Replacing the Encounter Power

[Stalker0]

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)

Some great ideas here. It also provides incentives to hit the mooks.....sure I'm not doing as much as if I hit the big man, but it lets me set up my strengths better.

Heck, you could take it a step further and allow manuevers that activate immediately on an attack roll.

Such as:

Disarming Stance: Whenever a fighter in this stance rolls a natural 19 or 20 on his attack roll, he may immediately apply the disarm blah blah.

 

[groklynn]

Cooldown timers - LIKE IT! Just put some marker at your ability/power and count a cooldown time!
E.g. you could use d6 for this purpose. Throw d6 after a use of ability. The result is a number of rounds you'll have to wait to use your exploit again. After next round just turn a dice to a lesser number. After "1" you can use your attack again. Add some modifiers (e.g. specialization in some ability grants -1 to cooldown, or lesser dice to throw, or else), add some restrictions (e.g. 1 cooldown ability per 3 levels, so at level 20 you'll have 6/7 rechargeable abilities, that's not a big deal; and you'll still have your vancian-style dailies and at-wills). If power cards or something similar will remain (and I'm sure they will, WotC is a card-trading games company first of all, they just LOVE cardboard), it will be easy to housekeep every single dice on every single ability card. Even if not, they could add some empty space on charsheet to put a dice on.
In this case encounter abilities could be a little bit more interesting, and much more believable - you just can't do more, cause your training isn't perfect enough to use these certain abilities more frequently. Cause I hate fighters with encounter powers 4e style - WHY fighter can't do his stuff 2 times per encounter?! Mages are ok, clerics too, but sorcerers and mages? But if it will be some sort of cooldown - why not?

 

[Glade Riven]

The Fighter thing: That isn't a cooldown, that's bonus crit mechanics. The suggestion I had for fighters was based off Ready Actions.

Back on topic, why track multiple cooldowns? You choose your ability to use, and then have to wait for the cooldown before using another ability. Only one cooldown to track per player. Max of, say, 3 "prepped" cooldown abilities per day. Keeps a dash of Vancian in there with that method.

 

[Stalker0]

The Fighter thing: That isn't a cooldown, that's bonus crit mechanics.

This is when the lines get blurred, and a mechanic can serve multiple functions.

All a cooldown is at the base definition is a period of time a person must wait until they can use an ability again.


The "bonus crit mechanic" can be used as a cooldown, its simply that:

1) The player doesn't know ahead of time how long the cooldown will be.
2) The cooldown duration is not static, and can have a wide range of variance.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Imo, one problem with encounter powers is that they are clearly better than at-wills, so it's a no brainer to use your encounter power at the start of a fight. Otoh, this is less of a problem once PCs are higher level and have many encounter powers to pick from, making the choice interesting.

Another problem is that of decreasing power level throughout the fight, we every big battle ended by feeble at-wills traded back and forth. We really want it to go the opposite way, an escalation of power, for two reasons. Firstly, it's more exciting and, secondly, it simulates fiction better.

One option would be to require the use of an at-will before any encounter powers can be used. Dailies could require the prior use of two encounter powers. One could build further tiers of power into this system to make it more interesting.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Actually, in my group, the encounter power is not used on every opportunity. And I had fights with my encounter power not expended.

Actually, an additional dice of damage, or a good effect can be more useful later in the fight. When you are ready to concentrate your attacks on one target. When you are sure, which enemy is no minion. When you are sure you can drop someone with an extra hit die or so. Also there are pretty strong at wills flying around. Templar strength cleric at wills are so high damaging, that you chose your encounter powers for effects like healing or area damage, not just a bit of damage.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

I'm not a fan of encounter powers at all. If an exploit, trick, maneuver, spell or blessing happens but once in an encounter, it should be because of the natural limitations or restrictions on performing that action, not on the artificial one of "just because".

Perhaps you need to have tricked or out-maneuvered the target? Perhaps they need to be offering you opportunity? Perhaps your ally needs to be flanking a larger-sized enemy with you? (Additionally perhaps that ally needs to have just hit that larger target?) Perhaps they need to be bloodied? Perhaps you need to have successfully performed a setup action on the target the turn before? Perhaps your character needs to have had a bead on a target since last turn, they have not moved, and your character remains unseen? Perhaps your character needs to expend an action point (or possibly even two) to perform the action? The more exacting the restrictions, the more powerful (or interesting) the result.

There are so many flavourful ways of doing this rather than needing to resort to the oversimplification of saying only once an encounter, or on the back of a meaningless and random recharge roll.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[hanez]

I dont like the encounter power at all.

Prefer at wills, dailies and abilities that can be 3 x a day.

I am of the belief that the fighter should be like 3.x with a significant power boost and more attacks per round. leave power options for a different martial class or as a module for the fighter.

 

[CM]

If there is to be a recharge mechanic for players i would rather see it powered by misses rather than hits (or d6 rolls)

As a totally off-the-cuff example, say a fighter knows a few special maneuvers. The fighter has 6 maneuver points at the start of combat. Some maneuvers (equivalent to 4e at-wills) cost 0 points to use. Some maneuvers (equivalent to 4e encounter powers) cost 2 points to use. The most powerful maneuvers (equivalent to 4e daily powers) cost 5 points to use.

Missing with a 0-point or 2-point maneuver refunds 1 point. Missing with a 5-point maneuver refunds 2 points.

You would need some sort of fatigue limit, like perhaps you can't spend more points per combat than your Con score. Maybe abilities like Second Wind could refund a few maneuver points in addition to hit points. Higher-level characters get the ability to spend additional points per fight.

In this way, the fighter still gets cool abilities but isn't limited to using them once per day (or per combat).

Edit: I noticed this is pretty similar to 4e psionics.

 

[Stalker0]

Another problem is that of decreasing power level throughout the fight, we every big battle ended by feeble at-wills traded back and forth. We really want it to go the opposite way, an escalation of power, for two reasons. Firstly, it's more exciting and, secondly, it simulates fiction better.
.

Very much agree here. While "fatigue" makes sense in real life, that's not how fiction tends to go.