Recharge on a Miss: Reprecussions?

[Rechan]

I had an old houserule which was "If you miss with a Daily, it's usable in the next encounter."

Although that doesn't really address the problem: Missing with infrequent powers Sucks.

Further, I've noticed something else, as time goes on. If PCs miss with their encounters/dailies, it exacerbates grind. Because encounter powers usually bring in the Damage, and since higher damage is lost, the monsters still stay alive.

So I had a thought:

Miss with an Encounter: It has a recharge of 5,6. Roll at the beginning of your turn.
Miss with a Daily: Roll a d6. It recharges on a 6.

How much will this mess with encounters, do you think?

Another ramification is that it elevates the Daily powers that have a Miss effect. I'm not sure how those should interact with this rule. Namely because if I nerf the Miss effect, that makes those Daily powers even less desirable, so no one will go for them. At the same time, the Miss powers are weaker BECAUSE they have a miss effect, so if I even say "Miss doesn't work", those powers are inherently weaker as is.

Also, powers that have a 'Reliable' keyword are less useful. The only benefit is the PC doesn't have to roll the d6 to get them back.

 

[Garthanos]

Also, powers that have a 'Reliable' keyword are less useful. The only benefit is the PC doesn't have to roll the d6 to get them back.

Yeah they are only 6 times as reliable ....

 

[Naszir]

How about instead of recharging, encounter and daily powers do minimum damage on a "miss"?

Any power that already has a "Miss" effect stays as is. So if you do half-damage with a "Miss" there is no change to the power.

 

[Psikus]

I don't think it's worth the effort for dailies, as many of them have effects regardless of hitting, and you already have reliable powers. For encounter powers, though, it's very intriguing. I'd go with a recharge of 6 or more for encounter powers - not a guaranteed recharge, but likely enough for the longer, grindier encounters.

Also, you might want to have the recharge work with only a single power (as monster recharge usually works with all powers).

 

[keterys]

If you're going to do it for dailies (and, really, some encounters, so probably across the board), make it so they have to choose to _not have used the power at all_ if they want to keep it. No Miss, no Effect, etc.

 

[Rechan]

Also, you might want to have the recharge work with only a single power (as monster recharge usually works with all powers).

Yeah, that's my intent.

If you're going to do it for dailies (and, really, some encounters, so probably across the board), make it so they have to choose to _not have used the power at all_ if they want to keep it. No Miss, no Effect, etc.

Mmm, good point.

 

[Nifft]

Yeah, you'd need to deal with the Effect powers (e.g. a lot of the Bard daily powers).

Cheers, -- N

 

[Eric Finley]

As for Encounter powers, you could do worse than to take the Warlock restriction off of Sacrifice to Caiphon (DragMag #366). Encounter powers with target(s) and also an Effect line are pretty few - and one of the prime ones (Otherwind Stride) is explicitly covered by the original Sacrifice to Caiphon anyway.

Or look at one of the various Hero Point mechanisms kicked around here in the archives.

Or maybe you just want to compensate multiple misses. Missing once, yeah, cope, start readying your good attacks for after the Cleric/Warlord/Bard takes his turn. Missing more than once begins to get annoying. So try this... put any Daily or Encounter powers which miss all their targets in a stack per player. Keep track of how many there are in the stack. Later on, when using a Daily attack, if the natural die roll is less than the number of cards in the stack and is a miss, then recharge (version A) the bottom card (or version B) the appropriate card by number [that is, if your Daily attack rolls a 3 on the d20 and there are four cards in the stack, take the third one, with the oldest one being #1]. If the power is an area- or multi-attack, only the first roll counts for this recharge.

That would keep it minimal, and give a certain amount of "condolence prize" for those really crappy rolls.

You can also work on fixing this through items. I handed out a scabbard whose power reads "Free Action (Daily): Reroll a melee attack which just rolled a natural 1-3 on the die." Seldom have I had more players all eyeing each other to see who gets this specific item.