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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 4258324" data-attributes="member: 32164">Okay Mark, consider this.I've played a game where almost all the classes were entirely non-magical (Iron Heroes, for the record). However, all those non-magical classes had special moves that they could build up to, or set up, by taking actions to do so. They'd acquire tokens every round. As the fight drug on, they'd be able to pull off a minor power every round, or save up their tokens to pull off bigger, more elaborate stunts.It was cool. It represented all the motions the character had to go through in order to set up their best moves. But what was a lot cooler was when they actually got to do their best moves. In practice (and in-game), they were able to pull off a couple of their better moves about once every fight, and were able to set up their very best move about once every 4-6 fights.To me, per-encounter powers and per-day powers are a way of modelling that without having to worry about all the bookkeeping. Sure, gathering tokens was, in a sense, fun, but mostly just because you knew you were setting up something cool. Building up points so you can pull off your good move is tedious. So, think about it this way.When your fighter is using those at-wills, he's actually setting his foe up so the special move (represented by his per-encounter ability) will work. And ditto with the daily. It's a rare circumstance when it comes into play, but it's the PLAYER who gets to decide when that circumstance occurs.Rather than playing a game of "Mother, may I?" with the DM for when his character can use his best moves, the player gets to make that call when he feels it's appropriate.The player knows he can use the power once a day. But all Joe the Fighter knows is that the circumstances surrounding that exploit only occur rarely. He was lucky to set it up once today. Pulling it off again just isn't likely.Yes, this requires you to separate player knowledge (Daily Exploits are available whenever you want, but only once a day) from character knowledge (you can't pull off a maneuver like that very often).Basically, encounter and daily exploits are a way of abstracting luck, effort, and circumstance. Yes, there are other ways to model these things (like the Iron Heroes token system), but IMO, they add a lot of unnecessary bookkeeping and achieve essentially the same result (albeit sometimes a bit "swingier").Maybe that helps. Maybe it doesn't.</blockquote>

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