At-will and encoutners only, no dailies?

[Wednesday Boy]

In games where there are a small number of encounters per day, I've been musing about a houserule so there are no daily powers--only encounters and at-wills. Has anyone tried this?

If so, what have you done to balance the lack of daily powers? Maybe when you should get a daily you instead get two encounter powers of a level lower than that daily?

(For the record this is isn't for any current game, just a mental exercise. I noticed we had the problem in our last game of only a couple of encounters per day and with the full retinue of dailies available we were rarely challenged.)

PS: Thanks ahead of time for any insights and brainstorms!

 

[El Coro]

The houserule my group always uses is that a player cannot use more than half of their daily powers in one encounter. Once they reach that point, they're locked out for the rest of that combat.

Mostly this was done to keep everyone from struggling through difficult encounters without using any dailies because they were saving them for the "boss fight," but it works just as well to keep them from unleashing every daily when they know they'll get an extended rest soon.

 

[Kingreaper]

Consider changing dailies to recharge at some longer time period, or significant events, and doing the same with surges.

What sort of timeline do encounters generally spread over in your games?

 

[aco175]

I have been toying with the idea of changing dailies to recharge powers, but then they just become more powerful encounter powers. The idea of not having them automatically recharge between short rests seems a bit of a hassle. You could have less of them, lessen the damage or overall power, or does this equal less fun of a character. It may make the pc into more of a npc in feel.

I have a npc that tags along with the party to fill in the roles with the power similar to the halfling slinger's atack where he gets 3 shots at -2 to hit. It is not super cool but works for him and does not compare with party powers, but seems powerful enough for a recharge power usable every fight. Maybe I will boost the power in a few levels by doing something like adding another number to the recharge die or adding a condition like slow, or making the distance longer, but it is still not better than other daily spells.

 

[psyronin]

I have been toying with the idea of changing dailies to recharge powers, but then they just become more powerful encounter powers.

I've been thinking about this as well. It might be a matter of tuning the recharge rate so players average the same number of dailies per day. My plan so far:
- you don't start off with daily uses
- the first d20 roll per round for a "heroic" maneuver is also the recharge roll (heroic would be attacks, saving throws, making a STR check to topple something onto enemies, but not a Diplomacy skill roll)
- rolling a natural 20 recharges a daily
- daily charges go away at the end of an encounter (no killing rats to load up on them)

At first level, if doing 3 encounters per day, daily use would be about the same if encounters average 6-7 rounds in length. For later levels where you have several dailies per day the target number would have to go down: 19-20 for 2 dailies, 18-20 for 3, etc.

One problem is that if encounters are longer then you would average more dailies. But the random availability also makes them a bit weaker than
before. If combats are really long, a limit on the number of recharges per encounter might reel the dailies back in.