D&D 4E [4e] Exertion points rather than at-will/ecounter/daily managment?

[harpy]

I was initially really excited about 4e, but once I got it in my hands I was crestfallen as the system felt far too gamey to me. The system's aesthetics overwhelm me with the sense of playing a boardgame rather than making me feel immersed in an RPG.

One thing that I thought could turn that around would be to use a different system for at-will/encounter/daily powers. Instead of these being card-like abilities that turn off and on, instead give them values that have to be spent by the player within the context of exertion, either physical, mental, spiritual, etc.

At-will powers would have no cost, as they are at-will and so could be done all day long. Encounter powers would have a cost and then dailies would have a significant cost. That way, mechanically, you could represent the power resource of the character being spent on a metric that draws out the theme of the power source better than the gamey lingo.

Further, with a more fine grained system you could break up the rigidity of the current system, allowing a more fluid mixture of choices. Perhaps more than one daily could be spent from the exertion pool, or instead more encounter powers could be utilized at the expense of being able to have enough exertion points to use a daily.

Lastly, with a more fine grain system it could allow a character to push themselves farther. They could go over the "red line" and begin exhausting themselves, either through HP damage, healing surges, or condition effects to allow the player to perform more encounter or daily powers.

Now, it could quickly be pointed out "Isn't anyone thinking of the balance!" that this system could cause. I guess that isn't a concern for me. I'd prefer more of a gambling game of players pushing their characters hard to overcome obstacles rather than rolling through the normal power expenditures.

Has anyone set up a system like this? I might have stayed with 4e if there had been something like this, and it's been out long enough now that it wouldn't surprise me if someone has developed this kind of system.

I assume you couldn't offer this up as a 3rd party supplement though with how the GSL is written.

 

[keterys]

The biggest problem with a system like this is you'll end up with people doing the same ability over and over, whatever is the best bang for their point-buck. Which is just sorta boring.

 

[harpy]

Well, someone could spend, say... perform the same daily power twice that day, but it would be valued in such a way that beyond that the player would be stuck with at-will powers for the rest of the day, or need to take damage in some way to perform further encounter or daily powers.

So someone could blow their wad, but that might not be the best way to handle the situation. They'd need to read the fight to see if it was worth that approach.

 

[the Jester]

I'm working on a system similar to this for my "D&D Jazz Edition" project... basically I've redefined action points. Most characters start off with about 4 APs, and they come and go easily. A fighter, for instance, gains 1 AP per enemy he hits with a melee attack, and he's going to be spending them for things like charging, bull rushing, etc. I'm going to be largely replacing the power system with this.

 

[lkjopajdowma]

This is an interesting idea. I think in order for this to work, and have some semblance of balance, you'd need to do the math on how many encounter/dailies powers characters use in an average adventuring day (if the exertion points are on a daily recharge) to figure out the right amount of points to give out, and how many points to assign to powers.

And then the question is, do higher level powers cost more than lower level powers, or do all encounter powers and daily powers have the same cost, regardless of level? I'd be afraid of it getting pretty fiddly with different costs, but in theory, higher level powers should cost more. It almost seems like you would have to assign a point value based on power level. In that regard, you'd get some pretty large numbers, even if you combine a few levels of powers at a time into a "cost tier".

EDIT: Then again, you can retrain to replace powers as you level up, so this may not be that huge of an issue. It's been a while since I've played 4e, and sort of forgot about that. But even then, looking at a 25th lvl character I had, I didn't retrain some low level utility powers, because even at that level, they're still useful, and it still has a 15th level daily. So are we at a point where utilities would also need a different cost structure due to the fact low level utilities can still be useful at high levels, whereas attack powers are more likely to be retrained?

I do like the idea of seeing characters pushing themselves beyond normal limits by expending healing surges, and I'm in the middle of brainstorming ideas for when I run another 4e game, and I like the idea of spending healing surges (and maybe an AP, which I'm already planning on being more liberal with and giving more uses to--but that's another thread) to recharge daily/encounter powers.

I think an option like this would work great for some groups, but for others you might have a problem with player's overanalyzing how many points they have vs. what they want to do. It also seems like it would be more book keeping (assuming a group is using power cards at present and not just marking off on a sheet what powers they used).

(As an aside: I feel the current system does much of the same, depending on how you look at it. The idea with Encounter powers and Daily powers, as I see it, is that they represent the exertion needed to use them in that Encounters can only be done every so often, and Dailies use so much energy that you can only do them once a day. IMO, "exertion points" is just as "gamey".)

 

[Garthanos]

Hit points are certainly measures of luck and fatigue... etc
One of the things that allows heros to pull of stunts is the same heroic luck that allows them survive the dangers. That said when you bucket the numbers together you also risk people becoming conservative/cautious to the degree of un-funness.

Encounter powers sometimes are a reflection of a trick that has fool me once shame on you ... fool me twice shame on me... painted all over it. One way to emulate that and to encourage breaking up the choices even if one ends up being too optimal is to make the cost progress... if you do it twice... it might get more costly or it might loose reliability something similar.

Dailies I have a planned house rule for which will make them inspired abilities and disconnect there refresh from time ... and tie it in with a number of encounters (like action points really).

 

[LostSoul]

I don't know if that's going to help you get more immersed in the game world.

I think lack of immersion happens because you don't need to concern yourself with the game world when it comes to action resolution. There's no difference between a stream of water (difficult terrain) and heavy underbrush (difficult terrain).

If you make the details of the game world matter in action resolution - "Hey, that gnome who's invisible, if he goes through the water I should see splashes, right?" "I am going to try to manoeuvre the bad guy so his footing is off in the underbrush, making it easier for me to trip him with a push."

If those little details matter then players will be looking at them for advantages, thus thinking about the details of the game world, picturing their characters in the game world - immersion.

The question is, how do you do that? Anyway, another thing to consider.

If I were to use your system... I'd have a rule that says:

"The DM can waive the cost of exertion points if the attack uses features of the environment, the positioning of opponents, or any other details of the game world to aid in its success."

(Maybe the exact reason for waiving the cost would be different based on the power: "Spinning Sweep: if you can get under his guard and kick out his legs, you don't need to spend an exertion point." Don't define anything else, leave it game-world based. This means you can't Spinning Sweep oozes easily; with a creature like a hobgoblin, who fights in little phalanx, you'd have the same problem - at least not until you knock their shield away and are able to get under their guard.)

Then you keep the number of exertion points low so that players are forced to look for these things. You'd probably want to make sure you add in specific things that are easily used for the first while until players get the hang of it.

Hmm... that could work!

 

[Alex319]

The PHB3 has psionic character classes, which use a "power point" mechanic very similar to the "exertion points" you are talking about.

Basically, the power point classes have no encounter powers. Instead of getting new encounter powers as they go up in level, they get to retrain their at-wills to higher level at-wills. Each at-will has two different "augments" where you spend power points to improve the power. Power points reset after every encounter.

 

[Alex319]

Lastly, with a more fine grain system it could allow a character to push themselves farther. They could go over the "red line" and begin exhausting themselves, either through HP damage, healing surges, or condition effects to allow the player to perform more encounter or daily powers.

Now, it could quickly be pointed out "Isn't anyone thinking of the balance!" that this system could cause. I guess that isn't a concern for me. I'd prefer more of a gambling game of players pushing their characters hard to overcome obstacles rather than rolling through the normal power expenditures.

I'm not sure that such a system will have the effect you seek, and here's why. In many ways, 4e is essentially a game of resource management, where hit points and healing surges are just one of the resources you are managing, just like encounter an daily powers. For example, let's say a player can burn 5 hit points to get enough exertion points to use an encounter power one more time, and on average that makes the monster live one round less, and the monster does 10 damage per round on average. Then the player will always want to do this because it saves hit points, even if they aren't in any real danger from the monster. In fact if they are in a tough situation they might be even less likely to use this system because they need to save every hit point they can get. Also characters like wizards that tend to stay behind the front lines will be burning hit points and healing surges for this constantly, because normally they don't get hit much anyway.

Probably what you want is a system where the thing you are risking for extra power is something that has a long term effect, like some sort of long lasting wound system. That way there is a real trade off between short term power and long term effectiveness.

 

[Amaroq]

On a similar topic, but with less modification, I'd been wondering about the idea of letting players pick two powers at each level, much like a Wizard's spellbook.

The idea, then, is that, when you use a Level 5 Daily power, you've used them both ... but now you're more likely to pick two that fill very different roles.

I mean, as a fighter, I might want one L5 Daily which is great for dancing my way through a bunch of minions, and a second L5 Daily which is great for going to town on a solo ... rather than feeling like I have a single choice that I'm "locked into" for the duration of the character.

Not sure how well that'll wind up playing - but the thought was originally prompted by the same "the system feels gamey" feeling that you describe; it gets a little boring when you trot out the same old Level 3 encounter power you've had for nine levels now, and done in say, eight battles per level, and you do it for the 75th time. No matter how cool that power was, it gets a little old by the end of its life.

On the other hand, I've always thought that "system" was less important than "players" for encouraging role-playing:

If you have a DM who creates encounters with multiple ways past, such as:
- Kill them all
- Fight them, but use the defenders to shield them while the others go by
- Go around them
- Bribe them
- Intimidate them
- Lie to them
- Sneak past them
- Trick them into going somewhere else, then rush past them

Then you're going to get a lot of good role-play.

For example, in my current dungeon, I have a revenant paladin who is "guarding" the lich, because anybody who dies fighting the lich makes the lich stronger. I had her very much written in an anime-style, "you must kill me to prove you are worthy of fighting the lich", with a tone of "and if you can beat the lich, thank the gods, because I'll finally be able to rest".

My players refused to fight her, and after negotiating with her, have informed me that they're determined to convince her to do something useful to help them against the lich.

If I force them to fight her, it really doesn't matter what the mechanics of the system are - they're going to see the system as "mechanical" and the world as "static".

If I give them a chance to talk her out of her personal quest, they're going to see the system as "fun" and the world as "sandbox" ... especially if her choice in the matter has some knock-on effects later on.