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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jackelope King" data-source="post: 4016943" data-attributes="member: 31454">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.</blockquote>

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