For that, I had this idea I want to test out. But I need some help to give some shape to it. Each source differs in the amount of powers it gives to a class. So, Martial gives more at-wills, Arcane more dailies, and such. I know this will create some balance issues, but, as long as they're not overpowered, that's what I want. I want the power sources to be different! That being Martial really means something other than my powers come from physical training.
So far I have the two that I said earlier. Martial gives more at-wills (because, you have more training and know more simple manoeuvres), while Arcana gives more dailies (because your powers demand more from yourself). I want Martial characters to have something like 6/4/2/7 powers (at-wills/encounters/dailies/utilities), Arcana characters to have something like 2/2/6/8, and things like that. Now, I need help defining the other power sources, and the actual power learning progressions for the classes.
So, any help with this?
All classes gain the normal amount of powers at the normal levels, but at 1st, 11th, and 21st levels, they gain one extra power of their level or lower, according to their power source:
Arcane: extra Daily power
Divine: extra Utility power
Martial: extra At-will power
Primal: extra Encounter power
Psionic and Shadow: ?
This would be a pretty simple way to alter the number of powers based on power source. The big problem with tinkering around with the numbers of powers characters gain is that things get unbalanced very quickly...
At-wills give X amount of damage.
Encounters 2X, and Dailies 3X.
This is gross simplification (since it varies by level), but that's basically the gist of how they calculated the effectiveness of the various powers. If you give someone an extra daily, then you're allowing that power source to do more than the one with the extra at-will.
If you want to find a way to make each power source unique, then I suggest you do it with the fluff and background rather than the mechanics, which is harder to balance around.
Yes, probably it isn't balanced. I know. But, I'm not looking for an extreme balance. I'm looking for a mechanical differentation between the power sources. Even if that leads to some disbalancing between the powers (as long as it isn't broken or overpowered).
They're not big differences, but they're there.
On the other hand, I appreciate the fact that the sources are mostly fluff. If I want to run a game where, say, there are no gods, but certain humans have a reputation as "miracle workers", it allows me to use the divine classes easily in my new godless setting. Or if I think the primal power source is silly and not essentially different to nature-flavoured divine (which I do) I can run that way without the slightest mechanical impediment.
I'm honestly not sure why they bothered with power sources to start with, but there you go.
You just explained why, so their mechanics are justified. You have to have Primal classes before you can give primal characters more HP. You have to segregate divine classes to give them exclusive (theoretically) access to channel divinity. It's a way to help orient the design process and keep the powers in line with what the class is supposed to do.
?? You can't just give the classes who should have more HP more HP without trying to justify it as being based on their primal origin?
It's a hard argument to make that the Avenger's Channel Divinity (while awesome) is the most streamlined or effective way of implementing those design features of that class. The vast majority of that class's powers are so very lightly brushed with the "divine" flavour that it only takes the merest retarring to make it an "Assassin" or a "Huntsman". It's box-first thinking - he gets Channel Divinity because he's Divine, he's not Divine because he has Channel Divinity.
Ok, one thing I don't like about 4e is that all power sources, in the end, are basically the same. There's no difference whatsoever between them, only the fluff!
Gotta love it when the idea that a houserule is founded upon is patently untrue.
Channel Divinity, Martial feats, Arcane feats, Martial classes consistently getting bonuses to hit... any of these ringing a bell?
I've heard third edition has more stringent differences between characters based on how they do what they do. Might want to give that a look and see if you want to play it?
If you want to apply that flavor, I'd advise you to rather give the martial characters 'upgrades' for their at-wills. Like say you give Martial 3 at-wills to start with and at level 11 they get to pick a 'weak' status effect to attach to one of their at-wills or something like that.
Just more at-wills is not a significant gain unless you design 'advanced' at-wills that are above par and are gained at later levels.
It won't work.
At-wills give X amount of damage.
Encounters 2X, and Dailies 3X.
This is gross simplification (since it varies by level), but that's basically the gist of how they calculated the effectiveness of the various powers. If you give someone an extra daily, then you're allowing that power source to do more than the one with the extra at-will.
If you want to find a way to make each power source unique, then I suggest you do it with the fluff and background rather than the mechanics, which is harder to balance around.
This.
It's the price of a more simplified system: while everything is 'balanced', there's really not much difference in the offerings except for the basic feel and fluff.
I don't think that additional at-wills will give Martial characters much of an advantage. I already often have trouble making a useful pick for my third at-will with many human characters.
If you want to apply that flavor, I'd advise you to rather give the martial characters 'upgrades' for their at-wills. Like say you give Martial 3 at-wills to start with and at level 11 they get to pick a 'weak' status effect to attach to one of their at-wills or something like that.
Just more at-wills is not a significant gain unless you design 'advanced' at-wills that are above par and are gained at later levels.
Hmm... You're right. Then, how if I switch a higher level daily for a higher level at-will? Like, at level 5th instead of a daily you gain another at-will (with more power than a 1st level at-will)?
First some basics:
Ignoring Paragon stuff, a character has reached his top amount of attack powers at
2 At-Will
3 Encounter
3 Daily
We'd best not fiddle with the utilities.
We'll assume that the power level of an Encounter power is twice that of an At-Will and that a Daily power has twice the value of an Encounter power. This is a deviation from the 1/2/3 value suggested earlier but I am confident that Dailies earn the additional value through often having Miss/Effect-entries and many of them lasting all encounter.
Converting the (completely fictional) values, a Level 10 character has 20 'Power Points' at his disposal (2x1 + 3x2 + 3x4).
After level 10 you start replacing your powers when you learn new ones. This only increases the power level of Encounter and Daily powers.
You have already established an assertion about the strengths of each Power Sources. Martial shall be better at-Will and Arcane shall get more Daily. To continue the pattern, Divine is probably best with Encounters and Primal, well Nature is balance.
From your example I assume that you don't want the overall power to increase significantly, so we want to end up with approximately 20 'Power Points' at level 10.
The Arcane Power Source
Strength: Daily
Daily powers are the strongest and also the most swingy. Many Daily Powers make you powerful beyond belief on few-encounter-days but depending on your power selection only so much better if the day goes on and on and on. (But just think about playing with a party that starts every heroic encounter with a Flaming Sphere or the like.)
To account for this and to reach our Power Point goal we'll hit the bookworms and outworldly power conduits some. They only get a single At-Will and better pick that wisely. This probably hurts the Wizard the most who would like some choices for control effects. The Warlock gets only his Pact Power and the other two are fair game.
They only get a single Encounter Power, too. That's what you get for specializing too much.
We have freed up 5 'Power Points' which actually would allow for only one additional Daily. We'll give them two anyways partly due to a certain swingyness of the usefullness of Dailies in certain situations and partly because we're feeling generous. Just remember to throw the others a little bone, too.
The Power set up for any given Arcane character is now:
1 At-Will
1 Encounter
5 Daily
for a total of 23 'Power Points' (1x1 + 1x2 + 5x4)
They get their one At-Will at level 1. The missing Encounter Power means that the witches have replace every time they are eligible for a new Encounter Power and also emphasizes choosing a Paragon Path with a good Encounter Power. The additional Dailies are more trickier to fit in. You can either say that they don't need to replace before learning their sixth Daily (lvl 25) or give them additional Powers early. I guess, you'd prefer the latter which makes them stronger. If you do, rule that additional power 1 must be at most lvl-5 and additional power 2 shall be no higher than lvl-10. Either make them get two dailies on their respective progression slots or pick the levels as you like (with 6 and 11 being the earliest for additional powers).
Work from there normally, the amount of attacks known doesn't change after lvl 10 besides Paragon Path stuff which doesn't interfere.
The Divine Power Source
Strength: Encounter
While an individual Encounter Power is not as powerful as a Daily, the ability to use them as many times per day as there are encounters is a significant strength in itself. Expect Divine characters to shine during about the first five rounds of every encounter. We will also take away one At-Will from them. They won't bother using them much anyway. But we will only take away one Daily as well. It's magic after all.
So there are 5 free 'Power Points' to distribute which translates to 3 Encounter Powers (got to be generous here as well).
For a lvl 10 Power set-up of:
1 At-Will
6 Encounter
2 Daily
For a total of 21 'Power Points' (1x1 + 6x2 + 2x4)
We already have established the process for taking powers away. Friend Cleric will have to replace his Daily 1 if he wants to grab his Daily 9. Let's review the process of adding Powers and see if it fits with this one as well. Using the Arcane model, a Divine character gets an additional Encounter 1 at (always earliest) 6, an Encounter 3 at 11 and an Encounter 7 at 16. Seems about right to me so move on...
The Martial Power Source
Strength: At-Will
This one is difficult because At-Will Powers don't normally improve by level except for a generic upgrade at lvl 21. That means we will have to make something up. As I said I prefer the upgrading method so I'll outline that one. However if you feel like it, evaluate the lvl 1 and lvl 3 Encounter Powers and think about granting those as at-Wills somewhere in mid-paragon and mid-epic respectively.
To fuel the Martial characters' prowess we'll take a lot from them because we are giving them big boosts. It won't cost them an arm and a leg but 2 Dailies and an Encounter Power. They get an additional At-Will at level 1 to pick as normal.
Power set-up at lvl 10:
3 At-Will
2 Encounter
1 Daily
Which is only 11 'Power Points'. So we are at least 10 of them short. Taking powers away is easy, we did it already to the supernatural guys. Now let's take the 10 'Power Points' and distribute them along the advancement table. Say the Fighter gets 1 at lvl 3 and another one every 3 levels thereafter (3, 6, 9, etc.)
Not what to do with them? Use them to improve your At-Wills. We'll make up augments to be added to At-Wills at the cost of 'Power Points'. You can only ever apply one augment to a power, so by lvl 9 every one of the 3 At-Wills will have a 1 PP augment. By Paragon you can buy 2 PP augments essentially exchanging a 1 PP augment for a 2 PP augment at the price of the one point you get. And at Epic you can make 3 PP augments... you know the deal. There will be 1 PP surplus (since you get 10 points but can only spend 3x3 on 3 At-Wills) which means we best allow the augments to also go on Encounters (or Dailies if you insist) or else the non-Humans will cry foul. Lets further establish the rule that an augment can only affect the first target hit to prevent stacking even more cheese on the two double attacking At-Wills. We might lift this restriction for Encounter and Daily Powers to spice things up.
Without further ado, the augments (all of those are added to the Hit: section of the power augmented):
1 PP augments
Make a secondary attack Int vs. Ref
Hit: The target is slowed until the end of your next turn
Make a secondary attack Wis vs. Fort
Hit: The target is knocked prone
Make a secondary attack Cha vs. Will
Hit: The target grants combat advantage to you until the end of your next turn
2 PP augments
Make a secondary attack Cha vs. Will
Hit: The target is immobilized until the end of your next turn
Make a secondary attack Wis vs. Fort
Hit: The target is dazed until the end of your next turn
Make a secondary attack Int vs. Ref
Hit: The target takes 5 ongoing damage (save ends)
The target is slowed until the end of your next turn
The target is knocked prone
The target grants combat advantage to you until the end of your next turn
3 PP augments
Make a secondary attack Cha vs. Will
Hit: The target is restrained (save ends)
Make a secondary attack Wis vs. Fort
Hit: The target is stunned until the end of your next turn
Make a secondary attack Int vs. Ref
Hit: The target is dazed (save ends)
The target takes 5 ongoing damage (save ends)
The target is immobilized until the end of your next turn
The target is dazed until the end of your next turn
That is, a Martial character could actually stunlock a single enemy permanently at epic (if he manages to hit with the at-will and the secondary every turn). There are probably pretty powerful combinations possible but then again, we don't care too much about balance here. Feel free to tinker with the augments, the list could be expanded and modified.
The Primal Power Source
Strength: Balance
2/3/3 seems right, so let's not tinker much with them. To make them more interesting since we modified everybody else, you could give em one 'Power Point' per tier to buy augments but let them only apply them to Encounter and Daily Powers and deny them the lvl 3 augments (you don't want them to stun with an Encounter Area attack on top of what they already do).
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That was kinda fun to do. If you choose to actually do something like that, remember to tell me what your players think about it and how things work out.
Just for kicks, I'll give it a wild shot. You already said, you don't care much about the balance, so I won't pay heed to that a lot, either (though you do want *some* balance so you don't end up with everybody only asking to play arcane).
.....
HOLY CARP!!! That's a really great presentation on an alteration of the rules within the structure the OP wanted to set up! EXTREMELY IMPRESSIVE!!
I didn't think it could really be done effectively, but looking over what you wrote, I eat my words.
for you!!HOLY CARP!!! That's a really great presentation on an alteration of the rules within the structure the OP wanted to set up! EXTREMELY IMPRESSIVE!!
I didn't think it could really be done effectively, but looking over what you wrote, I eat my words.
Wow, that's my first cookies. (I'm always wondering if they are disguised smilies with little eyes or if someone had already taken a bite out of them)
Arcane Power
Dailies
Level 1 -> 1 1st-level
Level 5 -> 2 1st-level, 1 5th-level
Level 9 -> 2 1st-level, 2 5th-level, 1 9th-level
Level 15 -> 0 1st-level, 2 5th-level, 2 9th-level, 1 15th-level
Level 19-> 0 1st-level, 0 5th-level, 2 9th-level, 2 15th-level, 1 19th-level
Level 25-> 0 1st-level, 0 5th-level, 0 9th-level, 2 15th-level, 2 19th-level, 1 25th-level
Level 29-> 0 1st-level, 0 5th-level, 0 9th-level, 0 15th-level, 2 19th-level, 2 25th-level, 1 29th-level
Divine Power
Encounters
Level 1 -> 2 1st-level
Level 3 -> 3 1st-level, 1 3rd-level
Level 7 -> 2 1st-level, 3 3rd-level, 1 7th-level
Level 13 -> 0 1st-level, 3 3rd-level, 2 7th-level, 1 13th-level
Level 17 -> 0 1st-level, 1 3rd-level, 2 7th-level, 2 13th-level, 1 17th-level
Level 23 -> 0 1st-level, 0 3rd-level, 1 7th-level, 2 13th-level, 2 17th-level, 1 23th-level
Level 27 -> 0 1st-level, 0 3rd-level, 0 7th-level, 1 13th-level, 2 17th-level, 2 23th-level, 1 27th-level
Martial Power
1pp Augments
- Make a secondary attack Int vs. Ref; Hit: The target is slowed until the end of your next turn
- Make a secondary attack Wis vs. Fort; Hit: The target is knocked prone
- Make a secondary attack Cha vs. Will; Hit: The target grants combat advantage to you until the end of your next turn
- Add any ability modifier other than the one already used to the damage done
- Change the defence the attack targets to.
- Hit: The target is marked
Damn it, gotta go. I'll update it as soon as I can.