Forked Thread: Do nonmagical 1/day abilities damage suspension of disbelief?

[Toras]

I thought the idea for 4e was that the powers were balanced? Wasn't that one of the major benefits. One might be more advantageous in a given situation, but if one is simply always better, not being able to do it more than once sounds like a pretty poor balance. Honestly I think we might have benefited from power creation criteria in the DMG, so that we could compare the balance and make adjustments. But that's an aside.

As for it being boring if the player decides to spam, lets face it. If someone feels like not making the effort they can be boring no matter how many powers they have. It is not like the descriptions that the book gives are exactly evocative imagery. If your at-will isn't boring, the chance of using the Horse-Cutting Thrust more than once is far outweighed by the chance that it is the only move that you'd use that day.

I would personally have perferred that the power source mattered just a little bit, even if it was something that only the class designer would have pegged intially.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I thought the idea for 4e was that the powers were balanced? Wasn't that one of the major benefits. One might be more advantageous in a given situation, but if one is simply always better, not being able to do it more than once sounds like a pretty poor balance. Honestly I think we might have benefited from power creation criteria in the DMG, so that we could compare the balance and make adjustments. But that's an aside.

Powers of different levels (or even tiers) are not balanced. Possibly, powers of different classes at the same level are not balanced in and on themselves.

A Close Blast power is more useful for a Fighter (who's always standing near enemies) then for a Wizard (who hates being in the middle of his enemies)

As for it being boring if the player decides to spam, lets face it. If someone feels like not making the effort they can be boring no matter how many powers they have. It is not like the descriptions that the book gives are exactly evocative imagery. If your at-will isn't boring, the chance of using the Horse-Cutting Thrust more than once is far outweighed by the chance that it is the only move that you'd use that day.

The main problem appears if "boring" = "most effective". That's what will most likely happen if you have your one-trick pony - you're choosing this one trick because it's the best available. And it also means that those that want variety are not rewarded for achieving this goal.
If "most effective" means "adapt to the situation", you avoid a lot of boringness, and motivate everyone to look for interesting options.

I would personally have preferred that the power source mattered just a little bit, even if it was something that only the class designer would have pegged initially.

I think they tried a similar approach in the book of 9 swords - they used different "recharge" mechanics for powers for the 3 classes. Their conclusion was it was not as satisfying as they hoped for. Of course, there are countless other ways to create mechanical variety (Iron Heroes used Token for most classes, with different rules how to gain them) which might have different effects.