Do you know how many powers there are currently out there?

[Voadam]

I think the "power" concept as a formalization of an action is perhaps the greatest advance in terms of combat made from 3E to 4E. By referencing a heavily streamlined gamespace of terms/resources (hit points, position, conditions and keywords), it has become possible for the players (through power cards / sheets) to take much of the burden of adjusication away from the DM. As such, I suppose having 4203 powers out there is not that big an issue because of how easily they are adjudicated by a group rather than everything being pushed through the DM's brainspace.

I don't understand this point. What do you mean adjudicated by a group rather than a DM? Do you simply mean the 4203 4e powers are straightforward and unambiguous and obvious to anyone reading them and so do not require a DM to stop and make an interpretation or adjudication?

 

[Voadam]

Using that counting method for 4e, you'd count each class once for each build plus once for every race that gets racial feats for it, heh. I'm not sure there is a perfect method for counting 3.5 class variants, but the 175 number is certainly distorted.

Nah, they only count ranger once despite having the two weapon versus archery class builds within the class and I don't think any of the classes on the list require you to spend a feat for the stuff that makes them different from the base (though I am not familiar with substitution levels for races).

Wierd that it does not count any paragon classes from UA or any Savage Species progressions. Seeing as you can take these at 1st level I expected to find them on the list.

Or anything from the website or Dragon Magazine, not to mention the licensed properties (Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Rokugan, Kalamar, etc.) to say nothing of the OGL explosion of options.

So full base classes from WotC print books. I'd have to guess the actual number of 3e class options is in the hundreds.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

I don't understand this point. What do you mean adjudicated by a group rather than a DM? Do you simply mean the 4203 4e powers are straightforward and unambiguous and obvious to anyone reading them and so do not require a DM to stop and make an interpretation or adjudication?

Hi Voadam,

What I mean is that the player describes what their character is doing (or at least the power being used), rolls the dice and adjudicates the consequences (this creature is slid to here, this one takes x damage and that one is marked). The DM just has to worry about what is happening on his or her side of the fence - the players can literally adjudicate their own actions. Because the scope of gamespace is constricted to position, condition, hit points and keywords there is minimal need for interpretation or adjudication. What happens is really that simple to work out. About the only thing we have had rules lawyering over in our game is using stealth and what its effects are. Everything else has barely needed any consultation with the rule books. While personally, I enjoy a little more colour and width in the gamespace, it does slow things down because a lot of actions have to go through the DMs lens first.

As for there being too many powers, I was just surprised that there were so many and was interested whether this was a good or bad thing - are there too many? Terradave makes an interesting point in that iconic effects are somewhat lost in the maelstrom of powers. Equally, keterys makes a good point that its fun when something different happens, such as the use of a new power - I suppose as long as it's not just a different permutation of damage, position and condition. As well, this means that there is more chance for a particular build to be unique. There's been a lot of well made points but most surprisingly a couple that indicate that there are too few powers; meaningful options per level are still too low. Anyway, thanks for the discussion everyone.

Mark,
In our group, I have a DDI subscription as well as one other while there is a scattering of books (that roughly covers everything released thus far). And so yes, anything that's in the DDI is fair game for our group.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise