Encounter Pwr Recharge House Rule?

[Dragonblade]

I have a pretty liberal encounter power recovery rule. Any PC can spend a Standard Action (or an AP) to recover any expended Encounter power with some caveats:

-You can't recover Encounter powers with an already defined limit on uses per Encounter (such as Healing Word, etc.).

-You can't recover Encounter powers with a recovery method already specified for them (such as the Avenger's core class power).

-You cannot recover Encounter powers that grant additional actions (to avoid infinite action combos).

Also, to further avoid grind, I use the Escalation Die from 13th Age in my 4e game. Essentially, starting in round 2 of the combat the PCs get a +1 to hit that increases by a cumulative +1 each round, to a maximum of +6.

This means PCs will have an increasing chance to hit as the combat goes on, and it also incentivizes them to hold onto dailies till later when they are more dramatically appropriate, instead of blowing them all in the first couple of rounds. Its a great technique and really helps with grind, IMO.

 

[Marshall]

One thing I noticed is that players rarely use their second winds. Occasionally if they are in real trouble they will use an AP to use their second wind.

Uh, I'd say this is the core of your problem right here. AP to Second Wind?!? WTF?!?

Teach your players how to Nova. Saving an AP until you need to SW means that you're bypassing what should be a Daily+Enc combo round, or Enc+Enc at least, thats a lot of potential for dropping target defenses in the early rounds when other PCs still have their encounter big-guns, dishing out hard control effects, maximizing striker damage potential or just a big hitter in its own right.

A couple extra actions that reduce team monster early in the fight can go a long way towards reducing the drag late in the fight.

 

[S'mon]

Uh, I'd say this is the core of your problem right here. AP to Second Wind?!? WTF?!?

Teach your players how to Nova. Saving an AP until you need to SW means that you're bypassing what should be a Daily+Enc combo round, or Enc+Enc at least...

I agree - my typical tactic with my Fighter PC when I had an AP was to charge in on the first round, then when the monsters had closed in on me, suck up the pain (dwarven armour free action healing is nice) then nova in the second: Encounter + AP + Daily, or vice versa - ripping them apart. Against standard monsters of my level I could sometimes kill them in one round, and I could certainly bloody them, making them easy meat for the rest of the party to mop up.

 

[the Jester]

In especially big, climactic or goal-driven encounters I'll sometimes add a "recharge condition". For instance, if the pcs are trying to rescue someone who is chained to a table and about to be vivisected by kaorti, once they free the victim (minor skill challenge!) they each get to recharge an encounter power.

This is pretty rare, though.

Even more rarely, I'll allow a daily recharge, but that's a pretty huge power-bump for an encounter.

 

[D'karr]

In especially big, climactic or goal-driven encounters I'll sometimes add a "recharge condition". For instance, if the pcs are trying to rescue someone who is chained to a table and about to be vivisected by kaorti, once they free the victim (minor skill challenge!) they each get to recharge an encounter power.

This is pretty rare, though.

Even more rarely, I'll allow a daily recharge, but that's a pretty huge power-bump for an encounter.

Thematically, I've allowed a single power to be reused when a player decided to use Second Wind. At the time, within that particular encounter, it seemed appropriate.

Some of these things really work a lot better as "rough guidelines" rather than "hard rules."

Allowing the PCs to reuse a spent power is one of those things that also allows me to set some pacing goals. For example when wave 2 of an encounter starts "the heroes look at it and steel themselves for the onslaught." At that time I might recharge a power, or grant them recovery of a healing surge.

I've also used milestones, real ones not the artificial every 2 encounter ones, as the recharge point of an adventure.

I tinker with the system a lot, and I have a lot of fun doing it.

 

[Highland Raider]

Our group has, for a few years now, used the following rules for action points:
1) spend 1 action point to gain an extra action (per rules);
2) spend 1 action point to re-roll a botched roll (used for those dailies when you wind up rolling a 1, which happens far more often with our group than we care for);
3) spend 1 action point to recover a spent encounter power;
4) spend 2 action points to recover a spent daily.

I think that's it. We've found that this eliminates nearly all grind (though we have had a few encounters that wound up dragging out even with these adjustments--just fewer than we saw previously).

 

[Emka]

Our group has, for a few years now, used the following rules for action points:
1) spend 1 action point to gain an extra action (per rules);
2) spend 1 action point to re-roll a botched roll (used for those dailies when you wind up rolling a 1, which happens far more often with our group than we care for);
3) spend 1 action point to recover a spent encounter power;
4) spend 2 action points to recover a spent daily.

I think that's it. We've found that this eliminates nearly all grind (though we have had a few encounters that wound up dragging out even with these adjustments--just fewer than we saw previously).

This sounds very interesting. We've been struggling with some streamlining issues in our group.
My players tend to sit on their action points like it's black gold - way too valuable to just give up. On the other hand, the wizard usually pushes for 15 minute workdays because everything lower than max (including surges) qualifies as "weakened" in his eyes. So they never stock up on Action Points either.

Your adjustments might be a cure for both problems.
Does this work well with the oft-proposed houserule of making an Action Point recharge after every battle instead of a milestone? I've been thinking of doing that for our group for the same reasons mentioned above.

Rambling a bit here but I've also read about this houserule where you could spend more than 1 AP per encounter. This would counter the 15min workday but could also cause the players never to spend any APs, saving them for the BBEG which might not even show up before their next extended rest.

The woes of a DM..

 

[Dragonblade]

I give every PC one action point at the beginning of every encounter. Use it or lose it. I don't use milestones at all.

Never had an issue. Works great.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=413]Uller[/MENTION]

If you want a house rule I like the healing surges for encounter powers suggestion [MENTION=98255]Nemesis Destiny[/MENTION] made. EDIT: it has the benefit of mitigating your wizard from recharging many encounter spells this way, because they need their few surges for healing.

However, there is more to an interesting combat encounter besides the power or force of arms each side brings to bear...in 4e terms this would be encounter scripting, traps/hazards, or skill challenges.

Basically, in major encounters either introduce a goal besides "kill each other" (several threads have appeared on ENWorld on this topic), or at around round 4 introduce something which changes up the fight dramatically - the floor drops revealing an acid pit, an enemy grabs a hostage and threatens to kill them, the Mage's fireball blasts a hole in the side of the tower and lights the alchemist equipment on fire, reinforcements arrive, etc.

EDIT: Another thing is to really lean hard on DMG page 42, and encourage the players to come up with cool ideas and just wing it. Unless a player has a seriously optimized at-will power, most of the improv stuff they'll try should deal more than at-will power damage, just eyeballing the page 42 damage table.

 

[Uller]

Thanks for the feedback all. I've taken a lot of the advice to heart. Specifically avoiding/modifying soldiers and other monsters with damage reducing/hit avoiding powers and encouraging my players to use APs to nova on monsters early.

In a recent fight, I had a monster (Bronze Warder) with Resist All 5. It made sense to keep it, but once he was bloodied, I described him has damaged and hits penetrating into his inner workings (and did away with the Resist All). Once he dropped, his controller fled and was hit by an OA and I just said it killed him...The fight was EL 8 for a 6th level party and took about 5 rounds (there were minions, two lurkers and the Warder). That's pretty much what I expected.

So I think I have combat grind generally under control. However, I still see times when PCs need a bit of a boost or an option to pull themselves out of a jam. I think if you combine a lot of the suggestions here with the "DMG Page 42" suggestions you can come up with a rule that allows for expanded use of second winds for things other than healing/improved defenses.

So...

Ad Hoc Second Wind Usage:

PCs can use a second wind to do the following (all still expend a healing surge...so there is always a daily resource cost):
1. Traditional - Standard Action: regain healing surge value in HP and +2 to all defenses
2. Move Action: Regain HP _or_ +2 to defenses
3. Interrupt: Force an enemy to reroll an attack (too much?)
4. Standard Action: recharge and use an encounter power.
5. Minor Action: Recharge an encounter power but don't use it.
6. Minor Action: Make a saving throw against a save ends effect.
7. Not an Action: Reroll any single roll (attack/save/check/damage) but you must take the second result
8: Ad hoc: Allow players to come up with other reasonable uses not listed.

Elites and Solos can use one healing surge per encounter for items 2-7.

We're going to try it and see how it goes.