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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6090959" data-attributes="member: 42582">I haven't read the last couple of pages, but wanted to reply to some of the replies to my posts. [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] is (as best I can tell) on the same page as me: I agree with all your posts at least up to 300.This is pretty much the point I was making, except I was adding an additional hypothesis: I've seen no evidence that the adventuring day will be material, and hence I've seen no evidence that the cleric which makes a given adventuring day more efficient will be more powerful.In 4e, with a few exceptions (Essentials martial classes, variation across utility powes) everyone is on the same AEDU scheme, and so it doesn't matter to intraparty balance whether or not the adventuring day counts. I'm sure at some tables it does count, whether because of time-sensitive scenarios, leveraging action points and daily item uses, etc. I'm sure at some other tables it doesn't count, because the players have de facto authority over the pacing of extended rests. At those two different tables the resolution of any given encounter will be different - group 1 will worry about conserving surges, for instance, whereas group 2 will not - and that in turn may make some classes more or less valuable for that party's playstyle, but there will be no general pattern of imbalance in the game.In Next, though, if the adventuring day doesn't matter than there will be intraparty imabalance - for instance, in a party with a cleric, that gets in 5 encounters between recharges, a fighter will be relatively more powerful; whereas in a party with my hypothetical rope-tricking magic-user, that gets in only 4 encounters between recharges, a fighter will be relatively less powerful (because the spell-casters will have more spells available per encounter).But this doesn't tend to show that clerics are over-powered. If anything, it shows that clerics make fighters and rogues better, because making at-wills relatively more powerful compared to spells. It is in fact wizards, with their ability to speed up the recharge rate, who are the threat to intraparty balance!Of course.Only if you define powers as "capacity to make succesful dice rolls within a given recharge period". But why should that definition be accepted? If recharge periods are under player control, then they are not relevant to measuring power.This isn't true, in general.For instance, suppose a party has, collectively, 20 units of challenge-defeating capacity (damage, let's say) between recharges. And suppose a cleric allows the party to endure 5 rather than 4 challenges.With the cleric, then, the party can afford to deploy (on average) 4 challenge-defeating units per encounter.Without a cleric, the party can afford to deploy (on average) 5 challenge-defeating units per encounter.If the second party can in fact recharge more-or-less when it wants to, then it is going to find encounters easier to deal with, not harder: it will deply 5 challenge-defeating units per encounter (at the crudest, let's say it beats every encounter with fireball and death spell, then Rope Tricks and gets those spells back); whereas the cleric party is having to use every bit of tactical skill to defeat its 5 encounters between rests using only 4 units per encounter.In these circumstances, the cleric has not made challenges easier.(My analysis has one over-simplification - it is treating units of challenge-defeating capacity as fixed over the number of encounters, whereas in fact - given the at-will nature of some class abilities, especially martial ones - it grows with the number of encounters. But that wrinkle of complexity doesn't change the general thrust of my point.)</blockquote>

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