I was with you all the way in the original post up until the point that you mentioned those with Divine abilities will be getting random powers every time they refresh. Am I playing a Cleric/Paladin or a Chaos Souled Sorcerer? For the sake of argument let's say the Paladin has access to some Cleric Spheres and some Schools of Combat that the Martial characters use, but refreshes totally the same way the Cleric does in your example. I feel that you are making this refresh mechanic be different just to be different and not really thinking about how it would work when implemented.
Also, getting rid of Dailies entirely would limit some of the cool of things. It makes sense for those that use exceptional powers to only be able to use it one time per day or even longer. For combat powers once per day would be the most restrictive I would get. Utilities would be the ones that I would have take longer if that were to be included at all.
Allow me to elaborate. The explanation for Daily Exploits (Martial Powers) from 4E Core is fair enough. What Martial characters are tapping into is not just physical training, might, prowess, dexterity, etc. but raw willpower as well. It stands to reason that they only have so much to go around. I think we should keep the Daily powers, but maybe have a more limited number of slots for them so they aren't as unbalancing when used in encounters. We have to remember that these are the big guns, they should be suitably rare and special, not as available as encounter powers when we look at the number of slots available.
Other than that, I think this idea has merit. Thank you for bringing it up for discussion.
Funnily enough, that refresh mechanic comes from the Crusader, which was itself a remake of the Paladin. The idea is that divine characters are channeling what amounts to infinite power from their god, without ever having to pause in channeling that power the way martial and arcane characters do. In exchange, though, they give up some choice; because the power comes from the god, the god gets to influence what prayers the paladin and cleric have access to. At any given moment, like with the crusader, they should have at least four-five options to pick from. It might be the the cleric knows an equal number of powers to the wizard, but only readies a certain number from that list for a given day, giving them some control over what they get.
And yes, you've got it right with the paladin, which would share some schools with the cleric, some with the fighter, and then have a unique school of its own built around the cleaving and smiting of evil signature to the paladin, using the divine refresh mechanic. Its class features would then support the traditional paladin features (like poison resistance, Cha to Fortitude, etc), and utility powers would allow the paladin to pick up the minor prayers such as removing disease, curing poison, lay on hands, and the like that normally don't see use in combat but make up an important part of what the paladin is.
As for daily powers, while I think it's fine for utility effects like Raise Dead or extreme athletic feats to be 1/day effects, in combat the main reason dailies are fun is because they have much more varied effects than encounter powers typically do. Under this system, no two encounter powers are ever alike across any part of the system, so there's less need to stuff all the cool tricks like Driving Attack or Aspect of Might into dailies. You can make Aspect of Might a paladin stance, Shield an Abjuration "stance", Driving Attack an Iron Heart strike. Your "big guns" become not once-a-day tricks, but attacks combining multiple powers that burn through how long you have until you need to refresh, but can potentially deal far more devastating effects than the individual attacks would have. While the system can support dailies as an additional system, I personally feel it's best to focus on the encounter effects, which is where there's room for powers to be cool and a drive to actually use them rather than save them for the boss.
The system has in a roundabout way also gotten rid of at-wills, in a sense, because every class has an encounter effect available at all times unless they need to refresh. It's my belief a minimum amount of time in combat should be spent with characters just throwing their at-wills over and over again, so in this system they only typically come up for martial characters, who can throw their basic attack during their refresh turns, and arcane characters, who all can use some basic spell specific to their class like the wizard's magic missile. That's not to say you -can't- just use your at-will attack, and stances can be used whenever you want to give the same kind of at-will variety as the Slayer, but powers refreshing means there's always another option.
I like the idea for the martial classes. This would work great.
For spell casters you just knee capped them. If a cleric gets random spells then how can he possibly be useful? It is possible all he will get is Zone of Truth or Comprehend Languages. If he is preparing for a dungeon delve neither of these are useful. He needs to be able to choose.
Wizards: I actually came up with an alternative to Wizards a while back. Works like this. 1) Spell are divided into combat and non-combat. The difference is that combat spell have a cast time in rounds, or less. Non-combat have a minute or more cast time. You could even treat the non-combat like rituals. 2) Combat spells are prepared like 3.5 normal, but can be refreshed by spending time reading your spell book. 3) If needed combat spells can be cast by reading them directly out of your spell book but this takes 10x as long (aka 1 minute or more). 4) Now you put a limit on the number of times per day a wizard can prepare his spells. Say, he gets fatigued after study. Now you have limited his power but have given him the ability to choose spells more often. (I dont think this is needed, the wizards gets enough casting per day) 5) Non-combat spells take time and uninterrupted casting. For example for teleport you need to draw out a magic circle with runes and the like, now you need to draw this and that takes time. You also need to incant the spell while drawing this and thus more time is spent. Now teleport is a 3 minute cast time and requires you have a flat surface to draw on, and something to draw with. You could even say that the type of drawing substance will effect the spell. (blood would have a different effect than chalk would, or long distance teleportation needs special chalk that costs 30gp.)
If you read the text in the 3.5 PHB magic section you find out that when a wizard is preparing a spell he is incanting the spell but stops before the last few lines, he carries the magic power of the mostly complete spell around with him. Then when he needs it he says the last few lines, the spell is completed, and he releases the magic power in the form of the spell. That is why low level wizards have so few spells per day, they can't hold more magical power.
Im sorry but ADEU is a French word for goodbye, not a combat system.
You say, "Encounter Power" and I stop listening to you.
This is a very simple problem and I will outline it below. Their are two types of people
Type 1: a lot of people (not all, but a lot) who play see alignment as "I am lawful good thus I must play lawful good"
Type 2: a lot of people (not all, but a lot) who play see alignment as "My previous actions have made people and the gods view me as lawful good.
The difference is subtle but it is the source of the misunderstanding. Alignment does not dictate how you play your character. All it does is tell you, the player, how the rest of the world views you, and your previous actions. Any future actions will be judged by their own merits.
Say you're a baby eating pyromaniac. You are most likely chaotic evil. But one day you decide, "Hey all I really need is love." So you get a wife, have a kid, and get a kitten named Mr. Snook'ems. You become a member of the PTA and help build houses for the homeless. You are no longer chaotic evil. And just because you were once chaotic evil it does not mean that you have to stay chaotic evil.
Alignment never dictates what you can do, it only says what you have done.
Now that is cleared up here is a simple test.
What is the alignment of...
A Police officer:
The average Citizen:
A Vigilante:
The answer is simple. The Police officer is lawful good. He uses the laws of the country and city to arrest people and make them pay their debt to society.
The Citizen is Neutral good. He wants to live is a place that is Good and follows moral and ethical principle, but he sometimes finds the laws impedes him, and he wonders why we spend so much on poor people.
The Vigilante is Chaotic Good. He wants to uphold the morals and ethics of society but finds that the bad guys often slip through the cracks in the law. He takes it upon himself to protect the people from these criminals.
That is the basic breakdown of the good alignment axis. What needs to be remembered is that any one of these people can change alignments, easily. The Police officer could be bought off by a local gang, and suddenly he drops to lawful neutral. The average citizen might find that his neighbors dog is annoying, barking at night and keeping him up. So he poisons its food, now he is no longer good, he is stepping towards true neutral. Maybe the citizen really goes crazy also kills the neighbor, hello neutral evil. It is possible that the Vigilante realizes that the cops are actually doing a pretty good job and decides to become an officer himself, leaving his masked crime fighting days behind him. Now he is Lawful good.
Your alignment is not carved in stone, it is malleable and will change to reflect your actions.
While I don't care for the 'school' terminology - it's strongly linked to magic in D&D - having the same structure within each source (Martial Styles, Arcane Schools, Divine Domains, Psionic Sciences, Primal Traditions, Shadow Secrets...) would be fine. You'd need a general term, like focus or speciality or something.
Replacing dailies across the board with a refresh mechanic wouldn't be a bad idea, but the refresh mechanic has to be reasonably balanced from source to source. The example you used for Divine is probably a little off, not only is random selection questionable, but it'd force Divine characters to 'cook off' useless prayers in the hopes of getting something useable when they refresh, which seems a very disrespectful use of granted power. Maybe the Divine character should refresh with an 'act of faith' - either something deity-apropriate, or simply spending a round not attacking or moving.
The idea of different character-defining options - source, specialities, classes, themes, race, etc - each opening up power choices, but all character getting basically the same number of choices, is a good one.
I like the idea for the martial classes. This would work great.
For spell casters you just knee capped them. If a cleric gets random spells then how can he possibly be useful? It is possible all he will get is Zone of Truth or Comprehend Languages. If he is preparing for a dungeon delve neither of these are useful. He needs to be able to choose.
I don't think you understand how it works, the powers only cover combat spells and are only going through this draw/refresh cycle during combat. Things like Heal, Flame Strike, Sunburst, spells and prayers that are meant for use while fighting. Spells and prayers that aren't for combat are instead covered in utility powers, which are tracked separately and work on the at-will/every X minutes/times per day system.
Comprehend Languages might be a 2nd-Level At-Will Arcane Utility Spell, so at 3rd level a wizard can take Comprehend Languages and use it whenever he wants, forever.
Resurrection might be an 8th-Level Daily Divine Utility Prayer, so at 15th level a cleric can take Resurrection and once per day he can resurrect someone.
Leap of Faith might be a 1st-Level Once Per 15 Minutes Martial Utility Maneuver, so at 2nd level a rogue can take Leap of Faith and make a jump that ignores falling damage once per 15 minutes, whenever he wants.
By making it so that all characters get out-of-combat abilities, as well as keeping those abilities separate from in-combat ones, the way characters fight is made different and the way they can contribute out of combat is distinct, without that distinction making one set of classes better than another.
i dont personally like any of these ideas (from the original post)
Neither do I. I think the mechanical framework and indeed most of the examples for the powers of Fourth Edition worked perfectly.
I played Wizards, Archer Rangers, Fighters, Paladins, Warlords. I played alongside Sorcerers, Warlocks, Druids, Runepriests, Seekers, Beastmaster Rangers, Monks, Barbarians, Clerics and Bards.
I never ever felt that the powers or classes were the same. Everybody seemed to be doing something very much flavoured to match their class's conceit and traditions.
I support this idea, though I'm too tired right now to go into it deeper. I agree that a random set of abilities for clerics when others get non-random abilities is not really OK. I might think of something better tomorrow.
I support this idea, though I'm too tired right now to go into it deeper. I agree that a random set of abilities for clerics when others get non-random abilities is not really OK. I might think of something better tomorrow.
I've just edited the opening post to give divine characters more control over their prayers, both from a guarantee that they will get every prayer they know within three turns and from the ability for class features to designate certain prayers as always available. For instance, the cleric might get a class feature reading something like:
Divine Favor: A cleric is exceptionally favored by her god, and as such holds much greater sway over what prayers they receive during combat. A cleric may declare one of her prayers readied each day as a favored prayer. This prayer is always made available at the start of an encounter and every time the cleric's prayers would refresh. At 5th level and every five levels thereafter, the cleric may choose to designate an additional prayer as favored.
I don't think you understand how it works, the powers only cover combat spells and are only going through this draw/refresh cycle during combat. Things like Heal, Flame Strike, Sunburst, spells and prayers that are meant for use while fighting.
OK. But the example of Divine having to burn it's prayers up to refresh still seems potentially silly. What if you're fighting an old-school Iron Golem and you're down to Flame Strike - which is going to heal it? Do you heal your enemy so your powers refresh, do you toss Flame Strike so it hits nobody?
By making it so that all characters get out-of-combat abilities, as well as keeping those abilities separate from in-combat ones, the way characters fight is made different and the way they can contribute out of combat is distinct, without that distinction making one set of classes better than another.
Sounds solid to me. Also really close to what 4e already does. I doubt 5e will be able to go this route. The demands of retro-nostalgia, and Monte 'rewarding system mastery' Cook on the team make something like this - potentially elegant and balanced - impossible.
I don't think you understand how it works, the powers only cover combat spells and are only going through this draw/refresh cycle during combat. Things like Heal, Flame Strike, Sunburst, spells and prayers that are meant for use while fighting.
OK. But the example of Divine having to burn it's prayers up to refresh still seems potentially silly. What if you're fighting an old-school Iron Golem and you're down to Flame Strike - which is going to heal it? Do you heal your enemy so your powers refresh, do you toss Flame Strike so it hits nobody?.
A fair enough complaint, and common enough that I've retooled it a bit. Divine characters now autorefresh even if they sit around and do nothing, and they're guaranteed to get every prayer they have readied first, with the ability to designate certain prayers they always want to have available as automatically gained whenever they refresh. Take a look at the new opening post and tell me what you think.
OK, more reasonable, I think. I don't suppose it's the kind of detail that needs to be ironed out in a thread like this. My instinct is to put the refresh in the hands of the DM, as stand-in for the deity, but I also see nothing wrong with it being in the player's control - it could still, conceptually, not be under the direct control of the character.
The concept is very good. I WotC uses anything like it, the detail implementation will be in their hands.
Got anything for Primal? I could see Primal using a no-action Healing Surge to refresh.
