At-will class powers ruining my archetypes

[UngeheuerLich]

you need to add a dice or two to wizard dailies to have the right feel... don´t think that is too difficult to do...

I would however not take away all his at wills... i would give him all his at wills and allow him to prepare some of them as dailies...

 

[UngainlyTitan]

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?

I have no comment on the warlock, I have not seen them enough in play to really comment. The restoration of eldritch blast seems ok. For the Wizard, I would go with standard action recharge. Wizard powers in 4e tend to be hit or miss and if recharge is too hard then playing a wizard could become an excerise in frustration.
I would also chime in that in the wizard Dailies need more oomph. They will miss quite often so when they work then need to work well.

 

[WizarDru]

I'm just curious: in your combats, how many opponents and players do you normally have?

 

[pawsplay]

I'm kind of surprised that, having settled on everyone having at-will powers, they didn't come up with some non-spell powers for Wizards. Why couldn't they have at-wills that affected crossbows or daggers or whatever? Maybe a dagger attacks that adds Int to damage and causes the enemy to take -1 on defenses if he doesn't step back next round, or something. I don't see any reason why a Wizard couldn't secondarily have powers related to crossbows or darts.

 

[Obryn]

I'm kind of surprised that, having settled on everyone having at-will powers, they didn't come up with some non-spell powers for Wizards. Why couldn't they have at-wills that affected crossbows or daggers or whatever? Maybe a dagger attacks that adds Int to damage and causes the enemy to take -1 on defenses if he doesn't step back next round, or something. I don't see any reason why a Wizard couldn't secondarily have powers related to crossbows or darts.

Well, one of the nice things about 4e is that there's plenty of design space to add those, should you wish to do so.

I think giving them a melee at-will would be a neat idea, maybe tying it to Staff Mastery.

-O

 

[WalterKovacs]

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.

The thing many have pointed out though, is that it really doesn't. It adds new archetypes, but it also ruins existing archetypes ... unless you implement fixes that make it so that a character never has to actually use their basic attacks, otherwise that archetype is gone. The archetype for wizard is: Wizard with a melee weapon, wizard with a ranged weapon, wizard that cowers when out of spells. Warlock has warlock with a knife, warlock with a thrown knife ... warlock that cowers when out of spells.

People talk about how the at-wills make classes seem the same. The weapons are all very similar, just different ways of having either +2 or +3 to hit with the damage die being close to each other as well. So a wizard with a quatterstaff isn't that much different mechanically than a wizard with a scythe. And, even if the respective weapons seemed cool, they would stop being cool once you ended up having to use them when your spells run out.

It just seems odd that the goal is to get rid of at-wills to make them have to use basic attacks ... but then you have to make it so that they never really will be making basic attacks (unless they want to), in order to make it balanced in the 4e system.

 

[WalterKovacs]

actually i could live with a class with very weak at-wills which are solely used to fullfill its role and relying on base attacks and strong encounter/dailies...

One of the problems with this is the option of multiclassing. A class with "good" at-wills and weaker encounter/dailies will steal powers from the class with more powerful encounters and dailies that balance out the weaker at-wills.

 

[Fredrik Svanberg]

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.

Except the powers I suggested had no visible effects and could just as easily be described as "smart fighting" or whatever you prefer, instead of "magic".

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.

It's simple, alright, but it's not a fix.

 

[Zustiur]

Allow me to present an analogy, just in case anyone hasn't got it already.
Chocolate is special.
If you have chocolate with every meal, it will cease to be special.

Like Sadrik, I have toyed with the idea of removing at-will powers in some manner. I find all their finicky effects to be a significant factor in battle-grind. Particularly for martial characters, but also for some of the others. Removing at-wills probably won't speed up the combat in terms of rounds, but it may speed it up in terms of real elapsed time. Less counting of when effects start and stop, and all the tiny bonuses or penalties that they inflict, more getting on with the job of actually fighting.

The way I envisioned the changes is as follows:

Melee characters (defenders and strikers): Have no at-wills. Each at-will power becomes an encounter power, and may get improved to reflect that fact. Melee characters may or may not get additional encounter powers per encounter, this is to be decided by actual playtest.
Spellcasters (wizards and warlocks): I think warlocks would remain fairly much as they are. Wizards however would have their at-wills converted to encounters, be able to use a greater number of encounter powers per battle, and be able to learn ALL spells. They would still have to choose which spells they prepared each day, but they'd go way beyond the limit of spells known that is normally imposed by 4E.
Leader/healer types: The ability to heal someone should never be tied to your ability to hit someone else. I would remove cleric at-will powers altogether and boost their ability to heal instead. Personally I'd remove warlords altogether, so I'll skip class that for this discussion.

So apart from the warlock's at wills (mainly eldritch blast), there are no at-wills in my model. While I fully realize my model is not balanced to the same degree as 4E, I feel it is much more pleasant starting point to work from. Balance from there on would be handled by how many encounter powers each class had available, or in how powerful they are.

Personally I'd also make other sweeping changes if I were to run 4E, like halving all HP. But this discussion isn't about me.

Were I in the same location as Sadrik, I'd volunteer to test his version, but I'm on the other side of the world. Nevermind.

 

[Cadfan]

Allow me to present an analogy, just in case anyone hasn't got it already.
Chocolate is special.
If you have chocolate with every meal, it will cease to be special.

I think this reasoning is very flawed.

Its not about how interesting the individual powers are, viewed in a vacuum. Its about how interesting the character as a whole is, viewed in total. Having things that you can do whenever you like makes your character, overall, more interesting. Reaping Strike might not be as awesome as an at will power in comparison to how awesome it would be if we enhanced it and made it an encounter power, but so what?

Right now my human fighter has a suite of three at will attacks. Each individual power might be cooler as an encounter power, but my fighter is cooler as a guy who can choose between three different tactical effects at any given time than he would be if he couldn't. And its more important that my character be cool than that his attack powers be cool viewed in a vacuum and unconnected to him.