D&D 4E Designing 4e powers

[Garthanos]

I wonder which sorcerer powers you _couldn't_ slap onto a warlock, hmm.

hmmm none I can think of ....

The barbarian is an example of somebody whose powers are ummm intermingled with his strikerhood... and very not portable imho.

 

[keterys]

Some barbarian powers transition just fine. Most of the low level ones, even. I don't know the high level powers well enough yet.

There are a couple obvious exceptions, sure - Vault the Fallen is just a bit too good to casually slap onto Fighter. Avalanche Strike, otoh, is already near duplicated in a paladin 1st level power.

Course, some of those exceptions even barbarians shouldn't get. (Yeah, I'm looking at you Storm of Blades)

 

[talarei07]

the reason i ask is im attempting to convert blood abilities to 4e as blood utility powers so im trying to keep them balanced and not too powerful

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Monsters don't have to be as balanced as powers. If a monster is broken, the brokenness lasts a session. If a power is broken, it can last the campaign.

And while there are thousands of powers, when you consider that you only get the ones related to your class, you only get the ones in a certain level range, and in many cases some powers are so good or so bad that it limits the pool even more. So new powers is always welcome to me.

Well, I suppose its true, a badly designed monster may be less of a problem than a poorly thought out power.

My point about thousands of powers is that there is really very little reason why a power from one class can't simply be ported to another class. In a minority of cases it may require a bit of retooling due to some specific mechanics tied to a class feature or such, but the vast majority of powers don't have that problem. Obviously a good percentage of powers aren't thematically appropriate for a given target class, but that still leaves you with a LOT of choices. Probably enough that in the majority of cases it can be used as-is. In other cases it may require a slight amount of tweaking, changing of keywords or maybe even a small power adjustment.

I figure it this way. Every class that has a power book covering it has roughly 8 powers of every level. Supposing for the sake of argument you needed a new Wizard Encounter Attack Power Level 1. Just looking at the most likely sources you have 8 warlock, 8 sorcerer, 8 bard, 8 cleric, and 8 invoker powers that might potentially fit mechanically. That's 40 to choose from and there is no real reason to suppose that the other dozen odd classes have nothing to contribute either. I think in the vast majority of cases you'll find something VERY close to what you want. A switch of power source (possibly), class, maybe drop or alter a feature based mechanic, maybe change a keyword or two, write some new fluff, and you're in business.

Honestly at this point it would be pretty difficult to propose a new power and it NOT to have mechanics nearly or entirely identical to something out there already.

The main exceptions I would expect would be something like a summons where the details of what is summoned probably needs to be figured out, but that should be a pretty straightforward swap in terms of the spell itself and even here the chances are you can do a very simple reskin of an existing summons.

 

[keterys]

It's really not that hard to think of powers that don't match others... but that have _some_ similarities? Sure.

If the 'blood' powers you're looking for cost hp to use or something like that, you might want to glance at some of the Malediction Invoker powers to start with... otherwise, look for powers that are close enough then just change them slightly.

Like, you want a spray of boiling blood that blinds people? Blinding Barrage, pick a damage die, add a slight hp cost and bump it the tiniest bit if you want. Daze? Color Spray. Pools of blood pulling enemies down? Grease...

etc.