How Per Encounter power recharging should work

[Dragonblade]

So in the podcast they revealed that the different recharge mechanics used by the Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade will be gone. But they didn't really say what they replaced it with, or perhaps they didn't replace it with anything.

I say this because while I agree with having a unified in-battle recharge mechanic, I also think that it is important that there is one, and it shouldn't require a feat to get.

In SW Saga, the fact that Jedi cannot refresh their powers at all in-battle unless they take a talent really bugs me. The talent is not even that powerful, you can spend a full round action doing nothing and refresh one power. Personally, I think a refresh mechanic that weak should just be the default for all Jedi.

It drives me nuts. "Sorry, my character can't use the force anymore in this fight." It feels completely artificial and ruins my suspension of disbelief. Its like Vancian casting all over again.

If any of the designers/developers are listening, please add a basic in-battle refresh mechanic if one does not exist currently. All characters should be able to at a minimum have a refresh mechanic that allows them to recover at least one per encounter power by taking a full round action. This should not cost a feat and should just be built in to all classes. If they want to make that better, or have feats that improve on it, thats even better. Although I wouldn't make the recovery any faster than taking a standard action.

And as a tangential topic, I also think that all per encounter powers should be available to you at all times. One thing I have noticed when playing Bo9S characters is that since you can only ready a few maneuvers, many of my maneuvers just take up dead weight on my character sheet. They are often maneuvers I think are kind of cool, but given the limited amount of maneuvers I can ready, I never choose them and never get to use them in battle. (Yes, I know about the Adaptive Style feat, read on.)

This is the same sort of thing that happens when you play a wizard. You want to memorize all the cool utility spells, but you end up choosing mostly combat spells. Your utility spells never end up getting used unless you take a couple days of downtime and you know your character won't be in combat.

I remember back in August, or September when the 4e designers started talking about 4e they said specifically this is one thing that they wanted to avoid. For example, a wizard should never have to sacrifice combat ability in order to cast cool utility spells. Therefore, I hope they treat per encounter powers the same way.

Or if not, then I hope that they at least ease the burden of swapping readied powers. Perhaps as a full round action you can ready one power in place of one you had previously readied. The Adaptive Style feat sort of does this for Bo9S characters but its almost too good since it allows you to re-select and re-ready all your maneuvers as full round action.

Granted I don't know anything about how 4e works and perhaps my concerns will be completely unnecessary once I see the rules.

But here is my suggestion for a default (no feat required, available to all classes) Per Encounter Power recharge mechanic: As a full round action you can re-ready one expended per encounter power, or you can exchange one readied power for another power that you know.

I like resource management as much as the next guy, but there is resource management that is fun (deciding whether I should spend a whole turn doing nothing in order to swap out powers or to regain an existing power), and resource management that is not fun (trying to anticipate what powers I'll need and knowing that if choose poorly my character will be totally handicapped for the entirety of any encounter we have).

Thoughts?

 

[Nikosandros]

Weren't they pretty explicit in stating that there are no recharge mechanic?

 

[Kunimatyu]

I'll bet powers can recharge if you spend action points(a finite, slowly-returning resource) to do it.

I *am* happy to see the design team mention in the podcast that per-encounter powers will refresh after you've rested for a few minutes, which helps keep them from being too gamey.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Yeah, I'm thinking no dice on that one. You've got to make your per-encounter stuff last the whole battle by only using it sparingly.

It's different from the 3e Warblade because the Warblade was only ONE member of the party, which probably consisted of spellcasters with a hard limit on their powers. It didn't really matter if he could keep going forever, because eventually the guy keeping his HP up would run out of spells.

4e, unlike 3e, isn't reliant on clerics having limited healing, so to keep the party from fighting indefinitely, EVERYBODY runs out of juice after a while, including the rogue and fighter. It's sort of an interesting re-balance, if you think of it. Rather than having martial classes with unlimited resources and leaders with strictly limited resources, both classes have a combination, so the party as a whole still needs to rest every so often, but the martial characters aren't sitting there fully-charged and muttering about narcoleptic spellcasters when they do.

Remember that every class, INCLUDING fighters, has a few basic at-will abilities. (R&C mentioned a fighter at-will melee attack that adds to your AC when your blow connects with your opponent.) So it's not like you run out of powers and are stuck standard-attacking the enemy every round; rather, you're just restricted to a more limited pool of tactical options.

 

[mach1.9pants]

But they didn't really say what they replaced it with, or perhaps they didn't replace it with anything.

They said, IIRC, just wait 5 minutes and you are recharged...

But here is my suggestion for a default (no feat required, available to all classes) Per Encounter Power recharge mechanic: As a full round action you can re-ready one expended per encounter power, or you can exchange one readied power for another power that you know.

But I like this, nice and simple and not over powered- loosing an action is no small thing!

 

[HeinorNY]

I still have issues with per encounter powers.

1- I wanna know what happens to encounter powers outside combat! How often can I use them?

2- I'm worried about the mentioning of the "wait x minutes and you are recharged", because what if an encounter starts before that? I saw people saying "if it happens it's still the same encounter" but it's not. Party kill all monster, take their loot, an are attacked by a new group of monster, before the x minutes passed. It's a new encounter, come on!

3- They mentioned some martial powers can only be used once per encounter, because "the monster won't fall for the same trick again". But what if a new monster joins the combat, can I use that wasted encounter maneuver against him? I don't like this line of rationalization. Just say martial powers use some kind of energy, effort, momentum, weariness, inner power/will, etc.


I don't mean to be harsh, I'm just too damn curious

 

[Xethreau]

Weren't they pretty explicit in stating that there are no recharge mechanic?

That's what I thought. No recharging, so now they can accurately predict how often a maneuver can be used.

 

[Aage]

I still have issues with per encounter powers.

1- I wanna know what happens to encounter powers outside combat! How often can I use them?

2- I'm worried about the mentioning of the "wait x minutes and you are recharged", because what if an encounter starts before that? I saw people saying "if it happens it's still the same encounter" but it's not. Party kill all monster, take their loot, an are attacked by a new group of monster, before the x minutes passed. It's a new encounter, come on!

3- They mentioned some martial powers can only be used once per encounter, because "the monster won't fall for the same trick again". But what if a new monster joins the combat, can I use that wasted encounter maneuver against him? I don't like this line of rationalization. Just say martial powers use some kind of energy, effort, momentum, weariness, inner power/will, etc.


I don't mean to be harsh, I'm just too damn curious

Probably you need a couple of minutes of rest before they refresh, i.e. if a new encounter starts before that time the powers are not renewed.... So 1/encounter is really 1/5 minute rest, but /encounter is used 'cause it's a simpler and more elegant wording

 

[Zurai]

I still have issues with per encounter powers.

1- I wanna know what happens to encounter powers outside combat! How often can I use them?

Combats are not the only kind of encounter. If your character is interacting with something, the character is in an encounter.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I still have issues with per encounter powers.

1- I wanna know what happens to encounter powers outside combat! How often can I use them?

2- I'm worried about the mentioning of the "wait x minutes and you are recharged", because what if an encounter starts before that? I saw people saying "if it happens it's still the same encounter" but it's not. Party kill all monster, take their loot, an are attacked by a new group of monster, before the x minutes passed. It's a new encounter, come on!

3- They mentioned some martial powers can only be used once per encounter, because "the monster won't fall for the same trick again". But what if a new monster joins the combat, can I use that wasted encounter maneuver against him? I don't like this line of rationalization. Just say martial powers use some kind of energy, effort, momentum, weariness, inner power/will, etc.


I don't mean to be harsh, I'm just too damn curious

My guesses:

1. Every five minutes.

2. Tough cookies. If they haven't even had a couple minutes to wipe the blood off their faces, they haven't had time to "recharge" anything. And it's up to the DM how often the encounters come anyway, so he could just have that new group of monsters hold off a couple minutes if they're supposed to be a separate encounter. (IMO a partial solution would be to lower the time limit from 5 minutes to 2 minutes.)

3. This justification does have its issues (my pet peeve is that a recurring villain will have seen each of your maneuvers maybe a dozen times anyway), but so does any other explanation. If the explanation was "inner will" or whatever, it'd be hard to explain why you couldn't use Maneuver A 5 times in a row rather than having to use Maneuvers A, B, C, D, E and F. For your particular objection, imagine one of the following:
a) Any time your fighter got ready to re-use a maneuver, another monster would recognize it and tell him to look out.
b) The maneuver in question is really hard on certain particular muscle groups, and you'd get a cramp if you repeated it immediately.
c) Your fighter is under strict orders from his swordmaster never to re-use his top-secret techniques in combat, lest an observant enemy begin to learn their secrets.