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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4940872" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, this is exactly where my thinking is. Once the players come up with a few good attack routines they are just going to use them over and over again. Then they'll have a few more that they can use with their "surge" and maybe one or two they pull out whenever they (by whatever mechanism) get extra PR.  Yeah, I think basically you took the words right out of my mouth MR <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />. Players are just going to "cook up" a small number of "powers" that they find really work well and then you might as well be using the existing power system. In fact I thought about this quite deeply and played with some numbers and different possible options way back last year some time and the conclusion I came to was that having a system where the players can use the same elements turn after turn to compose their attacks just doesn't really work. At best it looks VERY similar to the 4e power system in actual play. At worst it looks like someone with a super-optimized at-will they can spam all over the battlefield all day and virtually lock down all opposition.Then the problem is if you add in various mechanisms of "points" or whatever that restrict the players to only a few really nasty maneuvers each combat (or day etc) then you're likely to get analysis paralysis as the player says "oh oh, things are getting bad, I better come up with a super slick nova move" and then they spend the next 5 minutes trying to decide just exactly what combination of 42 different options to combine in order to get the most out of this super move.Finally I don't think it solves ANYTHING narratively. The main objection people have had with powers is that certain things don't always make sense. Like using Come and Get It to force an enemy through a wall of fire or knocking a Gelatinous Cube prone, etc. This issue is still there and hasn't been addressed at all really because it isn't an issue that was caused by powers, it is just an issue that exists because of the players insistence that non-magical actions must make sense and that they have to be described the same way all the time. Of course you can just say "well, the GC isn't knocked prone, that can't happen" but that's the same option you have right now, and the player's other option would be to use a different power that does more damage or something else, which option exists in both the existing 4e system and your modular system.Basically in other words, combat will be slower but not much else will change. I really think of the existing powers as sort of just combos that the characters have practiced. From a narrative perspective I don't even necessarily distinguish the use of a daily power vs using an at-will. It just happens that sometimes the character sees a good opportunity or gets lucky and dramatic things happen. So using a more organic and natural kind of flow to your narration really makes power based combat seem quite cinematic.For example if a PC finishes off a monster using an at-will power its just as dramatic as anything else. I just describe it as the enemy ran out of luck and the character figured out his fighting style and that at-will turns into a grand finishing move where he finally nails the enemy a good clean shot and it goes down. All the hits that went before that were (mostly) fairly trivial in narrative terms, even if they were accomplished by expending a daily power.Anyway, its always fun to play with numbers and I echo MR in saying it will be fun to see what you can do with the idea. I just don't think it will play all that differently than the existing system does or offers a lot of advantages as it stands now.</blockquote>

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