D&D 4E Designing 4e powers

[talarei07]

is there any formula to creating powers in 4e or is it simply guess work?

 

[keterys]

Hopefully neither. There is no set formula, but it should be more than just a guess

 

[aco175]

I'm sure there are some general guidelines, but no hard rules, although there should be. I haven't put all the powers into formulas but I tend to go with the rule 'If everyone wants it, then it's broken'.

Some general concepts I tend to see with powers, most are obvious and I'm sure everyone sees the same. At-will powers deal 1d10 like most big weapons. Now they deal less and less when adding things, such as slow, mark, or can be used as basic atk. Utility powers do not deal damage, and they should not IMO. Dailies follow At-will powers generally. I'm thinking the fighter 1st level 3x+str damage followed by the less damage and more other things like push+2xdamage, 1xdamage and sustain minor, etc.

I guess you would need to try out new powers with the understanding among your players that you can lower the power of the power or raise the level after playing with the new power.

 

[CapnZapp]

is there any formula to creating powers in 4e or is it simply guess work?

WotC haven't released any guidelines although I'm sure they have a design doc internally. They would much rather sell you a bunch of new powers than teach you to create them yourself.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

WotC haven't released any guidelines although I'm sure they have a design doc internally. They would much rather sell you a bunch of new powers than teach you to create them yourself.

By that logic why did they publish monster design guidelines?

Lets actually look at this in a fairly logical fashion. A hard and fast set of numeric rules for power design would be pretty iffy. Its not really all that hard to create a basic vanilla attack power and any published guidelines for that would be so trivial as to hardly need stating (as demonstrated by the fact that they've already been pretty much stated in this thread already). More complicated situations or powers which don't mainly do damage and place a status condition really aren't going to be quantifiable in the same way and I don't see how you could write useful guidelines for them that didn't amount to a compendium of all the design principles of 4e. On top of that the main reason why homebrewed powers create problems is either unintended synergy with other powers/features/items/feats/etc or poor wording. Both of those can't really be addressed by guidelines and are just the hazards of homebrew and need to be addressed by the DM using the power.

The final real question is "why do you need to homebrew powers?" There are now what 18 (at least) complete published classes, each with between 120 to 300 powers or a total of something approaching 4 THOUSAND published powers (and if anything this is a conservative estimate). I find it hard to imagine in all those 4000 powers you can't find what you want in terms of mechanics. I guess its POSSIBLE, but chances are whatever power you want to create has already been written and all you need to do is steal the mechanics and do what you want with it.

The best guidelines for creating powers really are the existing powers themselves. I think similar arguments apply to items too.

 

[Garthanos]

I'm sure there are some general guidelines, but no hard rules, although there should be. I haven't put all the powers into formulas but I tend to go with the rule 'If everyone wants it, then it's broken'.

Well there is another option ... if everyone want's it... everyone should have it... see expertise feats.

 

[aco175]

Well there is another option ... if everyone want's it... everyone should have it... see expertise feats.

Right you are, I agree with you there. I just do not know if that agrees with homebrew powers, and if it does, where does it start to not be more or less "standard". Not sure if "core" would be a better word.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I imagine that any power design guidelines would have to be unique to a given class.

I don't think you could create a serious generic power design document for the same reason that you couldn't just take a random Sorcerer power, slap it onto the Warlock's list of powers, and call it balanced. They're both strikers, but their features and flavor are quite different.

 

[keterys]

I wonder which sorcerer powers you _couldn't_ slap onto a warlock, hmm.

 

[Stalker0]

By that logic why did they publish monster design guidelines?

There are now what 18 (at least) complete published classes, each with between 120 to 300 powers or a total of something approaching 4 THOUSAND published powers (and if anything this is a conservative estimate). I find it hard to imagine in all those 4000 powers you can't find what you want in terms of mechanics.

Monsters don't have to be as balanced as powers. If a monster is broken, the brokenness lasts a session. If a power is broken, it can last the campaign.

And while there are thousands of powers, when you consider that you only get the ones related to your class, you only get the ones in a certain level range, and in many cases some powers are so good or so bad that it limits the pool even more. So new powers is always welcome to me.