1st Level: Bonus skill power

[WhatGravitas]

So... I'm probably going to run a 4E game again soon and I'd like to address an issue my players had: 1st level characters are boring and feel too cookie-cutter.

Especially after having played higher-level characters, the rather slim power selection feels odd - so I thought this could be fixed with something small:

Every character can choose a 2nd level skill power (see PHB3) as bonus power; the skill power must belong the a skill the character is trained in.

Skill powers are, IIRC, a bit weaker than equally levelled utility powers, so that shouldn't be too good. It gives an extra option to use and makes the skill selection a bit more interesting and give a bit of extra customisation to the character.

So, what do people think? Bad/good idea? Balance issues? I considered making them go at-will->encounter->daily to prevent them from being too good, but that would bar the couple of dailies out there.

Cheers, LT.

 

[fba827]

i don't think it would be the end of the world. And in fact, I was thinking of doing something similar in my next campaign (whenever that would be).

Though i'm not sure what you mean by "making them go at-will->encounter->daily"
there are some skills that don't have powers that are anything other than encounter at that level, and so on. so you'd narrow down the scope of what's available depending on the skills chosen by the party. just leave it, without restriction, to one bonus skill power of level 2 from any skill that the pc is trained in.

oh, but make sure they know they'll get this bonus ahead of time, as it may affect people's skill choices.

As an aside:
if your players use the character builder ("CB"), i don't know if it lets you a) pick bonus powers, b) let's you pick powers higher than your character level -- i don't know since i don't use the CB. So (if many of them use it) you may want to confirm whether or not your players would have trouble there. If some/all would, then you may just want to have everyone start at 2nd level.

 

[Starfox]

I think 1st level is strictly a tutorial exercise. You are supposed to learn the ropes, understand the basics, and get on with it. You are not supposed to spend much time there, and you can very well skip it on your second and later games.

I would prefer to zip by it rather than enhance it.

That said, i think adding more utility powers is a good idea. A free skill power is definitely good, and a rule you could use throughout the levels. Giving it out at 1st level (rather than 2nd) should definitely work.

If I ever played 4E again, I think I'd double up on utility powers; at each level when you get a utility power, a character gets to pick one utility power from his class and another that can be either a class power, multiclass power, or skill power.