power balance - h4ter needs help

[lutecius]

I doubt it's unbalanced as long as you're looking at trading say your 1st and your 3rd for two 1sts. But it is a bit more boring. A huge part of the system is to force a variety of tactics on people.

I know, this is one of the reasons i hate it, actually. It feels forced.
To me, the variety of tactics should arise from a variety of adversaries and situations (ie designers and dm creativity) and diversity of options, not artificial restrictions.

There are some unbalancing elements. I believe part of the fact that fighters only get 'weapons matter' powers every few levels, for example, is to prevent you from having these for all your powers and potentially getting too many bonuses from secondary ability scores. But the reduced level should fight this a bit, and it could also just be a way to try and fight MAD.

Precisely, reusable powers would make a secondary ability score more useful, without too many powers relying on it (which would penalize players who didn't boost that particular score.)
I'm sure there will be more of these 'weapons matter' powers anyway. As I understand it, secondary ability bonuses are meant to differentiate the various builds or tone down some powers by making them more costly.

I see an actual balance issue. There is no way to get every power of a given level at the same power level. Some will be more useful in more circumstances than others.
By limiting the use an a given power to once per encounter, you minimize the impact of a 'I WIN!' power that fits the encounter perfectly.
On the other hand, if you allow that power to be used multiple times and have a string of encounters that are similar...the character with the 'right' power will be stronger than the system, and other players, expects.

If this a bad thing? depends on your play style and gaming group.

I prefer the creativity that the limitation encourages.

Power point systems, in general, tend to encourage flexibility to adapt the best option for the circumstance. As long as you have varying circumstances, this too can lead to creativity.

I haven't noticed that many powers perfectly fitting a particular type of encounter. Most seem fairly generic to me, especially since immunities have been drastically reduced in 4e.

I may be wrong, but even then, it's the DM's job to come up with diverse encounters and situations, like in every rpg. If anything, power points might encourage players to pick some specialized powers rather than just the most generic and useful ones, because they won't be penalized if they don't get to use every one of their powers during an encounter.

I'm more concerned about actual power disparities. I'm trying to identify broken powers and combos, even though I'm hoping the "can't use the same power twice" rule is not just a lazy cop-out and that they did give each power some serious thought and playtesting before assigning levels.

Oh, and welcome to the ever active Limbo where the occupants have little to do but fuss over system tweaks

Thanks. I didn't start this thread in house rules because at this point, i don't have a house rule. I just wanted as much input as possible on how powers were balanced to see what is worth trying.

 

[jeff0]

I think that, whatever your solution is, getting extra uses out of a power should be costly. Unless, of course, you're okay with the PCs being significantly more powerful than usual. Here's one way to do this (though not a very polished one):

Spend a healing surge and one use of a power: Regain the use of a power of lesser or equal level.

Spend two healing surges and one use of a power: Regain the use of a power ten or fewer levels higher.

Daily powers are considered to be ten levels higher for this purpose*. The level of a power without a given level (e.g. racial and feat) is the character level at which you first gained that power. At-will powers cannot be expended in this way (i.e. count as level 0).

* The level+10 figure is a wild extrapolation based on the fact that Reckless Strike (Fighter Encounter 7) is strictly worse than Brute Strike (Fighter Daily 1) which is strictly worse than Chains of Sorrow (Fighter Encounter 13).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Another idea I had was using something like a token system. Every attack you make, or even every round you spend, let's you gather some token. If you have enough token, you can use a power. The token represent your general ability to manipulate the battlefield.

Each round could generate 3 tokens. An At-Will power is free. A Encounter Power costs 8 tokens. A Daily power 16.

But in the end, I am not sure Token are _that_ helpful. You're just exchanging one abstraction for another. But maybe you prefer the token-abstraction? (Did you like Iron Heroes?)

 

[megasycophant]

Spend a healing surge and one use of a power: Regain the use of a power of lesser or equal level.

Spend two healing surges and one use of a power: Regain the use of a power ten or fewer levels higher.

This is sounding like fodder for feats to me. I don't have enough experience with the rules yet to make a suggestion, but it does feel like feats are the appropriate way to deal with this issue.

 

[lutecius]

I think that, whatever your solution is, getting extra uses out of a power should be costly. Unless, of course, you're okay with the PCs being significantly more powerful than usual. Here's one way to do this (though not a very polished one):

Spend a healing surge and one use of a power: Regain the use of a power of lesser or equal level.

Wow, that is harsh. Isn't trading a power for one of a lower level enough?

Spend two healing surges and one use of a power: Regain the use of a power ten or fewer levels higher.

Daily powers are considered to be ten levels higher for this purpose*. The level of a power without a given level (e.g. racial and feat) is the character level at which you first gained that power. At-will powers cannot be expended in this way (i.e. count as level 0).

* The level+10 figure is a wild extrapolation based on the fact that Reckless Strike (Fighter Encounter 7) is strictly worse than Brute Strike (Fighter Daily 1) which is strictly worse than Chains of Sorrow (Fighter Encounter 13).

Interesting. I didn't realize there was such a difference between per encounter and dailies.

I'd rather leave healing surges out of this. Why not sacrifice 3 or more encounter powers to reuse a daily or a higher level encounter power?

 

[jeff0]

Wow, that is harsh. Isn't trading a power for one of a lower level enough?

Now that I think about it again, it probably is too harsh. megasycophant was probably on the right track when he mentioned using feats for this. I just picked healing surges because it's a convenient resource that PCs have.

I was trying to make a point, which I should have just stated explicitly. Namely, that allowing the PCs to trade powers on a one-for-one basis would make them considerably more powerful. If you're okay with more powerful PCs, then trading for a lower level power works. Otherwise, there should be some additional cost for using a power a second time.

It seems as though powers get better rather slowly from level to level. So being able to pick the right power for a given situation is often going to be a lot better than using the highest level powers available to you.

 

[megasycophant]

Now that I think about it again, it probably is too harsh. megasycophant was probably on the right track when he mentioned using feats for this. I just picked healing surges because it's a convenient resource that PCs have.

Actually, my post didn't get across what I was trying to say. I quoted your bit about healing surges because it sounded like the beginnings of a feat. IMHO, spending healing surges to regain use of a power is more in the spirit the rules as I understand them than some sort of power swap math, and I thought you were on the right track.

But yeah, seems like just the sort of things feats are for.

 

[lutecius]

Another idea I had was using something like a token system. Every attack you make, or even every round you spend, let's you gather some token. If you have enough token, you can use a power. The token represent your general ability to manipulate the battlefield.

Each round could generate 3 tokens. An At-Will power is free. A Encounter Power costs 8 tokens. A Daily power 16.

But in the end, I am not sure Token are _that_ helpful. You're just exchanging one abstraction for another. But maybe you prefer the token-abstraction? (Did you like Iron Heroes?)

I don't have a problem with abstraction per se. Power points are abstract.
I hate the aw/pe/d system for its in-game implications: not being able to use a low level power twice, no matter what, even when you have enough juice/luck/time/whatever-you-call-it left to execute much more complicated or powerful moves (I didn't like that in Vancian spellcasting and i hate it even more for "mundane" action)

Your token system makes a lot of sense for some combat moves: the more time you spend preparing an attack or casting a spell, the more elaborate and efficient it will be. But it has other tactical repercussions, like not being able to use a power at the beginning of a combat. Which would seriously cripple buffers and controllers, and limit charge attacks.

Edit: or do tokens allow you to reuse powers on top of your regular encounters/dailies? That would make sense, but it would be a huge power boost, especially if you don't have level limitations.