Eliminating Milestones

[Kzach]

I've seen a couple of threads discussing alternating the way milestones work but I couldn't find one that discussed eliminating them altogether.

I don't propose to provide a solution to milestones but I would like to see discussion on eliminating them altogether and how to 'rebalance' the system to accommodate this change.

How would you do it?

 

[Andur]

What is the problem with milestones in the first place? Why are they any worse than using encounter, days, hours, or any other unit of measurement to determine when something does or can happen?

Easiest mechanic, for anything that is milestone based, replace with (Recharge ) during each short rest. Course sucks to be the PC who has some bad d6's...

 

[Kzach]

This isn't a discussion about the worth of the milestone or whether or not to include it.

If you wish to do so, I kindly ask that you start another thread.

 

[Henry]

One thought, and I don't know how balanced it is:

Eliminate milestones; give 2 action points per session, which renew at each session, to use instead. In addition, action points can be used to do all the things that milestones activate - magic item usages, etc.

So, a character probably only goes through two to four battles before extended resting, right? So they're probably only getting, max, two to three action points per game session. So, since three action points sounds a bit much to hand out first thing in the day, and one per session doesn't sound enough, two is a nice round number, and teaches conserving later in the day without just resorting to the "oh, we'll just stop and rest after every encounter" that some people are complaining about.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Would you like to recap everything that milestones currently do?

As I understand it at the moment Milestones are:

- After every two encounters without an extended rest
- grant a new action point
- allow another magic item daily to be used(?)
- anything else?

So the current purpose is presumably to encourage a party to press on rather than stop and rest ('cos you get action points refreshed and get to use more of your magic items(?))

So one option might be to grant an action point at the start of every encounter, and action points can be used for either their normal use OR to get the use of another magic item daily (assuming I've got that bit about milestones right).

That would mean that every two encounters you are probably either using an action point or getting another magic item daily, which would work out roughly the same in the long term.

Lots of guestimates there, but how does that sound?

Cheers

 

[keterys]

- After every two encounters without an extended rest

'As decided by the DM, with the suggestion of once every two encounters, or after a particularly hard encounter, or less often for unimportant or excessively easy encounters'

Milestones are a balancing mechanism used against extended rests to encourage you to play longer in a day, giving the things you mentioned as well as empowering many rings.

 

[Kzach]

As I understand it at the moment Milestones are:

- After every two encounters without an extended rest
- grant a new action point
- allow another magic item daily to be used(?)
- anything else?

What power would it really give the PC's if they were to simply have an action point every encounter and magic items work to their full power all the time?

The daily milestone mechanic for magic items is also a little redundant. Why not just simply say you can only use one daily power from an item in any single encounter? Either way, they're still daily powers, so the only real difference is that you get the option to use them earlier on in the day. But even then, smart players will save them for the right moment just like they do any other daily.

So, in other words, just ignore the entire milestone mechanic altogether.

It only makes PC's marginally more powerful. There are only nine magical items with milestone powers and they're all over 14th-level. So I don't see it being a huge deal anyway.

Maybe have two versions of the magic items. One that has the extra power and one that doesn't. Change the level of them and no biggie.

Assuming an action point every encounter isn't that big a boost in power either, really. Compensate with maybe one extra minion or something.

Anyway, that's the gist I was going for with the thread. Just getting rid of the milestone mechanic wholesale and compensating for the power increase somehow.

 

[Tehnai]

Actually, you can't use your magical items all that often.

The number of magical item special abilities you can use in a day is 1 for heroic, 2 for paragon and 3 for epic.

So even if I had seven billion items with a /day power, I could only use 1-3, depending on the tier. Milestones basically allow the player to use their items to their full potential.

If you would just wing it and go : Well, you can use everything, knock yourselves out! It would be a bit unbalancing (pro-player). Some of your monsters might consider their lives sucking a whole lot more.

An easy solution is, of course, to limit magical items instead.

 

[keterys]

20th level guys pulling level 2 dwarven armors for free surges is lame, so if you want you could say that a daily use makes it so you can't use any other encounter or daily powers for an equipment slot.

The problem getting rid of the milestone mechanic is it's yet another 'nail' in no encouragement to doing more than one encounter per day.

 

[Kzach]

The problem getting rid of the milestone mechanic is it's yet another 'nail' in no encouragement to doing more than one encounter per day.

Actually, I have a solution for that as well.

Scaling XP!

For every successful encounter, add 1% bonus the earned XP.

The more encounters you do in a row before an extended rest, the more XP you earn for each encounter.