As a player, I'd love this. I'd load up on 3 uses of Wall of Fire a day and make my DM cry.
Fire elementals, immune to fire damage(at least mine are anyway).
While I don't think this will break the game, I'd watch out for a few stellar powers being taken multiple times. Come and Get It comes to mind. But I wouldn't have any problem with the houserule. Actually sounds nice.
Any over-use of a particular attack setup(push, pull, slide, prone, ect..) generally gets my players met with enemies who can't be affected by said things.
But keep an eye out for a couple specific things like ....
a) it reduces variety in combat, thus, some players might find that boring (as the player doing it, or as a player watching another do the same over and over)
My personal opinion if someone told me that "Jason's turn was so boring, he just did X over and over!" would be to tell them that Jason's turn doesn't exist for their amusement. I do understand 4e has a bit more of a cinematic nature to it, so watching a fighter is certainly more interesting than older editions, but I don't expect my players to entertain the others, and if folks are looking for their entertainment in how others are playing, they're probably looking in the wrong places, and I would tell them so.
b) some powers, particularly those that can impose conditions, could be built entirely around. and while that isn't a problem to be that sort of niche tactic pc, it could get you a couple wonky combos. (check out char ops that people do for focusing on things granted by at-will powers, particularly at-wills that impose a condition. encounters and dailies are more likely to impose conditions and thus more likely to have feats and other powers that could synergize a bit too well for someone who is repeatedly using that power. it -might- get ridiculous depending on what your threshold for ridiculous is
I agree. As a fan of Paladin's I've read over the cold synergies quite a few times. However, my solution to highly specialized, highly synergistic powers is simply to find/create foes who are immune or highly resistant to those types of maneuvers.
c) i might be a little cautious of repeating powers that stun or daze... as a DM if you use a lot of solos, it just increases the chance of getting a big boss get stunned for an entire combat as the other PCs just whittle away its hp.
As a WoW player, I've learned two things:
1: Stuns are highly obnoxious.
2: Bosses are immune to crowd control, or at least highly resistant
d) if a situation comes up where the PC can't use his favored tactic (example: his favored tactic is fire based but he's up against fire resistant monsters; or it involves pushing people off a cliff but there aren't any cliffs around) then that player might feel like he can't do anything or feel frustrated or feel annoyed at you for picking such a monster and so on. -- yes, i've played with people like that. while i'm not saying most players will react like that, some will.
True, which is why I try to present my players with a fairly diverse selection of foes on a regular basis. I've also got a party of 6 right now, and I'm running a "Gandalf" as the "voice of the DM" to help point out what may seem obvious to me but obviously isn't to my players.
all that aside, in general i actually think it's a fine idea that i would think is just fine for a table/group of players that i knew well enough to not be jerks to exploit it
I've only got one guy who builds for sheer power, but that's been toned down a lot in 4e anyway, and he's playing a more concept character right now so I think my party will be okay in that regard, they're pretty cool folks.
My concerns with the houserule have already been noted by others. One additional thing I will mention is that it does allow a class to take on specialisations that would not normally be available.
For instance, a high level rogue can become a specialist in area effect damage. Their area effect attacks are few and far between, but if they can repeat them, then they can have as many non-at-wills as a sorcerer. A sorcerer on the other hand has few enticing single target spells, if they can choose the best of them though they can be come a single target specialist. A warlock can become even more of a controller and a warlord or bard can take on a more controller-ish role with repeated abilities. A class that can not normally do a particular type of damage often can be made to specialise in it.
None of this is a bad thing though.
Right, I'm not too worried about that though, I feel it's always the player's choice to specialize or not.
What is a bad thing, is the interaction with some of the epic tier feats. For instance, a rogue has a burst 5 encounter(?) power called Steel Entrapment that also immobilises the enemy UEONT. Being able to spam this 3-4 times in a row would keep a whole bunch of enemies locked down and/or dead. The real problem is though, that with there are feats that modify powers to make it so that it uses Sneak Attack on every target.
So shooting in a burst 5 doing an extra 5d8 damage to each person is ok now and then, but on every encounter power that would get ridiculous.
P.S. Even at lower levels, as a GM I don't want to be putting up with Blinding Barrage or Sleep more times a day than I have to.
P.P.S. Arcane Admixture could also become an issue too.
This kinda falls into the "don't piss off the DM" territory in my book, and generally speaking if any player abuses a specific thing too often, they'll encounter foes who are immune, or have their own solutions to it. One thing Champions Online taught me is that even melee characters should have some basic ranged attacks, so that you cannot simply immobilize them and blast them away from afar. I generally make my more powerful foes immune or highly resistant to "stun" type effects as well.
I play a lot of my games on the fly, so if I see abuse in action, I generally maintain the ability to throw something in that negates it.
ALSO: We're all level 5 atm, so I won't have to worry about epic tier stuff for a while.
