Per-Encounter Powers

[Drowbane]

1/day and 1/encounter powers can go and I won't miss them.

 

[FireLance]

If a player has invested in an Encounter power, they presumably want a power that works every encounter, which means the DM either has to worry about encounter based design or result in the player having no idea what the power level really is. Which frankly makes them a reasonably bad idea.

Seriously, I do not understand why any DM needs to worry about "encounter based design".

If the DM is not concerned about encounter balance, why would the presence or absence of encounter powers (or, to avoid knee-jerk negative reactions, powers that you regain after a short rest) affect the way in which he designs his encounters?

If the DM is concerned about encounter balance, why would the presence of powers that you regain after a short rest be considered a bad thing?

 

[jadrax]

Because making sure the DM is on the same page as the Players when it comes to expectations is important.

Daily powers can have the same issue, but people tend to be on the same page when it comes to knowing you get a long rest every 24 hours, there is no shared consensus about how often you should be able to have a short rest.

 

[tlantl]

Because making sure the DM is on the same page as the Players when it comes to expectations is important.

Daily powers can have the same issue, but people tend to be on the same page when it comes to knowing you get a long rest every 24 hours, there is no shared consensus about how often you should be able to have a short rest.

I don't see any reason for DMs or players to use short rests in their planing. there needs be no consensus of when to rest or any expectation that one will be needed other than to regain some hit points if a fight leaves them low enough to worry about.

I shouldn't need to worry about or even consider writing dungeons around how often or even whether the group will need to replenish powers and I am not going to. I write scenarios that have a certain pace and danger level. I expect that by a certain point no one will have any spells or x/day uses left on items or class features. I also write them so that there is no way to stop to rest to regain spells, and healing is found in their pouches in the form of scrolls and potions. There are no 15 minute work days in my world you use up your daily allotment of spells, charges, or what have you then you do without them until you can safely replenish them.

The last thing I want in my games are encounter based powers. I'm not to thrilled with those abominable at will spells that turn players into blasting machines either. To me spell powers are rare, difficult to use, and unreliable at best. I have two versions of the game that provide this, and it looks like there may be a third.

This is good, and to me this is D&D.

As I see it being a spell caster can make you as powerful as the gods but only for a round or two.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Some spells might also have greater (for at-will spells) or lesser (for daily spells) effects that a character who knows the at-will spell or has prepared the daily spell could use in a fight and regain after taking a short rest.

Take this further, based on the idea of Reserve feats from Complete Mage.

As a class feature or a feat or what-have-you, you know some spells. You can cast these spells as cantrips, at-will. You have some pool of vitality that refreshes slowly outside of combat, that you can spend to cast these spells as sorceries. And then, you can prepare these spells in your spell slots so that you can cast them as invocations.

Here's where the Reserve feats come in, the neat part: if you prepare a spell as an invocation, the cantrip and sorcery versions of that spell are more powerful based on the highest level spell slot you have it prepared in. As you cast your invocations, your cantrips and sorceries slowly become less powerful.

None of this is an artificial distinction, a gamist artifact; it's all based on the character's exertions and the passage of time. If you spend all of your sorcery points in an encounter, you might not have all of them back by your next fight-- they come back a point at a time, over time, while you're not using them. If you cast all of your invocations, your cantrips and sorceries will be weaker for the rest of the day. You have to pace yourself and rely on your cantrips or else you'll find yourself at a serious disadvantage.

Of course, Fighters and Rogues wouldn't have spell slots and daily powers... but they should have better at-will abilities and a similar vitality pool with which to enhance them.

 

[fjw70]

As a 4e DM I use to love the encounter-based design, but it has been wearing on me lately. The complete PC refresh between encounters does make it hard to challenge them. Eventually the daily powers will get used and healing surges will run out, but it typically takes a lot of combat to finally exhaust those resources.

For my next 4e campaign (our current 4e campaign is on hold while we playtest 4e) I was considering changing the frequency of the rests: a short rest would only happen once per day and a long rest would take at least a few days (so that it would be done between adventures or between adventure parts for big adventures).

So I am fine that 5e is moving away from encounter-based design (at least for the core rules – I am sure it will return as an option in 5e at some point).

 

[Gold Roger]

I still see a place for encounter powers, or whatever else they'll be called.

I can see them as an optional part of martial character classes. The warlock, I could see as a full AEDU class. I could see it for the sorcerer or for the druids wildshape (a druid can wildshape as much as he wants, but needs to take a short rest to regain his composure before using it again).

Just having some encounter powers won't directly lead into the 4e pacing many found problematic. I had Tome of Blades classes in the games I played the late days of 3.5 and they had no effect on the DMing side of the screen.

That said, many have trouble with encounter powers, wether it's the entire concept or individual uses (I can totally see the sorcerer and magic items needing to recharge, but eventually found martial 1/encounter harder, for example).

Just like at will wizard attack spells, individual groups should be able to take them out easily.

 

[Gilbetron]

The clue to avoid the "15-minute adventuring day" is right in the phrase itself: "day". Daily powers are what cause the syndrome, and if you have them, you'll keep the syndrome. I think 5E went the wrong way by getting rid of encounters and keeping dailies.

My group switched to Fantasy Craft from 4E, and we love it. It doesn't have the 15-minute adventuring day syndrome at all - but that's because it doesn't have dailies or weeklies or monthlies or anything like that. Rather, almost all of its abilities/powers/etc run on abstract times (except the equivalent to at-will). There are scene-based, session-base, and adventure-based refresh rates. It removes the option of "lets refresh our powers by doing nothing". A player can often choose to do nothing for the rest of a day to get a recharge. A player cannot end an adventure to refresh a power.

If such abstract times are difficult to accept for people, then you are going to be stuck with the 15-minute adventuring day.

Going with my newly found "try to please even those player styles I don't like" mantra, I guess I'd like to see options for time-keeping. In the Abstract module, you have Encounter, Session, and Adventure powers. In the Concrete module, you have, say, powers that refresh every Hour, Day, and Week, or some such. I think Abstract works better for the game and makes things more fun, but some people want the Concrete, so let's make sure it is in there!

 

[fjw70]

I wouldn't mind the abstract refresh rates. I don't think most D&D players would like it so I don't see it being a core option for 5e. However, if everything refreshed during a short or long rest then it should be a simple matter to just redefine what those rests are to go from concrete to abstract refresh rates.

 

[keterys]

I'm not really sure how 5e will avoid a return to the 15-minute day unless it stops folks from unloading all their spells into a very small number of encounters and limits more strongly resting to regain spells.

There are a variety of ways to do it*, but it's extraordinarily difficult to remotely compare classes that get no daily "bursts" and those who have all daily bursts. It's like "Hey, my fighter is cooler when you have no spells" "Why would I ever have no spells? That's crazy."

* Examples:
You become fatigued whenever you cast a spell of power X or greater, which prevents you from casting other spells of power Y until Z rounds have passed.
You must gather energy to cast a spell of power X or greater, which you can do while not casting at rate Y, or while casting minor spells at rate Z.
Give martial classes abilities they can burst with, based on fatigue or luck or... _something_
Etc.