It's the Actions Economy, Stupid!

[Brother MacLaren]

There's a huge difference between being able to cast ANY spell and having a couple of items that let you use one ability (based off of a spell) x times per day (especially if that ability isn't always beneficial based on circumstance.)

I know, I was exaggerating to illustrate the concept that versatility=power.

I'm not sure what the misc. items will look like, but just flipping through the MIC there seemed to be a lot of low-cost items that were like "Ongoing bonus X plus 3 charges per day and you can do Y for 1 charge and Z for 2 charges and when it's a full moon on a Tuesday you're immune to attacks from badgers." Okay, I made that last part up. But the really flexible multi-use items had traditionally been high-level items in D&D, in part (I think) because their complexity was seen as better-suited to experienced players. In the interests of fun, they are making magic items more flexible and versatile and perhaps not "one spell X/day." Who knows. I'm sure they're considering the power of versatility, just wonder if they're considering it enough.

 

[Bishmon]

But the impression I've gotten from you is that any kind of power increase from magic items is not acceptable since it will then become "required" and cause power creep and christmas tree like symptoms.

No, I'm very fine with magic items increasing power. They'd be boring and pointless if they didn't.

My problem is with the idea that 4E secondary magic items won't increase a character's power, that you can therefore remove them from the game if you want to reduce the Christmas Tree effect and there won't be any consequences. I just don't buy into that for a number of reasons.

 

[Jackelope King]

Versatility is only power if versatility is rare or expensive to achieve. In 3e, versatility was indeed power, where only spellcasters could actually claim versatility, and non-casters were stuck with much fewer options. In a game like Mutants & Masterminds or even a video game like Final Fantasy XII, versatility is dirt-cheap, and indeed, is almost expected or even encouraged by the system.

In both of those games, it is very easy for a player to have a character with a vast wealth of options very cheaply. In M&M, I can spend just 1 point and buy my character a second power in an array, which acts as a sort of "second setting" for the base power (such as turning a Fire Blast, which would shoot a ray of fire at one enemy, into a Fire Burst, which would let him deal fire damage to all creatures in the area around him). Balance-wise, neither of those options is more powerful than the other. The damage would be the same. The only difference would be who gets targeted by it (just one enemy, or potentially several enemies and possibly allies?).

Judging by the old Warlock in Complete Arcane, I wouldn't be surprised to see 4e follow a similar path. Notice that none of his class abilities ever really become "obsolete". Not only do things like his eldritch blast, damage resistance, and energy resistance scale with level, but even his invocations do as well. Many of them (like the blast shapes and Voidsense and Fell Flight) are simply all very good, and don't need to be replaced as you go up in level, because they're always useful tools to have at your command. And the ones that do sort of "get better" (like Walk Unseen being replaced with Retributive Invisibility if you're really going for stealth), you have the option of swapping out the lower-level "redundant" invocation for a new one.

So long as a given ability will be on the same tier as other ones, it'll be less a question of "is it more powerful than these other ones". It'll be more a question of "is this power going to be more useful to me than that other one". Miscellaneous magic items look like they'll be adding into that side of the equation, where now on a given round, a fighter will have to ask if it's better to use a power to boost his AC for the round, use his second wind to survive the next volley, or use his magic boots to gain air walk for the round and just get clear of his enemies altogether and get closer to the cleric for a heal. If all the options are roughly equal, and grow similarly in power as the character levels, then you'll have balance.

So the trick with those miscellaneous magic items becomes "How do we make something cool that would be on the level of a Heroic-Tier class ability?" I don't think that's an impossible task.

 

[Lackhand]

No, I'm very fine with magic items increasing power. They'd be boring and pointless if they didn't.

My problem is with the idea that 4E secondary magic items won't increase a character's power, that you can therefore remove them from the game if you want to reduce the Christmas Tree effect and there won't be any consequences. I just don't buy into that for a number of reasons.

This is a response to a couple of people, not just you

It may be that they still increase a character's power (which is somewhat ill-defined), but they will not increase a character's attack bonus or armor class (say).

This matters. This means that there will not be monsters that the character cannot hit, or that cannot miss the character, assuming only the Big Three (or house rules to duplicate the Big Three). Sure, the character with items may hit them more often due to situational rerolls, flanking from summoned creatures, and so forth. They will seem (to an itemless campaign) to have endless hitpoints (and therefore, to do more damage).

But at least there won't be a 20 point armor class disparity between an item-present and an item-absent campaign, meaning that what you need to adjust for between the two is obvious -- incorporeality, flight, mind control... abilities, not scale.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

And that's the crux. There is virtually no way that this balance can be ensured. How do you balance a magic item that grants some sort of flying ability against a fighter's powers at any given level considering that fighters presumably won't have any powers that grant flying? How do you balance the flying from the magic item versus a new fighter power that deals a bit more damage than he could do five levels ago?

You balance these things based on the following:

1) you consider only the ramifications as they relate to combat
2) you consider how often the ability can be used in a game situation
3) you consider how that ability interacts with the rest of the PC party.
4) you consider when you want that new ability to enter the game

In the case of Flying vs Extra Damage, here is what i would take into account.

- Flying will negate terrain based obstacles and allow the combatant to avoid melee with non flying opponents
- Flying does not make you invincible, ranged weapons still matter
- Flying does not help you if you are indoors
- Flying only offers a direct tactical benefit in combat if you are retreating, or if you can engage in effective long ranged combat
- The combat advantages of flight can be negated by the same things that negate the combat advantages of ranged combat. You need a line of sight (or useful area of effect) to be effective.
- If the effect is tied to a duration, it can be defeated by a retreat and regroup on the part of the enemy.

- Extra damage for a fighter is something that fighter can use essentially every time he makes an attack.
- Negating extra damage can be achieved if the damage is tied to a particular weapon or mode of combat. If your facing a character with weapon mastery, disarming him can cause significant problems.
- That aside, having extra damage is something that will essentially always help.
- Otherwise, you can negate extra damage by any means that negates the ability of an opponent to attack.
- The signifigance of the extra damage is dependant on how often the fighter can hit you, and how much that extra damage impacts your hitpoints.
- The presence of extra damage on the part of a particular opponent generally will not force you to alter the way you combat that opponent, unless his attacks are likely to prove deadly to you.
- If the an opponents attacks are going to 1 shot you anyway, extra damage is not really worth worrying about.

Conclusion:
Flying is primarily effective as a defensive means, and as a means to force an opponent to use potentially suboptimal tactics to fight you. The advantage can be negated with some effort, and can be greatly exploited if the means are available. Balancing that against extra damage that is nearly always going to be useful is not too difficult if your have some idea of exactly how useful flying will be. As a flat out general case, I would place flying as being comparable to a damage bonus of +3 or +4 (assuming similar durations).

Is that balance going to be meaningful in every game of D&D ever played? Hell no! But it is a starting point. Flying is the sort of thing a clever player can use to make a DM's life very difficult. But once the DM starts throwing archers with composite bows and weapon specialization against it, the irritation goes away. But Damage is the sort of thing that does not really take too much creative thought to exploit.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Xyl]

You're right, I'm certainly making that assumption. I feel pretty safe with it, too.

Have you considered the possibility that low-level abilities will get better as the player advances, so that most the abilities available at a given level are roughly balanced no matter when they first became available?

One of the playtest reports features a 1st level wizard throwing a fireball, which only hits a single monster. I think that's pretty good evidence that abilities will scale with level.

 

[Propheous_D]

I can see a couple interesting points here. The main one I want to address is versatility.

Versatility != power outright
Versatility == potential power

In order to call versatility power you need to have an application for that power. If 9 times out of 10 you never use that power then Versatility is not outright power.

Power is not usefullness

Power is the ability to do something well. If it takes 2 characters the same time to do the same thing, just one character has more options then nothing is gained.

What the new system does is enhance the usefullness of a character or characters in any given situation. This enhanced usefullness may seem like more power but in reality these new options should not overbalance encounters. Unless a DM gives the characters either an advantage through setup or the pcs take the advantage through creativity.

Replacement of lower level powers

I think that this is a bit of a misnomer. Alot of times higher level abilities don't replace lower level powers unless it is literally an upgraded power. Rather they are situation. Fireball doesn't replace magic missile, its an option that is better suited to larger combat. It allows you to do things you would not do with magic missile therefore it doesn't replace magic missile but rather opens new options for the character. It can be argued that some abilities do replace others, however this is bad design on part of the ability or the DM who is allowing the PC's to get away with cookie cutter tactics.

I do see how you think adding secondary abilities can be unbalancing I simply don't agree completely that is anything to worry about.

 

[Baron Opal]

I think you're making an important mistaken assumption: that a 5th level power will be better than a 1st level power.

I think that's a reasonable assumption. A first level wizard has the choice of magic missle, sleep or shield. A fifth level wizard has the additional choices fireball, fly or blink.

I imagine that the 4e wizard will have similar choices. They may have lesser options that they never use unless a lesser effect is warranted. For example, his 1/encounter lightning bolt would annihalate the goblin he needs to question. The 1/encounter stunning zap that he hasn't used in 3 levels is much more appropriate.

 

[AllisterH]

re: low level powers vs high level powers.

Well, it should be noted that the latter books that WOTC have worked on seem to have gotten around this problem via two methods.

The ToB method. Basically, you're not exactly expected to USE the low level powers and in fact the system explicitly lets you trade in your low level powers for higher level ones. Thus, encounters would be designed on the basis that a 10th level fighter is using powers that he got at levels 8,9 and 10 and NOT the 1st level powers that he once had. In ToB, giving a 10th level crusader a magic martial adept item equivalent to a 5th level power doesn't change the numbers in an encounter since he wasn't going to use those 1st level powers ANYWAY.

MIC method. Present in ToB but a lot more common in the MIC is the use of powers that are always useful even at later levels. For example, in the arms category in the MIC, for 800 gp, you have the armbands of elusive action which for once a day, allow you to negate an attack of opportunity. Even though this is a low level item, the effect is useful even up to 30th level (knowing I can ignore an attack of opportunity would be helpful if I wanted to move up past the suimmoned devil and attack the pit fiend directly). Similarly, in ToB, Countercharge is a 1st level power, yet it NEVER loses its effectiveness.

Now, given that these are two of the latter books that supposedly were written with them thinking 4E design, I think this should be a good indicator.

Have faith in the Mearls

 

[ObsidianCrane]

Hey look its another thread full of someone speculatively denouncing the new system with a series of posts where they make authorative statements about a game based only on designer comments, and minimal rules evidence. In short people are busy making strawmen about 4E based on the tiny portion of information we have so far.

I mean how the heck can you know that the new explicit level based allocation of magic items is not going to be balanced and/or work?

The only way you could know is if you were involved in the play test, and then I would hope you were providing relevant feedback to help WotC to fix the problem.

My experience is that level based item restriction, both works and is balanced. You can design around knowing what the maximum typical effectiveness of the PCs is going to be. Some PCs by virtue of "power building" will be above that curve, some for lots of reasons will be below it. But the challenge can be guestimated, and that is a huge advantage. The current simple gold cost system fails the moment the PCs do something unexpected to gain a massive income. (eg our party recently disassmebled a statue worth 2mil gp in that state, cast limited wish sufficently to remove the curse associated with it, and then simply teleported to a city that could handle the gold and spent up big....heck its an example that shows several flaws in the current system)

Hopefully they don't go "Towns of X size can have items up to Y level" that way the DM gets more control over the available items when the PCs go on a shopping spree with uber amounts of gold. I'm happy to wait and see though.