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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sadrik" data-source="post: 4681978" data-attributes="member: 14506">Class at-will powers suffer from being too at-will. The image of the wizard eventually knocking down a wall by magic missiling it endlessly escapes my believability standards. At least martial characters can theoretically dull their axe or explicitly run out of ammo with their at-will powers. A vanilla attack is supposed to be you basic attack and because of the game's design your at-wills are your vanilla attacks. Regardless of which attack they are, vanilla attacks become dull after 12 rounds of combat. Would removing class at-will powers make magic missile or reaping strike any more cool, say if they were moved to encounter powers at 21st level ability? Of course they become cooler because they don't happen every round and hey they are buffed up a bit too.At-will powers are a limitation of the game system by my estimation. They make a lot of assumptions chiefly, you will always be attacking with your highest stat always. The concern is that if this 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 to combat.In previous editions, not always attacking with your highest stat was not a very bad thing. Base attacks were based upon strength or dexterity only. So you knew that if you were going to be shooting a bow or swinging a sword you needed strength or dexterity at least a little. Additionally, you know that the "to-hit" rate for your spells was much higher than it is now (saving throws were relatively easily failed). You could afford a compromise on your stat line and spread it out and take two 16's or even a 16 and several 14's and still be competent. Now you need an 18 or 20 to be competent and you don't necessarily need strength or dexterity. So what would the effect of removing the at-wills be? It would change character creation for sure. It may make characters invest in strength or dexterity more, when they normally would not have. This will lower the primary stat to do so (unless of course you have a class that needs one of those stats). Doing this may alter the 50% to hit rate assumption and make it more difficult to be competent.A positive effect is that it will open up design for character types that are sub-par in the current rule set. For instance, a common character at my game table in previous editions was the elf cleric archer of correlon. This character was a dex and wis based character. Not a very viable build now. I mean, what would a cleric be doing with a bow let alone a high dex. A ranged cleric is a lazer cleric pure and simple and that only requires wisdom, and a very high wisdom at that to be effective. With making basic attacks the standard instead of lazers and reaping strikes, it says, "Ok I can make an archer cleric because I am not losing anything for doing it." Thus it opens up many more character concepts than were previously available. Again this is just one of the positive effects of making at-wills into encounter powers.So should there be a basic at-will attack for each class so they can maximize their single bloated stat in combat? I say no. What do you say?Much of this is taken from this thread <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/251056-i-like-encounter-powers-rituals-but-not-wills-dailies.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</blockquote>

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