PCs With Recharging Abilities... Why Not?

[Sashi]

Monsters get one or two powers that recharge, so they still have powers in round 5.

PC's don't recharge, but get 10 different powers.

 

[Victim]

How important do you want luck to be? The randomness from attack rolls and saves seems like enough chance to me.

 

[MerricB]

The advantage of not having randomly recharging player abilities is this: planning.

That is, the players know beforehand what resources they have to deal with and can plan their encounter strategy in advance without suddenly having everything change on them due to a single die roll. It makes them adapt to scarcity.

Conversely, random monster power recharging means the players can't plan on what the monster will do. "Ooh look - it's used it's breath weapon so we're safe for 3 rounds" or "the rest of the combat" etc. The advantage of random recharging for the DM is that they don't have to keep track of how many rounds it is until the power can be used again.

Cheers!

 

[D.Shaffer]

With the new Tiers article up, it's hinted that players WILL get recharge mechanics at some point, although limited to some degree.

They can spend action points to gain additional effects, are able to use magic rings, and can sometimes regain limited powers they’ve expended.

 

[Dr. Confoundo]

Okay... for just a few minutes, imagine something midway between a fireball and a magic missile.

Something like, oh... say... Grease... A spell that gives you the option of knocking someone prone or making them drop whatever their holding.

Imagine something that's a little too powerful to used at-will, but not quite powerful enough to be an encounter only power... I'm not proposing making Encounter powers rechargeable, I'm proposing adding a "rechargeable" category in between the two for PCs, to fill in that big quantum gap that lies between them.

Instead of making a whole new category of powers, you've got another option when it comes to a spell like Grease that seems to slip between the cracks... either up its power enough to make it an Encounter Power (make it ranged burst?) or lower it's power to make it an At-Will. Problem solved.