D&D 4E Complexity Dials and 4e

[Kannon]

I always feel weird posting massive walls of dense text directly to forums. (Getting yelled at for breaking the formatting and TL;DR trollmods do that.) So, I have a quick study on how one could turn the power system in 4e to one of those complexity dials on my ENWorld blog here.

Overall, I'm impressed with how, well, easy it was to convert it to a point-base power system, with keeping current powers, progression, balance, so on. And going even farther, with the last set of mods, was fairly easy, and there was a couple of little oddities in the system that actually worked out.

I'm curious as to what others think of this, not only of the system itself (I'm sure there's gaps the size of texas in the quick writeup), but about the concept as a whole. Provided the effort does not come out of something else major (It doesn't seem too much of an effort sink, though you'd need more playtesters...), would you like to see more of this kind of core complexity dial in other game systems?
Would it work well with other mechanics, like skill resolution or monster design?
Would you ever use them?

 

[RangerWickett]

I think I understand what you are shooting for. I like level 2, since it addresses the old "why the heck can't I do this awesome jumping-spin-stab attack more than once per day?"

The level 3 I don't know if I quite follow. Maybe I'm just not reading it clearly. Is it just that you get a pool of 'power points' that you spend to use your powers that you know (coupled with the ability to learn extra powers)?

At first, I thought you were going for something sorta like what EN Publishing did with Elements of Magic back in 3e. You get X points per day/encounter/whatever, and your class, feats, and so on give you access to menus of things that powers can do, each with its own cost. You can combine several different elements into a single action. Like: "melee range, targets Fort, 2[w], inflicts condition X; total cost 5 points."

 

[Kannon]

The level 3 I don't know if I quite follow. Maybe I'm just not reading it clearly. Is it just that you get a pool of 'power points' that you spend to use your powers that you know (coupled with the ability to learn extra powers)?

At first, I thought you were going for something sorta like what EN Publishing did with Elements of Magic back in 3e. You get X points per day/encounter/whatever, and your class, feats, and so on give you access to menus of things that powers can do, each with its own cost. You can combine several different elements into a single action. Like: "melee range, targets Fort, 2[w], inflicts condition X; total cost 5 points."

That'd be cool. I'll be honest, with level 3 I wasn't actively going for anything (Level 2 is what I'm working on polishing up a houserule mod for), more "Ok, we take this, and go a step farther...". Which still kind of works. (Or would if I had a better idea of what I was doing.)

The primary idea would be more complexity for more mechanical flexibility, without breaking the rest of it. That Elements of Magic system sounds pretty awesome. You could also use it something like sorcerers in 3.5/PF use with spells, or even a 4e balanced version of Vancian magic. Or allow for researched or created spells/martial abilities, or what have you.

In other words, a shot at a generic experimental framework for stuff that is way out of my depth or interest at doing. It did have more to do with "Ok, this works, what happens if I take it out a step more...", which I think, using that basic framework, with a better designer more interested in that next step would work.

Past that, I really do have no idea, besides an interest in wondering just how far one could push that mechanic until it breaks, and just how much complexity and depth someone could squeeze out of it and still keep it balanced with the default, simpler, system.