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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alex319" data-source="post: 4941640" data-attributes="member: 45678">Let's back up a bit and run down some of the issues with the existing combat system that you've identified. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding the issues.1. Players don't "react to the situation of combat" enough, because they don't have enough versatility to tailor their action to the combat situation.2. There are too many nonstandard attacks (i.e. attacks that do "extra" things) making each one less special.3. Players often use encounter/daily powers with rider effects even when the rider effects are unnecessary in the situation, because the only other option is an at-will that does even less damage.4. The powers often don't make sense "narratively" in many situations.Let's look at possible solutions:1. A build-your-own-power system could provide more versatility. However you would have to avoid the traps we've already mentioned with regards to spamming the same attacks. Here's another way to look at that problem. Basically there are two things you want:(a) Players to use different things each round.(b) Players to use things appropriate to the combat situation.In order for this to work, through, the "combat situation" has to be different enough round-to-round or encounter-to-encounter that it's actually "appropriate to the situation" to use significantly different attacks. And that's an encounter design issue as much as it is a power issue.Can you give an example of the kind of "flexibility and ingenuity" (your words) in adapting attacks to the combat situation that you are aiming for?2. This seems to conflict with (1). In (1) you basically say that people are using the same powers over and over, and want that to change. Here you say that you want people to use the same powers most of the time.3. One way to fix this is simple: say that when you're using an at-will, if you hit then you can burn an encounter/daily to get bonus damage based on the level of the power burned (say 1W/2W/3W for heroic/paragon/epic encounter powers and 2W/4W/6W for dailies, or something) Then if you can't use the rider effects, you can just burn them on at-wills for extra damage, and don't have to worry about "wasting" anything. This also means you're not actually using those moves in situations where they wouldn't be appropriate.4. I don't really see how the BYOP (build-your-own-power) system solves this problem. Since players can choose any effects they want up to the level of the power, then they can still choose things that "aren't narratively appropriate." Although if your players take "being narratively appropriate" into consideration when choosing powers, then this could help if it gives them more flexibility.</blockquote>

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