Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 kaliban7 May 27, 2011 0:02:37	Here is an idea I am considering to develop and test. Using any daily Power costs two "activation points". A used daily power can be recovered as usual - but can only be used in play if the "activation" cost is met. You gain "activation points" in the folloxing ways:  - each PC earns one point when a milestone is met.  - each PC earns one point when he becomes bloodied for the first time in a given encounter.  - each PC earns one point the first time a member of the team is bloodied in a given encounter. This is awardeed only once by encounter, whatever the number of wounded PCs. Possibility : allowing characters to give one or more earned activation points to another member of the team. Or having only one activation pool for the whole team. Goal : enforce the "dramatic" use of daily powers. You now use them when the fight becomes "dangerous", making them feel like a kind of heroic action. Important note : I propose this idea even if I consider it to be more of a "test of concept" for an hypothetic re-design of "dailies" along a new line, like it could be done with an hypothetical 5E. Your thoughts ?
#2 pluisjen May 27, 2011 1:07:25	This will work fairly well at medium levels (where you can't use Dailies unless you fight a lot) but it won't work at low levels (where you basically can't use your Daily in the first battle but otherwise anything goes) and it probably won't work in higher levels (where you'd need to get bloodied in every battle or you'll end up with Dailies you can't use)
#3 slobo777a May 27, 2011 9:02:23	The problem with tying the activation points idea to "bloodied" is that this indirectly ties the number of points you get to the number of healing surges you have, the surges remain the same as you level up, and are different for each class, but that number of Dailies you need to use for balance purposes goes up. For example, the mechanic will naturally grant an extra Daily use, maybe two, over a typical day for Defenders compared to Controllers. The proposed mechanic may also encourage some players to heal to just above bloodied rather than back to full hits, during Short Rests, as that would lead to gaining more activation points. I would suggest you look at other things that you want to promote that are completely equal for all character builds, perhaps look at  more things you could do with resting and milestones, goals and successes. You need to take into account number of Dailies that PCs have access to at different levels, at the very least it should be reasonable that a high level player gets to use all their Dailies between Extended Rests if they play the game well and meet your criteria. Edit: Actually, a party pool of activation points might fix a lot of this. You need to be aiming at ~40 activation points total for a 5 PC party at high level, during a "full" day (i.e. one that meets your criteria as DM and houserule designer as being dramatic enough). Let's arbitrarily say that day has 6 encounters. So the party get 10 of those points from milestones (the third milestone grants activation points too late to be of any use). One PC bloodied per combat would gain 36 more over the day, so on the back of an envelope a party pool version is doable. Personally, I quite like the open access to all dailies that PCs have at the moment. It encourages some resource-management thinking. Do they use more dailies to win quicker (and risk less surges), or do they save them for the next battle, which might be harder? Rationing out use of the dailies reduces player ability to do this.