PCs With Recharging Abilities... Why Not?

[hong]

Why?

I go by the spirit of "per encounter", which means discrete scenes in which interactions of narrative importance and/or ultraviolence are carried out. If these scenes happen to take place within 5 minutes of each other, well, that's neither here nor there.

 

[Ximenes088]

I don't see recharge mechanics playing any role in 4e until designers get so played out that they start doing goofy stuff. It's a pretty basic optimization issue in that fast recharge turns any encounter power from "once per encounter" to "once per fast recharge interval", whatever that is. If your power is so useful that you're willing to spend X turns contemplating your navel to use it again, then it's by-definition your best option for the situation. For that tactical option to make sense, you'd have to design the power to be so useful _sometimes_ that you'd willingly pay the recharge fee to spam it, yet not so generally useful that you'd do such a thing often. That would seem to require a lot more designer artifice than can reasonably be expected.

In a larger sense, recharge mechanics strip some of the tactical elements out of a fight. A "Roll 4+ to recharge" mechanic rewards those characters who spam their most relevant per-encounter powers early and often, maximizing the number of times they get to use it in the fight. For each round the power is available, the player doesn't really think- they just hit the button, because that's the smartest thing to do. A "Wait X turns to recharge" mechanic does exactly the same thing, it just gives you a set interval of predetermined actions.

Recharge mechanics seem bad to me because they give you a "best option", and they give it to you more often the more often you exercise it. It may be that no single rechargeable power really is the best for a given encounter, but the mechanism helps fool people into thinking there is, or feeling unease over not spamming a seemingly-useful encounter power as fast as they can.

 

[Pbartender]

So, out of curiosity.

Does it bother anyone that any of the following arguments...

Perhaps it has to do with trying to balance an encounter? I could see this being a reason for it: if it's hard to predict if a character will use an ability once, twice, or 10 times during an encounter, it's harder to make an encounter that is really balanced for that character. This is more true the more powerful the ability is.

It is also harder to balance. Do I plan for Mialee to be able to cast force orb once or 4 times in a 10 round encounter? Well, if it had a 5-6 recharge, that could easily be 4 (3 times recharging) but it could be as many as 10 or as few as one. This is a quandary for both the DM and the player(s).

Encounter power might recharge? May as well use it immediately and hope for the best!

Having recharge abilities for PC powers adds a layer of complexity onto the at-will/encounter/daily system, and it is probably best to stick to a coherent and simple system for the first PHB. More complex systems can wait for later.

In a larger sense, recharge mechanics strip some of the tactical elements out of a fight. A "Roll 4+ to recharge" mechanic rewards those characters who spam their most relevant per-encounter powers early and often, maximizing the number of times they get to use it in the fight. For each round the power is available, the player doesn't really think- they just hit the button, because that's the smartest thing to do.

Recharge mechanics seem bad to me because they give you a "best option", and they give it to you more often the more often you exercise it. It may be that no single rechargeable power really is the best for a given encounter, but the mechanism helps fool people into thinking there is, or feeling unease over not spamming a seemingly-useful encounter power as fast as they can.

...can be just as valid when applied to DMs and the monsters they pit against player-characters in encounters? If recharging abilities are so troublesome, why have them at all? Why don't monsters have just At-Will powers and Encounter/Daily* powers?


*For the purposes of monsters, Encounter and Daily powers are effectively the same thing... the monsters will only ever get to use them once, before they die, run away or TPK.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

I suspect the reason that PCs don't "recharge" is because they have a longer lifespan than foes.

 

[DandD]

A dragon's breath or a wardevil's trident ability are probably iconic abilites that do define the monsters. Too powerful to be used at-will, but not very evocative for the feeling of the combat, if they can use it only once per encounter or even per day.

 

[DM_Blake]

Dreamcatcher said it first, I believe:

It comes down to balance. You expect each PC to throw in 1 - 3 big powers (a couple per-encounter powers, maybe a daily), and then spend the rest of the fight using small powers (at-will powers or even basic attacks, sometimes).

Each encounter you place in your dungeon is scaled in power to expect that level of PC power.

Then, when you run the encounters, you will have some encounters where many PCs roll lots of lucky recharges, and they are able to almost literally spam the encounter and consequently they blow it away easily. Then you'll have some encounters where the opposite happens, and lots of bad rolls causes stuff to not recharge nearly as much as you would expect, and the PCs end up having a very difficult time, maybe even TPK (especially if their bad luck happens in, say, the really challenging climactic fight).

So, out of curiosity.

Does it bother anyone that any of the following arguments can be just as valid when applied to DMs and the monsters they pit against player-characters in encounters? If recharging abilities are so troublesome, why have them at all? Why don't monsters have just At-Will powers and Encounter/Daily* powers?

Sure, this kind of good/bad luck that I described can happen to the monsters, too.

But really, if one monster encounter suffers a TPK, well, that was what should have happened anyway, right? Weren't the PCs supposed to win?

It's a whole different story when the PCs suffer a TPK.

In a long, newbie through epic campaign, your PCs will encounter hundreds of encounters. Let's say 300 total encounters. At the end of the campaign, the score should be PCs 300, monsters 0. Sure, maybe you put in 1 or 2 encounters that were designed to whoop the PCs for some reason, so maybe it's more like PCs 298, monsters 2.

But if you make the PCs ability to survive too random, then if even 1% of their battles suffer from horrible luck, that's still 3 TPKs before the campaign ends.

Nobody wants that.

 

[Lacyon]

So, out of curiosity.

Does it bother anyone that any of the following arguments...

...can be just as valid when applied to DMs and the monsters they pit against player-characters in encounters? If recharging abilities are so troublesome, why have them at all? Why don't monsters have just At-Will powers and Encounter/Daily* powers?

I don't think they all apply equally to DMs and monsters: the DM is typically controlling a lot of guys. Having *some* of those guys each round get a clear "use this power whenever its avaialble" option speeds up play without dictating the DM's entire turn. More dice rolls also yields more bell-curve effect - it'll be quite rare for all the monsters to recharge in a turn, so the total damage output will skew toward the average.

PCs already have a couple of very stable recharge mechanics - the short and extended rests. The stability means that these resources can be intelligently managed. Taking away that stability makes the management more of a crapshoot. Since monsters tend not to survive an encounter with the PCs, this resource management aspect is moot from the DMs perspective.

 

[Storminator]

So, out of curiosity.

Does it bother anyone that any of the following arguments...

...can be just as valid when applied to DMs and the monsters they pit against player-characters in encounters? If recharging abilities are so troublesome, why have them at all? Why don't monsters have just At-Will powers and Encounter/Daily* powers?


*For the purposes of monsters, Encounter and Daily powers are effectively the same thing... the monsters will only ever get to use them once, before they die, run away or TPK.

The problem is amplified is both sides are rolling. If the DM has recharge powers and rolls well, there's a bit of an upswing in the encounter difficulty. If the DM has recharge powers and is rolling well, and the players have recharge powers* and are rolling poorly, there's a drastic change in the encounter difficulty.

I've just thought of cursed magic items with recharge abilities that penalize the user...

PS

 

[Ximenes088]

A dragon breathing early and often is iconic. A malebranche forking people early and often is in the same vein. A monster who makes aggressive use of its keynote abilities, leavened with some uncertainty as to how often they can do it, is pretty much what a monster should be. PCs constantly using the same trick are notably less interesting to play because their tricks don't change with almost every encounter.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Does it bother anyone that any of the following arguments can be just as valid when applied to DMs and the monsters they pit against player-characters in encounters? If recharging abilities are so troublesome, why have them at all? Why don't monsters have just At-Will powers and Encounter/Daily* powers?

Part of it might be because monsters don't have "daily" powers (they're not going to be around tomorrow, in most cases) but PC's do. Not only that, but they've got five of 'em. So being able to use the trident again is part of how they continue to challenge PC's who use their massive powers on the combat. PC's will also have things like healing potions and magic items, while most monsters won't. So a recharge is one way for a monster to gain a bit of a threat, without decimating the PC's resources. It might tap into their daily powers, or into their magic items and potions, but it probably won't wipe them out. Meanwhile, a PC getting another use of their per-encounter powers might swing things against the monsters so drastically that the challenge is removed from the encounter.

Myself, I'd like to see recharge mechanics instead of Per-Encounter mechanics for some (most?) per-encounter abilities. But that's one reason why they might avoid doing it as a default.