Replacing the Encounter Power

[Glade Riven]

One thing I liked about 4e monster design over 3e was the sheer amount of powers (especially for high level monsters) got trimmed down, often paired with a recharge mechanic of "roll a d6." I'd like to see it on the player side, perhaps as a replacement for the "Encounter Power" - Roll a check to recharge that power, ability, or spell at the end of your next turn. It prevents "spamming" a low-level power, unless a player is really lucky - even then, the power could only be used a maximum of every other turn.

 

[Blackwarder]

I hope the core rules do away with powers. I'd much rather have powers be in a separate module...

Warder

 

[GX.Sigma]

How does a recharge roll fix any of the problems people have with encounter powers?

 

[Dice4Hire]

I would have no problem with a recharge mechanic for certain powers. It can add some excitement to the mix.

As for powers in 5E and encounter powers in particular, bring em on.

 

[Leatherhead]

When you don't have encounter powers, you are spamming at-wills or basic attacks, or full attacks, or iterative attacks, or so many attacks. This is the main reason I dislike low level games: Too many attacks that are too inaccurate, too weak, too simple, or just pain infective.

IF you want to prevent "spamming" the solution is to make combat shorter. A combination of attacks working better and less resilience all around would be amazing.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Recharge mechanics aren't inherently bad. They actually can be pretty good.

However, the problem is if a situation can happen where a fighter can swing his sword and then be stuck for the rest of the battle saying "Boy, I wish I could do that again, but I can't, even though I'm not tired and feel perfectly fine".

I could see a recharge mechanic presented as an alternate spellcasting system (as it was in 3e), but other things have to be handled differently, either by having no limits (as has always been the case in D&D) or by having an actual system for fatigue that makes some kind of sense.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

no thanks. No d6 rolling please...

but:

Maybe have fighter attacks that can be used after you rolled a 16+ on your last attack against a foe.
This way you have something like a recharge mechanic that is based on a good attack, that allowed you to position yourself better.

Against a very heavily armored foe, every hit may allow you to take advantage. If you don´t like that, you can define a good hit, if you hit AC+5 (You could even define two AC´s for everyone: normal hit/good hit)

 

[Glade Riven]

I'd rather have the option for Bo9S's martial maneuvers over 4e style powers for the fighter, except instead of spending a maneuver or 4e's encounter powers I'd have it that a fighter would have to take a full round action to "set up" the special attack, with feats that could shorten the time to a move action or allow the fighter to get a defense bonus during the set-up. Still want an optional blade magic module along side more mundane abilities.

But that's slightly off topic...

What I'm really talking about are special (non-fighter) abilities - like Dragonborn's breath weapon, a Drow's Dancing Lights or Globe of Darkness ability, Eladrin's teleport, an overcharge of the Warlock's energy blast, etc. Or maybe a random cooldown instead of a "saving throw" for recharge, like 3e's dragon breath weapons. 1d6 for how many rounds before you can use that ability again, with a feat later on that reduces it to 1d4. That might be a bit more stable.

 

[slobster]

I like the idea of abilities with variable recharge times. It would be an exciting way to give a player more powerful combat options that aren't usable all the time.

What I don't like the sound of is a system, like some previous editions, which has a large bookkeeping burden. If you have 5 players with 2 or 3 rechargeable abilities each, do we want to make the group track 10 or 15 separate cooldown timers in addition to all of the other things going on?

A "recharge on 5 or 6" mechanic avoids the worst of this, but still adds significant rolling to the beginning of each turn. A self-apparent solution would also be to limit the number of cooldown-type abilities offered.

Since it's D&D "take it or leave it" 5E, cooldown powers like this should be either an optional module, or there should be a module offered in core to replace cooldowns with something else (encounter powers maybe).

So to address what you were originally saying, I would use something like that in my game as long as it didn't slow combat down. I hope that it's considered as an option.

 

[john112364]

no thanks. No d6 rolling please...

but:

Maybe have fighter attacks that can be used after you rolled a 16+ on your last attack against a foe.
This way you have something like a recharge mechanic that is based on a good attack, that allowed you to position yourself better.

Against a very heavily armored foe, every hit may allow you to take advantage. If you don´t like that, you can define a good hit, if you hit AC+5 (You could even define two AC´s for everyone: normal hit/good hit)

I like this idea. It adds a recharge mechanic without extra die rolling. Simple and easy to track.