SAGA Jedi, spells/maneuvers only once per encounter: in or out?

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

(1) Yes, a wizard using a crossbow specifically is pretty silly; that's a bit of a straw-man. You don't see that in classic literature. It was a mistake in 3E to give them that proficiency; they didn't have it in 1E or 2E. My fix for that is just roll back to 1E and say they can't use crossbows.

Even better! Now we wizards can use even more subpar ranged weapons when we run out of spell! :blech:

Come on - even commoners get crossbow proficiency. Denying that to wizards is just being contrary.

(2) More generally, wizards being forced to use some physical weapon does come up a lot in literature. If it's good enough for Gandalf to fight with a sword or staff, it's good enough for my D&D wizards.

Yeah, but you forget that Gandalf was a badass with numerous Outsider hit dice and a decent BAB to boot.

Your d4, +1/2 BAB wizard isn't going to have that.

 

[breschau]

In Saga there's also the Use the Force skill. A few people have commented in other threads about how it might be the direction 4th Edition is going, just swap out UtF for Spellcraft and away you go.

With just the UtF skill you can project a small object at a target (to-hit roll) and cause damage (1d6) if you hit.

Separately there's the Force Training feat which gives you 1 + Wis bonus in force powers that can be used on a per encounter basis. You can buy the feat multiple times and if your Wis goes up, you get retroactive force powers.

Talents are the likely source of the per day abilities. Some of the per day Saga talents are Spontaneous Skill, Knack, Hyperdriven, and Indomitable.

None of these are as flashy as dropping a fireball, but hey... it's a possibility.

 

[hong]

A less conceptually awkward alternative to 1/encounter abilities might be a short-term recharge time. So you can pull off, say, a diamond nightmare blade (super-powerful ability) only once every 10 rounds, because that's how long it takes to get your mojo back -- that's effectively the same as 1/encounter most of the time.

The recharge time could also vary depending on the strength of the ability. You could have tiers of abilities: tier I is every round, tier II is every 3 rounds, tier III is every 5 rounds, and tier IV is every 10 rounds. Thus spamming magic missile every round is fine, but a fireball might be once every 3 rounds.

The downside is having to keep track of all those timers, which is the reason I can't see them doing this. However, I might implement a house rule that all 1/encounter abilities are really once per 10 rounds. Most of the time it won't make a difference, but for the really long fights it could make things interesting to have a "second wind".

 

[breschau]

A less conceptually awkward alternative to 1/encounter abilities might be a short-term recharge time. So you can pull off, say, a diamond nightmare blade (super-powerful ability) only once every 10 rounds, because that's how long it takes to get your mojo back -- that's effectively the same as 1/encounter most of the time.

The recharge time could also vary depending on the strength of the ability. You could have tiers of abilities: tier I is every round, tier II is every 3 rounds, tier III is every 5 rounds, and tier IV is every 10 rounds. Thus spamming magic missile every round is fine, but a fireball might be once every 3 rounds.

The downside is having to keep track of all those timers, which is the reason I can't see them doing this. However, I might implement a house rule that all 1/encounter abilities are really once per 10 rounds. Most of the time it won't make a difference, but for the really long fights it could make things interesting to have a "second wind".

Only trouble is that's an excessive amout of book keeping. One per encounter is smoother and easier to track, as you mentioned.

Also, in Saga with certain talents, you can spend actions to regain some powers, a natural 20 on a Use the Force check gets you your powers back, and spending a force point also works.

 

[Horacio]

That would be one way to look at it.

Me, my next campaign is going to work on the premise that the world is the creation of a child with a very short attention span. When you do things that are cool, he gives you more power so you can survive to do more cool things (i.e., XP so you level). However he hates things to get repetitive and boring, so he doesn't let people use the same powers over and over again. When you use a power, it always has the same appearance (i.e., animation), and though doing it over and over again saves on the animation budget, it gets kind of boring.

Really, it's going to be sort of like Naruto but without all the flashbacks. I mean, the villains who use the same trick over and over again never win.

Now I just need to find a proper mechanic to encourage the other PCs to have internal monologues pondering what is going on while the other people fight, and explaining to an ambiguous outside audience why Kenshin-sama is not able to block the attacks from the guy with the horizontal stripes on his shirt sleeves.

That reminds me a bit of Exalted, where Creation itself loves flashy moves and original maneuvers, rewarding Exalted who use them by making cool movements easier to success (that's the official justification of the Stunt mechanism, when the maneuver is cool and original the PC has extra dice as reward). And long internal monologues in wuxia/anime tradition too. It would be excellent to implement that in D&D

 

[Baumi]

The easiest way to overcome this "problem" is to just take your signature (combat-)moves several times (2 or 3 times per fight should really be enough).