crossbowman or staffdude.

Basically, Sadrik's whole premise is that if it's something that is more than just simply swinging a sword at an enemy and doing some hp damage, it should be something that can run out.

 

[Mallus]

Is that pretty much how they are supposed to work?

Yes.

If so, why couldn't you just add some extra oomph and bump them all up to "encounter" abilities, and let the characters use mundane gear and skills for their at-will actions?

Conditionally yes. At-wills do more than generate plain damage. They're a source of different damage types (which get around resistances or exploit vulnerabilities) and valuable effects (like Thuderwave's push). The system assumes PC's can produce these effects... well, at will. Which means calculating encounter difficulty will be more of chore.

Also, at-wills all key off of a classes primary stat, which mundane weapons don't (unless that stat is STR or DEX).

In 4E, it seems like "magic missile" is just another way of prounouncing "light crossbow" anyway.

Yes.