At-will class powers ruining my archetypes

[Sadrik]

I certainly wouldn't bother putting a 14 into a melee stat, even with your rules. It's still better to throw all my encounter powers then delay the rest of the combat. Because attempting to hit with +5 to hit at first level for 1d4+2 damage is kind of dumb. Against creatures with 16 AC, you only have a 50% chance of hitting for an average of 4 damage.

I agree, it is still more beneficial to focus on your powers and not on basic attacks. However, it does give the option to focus on basic attacks and I think that opens up a whole new avenue that is not there in 4e currently.

That's the problem with using the core of 4e to do what you want. The core of 4e assumes EVERYONE is attacking with a stat that is 16+. The average actually assumes an 18 with + or - 1 being acceptable.

And that's at 1st level. Unless you put a point into strength every time you get a choice for leveling, any attacks you make with strength fall farther and father behind.

The math is so well balanced that anything more than a point or two off the average and you might as well not bother.

So you are a proponent of:
The concern is that if this fundamental is altered, it may collapse the game and no one will hit or do a proper amount of damage to contribute in a meaningful way.

Fair enough, I don't think it will be that drastic, again the wizard is not supposed to be as good as the fighter, if it were that way then it would be a problem.

I actually think it would be easier to house rule 3e to do what you want than to force 4e to go there.

I don't. First of all, getting rid of the at-will powers is easy. Doing what you propose is rewriting 3e.

Unless you mean something different by "core". Do you mean the math behind all the monsters and players?

Yes, I mean the core fundamental mechanics that make the game work. +1/2 level bonus, how skills work, stats, experience and encounter design, easy to prep and stuff like that. Those in my mind are the core mechanics to the game. Sub-systems on top of that include classes, powers, magic items, etc. Anything that you could easily take away is a sub-system. For instance you could easily take away classes and throw in some generic template that gives you 4 skills and that is it and play the game. I don't think that would be very interesting but it would be playable.

Out of the core mechanics I think I only have one problem (stat polarity), out of the sub-systems I have a few but sub-systems are easily fixed core mechanics are much more difficult.

As far as removing the at-wills and adding 2 more encounters at 1st level, that is a snap. Does it open up more archetypes of characters more easily? Yup. Does it make the wizard and to a lesser extent warlock less powerful? Yup. Does it give you more a D&D feel? Yup. Does it utilize the superior core mechanics? Yup. Does it allow for a less magical, less wuxia feel for the game? Yup.

 

[Sadrik]

The At-Will/Encounter/Daily seperation for powers are part of the core mechanics for 4e.

See my previous post.

Your changes forces every class to have STR or DEX as a secondary or primary stat (making classes without STR or DEX as a primary lose any builds other than X + STR or X + DEX, and you pretty much HAVE to go with 16/16 for those stats so they can both be decent attack stats).

Everyone is not supposed to be perfectly in sync, A wizard is supposed to be worse than a fighter at fighting. I am ok with that happening. I also still think that the wizard will still invest heavily into his INT.

Classes this change does not affect:
Fighter
Ranger
Rogue
Warlord
Classes this change affects a little:
Cleric
Paladin
Classes this change affects more:
Warlock
Wizard

The first group will function as normal with very little change to the way the character was designed.
The second group's classes both have STR as one of their primary stats, so the player can choose to be really good at basic attacks and their STR based powers at little cost or become better with their other powers at the cost of not being as effective with their STR powers and basic attacks.
The last group is a little different 1/2 of their powers are not based on STR or DEX so they have to make a choice between powers or basic attacks, I think that they always choose powers, but there is on option for melee warlocks and wizards. I actually think it would be pretty cool to have a warlock with a big weapon cursing and blasting away with their weapon possibly selecting a multi-class feat to pick up some fighter powers. If I had EB, it would be sub-par to do that.

Also, on book of nine swords: They all had ways of regaining their powers. They had a number of encounter powers, but they always had a way of getting back all the encounter powers. It basically meant 1 turn of "basic attacks" before going back to encounter powers again. The one thing you may like about it is that it forces each character to use EACH of the powers before they can use the same one again.

Ew, nice idea. Recovering powers during a fight could be a way to make the wizard more viable. That way they just recover powers, hang back and blast away. Recover and then blast some more. I have no idea how to exactly make that work. But it is a definitely viable solution for improving the wizard over just giving them bonus damage. It could be a wizard feat, though.

 

[Sadrik]

one of the things behind the OP's original ideas is that having magic-based at-wills e.g. Magic Missile simply puts too much magic in the game; hence, a desire to reduce such. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

You are right on the money. That one thing that gives 4e its flavor, is the at-will powers. If you would rather have a feel like the previous versions of D&D remove these at-wills and you should arrive somewhere near that.

If removing at-wills causes concern that combats will grind even longer, there's a simple solution: reduce everyone's hit points

Grind is a problem by the RAW not just with this tune up, but it is a very easy fix as you have remarked.

 

[Sadrik]

I'd just like to add that the difference (in classes to hit bonus) was always that big.

This is why I fond it interesting that everyone is coming out of the woodwork arguing that the attack bonus for a wizard should be just as high as a fighter with their vanilla attacks.

 

[chaotix42]

So how soon is this change going to be implemented (looks like your mind was made up many pages ago so it's only a matter of time)? I'm curious to hear how no at-wills/more encounter powers works out in play!

 

[Sadrik]

If "Magic Missiles" and similar obvious magic is too magical and makes magic seem trivial and boring, why not change the at-wills of wizards (and warlocks and other casters too, I guess, but I'll focus on wizards for now) to make them less blatantly magical?

This or something like it is a solution. But what you have proposed is just a shell game switching one at-will magical effect for another. I would rather they just have the bonus encounter powers, delete the at-wills and be done. It is a very simple fix, without the need of writing 20 or 30 new powers.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This is why I fond it interesting that everyone is coming out of the woodwork arguing that the attack bonus for a wizard should be just as high as a fighter with their vanilla attacks.

Because, unlike in previous editions, he need to make those vanilla attacks in your proposal.

A 3E 5th level Wizard had a magic missile that dealt 3d4+3 damage (auto-hit)or a Fireball that dealt 5d6 damage (half on a save) in a 20 ft radius. (And not just one of each of these spells) The Fighter only had his melee attack at 1d8+6 damage (no damage on a miss).

The 4E Wizard modded by you has a Fireball that deals 3d6+4 damage, or one Bigby's Icy Grasp that that deals 2d10+4, once per day, and a Acid Arrow that deals 2d4+4 and 5 ongoing acid damage.
But the Fighter has, besides his 1d8+6 damage attack also a 2d10+6 attack that is guaranteed to work at some point and give him hit points back, and a 2d10+6 points of damage attack that deals ongoing 5 untyped damage.

Even if we ignore for a moment the dailies and replace them with extra encounter powers, not much changes - a Wizard might get more area attacks, but these deal less damage than the Fighters attacks, and an area attack is only useful if there are even enough enemies in a radius. Having 3 Fireball-like spells per encounter might turn out useless once the enemies have figured out you have it and flank the party and otherwise spread out.

 

[Sadrik]

Also late to the thread but reading through it this also occured to me. If the at wills are a problem then why not change the at wills to something more acceptable?

If that is no good then I think an encounter power recovery should be considered to encourage people to play caster types. Otherwise, it would be better to play a fighter/caster multiclass and dip into the caster encounter and dailies via feats than go for a straight caster, especially wizard.

Something that keys off of "spells" that way both the warlock and wizard, both the hardest hit, would be able to do things with their non-bloated DEX and non-bloated STR.

I don't think the warlock is that far off form being decent, give them a bonus "reserve feat" that I will be writing up for the eldritch blast power as a class feature. They should be fine.

The wizard could then have a feat that keys off of their "spellbook" class feature and gives them a recharge of an encounter power every once in a while during an encounter. Standard action? does that seem reasonable or should their be more cost? AP?

 

[Sadrik]

So how soon is this change going to be implemented (looks like your mind was made up many pages ago so it's only a matter of time)? I'm curious to hear how no at-wills/more encounter powers works out in play!

We are playing in a pretty big game 7 players and I am not currently the DM, that will shift to me at the next option to and the current DM will become a player. I'll institute it then. I also, am pretty excited to try this out. I think it will really make the game better and bring a nice D&D feel.

 

[Sadrik]

Because, unlike in previous editions, he need to make those vanilla attacks in your proposal.

This is true, before when the wizard attacked it was usually with a touch attack or they need to make a save and those generally favored the spell caster. So having a good BAB was not that important.

Contrasting that point to this change, we have a wizard who has an 18 INT whose powers all go off of that. The wizard starts with 3 encounter powers and a daily picks up a utility power at 2nd and continues adding powers. The wizard is not limited to what a 5th level 3e wizard can do in a day - he can do way more! This is advantage 4e.

damage

This rather eloquently illustrates how the 4e wizard is underpowered. As far as I am concerned they were already underpowered. So, adding anything to them to boost them up is almost a non-issue in this context. Adding something to spellbook class feature to recharge spells or giving them a bonus damage die to all of their spells both seem like good ways to go.