NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5712772" data-attributes="member: 2011">But, that's the point. It is the sheer number of buffs and debuffs. And, those buffs and debuffs come in many different varieties:1) I buff myself 2) I buff an ally.3) I buff multiple allies.4) I debuff a foe.5) I debuff multiple foes.On top of each of these, there are the different durations.On top of each of these, there are the conditional effects. The Conduit of Ice type powers were the zone does damage, but only if an enemy ends its turn in the zone. Or Daunting Presence where the foes take a -2 to attack the PC, but not other PCs, and the NPCs have to be adjacent for this to occur. There are a ton of these types of conditional effects in the game.So my point is that it is much easier if there are fewer types of durations and fewer numbers of #2 through #5. #1 is easy for each player to keep track of. I am +2 to attacks next turn. People rarely forget that.#2 and #3 are the second easiest to remember, but still often require bookkeeping.But, the DM is running 5 NPCs per encounter. #4 and #5 are more difficult for the DM to handle on his own and are a significant reason people use little tokens on miniatures.Getting back to the first sentence here, it is the sheer number of buffs and debuffs. There are only a few ways to get rid of the numbers mathematically:1) Decrease the number of powers that can do #2 through #5, especially At Will powers than can do these type of things round after round after round. Having an Encounter power doing it once in a while is fine. Spamming an At Will doesn't address the problem.2) Decrease the number of different durations. Make all disadvantageous effects a saving throw, make all advantageous effects either until the end of the next turn (for slightly stronger effects), or until the end of the encounter (for weaker effects).3) Decrease the number of powers that do things conditionally. Instead of Daunting Presence being a foe is -2 to hit if adjacent and only on the PC, instead make it a +1 to the defenses of the PC against all foes. The focus becomes on buffing the PC instead of conditionally debuffing foes against specific targets and in specific circumstances. That's much easier to remember and to bookkeep.4) Decrease the number of powers overall.The number of times each player can do buffs and debuffs and especially conditional stuff per encounter has to decrease in order to address the problem. Having every PC being able to throw out an effect/condition nearly every single round also means having to keep track of those effects/conditions unless they are instantaneous.As for the narrative part, that's easy. I've rarely had a problem narrating what happens based on the game mechanics except for a few rare cases like the original Come and Get It. Do you have some examples where the narrative is illogical?</blockquote>

Verification