Item daily usage house rule

[Mengu]

One of our DM's is finding the daily item usage rules for additional usage per milestone to be too clunky, and was asking for opinions on what could be a good house rule that's simpler.

Our typical adventuring day sees 3-5 encounters, with the occasional 1-2 encounter day, or the very rare 6-7 encounter day.

I suggested a flat cap. You can use 3 item dailies per day at heroic, 4 at paragon, 5 at epic.

Anyone see any major problems with this house rule? I realize all dailies could be dumped out in the first encounter, but this usually isn't wise any way.

 

[Alisair Longreach]

A simple house rule I use is to abolish the Milestones rules. An Action Point is once per encounter, a magic item daliy power is a daily power, magic items with milestone benefits integrate those benefits.

A consequence of this house rule is that a PC could go "nova" and activate all his magic item powers during an encounter but then again that would be the choice of said PC.

The milestone rules as written heavily encourage magic item daily power hoarding which leads to these magic items seldom or never being used which then leads to PC preferring magic items without daily powers.

Another consequence of the milestones rules is that if you have several with magic items with daily powers, just using one results in the others going "offline" which is very annoying.

 

[bardolph]

One of our DM's is finding the daily item usage rules for additional usage per milestone to be too clunky, and was asking for opinions on what could be a good house rule that's simpler.

Our typical adventuring day sees 3-5 encounters, with the occasional 1-2 encounter day, or the very rare 6-7 encounter day.

I suggested a flat cap. You can use 3 item dailies per day at heroic, 4 at paragon, 5 at epic.

Anyone see any major problems with this house rule? I realize all dailies could be dumped out in the first encounter, but this usually isn't wise any way.

Have it recharge once per encounter.

 

[eriktheguy]

Many smart DMs don't like the strict limitations on item daily powers and implement their own house rules. Yours is simple and effective.
Your restriction on # times per day is balanced in terms of daily limits. One problem could be the number of times they are used in a single combat. Activating 3 item daily powers in a row at heroic (5 at epic) would be a serious nova. I would suggest using your rule, but a limit of 1 item daily per round.

I personally prefer Bardolph's suggestion of 1 item daily power per encounter because:
-It encourages longer adventuring days
-It does not penalize using wondrous items out of combat (ex. instant campsite)
-I like how it doesn't scale with level (since item daily powers scale with level anyways)

Obviously with the 1/encounter rule, each item's power requires 1 day to recharge, it is just the player limitation we are considering.

 

[Mengu]

Thank you all for the suggestions, I'll discuss these with our group.

 

[DanmarLOK]

Might not work for you but I allow one daily item use per slot with the exception that a character can activate two weapon powers if they have two one handed magic weapons.

Mine is a low magic campaign setting, I use inherent bonuses and strip out magic item bonuses so acquiring gear isn't something the group as a whole does. At level 7 each character has perhaps 2 or 3 magic items not counting consumables. So a huge nova blast isn't an issue.

Since no one has 'extra' gear that they can swap out this makes for zero bookkeeping.

And the group isn't the type that would carry around multiple items to swap out anyway.

 

[BobTheNob]

We have abolished Milestones. We have made actions points a per encounter, and ALL ITEMS ENCOUNTER POWERS. (I tried all sorts of ideas like yours above and kept a log of changes, it was the 4th iteration till I finally settled on encounter powers for all items)

It requires alot of tweaking (some items dailies are so weak they should be encounters, some are too powerful as encounters) but generally it is far more fun for players.

We have been playing like that for nearly 6 months now and I have to say of all the houserules, this is definately the most interesting. I had to up the anti on encounters a little because players are just generally more powerful, but thats ok.

Tips (ballpark conversion rules)
* No surgeless healing. Make surgeless surged
* No end of encounter durations. Downgrade these to end of next turn
* Anything that allows the regain of an encounter power requires the players to give up an action point (which as documented above is per encounter under these rules)

 

[eriktheguy]

We have abolished Milestones. We have made actions points a per encounter, and ALL ITEMS ENCOUNTER POWERS. (I tried all sorts of ideas like yours above and kept a log of changes, it was the 4th iteration till I finally settled on encounter powers for all items)

It requires alot of tweaking (some items dailies are so weak they should be encounters, some are too powerful as encounters) but generally it is far more fun for players.

We have been playing like that for nearly 6 months now and I have to say of all the houserules, this is definately the most interesting. I had to up the anti on encounters a little because players are just generally more powerful, but thats ok.

Tips (ballpark conversion rules)
* No surgeless healing. Make surgeless surged
* No end of encounter durations. Downgrade these to end of next turn
* Anything that allows the regain of an encounter power requires the players to give up an action point (which as documented above is per encounter under these rules)

Wait, does this mean that the items recharge every encounter and that the players can use as many daily (changed to encounter) powers as they want from different items in a single combat?

 

[Nytmare]

My solution.

I made action points a teensy bit weaker, but more varied, and made them a collectible resource. The additional ability of 33% of the action point cards are "Use an Item Daily Power, even if you've already reached your daily limit."

 

[Gruns]

My two cents.

Hello.
I found that the Daily item restriction was far too limiting and more importantly, far too un-fun. My players want to be able to use ALL of their cool things, not sit around wondering "Well, yeah, item X's power would be handy right now, but then I won't be able to use item Y's power and I love item Y"! So...
I went with the "You can use any item's Daily power once a day". I understand there is potential abuse here, (Well, maybe... It's not like any of the Dailys shake up the world or anything) but I DM'd for a mature group that were only in it for the fun of it, and wouldn't resort to cheese of any kind.
That worked just fine for us. No problems of any kind, easy to track: Toss the Item Daily card into the used Daily's pile when you use it! After a Milestone, get one back. This is a lot more fun then the ultra-limiting default method.
Later!
Gruns