Others have already addressed this suffeciently, so there is no need for me to say "poppycock."
In this case, I am only reporting what I have encountered. Perhaps state sprinters in Texas (population larger than Australia) are better athletes than state sprinters in Victoria (population, obviously, smaller than Australia). That would be consistent with the fact that the US dominates international athletics in a way that Australia does not.
The real world just does not work that way.
Of course not. Nor is it true, in the real world, that in a fight there is only one genuine opportunity per minute, or per 6 seconds. These systems are mechanical impositions that order and structure the fiction.
But you said you couldn't think of abilities that are rationed by day. I can, and have given examples of ones that come to mind.
Even if I'm a complete idiot in holding my beliefs about these things, it doesn't change the fact that I hold them.
sometimes, frequently, when you are "on" in a particular field, you remain that way for some period of time.
When it comes to combat in 4e, that is modelled in a wholly different way, by the tempo of battle to which the deployment of particular abilities, at various levels of rationing, all make their contributions. You're not "on" because you repeat a given move after move after move. You're "on" because first you do X, which sets you up to spend an action point to do Y, which then opens up the chance for an OA or interrupt in response to what the next player does on his/her turn, etc.
The whole concept of a Daily Power <snippage> is pretty hampering when it comes to options within an RPG. Encounter Powers suffer a similar problem.
That is simply not my experience.
I see more variety in my D&D game than in other FRPGs I've played prior to it - AD&D, RM, RQ being the main ones - I think in part because of the range of options that a rationing system opens up.
An expended Daily Power is a literally depowering. Hit points say "yes you can," to the player. An expended daily power says "no you can't"
I'll pick up further on the "no you can't" below - because the action economy and the hit point system also say "no you can't" in all sorts of ways.
But first, I just wanted to check - it seems to be an implication of what you're saying that if I took a 4e fighter PC sheet and
did nothing but strike off the dailies then I would be empowering the player. To me that is extremely counterintuitive. In the same way the players of D&D casters enjoy getting more spells slots, and see their spells as giving them a capacity to act within the game and to affect the ingame situation, so - in my experience - players of 4e martial PCs see their dailies as giving them a capacity to push beyond their normal limits and, when the stakes warrant it, to have an above-average impact upon the ingame situation.
I prefer a hero point system for this sort of thing - allowing the player to do more than normal, instead of telling the player they can't do what they can normally do unless they want to pull out all the stops.
Again, I don't understand "telling the player they can't do what they can normally do". What is the thing that the player (or PC) can normally do, but that they can't do except by spending a daily power? On its face that seems oxymoronic, since by definition a daily power is a way of doing what cannot be done normally.
But I'm sure you didn't intend an oxymoron. You seem to have some conception of what sorts of abilities are rationed by way of martial dailies, but I have no real idea what that conception is. Martial dailies (and encounter powers) in 4e are generally ways to get multi-target attacks, or damage spikes, or condition infliction, or maybe all of the above. Within the confines of the action economy, these are not normal things.
I mean, any fighter can fight multiple foes: on round 1 you attack A, on round 2 you attack B, etc, and your AC is good against all comers (there is no active defence system in 4e except via certain encounter and daily powers). What a close burst attack lets you do is attack A and B
with the same action, ie without having to conform to the standard action economy. Likewise a power that lets you move as part of it - it gives you movement abilities that go beyond the normal action economy. Damage spikes, too, increase you damage output beyond what the standard action-economy's DPR.
The one feature of rationed powers that is not simply about breaking the limits of the action economy is condition infliction. But given that, by default, D&D fighters can't inflict damage and conditions as part of the same action, that is also a type of limit-break. (In 4e, at-will forced movement with no damage is available to everyone, at-will forced movement with damage is available to fighters, and at-will prone for a fighter requires more complex build investment - the fighter in my game does it via a combination of at-will power (Footwork Lure), feat (Polearm Momentum) and magic item (Rushing Cleats). I haven't seen at-will daze or slow on a martial PC, but there may be build options that can lead to it.)
there has to be some rationing of actions per round. But that is different from strictly defining what those actions cannot be based on the idea that you already did a thing once
<snip>
They [hit points] model being able to go until you can't go no more.
<snip>
Hit points are the ability to keep doing things. An expended daily power is telling you that you are no longer able to do what you know you should be able to do
I don't understand the force of "should be able to do". That is assuming the fiction is in a state that is contrary to what the mechanics are telling us. It's like saying "the problem with the action economy is that it is telling me I can't do something I should be able to do - like exploit a second opening". But in fact, given the action economy, we know that
there is no second opening.
It's like saying that the hit point system "is telling me I can't do something I should be able to do - like chop off the ogres head with a single blow". But in fact, given your sword does (say) 1d10+6, and the ogre has (say) 19 hp, in fact we know you
can't, in these circumstances, chop off its head in a single blow. The opportunity won't present itself - because of the ogre's luck, or skill, or sheer toughness - until at least 3 hp have been shaved away through non-decapitating attacks.
The structure of rationing opportunities and capacities through daily powers, and the relation that it establishes between fiction and mechanics, is no different from this. (Again, that's not a reason to like it. Or dislike it. Apart from anything else, many people see hit points as meat, which has a very different structure. And even if you don't see hit points as meet, you might be happy with the structure in relation to the damage system but not in relation to the action declaration system. But that doesn't speak to the underlying structure, which is as I've described.)h
It's one thing if you dabble (pick up a feat, multiclass, etc.), because that's explicitly adding just a dash of that stuff. Like ordering an entree, and choosing to get a single egg roll as a side. You're not there for the egg roll, so it's okay that it's not the main part of the dish--though you will still enjoy eating it. It just seems to me that certain classes' "entrees" are so small that you run out before everyone else has finished eating, yet you're paying exactly the same "price" everyone else is.
