Forked Thread: How would you have done 4e's Powers?

[FireLance]

Also posted to the original thread.

While I generally agree with Stalker0's points, I think most of the problems are rooted in the objective of having a system that would not overwhelm the average new player with too many options and variables to manage. Nonetheless, because the demand seems to be there, I'm fairly sure that we will see more complex options for advanced players in an Unearthed Arcana-type product in the future.

The reliance on hitting, for example, can be mitigated by having a recharge system for missed powers, but it would require more tracking on the part of the player. For example:
[SBLOCK]The first time in an encounter that the character misses with an encounter power or a non-reliable daily power, he gets a recharge range of .
Each subsequent time that he misses with an encounter power or a non-reliable daily power, he increases his recharge range by 1, e.g. from to .
A character who has a recharge range rolls a d6 at the start of his turn.
If the result of the d6 roll is within the recharge range, the character regains a used encounter power (optional; further tracking required: the character must regain missed encounter powers first) and reduces his recharge range by 1, e.g. from to .[/SBLOCK]
Alternatively, you could have a feat like the following, but the player will still have to track how many times he has missed with encounter powers and non-reliable daily powers:
[SBLOCK]Failure Breeds Success
Heroic Tier
Benefit: Each time you miss with an encounter attack power, you gain a cumulative +2 bonus to damage rolls with at-will attack powers until the end of the encounter.
Each time you miss with a non-reliable daily attack power, you gain a cumulative +1 bonus to attack rolls and a +2 bonus to damage rolls with at-will attack powers until the end of the encounter.
Special: The bonus to damage rolls increases to +3 at 11th level and +4 at 21st level.[/SBLOCK]
Similarly, giving more options to players with respect to powers can be done, but at the cost of complicating the game. This could take a number of forms, e.g. simply not "forgetting" older powers when you gain levels (so a 13th-level character would know four encounter powers from his base class, but would only be able to use three in any one encounter) or using one or more feats to gain additional power choices similar to 3e's Extra Power or Extra Spell.

Actually replacing a daily power with an encounter power may be more problematic. It makes a character's power output much smoother, but reduces his ability to mitigate and recover from encounters which are going against him due to luck, tactical errors, etc. One possible way to manage this is to allow him to access his daily power in a pinch, e.g. by spending an action point.

 

[Stalker0]

The biggest thing for me would be to take out the restrictions on specific power types at specific levels. Aka, make more of the powers similar to utility powers, with the choice of at-will, encounter, and daily.

Now let me restate one of the important points I made in my article, having classes with too many daily abilities is bad!! It causes parties to rest more frequently and inevitably leads to imbalances amongst different party members.

So with that in mind, I wouldn't allow any more dailies than we already have now, 1 at 1st, 5th, etc. But I am all for letting players trade some of those daily powers for encounter or at will powers. These would be weaker powers that refresh more often. That way a fighter could become more encounter focused if he wanted to...or he could keep in a few dailies for those big moments where he wants to do something extra special.

I also think having at least a limited form of power recharging is good. There are several on the board, I am currently using my Acheron system and its working very well for my group.

 

[TheSleepyKing]

I'd remove the unecessary symmetry between the classes -- ie. go back to something more like 3e's system. I don't have a problem with fighter's having lots of at-wills and wizards having lots of dailies (or even "spell points"). In short, each class should have it own power progression, rather than using a universal one. It would make the classes play much more differently than they presently do.

 

[RangerWickett]

For a simple improvement, how about:

• You can use your at-wills whenever.
• You can use 2 encounter powers per encounter. You can reuse the same one, or do two different ones. (The number you can use per encounter increases to 3 per encounter at 7th level, 4 at 13th level, 5 at 17th, 6 at 23rd, and 7 at 27th.)
• As with encounter powers, you can use 1 daily per day at 1st level, 2 at 5th, 3 at 9th, 4 at 15th, etc. You can reuse the same power if you want.

Alternately, if you want to heavily rework the system, rename at-wills as "normal," encounters as "special," and dailies as "super." Adopt a Marvel vs. Capcom mentality where to pull of super moves, you have to charge some sort of meter.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't think that my solution would have been better, but things that I have thought about:

1) Using Tokens. You just need to come up with a good "generic" way to manage token generation. The mish-mash found in Iron Heroes ultimiately is impossible to balance, in my opinion. Tokens would then be spent to fuel powers. If you gather a lot of tokens, you get more powerful abilities (for spellcasters, you'd move from something like 1 die of damage to 1 die per 3 levels up to 1 die per level or - if I still wanted that - save or die.

2) Using "staged" maneuvers. Similar to the token idea, but without the bean-counting. After using a basic maneuver, you can use an advanced maneuver. After an advanced maneuver, you can use a complex maneuver. "Higher" maneuvers are harder to pull off (but shouldn't modify attacks or DCs. Maybe just make the attack/casting roll to be targeted against the enemies defense and a "maneuver DC".
Alternatively, one could also split every maneuver in 3 actions, that can consequetively harder to pull off but with improved benefits.

3) Unlimited power learning.
You can learn as many powers as you want even without leveling, but of course all powers have level prerequisites. So, everyone can expand his "spellbook". Of course, you need someone to learn from. (Wizards might have the drawback that they are the few that can lose their powers with their spellbooks, but they have the easiest time learning new powers - they just need to copy a scroll into their spellbook.)
If using a 4E like power system otherwise, the encounter/daily limitations on powers stay, in a variant 1) or 2) like system, this is less of a concern. (Though the problem might become you gain too much versatility in the end.)

What I would probably not have done in either case is "daily powers". But I think that would also have been a mistake. These days I think you need a long-term resource you can spend when things get _really_ tough.

What I might have done if I had kept daily powers, I would have used very different damage values - closer to 1 dice of damage per 2 levels or even per level. But that would have made dailies far too powerful, I am afraid.

 

[erf_beto]

Option 2: Turn martial dailies into encounter powers; double the damage done by implement daily powers. Essentially make 'daily' an prepared spell kind of thing, but make it more powerful to balance giving the martial characters their 'super encounter' powers.

Option 3: Possibly included with option 2. Turn 'implements' into weapon equivalents, so that different weapons have different bonuses to hit and/or damage dice. e.g. wands get +1 hit and do -1 die size. Orbs, rods and symbols are +0 hit and do standard die size. Staffs are 2H weapons requiring 2H for wielding, and are +0 hit and to +1 die size. A scorching burst from a wand would do 1d4+int, from an orb would do 1d6+int and from a staff would do 1d8+int - the staff might be favoured by multi-damage-dice attacks, the wand might be favoured for attacks where you want to land the hit to get the effect, and orbs are already great.

I love these! Option 2 would make a fun old school style game, if you like that feel, but Option 3 would work well within any 4e adventure, IMO.

 

[Fifth Element]

another idea make the powers progressive and give power points.
1st level of a power does X worth of effect.
2nd level of power does 2X worth of effect.
~
6th level of power does 6X worth of effect.

Then just spend your power points available on whatever power you want at anytime with available points.

Certainly a workable idea. Maybe they'll get it refined for 5E in 8 years or so. Maybe by that time we can get "martial striker" powers instead of rogue powers and ranger powers as well. They could certainly build more flexibility into the system.

 

[mmadsen]

Like many people, I think 4E's designers took a wrong turn when they decided that all characters would have at-will, encounter, and daily powers. I can understand the decision, but it rubs me the wrong way.

For martial exploits, I would much prefer to see potent options limited by conditions that rarely come up, rather than having an explicit once-per-encounter or once-per-day limitation that can only be explained outside the game. Some of the 3E feats already worked this way, and Complete Warrior's "tactical" feats did as well -- with one feat actually buying you multiple "tactical maneuvers" that shared a theme.

Yes, simple resource management is easier to design for, but tactical challenges are more fun and less "meta" -- or at least than can be.

For magical powers, I can rationalize encounter and daily powers needing time to "recharge", but I much prefer powerful, infrequent magic to cheap, easy magic.

I think the designers should have gone in the other direction entirely, with once-per-adventure powers, more like potions and scrolls. Granted, this still leaves us with the problem of giving spellcasters something to do, but I much prefer the flavor.

Everyone hates the problem of the "out of spells" spellcaster, but GURPS introduced a fascinating alternative in its Unlimited Mana option: let the spellcaster cast as many spells as he wants, but going beyond his limits risks terrible side-effects. That makes for some interesting decisions and dramatic consequences.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Certainly a workable idea. Maybe they'll get it refined for 5E in 8 years or so. Maybe by that time we can get "martial striker" powers instead of rogue powers and ranger powers as well. They could certainly build more flexibility into the system.

I think they intentionally did not use a "power point" system or anything similar to avoid the typical problems involved them. Balancing often turns out to be impossible, and they typically involve a lot of book-keeping. Of course, depending on the composition of 5E design team, we could get back to such an approach.

But I could also see that they will just rebuild the power system a little bit.

For example, one relative "simple" change might be to allow people to pick up encounter, dailies and utilities in any order they like - but in the end, they still can't get more then the number they have. Might offer some people an option they like. But I think they didn't go there in 4E because it can lead to greater disparity in character strength. 4E is not just streamlined, it also wants to eliminate any type of system mastery requirements of you - and knowing when to pick encounters or dailies is certainly a system mastery requirement - you have to understand how dailies and encounters interact in the long run. While comparing encounter powers is typically a lot easier, and I don't think you can make any really bad decisions here. But you can make a choice of flavor, or a choice of party synergy (which differs from system mastery because party compositions can differ a lot...)


I could see them creating a new "line" of powers - Defenses. Many Utility powers are already defenses in everything but name. But the idea of being able to use a "Defense" action to change or change the effects of an attack could be possible. Utilities would then concentrate on powers focusing on non-directly combat relevant powers. (Is a +10 power bonus to Jump power useful in combat? Yes. But it's also good otuside. While a +4 bonus to AC and Reflex Defense is only useful in combat.)

 

[El Mahdi]

How would you have done 4e's Powers?

I know it's two pages into the thread already, but I'm going to post to the OP first with my ideas, and then read the rest of the thread. Sorry in advance if this mirrors any other posts.



I would have done a few things about this - not all of these are specifically about powers, but they all relate to the perceived problem (my perception that there's a problem also).

1. I would have kept spells basically the same as they were in 3.5 for spellcasting classes (i.e. descriptions, basic structure, etc.), but I would have eliminated Vancian casting for more of an at will type system and I would have implemented the Ritual concept also. However, I would have put some work into simplifying spells and spellcasting mechanics (but not oversimplifying as they are now).
2. Added powers for all classes, even for spellcasting classes (special attacks and maneuvers, just not as many for spellcasters), but I would have made them more generalized (a little less class specific) and made far less of them (so characters are less build dependent on powers and more on skill and feat selection). Since there would be less powers to choose from, I'd make them usable more often, but basic attacks would still be the most common attack form - Not Powers.
3. With less work needing to be devoted to Powers development, I would have done more work on class and race development (so the game could have the same level of options and flexibility 3E had out of the gate).

If they had done something along these lines, along with NOT oversimplifying mechanics (grapple, charge, etc. - simplifying: Yes, Oversimplifying: No), and keeping the ideas that really work (simplified monster statting and creation, better underlying math, minions, healing surges, death and dying, action points), then I'd probably be playing 4E right now.