Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 P1NBACK Apr 21, 2010 15:12:12	Here's my idea: This is a low-magic campaign using the inherent bonuses rule in the DMG2. As such, there are no magic items, and thus no magic item daily powers. Daily Powers from classes are gone entirely (I don't know of any daily racial ability). Instead, whenever you would take a daily power, you may take an encounter power of your level or lower (so I could have two 3rd Level Encounters and 1 1st level Encounter at 5th Level). Healing Surges are removed. Instead you can use your second wind 1/encounter to regain 1/4 HP, and all "healing" powers become encounter based (x times per encounter). At the end of an encounter, you automatically heal to full HP wi th an appropriate amount of time based on the fiction. Multi-class feats that give you a power once per day becomes 1/encounter. Monster HP are halved. And, use 3d6 in place of d20 (attacks will hit more often, meaning those "reliable" and miss effect dailies won't be missed as much). Thoughts?
#2 dogbackward Apr 21, 2010 15:26:13	And all of your Barbarians, Wardens and Wizards gang up to beat you senseless. Some classes rely on their Dailies, or get big class benefits based on them: think long and hard before removing them. Not to mention Psionics, which would be even more static without their Dailies to interrupt their constant use of the same three powers.
#3 P1NBACK Apr 21, 2010 15:28:01	And all of your Barbarians, Wardens and Wizards gang up to beat you senseless. Some classes rely on their Dailies, or get big class benefits based on them: think long and hard before removing them. Not to mention Psionics, which would be even more static without their Dailies to interrupt their constant use of the same three powers. Yup. All those classes are gone. That's me thinking long and hard. Barbarians, Wardens, Wizards and Psionics are banned. Next? EDIT: Just to clarify - I have no issues ditching entire aspects of 4E to make this idea work. (Hell, I'm also ditching races entirely - everyone is human.)
#4 Eisenritter Apr 21, 2010 18:26:20	...Your players gang up to beat you senseless.  This isn't 4e anymore, it's some new damn system!
#5 razzanor Apr 21, 2010 19:22:42	Instead of creating an entirely new system and banning half of the classes in the game, why don't you just find a way to enforce the idea that an extended rest is meant to occur at a balance rate, rather than the "five-minute workday" that plagues most DMs who have this ridiculous idea that daily powers make PCs overpowered?
#6 P1NBACK Apr 22, 2010 7:44:33	Instead of creating an entirely new system and banning half of the classes in the game, why don't you just find a way to enforce the idea that an extended rest is meant to occur at a balance rate, rather than the "five-minute workday" that plagues most DMs who have this ridiculous idea that daily powers make PCs overpowered? For one, 4 classes is hardly "half". To address your issue, there's still an economy problem. The PCs are still going to have their "easiest" encounter at the beginning of the "day". I say easiest because they'll have the most resources, not easiest as far as difficulty. And, then they will have their hardest toward the end of this "day" - whatever that may be. It's a battle of attrition that I find unpleasant. It's not the kind of fiction I'm trying to sell. Right... So, why not just use a different system? Maybe I will.
#7 Bluewyrm Apr 22, 2010 8:28:52	Actually, I fully agree with your intentions here... "daily" resources just remove any kind of climactic narrative for me...  picture if you will: "Oh my God, my life is being threatened by this gang of unruly gnolls!  I better call upon every personal resource I can to beat them and save the lives of my dear friends!  ....  On second thought, I might have to find some ogres later today, better not fight as if my life depended on it." The above thought process, to me, removes any kind of tension from a narrative. So, how to change the game to not rely on Dailiy resources? I strongly urge that you do NOT use 3d6... it throws of averages, removes critical hits, all kinds of repercussions you don't want... if you want to simulate the "reliable" or "hits on miss" effects, I recommend that any encounter powers that players choose instead of their normal-rules daily powers get either "half damage with no additional affects on a miss"  lines added to them or be treated as "reliable encounter" powers (if you miss with it, you don't expend it).  MUCH simpler way to simulate the desired effect. Instead of completely removing all healing surges, I recommend simply having characters get "half" the normal amount of them and have them all refresh after a short rest.  So a character that would normally get 6 surges would get only 3 instead, but he'd get all of them back at a short rest.  This makes feats like Durable and what-not still of use. Daily Utilities?  Not much of a good fix here... I'd simply eliminate them.  Fortunately every class has enough Encounter utility powers that they can use instead, particularly if you include Skill powers, that this should be fine. There's no simple and balanced fix for Wizards (or really any controller), Barbarians, or Wardens... so I'd simply remove them.  This hurts significantly class options, but if you are up front with it to your players, they should be able to deal. Halving monster hps?  I think unneccessary and over-kill...  Daily powers don't come even close to making that much of a damage difference that this is needed to balance the scales, particularly since you are replacing them with more encounter powers.  If you want to try and balance the missing damage, give players an Action Point every encounter...  the extra action should make up for the missing damage.  For any effects that let you somehow get more than one action point beyond the normal action-point economy, let those "additional" action points be spent in addition to the normal "one AP per encounter" rule. Any other daily-resources that  I missed?
#8 P1NBACK Apr 22, 2010 8:36:46	Hey Bluewyrm, This is good stuff. Thank you. You're right about doing the "reliable" encounter powers. I was intending to halve monster HP not only to make up for the missing dailies (which have higher [w] and also ongoing damages), but also because the PCs would have less potential for healing (without magic items like potions). But, you could be right and an AP per encounter seems reasonable (I've made this rule before and it worked out ok). I considered dividing the surges by 4 (since you're supposed to have 4 encounters = a day traditionally), but it seemed more intuitive to just assume the PCs had as much surges as they would healing. So, just get rid of them. However, because some rituals and other powers rely on surges, it might be better to just halve them as you suggest. And, if you use a ritual that costs a surge, you just get one less at the start of the next encounter. I'm totally cool with removing classes. There are plenty of options. Thanks for the excellent feedback.
#9 Bluewyrm Apr 22, 2010 8:49:38	No problem.  I have always hated the "daily resource" mechanics of D&D, so I've been scheming in my head all kinds of ways to remove them for some time now. I've also toyed a little with the idea of Barbarians (mainly because I love the class so much and would hate to see it go) getting the "encounter long effects" one of their rages as a free action with the expenditure of one of their healing surges that they can use that encounter.  The classes suddenly become playable again. Still no fix for controllers though.  Meh.  You're going for "low-magic" anyway, so this is no big loss from a thematic stand point.
#10 pluisjen Apr 22, 2010 11:39:38	I'd keep in the reduced surges, or you'll see a lot of Cleric's throwing around healing powers. Also, it'd reduce the Defender's strength, because you can just throw another heal at the rogue anyway. But yeah, this is still a bad idea and you'd be better of with another game system anyway. Good luck though.
#11 evilvegan Apr 22, 2010 14:42:45	How about a modification of dailies rather than a removal? To borrow a term from Magic the Daily powers start as "tapped". Once per encounter whenever a PC rolls a natural 20 on an attack roll (to avoid expanded crit range), they may choose to untap their Daily power instead of dealing max damage. This would keep the mechanic in place, but make them more special and cinematic, and also give you an explanation as to why they only function once per day...
#12 P1NBACK Apr 22, 2010 14:44:13	How about a modification of dailies rather than a removal? To borrow a term from Magic the Daily powers start as "tapped". Once per encounter whenever a PC rolls a natural 20 on an attack roll (to avoid expanded crit range), they may choose to untap their Daily power instead of dealing max damage. That's a very interesting idea.
#13 Bluewyrm Apr 22, 2010 15:14:05	How about a modification of dailies rather than a removal? To borrow a term from Magic the Daily powers start as "tapped". Once per encounter whenever a PC rolls a natural 20 on an attack roll (to avoid expanded crit range), they may choose to untap their Daily power instead of dealing max damage. That's a very interesting idea. Oooh, no, I can't emphasize enough how bad an idea this is.  I've tried it myself, it does NOT work. Many Daily Powers are far more than just additional damage.  They have blast radiuses, secondary attacks, free movement, are immediate interrupts, etc...  Suddenly what was just a normal Eldritch Blast has become an awkwardly placed blast zone.   You'll have all kinds of weird rules issues, history rewinding...  *shudder*  It just slows down gameplay and creates rules debates. Plus it doesn't handle things like Daily powers that don't have attack rolls (like Blade Barrier), Daily Utility powers, etc.  Just...  wow, it's a terrible idea. I think you're much better off removing Daily everything.  It removes many options from the players, true, but really... I'm getting the feeling that we both agree they have plenty of options already. Apart from removing many players options, you run into really two potential problems: 1.  Game becomes too easy because characters don't have to worry about attrition.  Well, halving healing surges should prevent players from spamming healing too much.  Also, attrition is often more of a "thematic element" then it is one of gameplay.  If thigns become too easy, simply ratchet up the average difficulty level of encounters.  Instead of them all being based on player level, make them based on player level + 1 or +2 (but don't adjust XP.  Or better yet, don't use XP at all.  Simply tell the players when they level and when they don't.  Much easier for all involved, prevents the DM from having to re-prep encounters when players gain levels unexpectedly). 2.  Game becomes too hard because players are lacking the power from their Dailies.  Only replacing them with encounter powers that are always available and Action Points should help prevent this.  Looking at it in purely damage levels, a Daily seems to be roughly the equivalent of an Encounter + an At-Will.  Well, the AP every encoutner will pretty much make them always be able to tack on an extra At-Will.
#14 P1NBACK Apr 22, 2010 15:20:57	True that, Bluewyrm. Good counter-points.
#15 pluisjen Apr 22, 2010 15:57:32	I think EvilVegan didn't mean  "The power triggers on a 20" but he meant "you can forgo getting max damage from a crit to be able to use your Daily later that day/during that encounter"
#16 rangerfreund Apr 23, 2010 2:47:45	I'm looking to solve the thematic-Daily problem in my campaign. I like dungeon crawls and race-against-the-clock adventures now and then, but there needs to be a house rule mode you can turn on for random encounters and a situation that only leads to one encounter over the day. Sorry WotC, but not all of my BBEGs can afford the 40 staff it takes to create 3-4 combats... let alone all those expensive traps and informants for skill challenges.   I like your idea... but I also don't want to see my players thumbing through 9 encounter powers. Every encounter would probably start to feel the same.
#17 Neutronium_Dragon Apr 23, 2010 3:29:20	> there needs to be a house rule mode you can turn on for random encounters > and a situation that only leads to one encounter over the day. The devs do (in some cases) play it that an extended rest is only available after the party reaches two milestones or a similar target, regardless of how much time passes between encounters.
#18 Bluewyrm Apr 23, 2010 8:21:26	I think EvilVegan didn't mean  "The power triggers on a 20" but he meant "you can forgo getting max damage from a crit to be able to use your Daily later that day/during that encounter"  Aye, I realized that, but it still doesn't address the point that often what makes a Daily power useful is more than just it's damage.  It's area of affect, riders, movement, encounter long effects, etc... these are all things that are best used in just the right situation... dropping a large blast that only hits one guy is a waste... entering a fighter-stance on the last round of combat is a waste... etc.  So if you have to wait until a 20 is rolled before you can use the Daily power, the power becomes significantly less powerful than it used to be.  And really, that's what we're trying to address here... how to keep the game system balanced without relying on thematic elements that we don't want (daily resources).  Plus, the "natural 20 makes a daily power available" idea doesn't properly address the power differential when a character has multiple dailies available to them (players reaching 3 by level 9).  So while a level 9 chararcter's power is partially measured by being able to use 3 daily powers in a single fight if need be, if he needs to roll a 20 to use even one of them...  I think you see my point.  The alternative is letting all of a character's dailies recharge on a natural 20 roll, which helps address the power issue, but it also makes things suddenly extremely swingy... one 20 roll and suddenly an encounter turns into easy mode. I've been down this road where daily powers recharge based on some randomization mechanic...  I was never able to get it to work.
#19 Bluewyrm Apr 23, 2010 8:34:26	Other alternatives I've worked with were Dailies recharging based on milestone mechanics.  At one point I had worked out a system where character's recharged Daily powers based on the number of milestones they had been through since their last extended rest.  Players would start the day with 0 daily powers, and recharge 1 at their first milestone,  recharge 2 at their second milestone, 3 at  their third milestone, etc....  This system rewarded players for pushing themselves to the limits of their healing surges.  It doesn't really "fit" what you were going for mechanically, it just prevents players from intentionally abusing the extended rest mechanic to ensure they are always at top-level performance. I've not really tested this idea much, but I know Capt Micha has used something similar to it.  You may want to ask him how it's worked out in his campaigns.
#20 rangerfreund Apr 23, 2010 11:54:47	> The devs do (in some cases) play it that an extended rest is only available after the party reaches two milestones or a similar target, regardless of how much time passes between encounters. Can you point me in that direction? Was this in some published adventures?
#21 stargazer_dragon May 04, 2010 22:43:47	Personaly if you hate the whole daily thing I would say tag it to action point usage, Change the ability to use action points to gain anouther action to action points allow them to use a daily power, Daily powers then become action point powers. There are other ideas to use like in my games my dailie powers recharge 6 after each combat, so a player might as well use some of the dailies early so they have a chace to recharge, but I am still testing this. My figure was they would probably burn dailies as needed without as much worry about not having them but would still reserve a few. Anouther perhaps perfect fit would be to allow daily powers to be used once per encounter but there never realy expended. the player would be able to use a daily per combat without worry if they would be able to use it again for the boss, though doing this I would comensate by increasing the lvl of the encounter by 1 or 2 without xp increase but this just further makes for dramtic cinimatic combats, this further keaps all classes fully playable. Personaly I think this best fits your goals. Healing surges perhaps allow a short rest to recharge some healing surges say 1/4 and then give the players 1/2 as many healing surges.  this keaps the basics so that healing surges r still important and can be drained via out of combat junk as well as deseases and what no however makes healing surges recover not dependent on extended rest. basicly extended rest is only used for sleaping and fatige everything else is recovered after encounters. This seams like it might fit your goal of removing the dependency of daily rests without killing the very system of the game
#22 P1NBACK May 05, 2010 7:54:26	Those are good ideas stargazer. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll take all these thoughts into consideration.
#23 stargazer_dragon May 05, 2010 11:57:03	thx let me know how things turn out if you use any of them (or if anyone else runs with them) am curiouse how difrent ways of handling it actualy turns out in game