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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eryndel" data-source="post: 4684194" data-attributes="member: 13120">Well, I might be a little late to the party...The issue here is that 4e isn't particularly focused on ensuring that everyone is reasonable good at using a weapon.   In fact, those that are typically utilize the Martial power source.   The expectation seems to be that if you are Divine, Arcane, Primal, etc... using a weapon is often, though not always, secondary.That may not be stylistically you're thing.  However, it's not that dissimilar to earlier editions.   The poor 1st edition magic user's hit table was pretty bad, and could hardly be called decent with a basic attack.   I think it was only with 3e (or maybe 2e Player's Options series) which brought some of these characters up to the sub-par level.Would the new encounter powers be upgraded in effect as well?  If not, then a wizard with 1 encounter power and magic missile/scorching burst would outperform a wizard with 1 encounter power and only two uses of magic missile/scorching burst and the rest basic attacks. Significantly.IMO, they are special because they are iconic of the role the character plays.  At wills help the character consistently perform his/her role.  Leader never lose the ability to aid their team members, controllers never lose the ability to manage minions or change the battlefield, if even on a minor level.  Taking at-wills away reduce the significance on role in the game.  Again, for some people that might be a good thing.   Also, I have a hard time really understanding your "repetitive" argument.  In the end, you're proposing reducing two (or three) at-wills to one (the basic attack) and I don't see how that will get less repetitive.   Instead of a two trick pony, it is a one trick pony.   Certainly, increasing the number of encounter abilities can fix the tedium of combat, but that solution can be done without removing at-wills.  That, and relying on basic attacks would increase the grind feel.   At wills have a little something extra to make a combat interesting.   Using tide of iron to push an enemy into a flanking position with rogue is a lot more fun, and makes for a shorter combat, then "I swing my sword."Your discussion has been focused on opening up options by encouraging/focus more dependence on weapons.   The design space I see opened up is making up the cleric archer, or the cleric crossbowman, or the wizard quarterstaff wielder.   True, certain at-wills (primarily those from power sources other than martial) don't really help the character swing a sword or shoot a bow.  The reason, I believe, is that the expectations is if you want your character to do cool stuff with weapons, you'll look into the martial power source.  It's important to look at the role you want to have.   Do you want your cleric archer to primarily assist the rest of the team?   Cleric is the way to go, with maybe a multiclass into Ranger.   It sounds as if you more want a hotshot archer who's also a devoted follower of Corellon.  That's mostly striker, you can do that completely as a Ranger.   However, if you want to add some healing and/or holy smiting, multiclass into Cleric.  I think that's a completely viable build.If, however, you simply want the characters to really focus on using weapons and don't like all that other flashy stuff, go with an all Martial campaign.   Throw in some extra encounters if you think the combats are getting too dull.  If you want, you can try removing at-wills in your campaign (no-one's stopping you).   However, my opinion would be that it would:1)  Make combats longer unless the adversaries were scaled down.  Even the current encounter powers aren't finishers, they are just slightly scaled up at-will powers (depending on level).   2)  Make combat more dull as the players use their abilities early (to bring the opponents down) and then grind away with basic attacks.3)  Make non martial characters less optimized (having to spread abilities out) while allowing martial characters to optimize as they please.   This would tend to make the non martial characters more fragile and probably less interesting to play.According to your posts, I think you're trying to get away from 1) and especially 2).   My opinion is removing at-wills would have the opposite effect of what you hope.But give it a shot and see if you want.</blockquote>

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