Why do we need Encounter Powers?

[D'karr]

Encounter powers are a big part of the enjoyment for me - they rarely feel as weak as most at-wills, and they never feel as game-breaking as dailies (even when some are actually worse). There's also no sense of "do I waste this now?" with encounters, or at least not much of one, whereas rationing dailies isn't all that much fun for me.

Another issue with dailies was missing with them. Until dailies had a miss effect, or were reliable they were a total gamble. Nothing more anticlimactic than missing with the resource that you will have to wait a longtime to recover.

 

[Umbran]

Dailies let PCs supernova if they know it'll be the only fight...

No, they don't.

In 3e and before, a spellcaster could really supernova - blow *everything*, all their spells, in one fight.

You might burn all your dailies in a single fight, but you're still going to have encounter and at-wills for the rest of the day, no matter how many encounters that is.

So, in the classic sense, no supernova - you cannot really blow the whole thing at once.

 

[keterys]

I'd like more of a focus on encounters, with dailies being more restricted... like maybe your standard daily attacks are more like barbarian rages and warden forms, affecting the whole encounter, but you can only use 1 in an encounter.

Then others can be more emergency-ish "When (you/ally) drop to 0" "Restore a surge" whatever-ish type stuff... but nothing you can just hurl into the first battle of the day then go rest.

 

[ggroy]

I would far rather get rid of dailies over encounters.

...

I would be happy dropping dailies, but not encounters.

In one of my previous 4E games, the players went back to town and took the rest of the day off, after every encounter.

So in effect, their daily powers functioned like "encounter" powers.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'd like to see dailies moved to magic items, and remove all that stuff about daily magic item activation limits. In fact, don't even have any thing but properties and dailies on items.

Then all the "resource" management goes into items, and all the "things my character can do natively" go into at-will and encounter powers. The nice side effect of this is that you can then run heavier or weaker magic as not a mere power shift, but a style shift as well.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I'd be asking "Why do we need dailies?" sooner than this question.

But why do we need them?

Also:

Consider the alternative. A more Essentials-like game...

This is reason enough for me.

Also also, encounter powers rock my world. Of the three power types, encounters are my favorite.

 

[MerricB]

and remove all that stuff about daily magic item activation limits.

It's gone.

Seriously, it's gone.

Essentials removed the activation limits for daily magic item powers.

Here you go: Magic Item Rarity: Countdown to Essentials

Cheers!

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Essentials removed the activation limits for daily magic item powers.

One of these days, I'm going to have to actually read the rules compendium, which I own. I can't bring myself to do it, because so much of it I already know. And in this case, i'd already house ruled that rule away before Essentials was launched.

 

[MerricB]

One of these days, I'm going to have to actually read the rules compendium, which I own. I can't bring myself to do it, because so much of it I already know. And in this case, i'd already house ruled that rule away before Essentials was launched.

You'd be very unlikely to pick up the rule change, because it just doesn't exist any more.

Cheers!

 

[Kzach]

One thing I forgot to mention in my OP was that part of my reasoning came from thinking back on how previous editions worked.

If you think about it, 1e-3e basically had an at-will + daily structure. Wizards had nothing BUT dailies whereas fighters and thieves had nothing BUT at-wills. Clerics, paladins, rangers, etc. had a mix of at-wills and dailies. I can't, off the top of my head, think of any class that had an encounter power.

One of my other reasons was that doing something 'special' every encounter makes it all the less 'special'. I find I get bored of my encounter powers solely on the basis that they become standard tactics for me that provide no real excitement beyond what a well considered at-will would provide.

I've always been of the opinion, as a DM, that a rough balance of encounters is along the lines of 2 easy (-2 party level), 2 average (equal party level), and 1 hard (+2 party level), with 1 very hard (+4 party level) every ten or so encounters (in no particular order). For the easy and average encounters which provide the bulk of the player experience, combat should be short and sweet. Four rounds max for easy, six rounds max for average. Only with the hard and very hard encounters would I expect players to dish out the big guns and even then, by doing so, the combat shouldn't be more than about six rounds.

Having twenty encounter powers just starts to become redundant at this point. Not only that, but the amount of times I've seen people suffer decision paralysis, because of encounter powers, would add up to several hours worth of lost gameplay at this point.