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...
I also thought of this but was also concerned about what APs do already, how they are generated and how changing them would effect various feats, paragon classes and other things that AP trickle down into.
That said if all the tangential side effects of implementing this can be shorn up, this may be the best way to make dailies as encounter powers with a cost. The first thing that I would do with implementing this idea would be removing the normal action point action, possibly making that a feat or a power.
BTW, do humans get an extra "at-will that becomes an encounter" power? It might not be balanced, because you're increasing their damage.
This is a good question. Giving them 4 encounter powers when everyone else gets 3 is probably too powerful but it may be fine, it would need to be tested. Assuming the racial feature would have to be removed perhaps humans could get a "reserve feat" for free instead.
Maybe you could make at-will work like Lay on Hands, which you can use [primary ability modifier] times each day or encounter or something.
I don't really like the lay on hands way because they are ultimately limited per day but the cleric's healing word and warlord's inspiring word's limitation seems to work well.
"You can use this power twice per encounter, but only once per round. At 16th level, you can use this power three times per encounter."
This is an interesting way to go with the "reserve feats". Rather than just do it once per battle allow twice per encounter and at 16th three times per encounter. You know considering they stripped out most of the sub-systems they have a lot of different systems within individual powers themselves. This is more difficult to track than simply discarding a power card or checking off a box. I suppose they way around this is you make more copies of the power card or multiple boxes to check off.
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
I understand this, and it is a bit of a limitation of the game system. It makes a lot of assumptions such as you will always be attacking with your highest stat. The concern is that if this is altered, it may collapse the game and no one will hit or do a proper amount of damage to contribute in a meaningful way to combat.
In previous editions this was not a very bad thing because base attacks were based upon strength or dexterity only and so you knew if you were going to be shooting a bow or swinging a sword you needed strength or dexterity at least a little. Now you don't need those stats to make a character necessarily. Additionally, you know that the "to-hit" rate for your spells was much higher than it is now (saving throws were relatively easily failed) so you could afford a compromise on your stat line and spread it out and take two 16's or even a 16 and several 14's and still be competent now you need an 18 or 20 to be competent.
So what would the effect of removing the at-wills be? It would change character creation for sure. It may make characters invest in strength or dexterity more, when they normally would not have. This will lower the primary stat to do so (unless of course you have a class that needs one of those stats). Doing this may alter the 50% to hit rate assumption and make it more difficult to be competent.
A positive effect is that it will open up design for character types that are sub-par in the current rule set. For instance, a common character at my game table in previous editions was the elf cleric archer of correlon. This character was a dex and wis based character. Not a very viable build now. I mean, what would a cleric be doing with a bow let alone a high dex. A ranged cleric is a lazer cleric pure and simple and that only requires wisdom, and a very high wisdom at that to be effective. With making basic attacks the standard instead of lazers and reaping strikes, it says, "Ok I can make an archer cleric because I am not losing anything for doing it." Thus it opens up many more character concepts than were previously available. Again this is just one of the positive effects of making at-wills into encounter powers.
So back to your point should their be a basic at-will attack for each class so they can maximize their single bloated stat in combat? I say no.
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.
So really this changes almost nothing except that to enter an at-will stance it costs a minor action but it gives you that at-will power while in that stance. To top it off you can only enter each stance once a day? Probably not...
