I like encounter powers and rituals but not at-wills and dailies

[Sadrik]

Book of Nine Swords was one the worst scams Hasbro ever foisted on D&D Players. Essentially, Hasbro couldn't completely disguise the development of 4E, yet they still had more than a year of 3.5 sales they could not afford to torpedo.

They could not admit to working on 4E, but all this material existed. Although the material was not intended for that purpose, The Book of Nine Swords was published as a 3.5 supplement, even though it was really partially developed 4E materials. That way Hasbro could continue denying that they were developing 4E, while at the same time accounting for the existance of the materials, and generate some revenue at the same time.

Smeelbo

Thats nice go start another thread.

 

[Sadrik]

This is an intriguing idea and I think it has merit.

Thanks.

But I don't know if I agree with your reasoning for doing it.

Fair enough.

I've run into the situation you describe where the endless application of an at-will brings down stone walls. This is where the DM should step in and make a ruling that it takes a very long time to do this and leaves the wizard severely fatigued. Any stone wall can be brought down in time but it should take quite a while.

Technically the wizard would be able to do this still but it would take quite a bit longer because they have to take a short rest after every discharging of their encounter powers.

Also at-wills avoid the <=3.5e situation where the 1st level wizard runs out of spells and has to resort to a crossbow.

True, but the wizard ran out after casting a couple of spells for the day, here the wizard runs out of spells for the encounter. Also the wizard by my proposed rule would begin with 3 encounter and 1 daily power. That is pretty damn good considering the previous editions limitations.

On top of that you want to avoid having to track the number of uses of a power because that's inconvenient and annoying.

No more difficult than checking off three boxes every encounter or discard your power card. I fail to see the complexity, it is no more annoying than the standard system.

What I don't like about them is that they are boring in long combats. So, I'm not opposed to eliminating them if a replacement can be found that preserved the things I do like. Turning at-wlls into encounter powers doesn't appeal to me because it just means that it's even more boring.

I agree, this is very true a vanilla attack is supposed to be you basic attack and because of the games design your at-wills are your vanilla attacks and they become dull after 12 rounds of combat. Does this HR make magic missile or reaping strike any more cool? Yeah they become cooler because they don't happen every round and hey they are buffed up a bit too.

One solution is to simply to dream up about ten different encounter powers for each class that are of about the same power level as an at-will power. Then replace the at-will powers with these. Most combats don't last longer than 10 rounds.

Interesting solution. Give every character 10 weak encounter powers. It still makes falling back on the basic attack an almost never option. I sort of like the idea of basic attacks, they make the powers more special. Others may not agree, I understand, no need to try and convince me otherwise.

 

[Sadrik]

I like the idea of having a few powers that are for "special occasions." But it sure stinks when you realize that you used your daily in the wrong combat or saved it when you should have spent it.

Agreed. This is why I thought that altering them into rituals would be pretty damn cool, they give a cost "gold", "10 minutes" to cast and a "Feat". However, under this idea these would have to be mitigated somehow and made into lesser factors. These are very heavy factors.

One thing you could do is turn dailies into encounter powers that have a cost. So, the power would have its effect on the enemy but it would also do something pretty bad to you like damage you or leave you dazed. The danger of this approach is preserving balance but I don't think that's insurmountable.

Interesting, dailies could be powers that are available to use every encounter but to use them you have to spend a power point. Give all the PCs a couple of power points to spend on these and you might have something.

I also like your condition idea, after using a daily you take on a condition or a couple damage or something. Perhaps create a condition that is simply - "you may not use any powers on you next round." In a 12 round combat, not being able to use a power for a round is a hit. But if the at-will are gone this is not really that bad because you will only be able to use so many powers anyway.

If you really want to stick with rituals then I'm inclined to make all daily powers into rituals with a 24 hour duration. This requires some severe rewriting though with a lot more stances and powers that are similar to "weapon of the gods." There are definitely balance issues here too.

This does seem pretty extensive and that is not what I was looking for, however that would be a pretty cool way to do them. Moving dailies to encounters and limit them some how makes a whole lot more sense.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I sort of like the idea of basic attacks, they make the powers more special. Others may not agree, I understand, no need to try and convince me otherwise.

Hmm... what if you sort of re-use the idea of Reserve Feats from Complete Mage? You can only access your at-wills as long as you have encounter powers left.

And to make it possible to "use up" at-wills, state that at-wills expend an encounter power, if used in a turn after a turn where you used an non-basic attack.

This way, you have to resort to basic attacks sometimes and the at-wills are sort of "slightly more frequent" encounter powers - as they are great to open combat or to use after a stunt or a turn where you only move around.

Cheers, LT.

 

[DEFCON 1]

As far as the Daily power thing you have an issue with... there's a pretty easy solution to that. Make all Dailies into Encounter powers, and just up the power of your enemies slightly. Create your encounters as though you have one or two additional party members, and let the players use their Daily powers each encounter. Not a big deal at all. Scaling encounters up and down is so easy that jury-rigging a system like this isn't a problem at all.

And if making all Dailies into Encounters seems a bit too much from your POV... a simple "cost" mechanism is to say that if a player misses on a Daily power, they can spend a healing surge to keep the power still in their repetoire (but gain no hit points). Basically make all Dailies Reliable but with a cost of a healing surge to do so (except of course for those powers that already are Reliable, which they'd still be able to use for free.) They'd still only get to use their Daily power once per day... but at least they wouldn't lose it altogether on a miss.

 

[Sadrik]

Hmm... what if you sort of re-use the idea of Reserve Feats from Complete Mage? You can only access your at-wills as long as you have encounter powers left.

And to make it possible to "use up" at-wills, state that at-wills expend an encounter power, if used in a turn after a turn where you used an non-basic attack.

This way, you have to resort to basic attacks sometimes and the at-wills are sort of "slightly more frequent" encounter powers - as they are great to open combat or to use after a stunt or a turn where you only move around.

Cheers, LT.

Hmm, reserve feats...
Good ideas. How about this?
The rule: At-will powers become 1st level encounter powers that are used at their 21st level power level and players select three encounter powers at first level instead of one.

What if there was a "reserve feat" that allowed you to select one of your former at-will powers that you have selected could use as a lesser version once per encounter if the encounter power is still available to be used.

That is pretty hairy, let me explain with an example:
Joe the wizard has selected magic missile as one of his 3 first level encounter powers. He also selects a reserve feat for his magic missile power. During an encounter he can now use the lesser version of magic missile once during an encounter if he has not expended magic missile encounter power.

Basically it gives you the lesser version once per encounter for the cost of a feat.

 

[Sadrik]

As far as the Daily power thing you have an issue with... there's a pretty easy solution to that. Make all Dailies into Encounter powers, and just up the power of your enemies slightly. Create your encounters as though you have one or two additional party members, and let the players use their Daily powers each encounter. Not a big deal at all. Scaling encounters up and down is so easy that jury-rigging a system like this isn't a problem at all.

Well I have heard there are some issues with making some daily powers into encounter powers. I kind of like the idea of making them encounter powers with an added - you can use this as an encounter power but you have to jump through a hoop. What that hoop is I don't know yet but there have been several good ideas including yours below.

And if making all Dailies into Encounters seems a bit too much from your POV... a simple "cost" mechanism is to say that if a player misses on a Daily power, they can spend a healing surge to keep the power still in their repetoire (but gain no hit points). Basically make all Dailies Reliable but with a cost of a healing surge to do so (except of course for those powers that already are Reliable, which they'd still be able to use for free.) They'd still only get to use their Daily power once per day... but at least they wouldn't lose it altogether on a miss.

What about simply, you have to spend a healing surge to use a daily power? I don't know... it seems like duck tailing one system into another. What does healing have to do with power-use exactly?

Using this will limit the ability for players to effectively heal themselves after an encounter. So they would be trading in-encounter resources for out-of-encounter resources. I think they would always choose in-encounter resources. The effects of this would force a lot more extended rests. I am wary. It seems like any cost for a daily power should have an in-encounter cost to balance the daily as encounter power.

 

[erf_beto]

If you use Healing Surges for Dailies, the party either will never use them or try to long rest all the time.

Instead, how about Daily Powers become Encounter Powers, but you need to spend an Action Point to use them. APs come by every other encounter (or more frequently, if you want to). This might have complications I'm not seeing though...

BTW, do humans get an extra "at-will that becomes an encounter" power? It might not be balanced, because you're increasing their damage.

Maybe you could make at-will work like Lay on Hands, wich you can use [primary ability modifier] times each day or encounter or something.

Either way, I think some builds will like your game better than others: a fighter will get another high damage encounter power, while still basic-attacking with his high Str, but a laser cleric will have to use his low Str to melee, and a fey-lock will be shooting a bow with his low Dex.

Perhaps if you gave each class a basic attack with their primary ability score, things wouldn't be so bad... like Rogues could use Finesse Attack (melee, Dex vs AC, [w]+Dex dmg), paladins would have Holy Attack (melee, Cha vs AC; [w]+Cha dmg), etc. They don't have to be basic attacks. Ranged classes could use these options [primary ability modifier] times per encounter/day. Think of it as conjuring magic ammunition for your imaginary crossbow. But maybe you could let warlocks keep their at-will Eldritch Blast (wich is a class feature anyway), as a tribute to their older edition brothers

That said, I know you're already trying to move away from dailies, but yet another way to handle at-wills would be turning them into Daily "stances", activated by a minor action.

I'm now 2 cents poorer.

 

[Alex319]

In 3e, the game was shifting to encounter based systems. Book of nine swords is the best example of this. In 4e they threw that out and split powers into at-will/encounter/daily/ritual powers. I don't like at-will or daily but really like encounter powers and rituals.

At-will powers suffer from being too at-will. The image of the wizard eventually knocking down a wall by magic missiling it endlessly escapes my believability standards. At least martial characters can dull their axe or run out of ammo with their at-will powers. Also, what exactly is the purpose of basic attacks when there are at-wills?

First of all, the answer to your question about "what exactly is the purpose of basic attacks when there are at-wills" is twofold:

(1) Sometimes you are granted a "basic attack" in particular situations, like OAs or Commander's Strike.

(2) Sometimes you may be in a situation where you can't use any of your at-wills, like if you're a fighter using a bow.

Aside from that, I'm not really sure what the problem is. Here's what I see is the main problem you've mentioned:

I don't want players to be able to repeatedly use their attacks outside of combat to say, bring down a castle wall by hitting it with a sword several hundred times.

In that case, I'm not sure how your proposed removal of at-wills will help. Someone could still do the above with a basic attack just as easily as they could with an at-will. And you obviously want each character to have at least one power (even if it's a basic attack) that they don't run out of, otherwise they would "run out of powers" and have nothing to do. The reason wizards now have at-will magic is to stop precisely this problem from earlier editions where they would use up all their spells and then have nothing useful to do.

In any case, if you wanted to limit out-of-combat power use, since there are few rules for out-of-combat power use that would have to be done with a houserule either way.

Daily powers are just a limiting factor that I thought was trying to be abolished in the 3e ruleset, yet here it is in 4e. I have seen various threads trying to basically get daily powers to be used more for various reasons (hated when they miss, want monster to die more quickly, power point system etc). So, there is some like for systems like this.

I assume that by "limiting factor" you are referring to the fact that it is a resource that only renews at the end of each day, so players have to conserve it. So as I understand it, you essentially want each encounter to stand on its own with no resources carrying over from encounter to encounter. Is this correct? (If so, does it also apply to healing surges, APs, and Magic Item Daily Powers, which also don't refresh until the end of the day?

If this is correct, a very easy thing to do is to essentially count every rest as an extended rest. Of course if you do this you will have to up the power on all the monsters to compensate. Or is there something else you're looking for?

I would love it if we can come up with a way, in this thread, to migrate daily powers into the ritual system which may cause some changes to the ritual system and the easier task migrate at-will powers into the encounter powers system.

So here is the bottom line:
Let’s make some rules that make daily powers into rituals and make at-will powers encounter powers.

Of course, rituals also have costs like component costs and healing surges, which also don't regenerate after every encounter. So I'm not sure how making daily powers into rituals solves the "limiting factor" problem. I guess I'm still not clear on what you mean by "limiting factor."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have to second Alex319 on the whole issue of resource management. It is a sort of 'either/or' kind of thing. Either PCs expend resources throughout the day, or they don't. If they DO, pretty much regardless of the value of those resources, they ARE going to want to have extended rest as often as they possibly can. What player would leave some advantage behind if they don't HAVE to?

So I fail to see how changing daily's to encounter powers or some sort of 'ritualization' of them is going to really accomplish much. The basic mechanics of hit points alone are enough to insure that, unless you just do like Alex319 says and make every rest into an extended rest. At that point you don't need to tinker with anything.

As for the at-will thing, I think you're swatting a fly with a sledge hammer. I've played DnD since the days of the original white boxed set. Sure, back in those days everyone basically had NOTHING BUT 'basic attacks' plus a few 'dailies'. They didn't get boring. Why is magic missle going to get boring but basic attack with a long sword isn't? All at-will powers do is give some 'flavor' to the PCs default form of attack. And as other's have pointed out several times you won't solve the 'breaking down the wall' problem by getting rid of them really. I'd just rule that you cannot use an at-will outside of combat. They are low enough power that you can use them the 20-30 times per encounter that in theory you might need, but 100's or 1000's of uses is just impossible. Or maybe rule that you CAN use magic missle 500 times out of combat, for the cost of a healing surge. Or just rule that no amount of magic missles will ever break down a stone wall.

My advice would be to actually PLAY 4e for a while. Then tinker with it. I know when players that are used to older versions of the game read through the 4e rules that a lot of things strike them as ugly, awkward, or just plain dumb. But if you actually play the game, run a campaign for a while, you will rapidly discover that it is a pretty decent system and really isn't in need of much tweaking.