How would you rate Dailies as they go up in level?

[Eric Finley]

Confusing title, I know.

I'm working on a house rule set to (a) introduce some kinda Shadowrun-esque "Lifestyle" considerations to play, giving players a better feel for the context of their characters and a set of situational RP hooks, and (b) smooth out the encounter day so that you can do an encounter that is the only one of its kind in a day, and not have to bump the encounter level through the roof to account for novas.

I'll post more about it once it takes shape more. But right now I'm just setting up the algorithms and odds for things. And I have one opinion question which I'm willing to guess at, but I'm also curious to get some other thoughts on.

How many times more valuable, on an overall average basis, is a higher-level Daily than the ones from the last set? That is, how many times more valuable, on average, is a Level 5 Daily than a Level 1 Daily? How about at higher levels - 5th to 9th, 9th to 15th, and so forth - do you think it's a relatively constant "power multiplier" each step up, or are some of those steps bigger jumps than others?

Please ignore outlier powers (Spitting Cobra Stance, Sleep, Rain of Steel and so forth), and consider only the 50% of Dailies that a character would honestly consider. But if you were pricing out "one use of Grasp of the Grave" versus "one use of Flaming Sphere" or whatever, how much more would Grasp of the Grave cost? Ten percent? Twenty-five percent? Fifty?

Put another way... how much better would the lower-level dailies have to be, for a typical character of a typical class (i.e. wizards are comparing wizard dailies to lower-level wizard dailies and so forth), for them to become competitive or even superior in more than isolated cases?

Be warned - this is a subject easily threadjacked by talking about fringe cases. I do NOT want to talk about those in this thread, and will be brusque about it. So don't talk in specific cases. Talk in percentages. Ranges of percentages are fine - say you think that Ranger dailies get better on a more consistent basis (33% each jump) than Barbarian ones (<10% each jump in your opinion). That'd be fine. But if you have to name a specific power, any specific power, in your post, then you shouldn't post it to this thread.

I am gathering data on a practical level for an ambitious houserule which will have many subtle effects. As such I need to stay focused on results and will be really happy if we can keep this thread at that level.

Whaddya think?

 

[tiornys]

1-5-9 aren't very big steps. A lot of the power at these levels is the fact that you're adding a power instead of replacing them. I'd say about a 10% increase at each step here. 9-15-19-25-29 are larger steps, because now you're replacing a power. I think 20-25% per step here.

Nothing scientific here though. I'm pulling numbers out of my hat based on what I've seen in play and what I've read in the past. I didn't actually look at any powers while formulating this response.

t~

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I might go with 20 % as a baseline. But don't forget - getting a second daily (or encounter) power alone is already a notable power jump.

I don't know how this compares to powers, but prices and XP values seem to go up by a factor of 5 every 5 levels. I think that doesn't work with powers, at least not by the pure numbers. But as tiornys suggests - it is possible that when you replace dailies, the individual dailies are notable more powerful than the previous daily.

 

[Eric Finley]

Those are good thoughts - thanks. The mechanics I'm working on will already account for the "add more" effect separately, so I just wanted to pick some numbers for the increased power level. Because while it clearly is an improvement, you're right that at 1-5-9 it's not much of one. I suspect a lot of people end up choosing a level 5 over a level 1 that might arguably be more optimized for their character simply because (a) the option to "choose down" isn't obvious, and (b) not only is it a new one, but it's a new one from a shiny new list they haven't already considered over a period of levels. Newness > power.

Thanks.