D&D 4E 4e powers and unfun moments

[MrGrenadine]

To cut to the chase, my question is this: does it unbalance the game to make all powers that have no effect on a miss Reliable?


I play in a weekly 4e campaign--a great mix of RP and combat. In the last session, we were in a pitched battle with a dozen foes who surprised us, and things looked sketchy--one guy was already down, another was surrounded and close to falling. On top of that, we were all spread out on the battlefield. Bad news.

My Battleguard of Tempus was boxed in by a couple foes who'd already taken some damage, and I saw an opportunity to take out one, possibly both of them. It was a situation where high damage was needed, and--bonus!--I had Divine Favor and Weapon of the Gods in play. I decided to use an At-Will on one enemy, and then use an Action Point (adding +3 to the attack with Action Surge), Righteous Rage of Tempus and Power Attack with the last of my 2[w] Encounter powers on the same guy, (if he was still up after the first attack), or (I hope) the other guy. So attack and miss with the At-Will, then AP and attack with the Encounter power...

and roll a 1.

Wasted my CD. Wasted my AP. Wasted one of my two 2[w] powers. Not fun. So then I was basically down to plinking away with At-Wills for the rest of the fight. And with the higher monster hp in 4e, and the way the enemies seem to be hitting on anything higher than an 8, things looked so bleak I was about ready to start rolling up a new character. Luckily, we figured out a cool way to win the day without slogging through round after round of combat, so it turned out ok, but missing on that one turn had a chance to be way more significant than it had any right to be.


I know missing has always been part of the game, and 1's suck in any edition. But I think the 4e power system has made missing way more significant in any encounter.

As a 7th lvl Cleric/MC Fighter, I have access to 5 possible high damage/effect powers--3 Encounters and 2 Dailies. And of all the powers available to me, there are a few 2[w] powers and only a couple 3[w] powers, so my opportunities to do a lot of damage are limited. Add in the fact that I took Weapon of the Gods and Guardian of Faith for my Dailies, and that of my Encounter powers, one is a 1[w] vs Fort with a push effect (nice) and two are 2[w] powers, and that means I really only have 2 good chances per encounter to do significant damage if I need to. And despite all the cool stuff my Cleric/Fighter is good at, sometimes the only thing thats needed is to make sure there's one less enemy when the next round comes around.

Now, I know this was a very specific situation which definitely won't come up every session, or even every combat. And feel free to critique my power choices, and/or remind me that 4e combat is more about synergy between allies, and less about one guy doing massive damage. Yes, I know 4e Clerics aren't made to do significant damage, (in hindsight, I probably should've made a Fighter or a striker of some sort and MC'd into Cleric). But I didn't do too much research into the viability of the character at first--I just made the character I wanted to play. And now, over the past few levels, I'm seeing how significant a few bad rolls can be.

Is it just me, and my less-than-optimal character, or is everyone seeing possibly game-changing situations like a significant depletion of resources after a miss?

And if thats true, why not make powers that do nothing on a miss Reliable? Or give 'em a recharge on 5-6 on a d6, or something--anything to avoid that feeling of "I just burned through my best resources and gained nothing!"

 

[supersaiyandoyle]

I know you think that 4E is broken because of no compensation for bad rolls, but that's only because you're still at a low level. Bad rolls (except 1's, because that's just unlucky) become compensated for half damage. Don't worry about it, and 1's are a part of life.

 

[MrGrenadine]

Just to be clear--I don't think 4e is broken. Imperfect, yes. Broken, no.

 

[TerraDave]

This was something I noticed from my first 4E session.

BUT, there are already a bunch of reroll and miss effects floating around.

My solution: give everyone one additional reroll each day (including me as the DM). This was meant to deal with cases like yours but not to crowd out other rerolls or miss effects. You could also do it once per level. (As a bonus, my rule requires making an appropriate prayer, which was way of bringing in my home-brew pantheon.)

 

[MatthewJHanson]

A few of things to consider about making powers reliable:

You suggestion would make encounter powers that currently have an effect less powerful.

Some encounter powers would actually be better than daily powers.

The PC would be more powerful in relation to monsters than they otherwise would be.

 

[Piratecat]

I ask myself: in 3e, 2e or 1e, would I have kept the dominate spell just because my foe saved against it? No - if they had, every fight would eventually end with my foe dominated.

 

[Mengu]

When I first played 4e, at 1st level, I also thought it sucked to miss with that one encounter power I had. In time, I learned to use encounter powers when I have attack bonuses, double rolls or reroll options, or generally pick encounter powers that aren't dependent upon a single roll, such as burst or multi-attack powers.

As you level up you gain more and more encounter powers. If they were all reliable, at 11th level, you would have 4 reliable encounter powers. You might never use an at-will power in a 6-7 round combat. The mechanical choices would change quite a bit under this scenario. Reliable minor action attacks or interrupt attacks would be crazy good. You're supposed to miss at least every now and then and waste a power, so the monsters have a shot at challenging you.

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

While missing isn't fun, and you felt like you wasted your resources (which you had), IMHO you weren't setting yourself up for success.
While your character isn't built to nova, its not so bad. But to make up for your lack of nova ability, you tried to stack all of the encounter abilities you could on a single attack. You had the bonus from Action Surge that would have helped you hit on just an average roll (unfortunately you rolled a 1) but negated much of the bonus by stacking power attack on top of it. It would have made for a great hit, if you had hit.

For your character you have a few options to get more bang out of your powers, and I'd suggest looking into some possibilities for a retraining at your next level up. (Please note I'm not suggesting I think you built your character wrong, and some of the suggestions I'm offering are based on assumptions about your character since we don't have all the details.)
You could:
1. Switch to a weapon with a higher proficiency bonus or take an Expertise feat if you haven't already done so. At level 7 if you are using a +2 prof weapon and have less than an 18 in your to hit stat you are on the low end of the accuracy scale for your level. The problems the Expertise feats were designed to alleviate start to show up at level 5.
2. Retrain to powers that have either higher [W] multipliers or have Effects or Miss damage. Or since you're playing a multiclass fighter pick up a Reliable power from there.
or 3. Ignore me and play the character you want to play, but expect that you won't have very big hits that often. I think your character should work fine the way you've built it, but you might want to spread out your encounter resources a little more since your powers are dependent on them hitting.

Making more powers reliable wouldn't be a bad thing, but if WotC did that, they would probably reduce the damage or effects on those powers. While we don't have access to the formulas; the designers have some sort of equation for expected damage output per encounter by character role. Now I can't be sure, but I'd bet money that their equations includes multipliers based on hit percentage. To balance out with other powers newly reliable ones would need other changes as well.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Satcking everything you have on one single encounter power promises great reward... at the chance of just missing... simple as that. It is not unlike older editions, where you used your spell on a monster with 20% spell resistance... and fail.
It used to happen a lot back in the old days, and it happens now. Failure is a part of the system. Maybe having some reserves for the slight chance, that your attack just misses is not the worst idea...

 

[MrGrenadine]

I ask myself: in 3e, 2e or 1e, would I have kept the dominate spell just because my foe saved against it? No - if they had, every fight would eventually end with my foe dominated.

I see what you mean, but my Healing Strike encounter power isn't an encounter-ender like Dominate was.

I don't want an auto-win move for every fight--I like a challenge, and the battles in our 4e campaign have been really fun, both in terms of story and tactics. Its just that the more effective attacks are a finite resource, and I hate that feeling half way through a battle that I've burned off my best stuff without seeing any return on the investment--with nothing to look forward to but chipping away with my little 1[w] At-wills.

I guess its partly a problem of this being my first 4e character.