Is Everything a Power Now?

[SDOgre]

One of the problems I and my players had with KotS was the 4E idea of powers. From what I could tell, swinging a sword and casting a spell are both powers now. I'm not sure if my problem is more mechanical or flavor.

It went like this:

The player asked, "If I cast a spell next to the kobold is he going to get an attack of... er, I mean opportunity attack?"

I replied, "Well..." flipping through the quickstart rules, "I think it's not really a spell any more, it's a power. And yeah, if you use a power adjacent to a character they get an attack of... er, opportunity attack."

"It's not a spell anymore?" my player asked.

"Well, it looks like any form of attack is a power. Um, I think..."

So the whole thing rubbed me the wrong way. The idea of sword and sorcery is that they're different. Swords are mundane and spells are, well, magical. The strange, amazing, and wonderful. Swords are quick, deadly, and reliable.

It seems to me the line is blurred now. Am I wrong?

 

[malraux]

Power = special thing that each class gets to do. The power source lets you know if its a spell, prayer, swashbuckle, etc.

 

[fissionessence]

The line is definitely blurred.

They're both powers. A swing of the sword is a martial power, whereas a magic missile is an arcane power. Martial powers are called exploits. Arcane powers are called spells. Divine powers are called prayers.

Opportunity attacks don't care if it's an exploit, a spell or a prayer. Instead, they care if the power (whatever its origin) is a melee or ranged attack, or if it's a ranged burst or area, as opposed to a close burst or area.

~

 

[Raduin711]

Wizard powers are called Spells, so yes there are spells, they just belong under the subheading Powers.

I believe ranged powers provoke opportunity attacks. Unless Otherwise Stated of course.

(new acronym? UOS?)

 

[SDOgre]

Well then, if a character uses a non ranged burst next to a kobold, does it get an Opportunity Attack? It seems from the quickstart rules, that it does not.

 

[Mort_Q]

'cause I'm anal...

I replied, "Well..." flipping through the quickstart rules, "I think it's not really a spell any more, it's a power. And yeah, if you use a power adjacent to a character they get an attack of... er, opportunity attack."

Any power, be it a spell, an exploit, or whatever, that uses the area or ranged keywords provokes an OA.

A power, be it a spell, an exploit, or whatever, that uses the close or melee keywords does not provoke an OA.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled thread.

 

[Celebrim]

As I understand it, anything with the 'close' descriptor doesn't provoke an oppurtunity attack.

As for the rest, yes, every class is a spell caster now. They might have a 'martial power source' for thier spells, but they are still spells.

Rogues and fighters are going to get area attacks that don't consume resources (no molitov cocktail on your character sheet, no flash powder) on a per encounter basis. There isn't any flavor that corresponds to that except magic. Everything else is explicitly magic. Hense, every class casts spells now.

We've pretty much seen this coming ever since Mearls was revealed as being one of the main designers. The Mearls approach to balancing spellcasters with non-spellcasters is to do away with non=spellcasters.

Problem solved, right?

 

[ForbidenMaster]

Well then, if a character uses a non ranged burst next to a kobold, does it get an Opportunity Attack? It seems from the quickstart rules, that it does not.

Correct. The only actions that provoke an OA are when you move out of an adjacent square, or use a power with either the Ranged or Area keywords.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

So the whole thing rubbed me the wrong way. The idea of sword and sorcery is that they're different. Swords are mundane and spells are, well, magical. The strange, amazing, and wonderful. Swords are quick, deadly, and reliable.

It seems to me the line is blurred now. Am I wrong?

You're right that most every attack for combat purposes is a power now. However, if you think about spells in 3.x, they're really not that much less reliable than a warrior with his sword in regards to how often you get the spell off successfully, and at higher levels they're a whole lot more reliable than weapons in every way with regards to killing stuff.

I think the blurring of the line works more in the other direction, that their main motivation for making weapon attacks and spells and prayers more similar to each other mechanically is in order to bring the martial characters up to par with the spellcasters, and the casters down to the level of more mundane combatants.

And really, it's only mechanics. The way powers are set up now really results in nothing much different than a fighter's feats and a wizard's spells in 3.x, they all just use the same format, the same terminology, and are more concise. Just because Tide of Iron and Acid Arrow are both powers doesn't in any way mean that they look similar to each other in the game world. You can still describe and think of magic as strange, amazing, and wonderfully as you want - there's nothing to prevent you from doing that.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

As I understand it, anything with the 'close' descriptor doesn't provoke an oppurtunity attack.

As for the rest, yes, every class is a spell caster now. They might have a 'martial power source' for thier spells, but they are still spells.

Rogues and fighters are going to get area attacks that don't consume resources (no molitov cocktail on your character sheet, no flash powder) on a per encounter basis. There isn't any flavor that corresponds to that except magic. Everything else is explicitly magic. Hense, every class casts spells now.

We've pretty much seen this coming ever since Mearls was revealed as being one of the main designers. The Mearls approach to balancing spellcasters with non-spellcasters is to do away with non=spellcasters.

Problem solved, right?

The thing with modelling everyone's attacks and skills with powers is ... it works. Who cares if the format of your fighter's attacks is similar to spells? Your character sure doesn't. It gives an easy format for letting the fighter do extra damage with some attacks, add effects to his attacks, and so on and so forth. I sure don't care if everyone has powers - I prefer that to casters referring to a chapter called "spells" with abilities in one format, and others referring to a chapter called "feats" with abilities in a different format if they can all be done in one format in one place. I likes it.