Messing with the A/E/D/U Power Progression

[Kurtomatic]

Looking at the way at-will, encounter, and daily attack powers are rationed in character advancement; are there significant risks altering the proportion of power frequencies? In other words, given that a character has n number of attack powers, is the ratio of at-wills vs. encounters vs. dailies highly coupled with balance or other mechanical concerns?

On the surface, at least, it appears to me that powers are already pretty well balanced within the contexts of frequency, level, and effects. The utility powers aren't regulated this way, and some of the new crunch coming from WotC seems to be loosening this up a little.

If the Character Advancement table (PHB.29) is house-ruled to read "gain 1 attack power" or "replace 1 attack power", and the players can choose their own power frequencies, what kinds of problems would this cause? Has anyone tried this before or using it now?

The next question would be erasing the attack vs. utility firewall, so that all power lines in the table read "gain 1 power" or "replace 1 power".

Thanks!

 

[keterys]

I think you could pretty safely give a little more in the way of options, change the method for all characters, etc...

But I think if you make it completely free form you will hit a couple problems
1) Some characters will screw themselves
2) Some characters will be far more powerful than others

Some classes seem to have better quality powers of one type, but worse of another type (for example, compare level 1 invoker encounter powers to wizard. Now compare their dailies).

And letting people take combat powers for utilities I think is just a bad idea unless you maintain some sorta maximums of each type. Ie, so you can get the same # of powers in a different order, but you can't drop all but 2 utilities for extra encounters and dailies, etc.

 

[Kurtomatic]

Thanks for the reply!

I agree that the current rules act as a safety net against poor choices that could gimp a character. The stock rules would still offer the ideal target mix of powers. I'd only use such a large change with experienced players, who could quickly correct any problems with retraining.

Which leads us to your second point. I absolutely see a degree of power creep. Any change that offers more choices will result in increased optimization. Personally, I'd probably accept a large flexibility gain for the cost of moderate creep, although mileage certainly may vary. Part of the whole idea behind this change is to help players out of "lesser evil" boring power choices. My first 4E PC had one standout at-will; his second was only minimally better than his basic attack. I would have happily swapped it for an encounter, as I rarely used the at-will more than once or twice per encounter on average anyway. This is the same kind of optimization you're referring to.

What I'm unsure about, is would this change result in an incremental power expansion, or is this opening the barn door for serious dairy (particularly in paragon or epic)?

I think I'm inclined to agree with you about utilities, but I'd be interested on others' opinions.

 

[keterys]

I think it'd be a dealable amount of power creep. Especially if the game has several fights a day.

If it's a city-based one fight a day game, then having 6 dailies might be unfortunate

Anyhow, just to check... you've got a 17th level human character. They normally receive:
Paragon Powers (Encounter Attack, Utility)
3 At-will
3 Encounter (7th, 13th, 17th)
3 Daily (5th, 9th, 15th)

If they had decided they only wanted 1 at-will, and traded the other 2 for an encounter and a daily, those would start at 1st level. Presumably they would still have then been eligible as powers to swap out at higher level and you'd end up with:

1 At-Will
4 Encounter (3rd, 7th, 13th, 17th)
4 Daily (1st, 5th, 9th, 15th)

 

[Fanaelialae]

I don't think that allowing a single power to be swapped around would be a big deal.

My biggest concern regarding your idea is the player who takes all encounter or all daily powers, as this could potentially mess with the difficulty and pacing of your game. IMO, encounters are the solid powers you aren't too afraid to toss out there (because you'll have them again in the next fight), whereas dailies require more reserve but usually turn the tide of battle (oftentimes regardless of the attack roll; similar to what in MMO parlance is referred to as an "I win button").

A player with mostly encounters is potentially stronger over the course of a long day (because he has steady, above-average output and doesn't have to worry much over whether he'll need a given power later) but may not have enough "oomph" when things get messy (which would normally be the time he'd use his daily). He's likely to not even need his at-wills for short, easy fights but I expect he'll have a tougher time with harder fights than an "average" PC.

A player with mostly dailies is potentially stronger for the duration of a single fight (which he can probably trivialize by spamming one daily after the other) but will be weaker over the course of a full day. If he needs to conserve powers for normal adventuring (as opposed to a 5-minute workday), I expect he'll throw one or two daily powers into the fray and then rely on his at-wills for the rest of the combat. Not necessarily weak so long as the right daily gets used at the right time, but likely boring for long fights (almost like being level 1 for your entire adventuring career).

Based on this, my advice would be to allow players to trade no more than half of their powers from a given power category. For example, if I have 4 daily powers I could trade no more than 2 of them for at-wills or encounters.

I'd also recommend against allowing attack and utility powers to be traded. Allowing someone to trade an attack for a +5 to a diplomacy check isn't very balanced. Allowing the reverse is probably even less balanced (in any game where combat makes up a noticeable portion of the game). There's an argument to be made for daily and encounter powers being roughly balanced against each other, but I really don't see it in the case of attack/utility powers.

Finally, I'll also echo that there's some real potential for power creep. There are definitely classes that justify having weaker encounter powers with stronger dailies and vice versa, and this house rule would allow canny players to capitalize on that difference. My guess, however, is that so long as you impose some limitations, it shouldn't break the game.

 

[keterys]

How would you round on that half principle?

That is to say...
1st level:
2 At-Wills
1 Encounter
1 Daily

Can you trade either the encounter or the daily, or is the at-will the only thing valid for trading?

Or the 17th character I mentioned:
Base 2 At-Wills plus 1 Bonus from Human (in case the bonus from human is special)
3 Encounters (so 1 or 2 tradeable)
3 Dailies (so 1 or 2 tradeable)

I'm guessing stick to it as defined and you can't trade away a daily power until 5th level when you get your 2nd, you have to keep a minimum of half.

I do worry that the most powerful approach is to trade away your at-wills for most characters, but that means when you're down to at-wills you have less options which is more boring potentially. Of course, when you're not down to at-wills having more encounter powers may be cooler. Or whatever.

I'd almost always just stack on as many encounter powers as I could I suspect

 

[Kurtomatic]

Great feedback, much appreciated.

I completely spaced-out on the one-encounter-day scenario, and agree its a problem. I think that's a very risky strategy for character development, so I'm not sure how powerful that would really be in a typical campaign, but its a door better left closed.

I think encounter attack spam is the serious risk domain, so thanks for that insight. Its probably best to leave page 29 alone. But before I give this idea up completely, I have another angle to try. The character advancement table remains as written, and instead approach this from retraining (PHB.28):

Optional: When retraining an attack power, you may choose to replace an at-will attack power with an encounter attack power, or replace an encounter attack power with a daily attack power. You cannot replace an attack power with a less powerful one, except that an attack power can always be replaced by another power of its original type.​

This severely throttles encounter attack hoarding. Daily inflation is less constrained, but still expensive. Plus there is an opportunity cost in the retraining economy. Thoughts?

 

[ColdHeart]

I wouldn't advocate letting players up the power level of their powers.

I would imagine every human player would happily swap their bonus At-Will for an Encounter power. 2 At-Wills is normally enough, a 3rd gives a little variety but an Encounter gives more variety and power.

I would also imagine most melee classes would swap an At-Will with an Encounter as well. Casters less so, because their At-Wills may target 2 difference defenses. But from what I have seen of melee classes, their At-Wills are all vs AC. So having one At-Will which targets one defense and another Encounter, which again targets that defense but has more punch to it, could be considered more useful than a 2nd At-Will which has a different effect than the first.

And if someone really wanted to go out of their way to make themselves Encounter boosted, Human Melee who at lvl 3 has At-Will: Basic melee Attack and 5 Encounters (1 from 1st lvl, 1 from 3rd lvl and 3 At-Wills retrained). If encounters normally take longer than 5 rounds he just resorts to the basic attack.

The main point here is, the game enforces you to have a variety of attacks at different frequencies. However as some poeple have noted the frequency you need certain attacks varies based on the game style and what the powers do. If you have long days with lots of encounters, losing a daily for an encounter gives you more power. If you have 1 encounter a day then swapping an encounter for a daily is giving you more power. Do you want players to gain more power?

 

[Kurtomatic]

Characters gaining power isn't the goal; its a cost, which has to balanced against possible gains. Any changes to the rules has a risk vs. reward consideration, so in that regard, thanks very much for the feedback. All the responses have provided valuable insight, and I appreciate the food for thought. The adventuring day is clearly the primary concern of the fixed A/E/D/U progression, and I've gained a better understanding of that. Rests and the adventuring day is another topic of interest to me, so this is very helpful.

Thanks heaps!