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Message: <blockquote data-quote="herrozerro" data-source="post: 5620444" data-attributes="member: 86211">On the topic of 4e not being an evolution, here is a great perspective I read from the WotC forums by Tempest_Stormwind:"Also, the idea of warriors using spell-like mechanics for martial exploits did show up pre-4th. This was clearest in the Tome of Battle (3.5 - martial maneuvers are very similar to 4e powers, except all of them were per-encounter with some method of recovering them), but was also present in earlier editions somewhat - look through any fighter-type book for the phrase "once per day". This was the key phrase that gave some powerful abilities limits - it was what allowed the wizard to cast his mighty spells that made everyone feel sad in the pants, but "only once per day". It also showed up on several warrior special moves (paladins come to mind).From the perspective of a game designer starting from an earlier edition, the big innovation of power mechanics (apart from rules standardization) was probably the use of "per encounter" balancing (which showed up systemwide in WotC's Star Wars Saga Edition game, which is mechanically somewhere between 3.5 and 4th). The idea was that a day is made up of some variable number of encounters, and it's the encounters that care about balance (the day cares about stamina, the encounters care about power. It's like the difference between torque and mileage.). That grew out of cooldown-based mechanics (which were featured prominently in the Tome of Magic, with the strongest abilities of pact magic operating on a 5-round cooldown, on the assumption that this would work out to more or less once per battle anyway; cooldowns have been present in the game for a VERY long time, going back at LEAST to 2nd edition dragon breath). Even then, the "power level" of these once-per-encounter abilities is pretty close to 3e's Warlock, which took traditional spell effects and made them at-will, available some levels later at the point where sorcerers had enough spell slots to cast "enough" of those spells such that it didn't matter (the warlock itself tended to lag a bit since all of its abilities were balanced towards at-will, so there was no extra "buck" to spend for more "bang".). And even then, the sorcerer itself (at least the 3e version; this holds to a lesser extent with its Player's Option version) was an attempt to give wizards some stamina for signature effects (because if the wizard has to bust out a crossbow, he doesn't feel like a wizard).So, we have a clear evolution here: Powerful "Per Day" abilities, notably Wizard spells -> Sorcerer (more time spent casting, less bookkeeping) -> Warlock (at-will magic at the point where it isn't gamebreaking, even less bookkeeping) -> Cooldowns (can afford a bit of extra power, but not truly at-will) -> "Per Encounter" (removes the need to count rounds) -> "Hey, why not use these mechanics, instead of 'once per day', for special warrior moves?" (Tome of Battle) -> Martial exploits. Then there's another step from AEDU to Essentials-style, but I admit I have no experience with essentials, so I don't know how to best describe that. However, this is a pretty clear lineage, at least from a rules-designer point of view. The idea of powers like this didn't come out of nowhere - it was a succession of related design and development decisions. By and large I see them as good decisions in general, too - anything that gives you more time playing the game and feeling like your character, and less time like an accountant, is a good move in my books."</blockquote>

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