Saeviomagy
Adventurer
My group has been playing 4e for a while now, and are now approaching the point where instead of getting new powers, we're going to be trading in lower level powers for higher level ones.
And it struck me that I don't actually want to: the powers that I have are pretty cool, and there's no direct upgrades for them.
Now, that said, I will undeniably gain in power if I do swap: not swapping is a quite suboptimal way to go.
In fact, the powers that I've selected in the first place are generally suboptimal: they all have niche uses with effects that require some setup. I'd be better off ditching them for more generically useful ones (like ones that flat-out cause more damage for instance). And that's a shame.
This issue is all derived from the fact that if I'm not using every daily I have every day, and every encounter power I have every encounter, then (assuming that dailies are more powerful than encounters, which are more powerful than at-wills) I'm playing sub-optimally.
There's a simple solution to both of these issues: limit the number of encounter and daily expenditures while allowing people to pick more powers.
In other words, the current line in the PHB that lists how many dailies and encounter powers a character gets would become a "dailies per day" and "encounter powers per encounter" line. At the point where you're supposed to trade in powers for higher level ones, you would instead simply gain those additional powers. You would still be restricted to using a particular daily once per day and a particular encounter power once per encounter to avoid spamming the same thing over and over again.
Now I'd like to take it further. Perhaps as far as having multiple powers selected at each level, but I've got a feeling that the bookkeeping might become too much or you would end up with people picking (say) two first level dailies, 2 5th level dailies, 2 9th level dailies, then using each day they'd use 2 9th level dailies and 1 5th level, which would result in a significant power increase.
If you were going to go this route, you'd probably need to record what power level dailies you'd used, and you'd only be allowed to use lower level dailies in a particular slot. So at 9th you'd get a 1st, 5th and 9th level daily slot. At higher levels you'd gain a new upper level slot, lose the bottom level slot and keep all your powers while adding 2 new high level ones in.
The same would all apply to encounter powers too.
I'm not sure how to do utilities, because they span encounter/at-will/dailes and I don't think that allowing them to be swapped between categories is going to be particularly balanced.
And it struck me that I don't actually want to: the powers that I have are pretty cool, and there's no direct upgrades for them.
Now, that said, I will undeniably gain in power if I do swap: not swapping is a quite suboptimal way to go.
In fact, the powers that I've selected in the first place are generally suboptimal: they all have niche uses with effects that require some setup. I'd be better off ditching them for more generically useful ones (like ones that flat-out cause more damage for instance). And that's a shame.
This issue is all derived from the fact that if I'm not using every daily I have every day, and every encounter power I have every encounter, then (assuming that dailies are more powerful than encounters, which are more powerful than at-wills) I'm playing sub-optimally.
There's a simple solution to both of these issues: limit the number of encounter and daily expenditures while allowing people to pick more powers.
In other words, the current line in the PHB that lists how many dailies and encounter powers a character gets would become a "dailies per day" and "encounter powers per encounter" line. At the point where you're supposed to trade in powers for higher level ones, you would instead simply gain those additional powers. You would still be restricted to using a particular daily once per day and a particular encounter power once per encounter to avoid spamming the same thing over and over again.
Now I'd like to take it further. Perhaps as far as having multiple powers selected at each level, but I've got a feeling that the bookkeeping might become too much or you would end up with people picking (say) two first level dailies, 2 5th level dailies, 2 9th level dailies, then using each day they'd use 2 9th level dailies and 1 5th level, which would result in a significant power increase.
If you were going to go this route, you'd probably need to record what power level dailies you'd used, and you'd only be allowed to use lower level dailies in a particular slot. So at 9th you'd get a 1st, 5th and 9th level daily slot. At higher levels you'd gain a new upper level slot, lose the bottom level slot and keep all your powers while adding 2 new high level ones in.
The same would all apply to encounter powers too.
I'm not sure how to do utilities, because they span encounter/at-will/dailes and I don't think that allowing them to be swapped between categories is going to be particularly balanced.
