First Level Powers at Epic Levels?

[FadedC]

What will be interesting is how much spells scale. It's sort of traditional for a 3rd level spell to be more powerful then a 1st level one, it would seem a little wierd (though not necesarily bad) if magic missile continued to be a good attack spell even at level 25.

Of course we don't know what rogue abilities are available at level 25 either, maybe they won't tend to use the lvl 1 attacks anymore either even with the scaling.

 

[Imban]

Well, Torturous Strike sucks like a very sucky thing once you get to level 21, so we're likely going to see some power replacement going on.

 

[Voss]

I have always allowed players to change their character's build. IMO forcing someone to play bad choices for the life of the character is a bad idea.

I fail to see why you would wish to remove the retraining option from the rules just because you don't like them. Other gamers have different tastes. Why should they have to play according to your tastes.

I'm not sure why stating an opinion is forcing my will upon others.

Its a matter of verisimilitude and believability. I'll greet retraining concepts with something other than derisive laughter the moment someone comes up with a workable way to swap my knowledge of C and HTML for knowledge of Arabic and Dutch.


In any case, retraining is not the same thing as let a player correct a bad choice within a session or too, which I'd be reasonably OK with, as long as they weren't taking advantage of it (like taking a craft feat to make a specific item then ditching it).

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

I simply allow people to retemplate their Feats and Skills if they choose whenever they gain a level. My players are a responsible bunch, so they're not entirely retailoring their builds with feats and skills they've never used or don't have any sort of in-game relation to the character's experience in the campaign world (meaning someone who has never picked up a bastard sword isn't taking an exotic weapon feat and building an entirely different build around it if they were previously an archer-focused fighter type).

 

[Victim]

Aren't the powers that receive upgrades at Epic levels both At Will powers? It's possible that at will abilities are few and far between. Hence they need to upgrade since there are few, if any, replacements.

 

[Celebrim]

My working assumption when reading the previews is that the game works something like the following.

Each class has at a given level the same number of quasi-vancian abilities, separated into 'at will', 'per encounter', and 'per day'. (And possibly further separated into 'silos'.) At 1st level you might have 2 at will, 1 per encounter, and 1 per day ability. This will slowly increase to say 6 at will, 5 per encounter, and 3 per day abilities at 30th level - plus things you may get from feats, your race, and possibly being trained in skills. (These numbers are of course purely pulled out of the air, and merely markers for how much flexibility I'd expect you to gain at higher levels. They could be less, you might not ever increase beyond 2/1/1, but I seriously doubt they will be higher.) Once you acquire an ability it is yours to keep, but even though you know an ability you won't necessarily be able to use it unless you've chosen it to fill one of your available slots.

One thing I'm not sure on and which I haven't seen hinted at is how often you can swap out your selected powers. Can you only do it when you level up? Can you do it while resting between encounters? Can you select a new kit of powers each day? Each pattern has different merits to it.

 

[Aristotle]

I really like the new power system, and the fact that everyone gets some flashy tricks rather than just the casters. I couldn't be more pleased as someone who would always have prefered to play a melee type character but typically played casters as the melee classes got boring.

I think the scale up is also great. I kind of wish powers would have scaled up at both 11 and 21, so every tier brings more power to the table... but I'm ok with it only happening at 21. I've run high level games in past editions where the mage or cleric wouldn't bother noting which lower level spells they memorized, because they were mostly pointless anyway. I love the idea of a game where the stunts/spells that I depended on in my lower levels can still be pulled out of the bag and used to good effect at higher levels too.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Hopefully its one.
A power is yours forever and hopefully it scales.
If it doesn't scale, the system gets a Fail! sticker.

Retraining rules should be driven off with bats and a multitude of curses.

The two aren't identical, of course. One reason not to have scaling powers is what happens right now in D&D spellcasting with multiplying complexity of spell lists. I'd love a system in which PCs swap out powers for better versions rather than having both side by side.

 

[FadedC]

Its a matter of verisimilitude and believability. I'll greet retraining concepts with something other than derisive laughter the moment someone comes up with a workable way to swap my knowledge of C and HTML for knowledge of Arabic and Dutch.

Well actually.....I used to work in computers and within the last 2 year I've switched to a completely unrelated field. My computer knowledge is definitely fading as I use it less and less and my other knowledge is increasing. One might well say that I'm retraining. Granted I will never completely forget everything I ever knew about computers.

But that's how I kind of imagine retraining. I had a spellcaster with bow feats at low level. As he went on he used his bow less and less and cast spells more and more. Seems quite reasonable to eventually be allowed to replace the bow feats with spell casting feats to reflect falling out of practice with one and emphasizing the other.

 

[Dragonblade]

The problem without allowing retraining is that you basically force a player to plan out their entire 30 level career from level 1 lest they get stuck with a power they later decide they don't like. That's lame.

Character advancement should grow organically without the player ever regretting that a power choice they thought was cool at the time is now useless to them at a later level.

Retraining is the way to go to avoid this. I don't have a problem with the verisimilitude of it, either. Think of it as neglecting your skills in one area and spending all your time practicing the new power.

But scaling is important too. Both to avoid the "power regret" that I mentioned before and to make it easier to create higher level characters from scratch.

Trying to create a legal 20th level Bo9S character is a nightmare, because in order to determine how to make sure they have the correct mix of low and high level powers, you have to literally level them up from level 1 and painstakingly follow all the rules for picking powers at the levels you get them and the be sure to follow the swapping rules, etc. It sucks.

Although, I hate Vancian casting, I have to admit that one advantage of the slot system is that when making a character that starts at high level, I already know what their mix of higher and lower level slots is. I really hope they offer a simplified advancement chart like this in the PHB or DMG, to facilitate making high level characters off the bat and ensuring they get the mix of low and high level powers they would have gotten had the character been played from level 1.