More powers, no replacements?

[comrade raoul]

I don't have anything close to a solid sense of balance for the 4e rules yet, so I have no idea whether this would be nifty or broken. Here's the thing. Conceptually I find replacing powers as you get more experienced to be a bit weird, but know it would be bad to give more experienced characters the ability to use a huge number of encounters or dailies without resting. I'm guessing that the replacement rule is there for simplicity, but it's easy to get around it. Consider the following three-step change:

--) Characters always learn more powers as they advance. Thus, a 17th level character knows five encounter attack powers and four daily attack powers from her class, plus one encounter power from her paragon path.
--) You can't use more than three encounter attack powers from your class, plus your encounter attack power from your paragon path (if you have one), without taking a short rest.
--) Similarly, you can't use more than three daily attack powers from your class, plus your daily attack power from your paragon path (if you have one), without taking an extended rest.
--) You still can't use any particular encounter or daily power more than once before resting.

The upshot is that characters can use the same number of powers (and the same level powers) that they always did, but more experienced characters have more options.

It makes characters more complicated, and it makes them at least slightly more powerful--particularly as they move into epic levels. Does it make them much more powerful?

 

[FireLance]

I think you would have fewer balance problems if you re-introduced the idea of levelled slots, so a 15th level character would have one 13th, one 7th and one 3rd level encounter slot, and one 15th, one 9th and one 5th level daily slot, and each slot can only be used to activate a power of the relevant type (encounter or daily) of its level or less.

 

[comrade raoul]

I think you would have fewer balance problems if you re-introduced the idea of levelled slots, so a 15th level character would have one 13th, one 7th and one 3rd level encounter slot, and one 15th, one 9th and one 5th level daily slot, and each slot can only be used to activate a power of the relevant type (encounter or daily) of its level or less.

Oh, yeah--definitely. But I'm not sure that this needs to be made explicit: aren't those exactly the powers he'd have if he didn't retrain, and can't you not retrain powers to get higher-level ones?

Basically, for more slots, let's take a 23rd-level character, who'd have six encounter powers from his class. If he used his three slots to activate his highest-level powers, he'd be using his 23rd, 17th, and 13th-level ones--exactly the one's he'd be replacing his lower-level powers with!

If I have the rules right, anyway, nobody would get to use more higher-level powers than they otherwise did. They'd just have more options. (The nice thing is that, once you hit 13th level for your encounters or 15th level for your dailies, you always have a choice about which power to use. And this seems to fit nicely, conceptually--shouldn't, as characters get more experienced, they also get more unpredictable, with more tricks up their sleeves?)

In other words, basically, what doesn't change is that you can't use a particular power more than once.

 

[FireLance]

I think I get what you're saying now. In my initial reading of your proposed system, I had the impression that a 15th level character (say) could use his 13th level encounter power three times in an encounter because he had three slots. If you're sticking with the convention that all the powers used have to be different (and thus, effectively usable only once per encounter or day), then I agree that it wouldn't make the characters much more powerful.

 

[keterys]

Do expect some mistakes to be made, but I think it's a very reasonable house rule if people are offended at losing powers.

I'd consider it, but honestly the game is complicated enough for some of my players.

 

[Skyscraper]

I've been thinking about the same house rule myself. It complicates things a bit, but not too much IMO. I also don't think that it's overpowering. I was actually thinking about having the PCs choose their powers in the morning as per a vancian spellcasting system, but i actually like your idea better since it's more logical and also simpler.

Also, to counterbalance things a tad, it's likely that i'm not going to allow retraining since i'm not too fond about the entire "un-learning" approach to powers. I also think players will prefer to have the choice between several powers each day over the loss of a retraining ability. I'll discuss it with them beforehand of course, and if they agree we might go that route.

Sky

 

[lordkiwi]

Balance wise that seems fine to me. You always get a little extra power from extra options, but since those options are weaker than normal it should be ok.

 

[comrade raoul]

A few things I like about this rule, the more I think about it:

--) If you do use the retraining rules, you can retrain low-level encounter powers to very situational ones--the kind of encounter powers that might not be that helpful too often, but make a big difference when they do. Thus, as characters become more experienced they increasingly resemble wily bastards with a lot of tricks up their sleeves. Which, naturally, is as it should be.

--) The extra options only make a really significant impact into epic levels. But in epic levels, your at-wills get better, too--to be on par with or better than your lowest-level encounter powers. The more extra powers you have, the less difference some of them make.

--) The rule becomes really easy to use if you also use power cards. Lay out all your power cards and flip them over when you use them. Once you've flipped over a power card, you can't use that power. Once you have three cards of a given type flipped over, you can't use any more of that type.

 

[sunrisekid]

The OP's description doesn't unbalanced to me at all. It just sounds like it re-introduces the Vancian method of power management, ie, you have a "spellbook" full of exploits and you pick the ones you want to use on a day by day basis. No?

 

[keterys]

Not day by day, no. Each encounter you use the (seeming) optimal selection of encounters and optimal selection of daily each day. You can decide whenever, from your list, which seems best to use right then. You just have a limit on how many you use by the end of the encounter/day.