Recharge Rule

[dm4hire]

I'm thinking of incorporating the Recharge Ability as a house rule to give the players better use of Encounter and Daily powers. I thought about making a feat that would give the ability but then decided that I'd try it without first to see how it works. My plan is to just give every ability a recharge of unless it seems really weak to which I might give the ability a recharge of to make it more reasonable. I understand that some people could get pretty good with dice rolls so am thinking of placing a preventative rule that you can only recharge any given power a number of times equal to 1/2 the Con modifier. So someone with a Con of 18 would only be able to recharge Encounter powers 2x per encounter and Daily powers 2x per day as 4/2=2.

Possible feats if I go that route are:

Recharge: Choose a power that is either an Encounter or Daily. You gain the ability to reuse that ability again if you succeed in making a recharge check, rolling on a d6. This feat may be taken multiple times but must be applied to a different ability.

Improved Recharge: If you have the Recharge feat you recharge the ability associated with it whenever you roll a or . This feat may be taken multiple times but must be applied to a different ability.

Has anyone tried this? I don't remember seeing it posted anywhere, but it might have slipped by me.

 

[keterys]

Hmm, if you go that route you may want to have the daily powers only recharge on a short rest.

I don't think tying recharge to Con is necessarily a good thing as it makes it almost a required stat at that point. You could just do the Heroic = 1, Paragon = 2, Epic = 3 thing that crops up every now and then...

I will say, there are daily healing abilities, so this will effectively give infinite healing.

 

[77IM]

To speed things up, instead of rolling to recharge each and every spent power, have them roll a single die. If it comes up , they get to recharge a single spent power (their choice). This also makes the recharging more manageable by limiting it -- players will only get the occasional recharge, so encounters will remain roughly balanced.

I wouldn't allow recharging of Dailies, that seems really powerful. It basically makes Daily powers into Encounter powers.

-- 77IM

 

[dm4hire]

To be honest I'm not a real fan of the new system of powers. And to be honest I was never a big fan of Cast and Forget ideology either. I'm trying to find a balance that gives a lot of bang for the buck without having to rebuild everything the way I want it to be.

I'm pretty sure if an ability has Reliable on it then it doesn't need Recharge as I'm really thinking of using it as a way to account for misses. Perhaps make it so they can only Recharge if the ability missed.

I did think of letting them choose an ability after rolling the as I originally got the idea while reading through the templates and was reading the Lich who has an ability that does that.

Like I said I will play with it and see how it works out.

 

[Foxen]

My friend actually incorporated recharge into another short-run game we played before 4e. It worked fairly well, except when players took "forever" to roll for each of their powers... I actually used different colored d6s to represent which powers I was recharging etc. and rolled to recharge right before my turn.

Anyhow, some thoughts...

Recharge only for Encounter abilities...as opposed to dailies. Dailies are too powerful for recharges imho.

Make it clear whether you recharge at the beginning of your turn, or at the end of your turn etc. Makes a huge difference.

Limit the amount of recharges per turn as was suggested. I was creating a homebrew game with recharges...and limited it to "three" recharge rolls per turn. Players had to name which powers they were recharging. However, perhaps one "named" recharge a turn is good enough (like players must name which power they are recharging).

Lastly, to further limit recharges, instead of limiting it to an attribute like Con, etc., perhaps players must "burn" a healing surge (without the healing) to recharge their power.

Just my four cents...

Fox

 

[Deodanth]

Hey gang, I like the idea and will probably use it in some form. Hopefully a form that is as simple and clear to players as possible.

Not sure if I'd tie recharges to Con myself; likewise I'd not discriminate against healing powers (if you can roll the six, Goo for Yoo, you get it back). But I would definitely make Improved Recharge a paragon tier feat, for balance.

Should Daily Power Recharge be a paragon feat as well?

 

[erf_beto]

I've considered giving the option of spending an action point as a minor action to recharge an encounter power. It could even be a daily option (or one time in Heroic Tier, two in Paragon, and three in Epic). At least there are no extra dice rolls this way.

Well, giving this to monsters as well would be scary (Dragon's Breath anyone?)

 

[keterys]

I think you could have spending an action point to recharge an encounter power be a free action, no restrictions.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

I think you could have spending an action point to recharge an encounter power be a free action, no restrictions.

Perhaps a combination of both--free action to recharge an encounter power, minor action to recharge a daily? Dailies should be once per day, that's it; they're too powerful to freely recharge, but I think once (or maybe twice) wouldn't be too bad. Encounters would only be limited by the number of action points you're willing to spend.

That works out nicely, actually. You start the day off with 1 AP and gain 1 per milestone; it takes 1 AP to recharge, so you could always recharge a daily and then recharge encounter powers based on how many encounters you take on.

 

[dm4hire]

What about making Dailies use a different die for recharge, perhaps a d10?

I like having it tied to Con or perhaps to Str as it gives it the element that the reason you can't continually use the power is that it taxes the body, thus requiring an extended rest. Though allowing a number of recharges per tier also works.

How about for Dailies if the recharge is rolled during a short rest period so as to make it still only once per encounter if you luck out and get to use it more than once per day due to Recharge?