Why the Encounter Powers hate? (Maneuvers = Encounter)

[Pickles JG]

I will add this. When essentials came out it's re-think of the existing classes went a long way to addressing this concern. I sometimes wonder with essentials that wotc wasn't thinking the same thing because the way the martial class's got a work over was so damned close to what I was thinking was needed.

I did not get this at all. I liked the reworking of the Cleric & Wizard to give them a stronger flavour but the one dimeinsional martial classes left me cold.

I share pemerton's experience of 4e as a player. Different characters feel very different in play. Even 3-4 different rogues played together can feel different (DPS movement tricks status efffects). Some classes fail at this -a bow ranger is pretty much a bow ranger but he feels different from everyone else.

OTOH from a DM perspective the game felt scripted to me sometimes. I ran a group from the preview to 16th level over 3 years at one session every month or two. By the end of it I could predict exactly what each character was going to do in each fight, even though several of the players would spend a while pondering what their actions were going to be. (3/5 PCs were the pregens!)

I like 4e a lot but I do not feel encounter powers give options other than superficially. Each encounter power is significantly more potent than an at will so you are going to use it sometime in each fight, the question is when. For very straightforward classes when all the encounter powers just deal more damage in differing amounts it's merely a matter of lining them up. For the more ticksy powers or ones that have areas of effect there is the tactical game of trying to set them up for best effect.
I think this is even worse for psionic classes where they seem to have a huge range of options for spending their powerpoints but in practice they have a best option that they spam most of the time.

This applies less to some characters who have more situational powers like rogues who get a lot of damage from sneak attack & they can use encounter powers to do things they ony need occasionally like sliding enemies around.

Dailies in different classes work the similalrly. Some classes have one per fight dailies, the best example being Barbarians. They plan to spend one daily rage in every fight regardless of how tough it is.
Other classes have Oh ****! dailies that they pull out when the fight is going badly or looks likely to such as massive healing powers.
There are also situational daily powers that cover a specific problem you might have but will not be useful in every difficult fight. Many controller powers sit here such as one my rogue had to knock an enemy prone for a while which was for shooting down awkward fliers.
Massive damage powers such as Rangers get probably fit in between the first two categories. If things are looking tough then quickly killing a bad guy or two can certainly help & across a party using one or two in each fight can save other resources.

Anyway that's drifting off topic but explains why 4e classes feel different to me.

Back on topic I can live without encounter powers but would certainly not object to having them. I think I would be happiest if there were some situational abilities you might use every couple of fights when they gave good value ie not just high damage attacks. Ie these would be tricks that work pretty much automatically.

 

[Dragoslav]

Anyway, as I said, maybe this is in part a build-dependent experience.

I think this is key. You can build a fighter with more controller-y powers (less damage but forced movement/status effects) and you can easily build a wizard as a controller (less damage but forced movement/status effects), and their results are going to end up being very similar, but that's the nature of having two characters fill the same role. For my part, I think the ability to create a fighter who gets similar results to a wizard is a strength of the system rather than a weakness, but it's important to talk to your group about who's playing what, so you don't step on each other's toes. If you really want to play a fighter, and your group already has a fighter but not a wizard, you can say, "Okay, I'll be a fighter, but I'll take a lot of powers that let me move enemies around and impose negative conditions on them while the other guy does straight-up damage."

As a side-note about Essentials, I get the most feeling of "sameness" out of the martial Essentials characters, although I haven't actually played them. Maybe they seem "samey" on paper but play out differently in practice, like some say that the pre-Essentials classes seem different in theory but play out to be the same in practice.

 

[Chalice]

This is probably helpful to the discussion (which I haven't read: tl;dr) in no way whatsoever, but I happen to rather like encounter-limited abilities.

What I would prefer is scene-limited abilities, however. A seemingly subtle difference, perhaps. But no, it's quite distinct: all encounters are scenes; not all scenes are encounters.

That aside, I'm all for them. for every class. Not everything should be scene-limited, of course, but many things could be.

If it helps to put my post into context, I use the Book of Nine Swords qutie regularly, but do not play 4th edition. Whether that would help is doubtful, but for the sake of full disclosure...

 

[Steely_Dan]

I think that the BoNS and 4th Ed are great for anime style campaigns, that is in no way a bad thing (I want to run a D&D campaign, anime style, where the players should picture the campaign like anime), but I do not think all campaigns should encompass that.

That's the way I have always approached D&D (since, well...now I feel old...), you can do your Sword & Sorcery, LotR, CoC, Anime, whatever tickles the campaign's fancy.

 

[Herschel]

The sameness wasn't the powers themselves, there was fluff to make them distinct. But the delivery mechanism (as in the AEDU strcture) and end result of it's use became indistinct. The thing that did remain distinct was the core class and paragon features, they did keep characters recognizable. But without that you just have the AEDU, and when one player delivered and encounter that caused x damage and slowed a target, and player b used a different power that caused y damage and slowed a target(with some light variance) using the same power structure for delivery...

This was an observation of result. In all, 4e was the most successful campaign our group has ever played, and it's the robustness of 4e that helped this result.

But ultimately, some aspects left us flat. We spent a lot of time talking about the campaign once it was over and this was a common complaint from all involved.

I stress again, I'm not claiming this is what happened to others, and I'm not saying this is gospel. But the community that claims 4e can be same same...at least I can say I understand where they are coming from.

And I think a lot of it does depend on the players being homogenous moreso than anything in the game. 4E is big on synergy and teamwork but if "everyone" in a group gravitates to slowing powers, for example, characters end up tailoring towards each other and you do get more overlap. I'm a big fan of battlefield control but I can see that issue coming up in an established, long-term group where people have been playing together for ages.

And there's also player approach. Using an Assault Swordmage as an example (character I was thinking about last night) looking at character the character can mark and run/kite/charge something else thinking "This is good because I can hit more enemies on the battlefield, I'll mark him, striking it and then still striking him when he attacks an ally" while looking at it in character "I'm going to strike it, but touch my friends and I shall knock your punk azz down!". It's sometimes easy to switch between the two but as people we easily can fall in to teh habit of singly focusing on one approach.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

I've read the whole thread, but I mainly just wanted to respond to two things:


1. Yes, hit points, levels, and other gamist conceits have always been there. Adding more gamist conceits makes the game more gamist. Some are fine with that. Some prefer that. Some dislike that. It's a matter of opinion. It is also a change. No, it's not a change of kind, but a change of degree (how gamist the game overall is).

It bothers me when people utilize the "4e isn't so different" argument. It IS quite different from 3e. For some that may mean it's better, for others, less desirable. But it is different. There is no such thing as "exactly the same, but better." That's a logical infallibility (at least as applied to rpgs).

Additionally, I like 4e. I dislike encounter powers (and AEDU). I also disliked that all classes used the same power framework. Essentials was FANTASTIC for me. It really fixed a lot with the system that bugged me. Comparing something I don't like in 4e to something identical in 3e doesn't make me like it. If I don't like it in 4e, I probably disliked it in 3e as well.



2. Encounter powers are NOT identical to Bo9S maneuvers. There are at least two meaningful reasons for this. The first is the "recharge during combat" element. A game element was incorporated to describe how a character could recharge himself that was somewhat more narratively forgiving than the attempts at explaining 4e's encounter powers. Secondly, and quite importantly, Bo9S were powers. They were "fluffed" as semi-mystical, semi-magical. They are easier to describe in game because they're intended to be non-mundane (mundane meaning "real worldy" rather than "boring").



Overall...I find the original post a bit troubling. I don't think it was entirely intended this way, but could be read as "ok 4e haters, take a look at this: encounter powers were in 3e, so they're fine".

What this take (which, again, I don't think was entirely the message or intent of the OP) misses is that: 1. people can like and dislike elements of 4e whether or not they were present in prior editions (they may have disliked them in prior editions as well), 2. people can dislike elements of 4e (or any edition) but still like the edition itself, 3. the maneuvers were similar, but not the same and the differences could be substantial to some while being irrelevant to others, 4. while present, they were in a single optional book that some may have liked and some may not have (as opposed to being the core/only way to play upon 4e's release). Imagine a Bo9S and Tome of Magic ONLY 3e game. I doubt most 3e players would recognize it as "3e" even though the books were supplements for 3e, and therefore optional parts of the edition.



So, to answer the title, Even supposing I liked 3e, I could:
1. Have disliked Bo9S (hence encounter power hate).
2. Have liked Bo9S as a mystical fighter variant (but not mundane, hence encounter power hate for mundane fighters).
3. Have liked Bo9S as an element of my D&D, but still wanted the option to play a character without maneuvers and/or encounters (hence encounter power hate).
4. Found Bo9S more realistic with its recharges than 4e encounter recharges (hence encounter power hate).

 

[B.T.]

I hate BONS, so any argument that is based on its awesomeitude is sort of a non-starter for me.

 

[Steely_Dan]

2. Encounter powers are NOT identical to Bo9S maneuvers. There are at least two meaningful reasons for this. The first is the "recharge during combat" element.

I read that initially they were looking at a refresh mechanic in 4th Ed, but decided against it, to many's chagrin.

 

[Herschel]

I will add this. When essentials came out it's re-think of the existing classes went a long way to addressing this concern. I sometimes wonder with essentials that wotc wasn't thinking the same thing because the way the martial class's got a work over was so damned close to what I was thinking was needed.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Essentials characters had come first, then the PHB 3 Psionic classes, then PHB 1 & 2-style characters. To me, Essentials felt like a huge step backwards and I don't enjoy those characters but as a progression from 3E transitioning that way would have been ...."smoother" or "more natural" for many I think.

 

[Zaphling]

Free Form Martial Powers Optional Rule

I transferd the link to 4e discusi0ns. It was indeed a wr0ng thread. Bt i stl left the link

Here's the original link: http://waysofthedeeem.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/free-form-martial-powers-optional-rule/