An alternative to Milestones

[MarkB]

I don't think I'm the only one who finds the concept of Milestones a little cumbersome. I get the idea - that there are some resources which shouldn't be replenished as often as once per encounter, but which need to be replenished more than once a day - but in practice, it feels just a little too arbitrary and artificial.

Currently, each milestone earns you one Action Point and lets you refresh one magic item's Daily power.

I would suggest the following alternative:

After each encounter, you gain one of three benefits, which you must choose immediately. You may choose to:

• Gain one Action Point
• Regain one Daily magic item power
• Or regain one expended Healing Surge

This should provide a similar rate of resource-recovery, with more options, without the need to track Milestones.

Comments? Criticism? Abuse?

 

[Szatany]

What about rings?

 

[mattdm]

Nice. If it feels like milestones aren't working in our game, I'll try this.

 

[TimeOut]

Nice. Really great idea. I never liked milestones anyway, and they don't seem to work in low-level games.

 

[Grazzt]

Nice. Really great idea. I never liked milestones anyway,

This. I never liked them either. Might try what Mark posted above, see how it works out.

 

[FunkBGR]

This gives 1 Action Point per encounter.

That's huge.

My only suggestion would be to say you can't pick the same thing twice in a row, but then that might emulate milestones too closely.

 

[TimeOut]

This gives 1 Action Point per encounter.

That's huge.

My only suggestion would be to say you can't pick the same thing twice in a row, but then that might emulate milestones too closely.

In that case: What about a random roll? 1d6 on the table the OP posted?

 

[MarkB]

What about rings?

Hmm, I'd missed rings' milestone-interaction. Since it doesn't seem to occur every milestone, I wouldn't be averse to leaving it as-is - those properties become active after your second encounter of the day. It still feels a little artificial, but it's not a major factor.

This gives 1 Action Point per encounter.

That's huge.

My only suggestion would be to say you can't pick the same thing twice in a row, but then that might emulate milestones too closely.

Yeah, my system works only on the assumption that gaining an Action Point every encounter instead of every second encounter is not so advantageous as to outweigh the other options - and, on the other hand, that there are no magic items which would become excessively powerful if their 'daily' powers were available once in each encounter.

I tend to think that, in general, once the players have picked up a few items with useful Dailies they'll tend to refresh Action Points and item powers at similar rates, with extra Healing Surges when they absolutely need them, in which case this variant will be balanced.

However, I haven't played enough yet to see whether that is true in practice.

 

[kclark]

I though milestones only allowed the use of magic items more than once per day (in heroic tier).

I though you could power 1 daily item power per day, 2 at paragon, and 3 at epic. At each milestone you harnessed enough hutzpah to power another item daily. You could not use the same daily power from an item twice, but could activate a second daily power of that item if it possessed more than one (I don't think any non artifact item in the book actually has two dailies).

Or did I read that section wrong?

 

[MarkB]

I though milestones only allowed the use of magic items more than once per day (in heroic tier).

I though you could power 1 daily item power per day, 2 at paragon, and 3 at epic. At each milestone you harnessed enough hutzpah to power another item daily. You could not use the same daily power from an item twice, but could activate a second daily power of that item if it possessed more than one (I don't think any non artifact item in the book actually has two dailies).

Or did I read that section wrong?

No, I did (or rather, I took the section in Milestones at face value, without following the page-reference to the Magic Items section). You're right that the renewal of the Magic Item Daily Usage only lets you use a new magic item, not re-use one you've already used.

Hmm, my alternative is starting to look less and less viable. I guess that'll teach me not to start making houserules while I'm still getting to grips with the actual rules.