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1 year ago ::
Jan 24, 2012 - 6:56AM
#11
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Date Joined:
May 17, 2005
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My personal opinion is that the basic system of At Will, Encounter and Daily powers give a good balance. Everyone has abilities that can be used all the time and require no management, some more powerful abilities that can be used each encounter which require some basic management and Daily abilities that need to be managed well to have their best effect. I, for one, like to have some level of resource management in my games.
Tying some of the recharges to Milestones may help to mitigate the "5 minute workday" issue. This would encourage characters to continue on as they would only need to go through another encounter or so to get some of their more powerful abilities back.
Having a generic currency for boosts (such as Healing Surges) has the benefit of simplicity but could introduce new resource management issues where some members of the party may "burn out" too quickly.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 24, 2012 - 7:29AM
#12
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Date Joined:
Jul 13, 2011
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Powers or Vancian Magic, neither have given me a problem as a player or DM. I house ruled out the power surge though. Might as well give every player a ring of regeneration. By sixth level how many healing surges does the average PC have? Why have a cleric to "act" as a healer, just make it a controler class stripped of all hit point related healing abilities.
I could see a system of "points" used for what Austinwolf is talking about. Though I still have to say not for healing.
Asking for clarification, not confrontation: have you played 4th and seen the healing mechanic? While yes, you might have 10 healing surges, you only get to use 1 per combat (usually) and that costs you your attack (usually) The rest are stitting there hoping you have a potion, or a power, or a Leader (cleric, bard, warlord, etc) who grants you access to that pool.
I would still recommend using a similar mechanic. You can only heal yourself once per combat, but an ally (cleric) could allow you to heal more, (and under this suggestion, they'd be spending x surges to allow you to use 1)
Yes I have. I not only play 4e but DM as well. It is really the concept that kinda bother me. I can see a fighter boosting his resolve and gaining "temporary hit points", just not full on healing of damage. I have also extrapolated the mechanic over level progression for the core classes to see the effect. I like that it is at least scaled for progression.
But why even have those extra points dangling out there. I just disagree that in order to "drink a potion" or "use a power" that you need to have surges. The potion is a consumable, one shot and gone. Powers have to be regained by rest and therefore if the character is getting harried or bashed hard are temporary one shots. I really do not want to see surges used as a “power up point” as has been suggested elsewhere. This make the feel of the game a little CRPG not TTRPG.
MY DM COMMITMENT
To insure that those who participate in any game that I adjudicate are having fun, staying engaged, maintaining focus, contributing to the story and becoming legendary.
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules."
Gary Gygax
Thanks for that Gary, so now stop playing RAW games.
Member of the Progressive Front of Grognardia Suicide Squad
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1 year ago ::
Jan 24, 2012 - 7:29AM
#13
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Having a generic currency for boosts (such as Healing Surges) has the benefit of simplicity but could introduce new resource management issues where some members of the party may "burn out" too quickly.
I am okay with this, as it adds a learning curve/challenge/combat option to the game. And for the folks who don't want that much combat accounting to consider, they can play in the same system and just have pre-set AEDU, second wind, and action point. They don't have any more or less power than the other guy or gal, (theoretically) he is just trading some of his free will for structure.
Frank the Frontloading Fighter may burn out all his neat tricks early, but Bob "by the book" Barbarian can help bail him out.
Roger, the Ridiculous Reaper, Ranger doesn't care, cause he can twin strike/quarry all day without much in the way of extra bennies and still be a damage machine.
I love twin strike. I'm not expecting to see it in DnD Next.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 24, 2012 - 7:32AM
#14
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I just disagree that in order to "drink a potion"
I don't disagree on this one point at all. I never liked surges and potions being linked, especially since the early potions seemed to be less effective than the surge.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 24, 2012 - 7:57AM
#15
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Date Joined:
Jul 13, 2011
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I just disagree that in order to "drink a potion"
I don't disagree on this one point at all. I never liked surges and potions being linked, especially since the early potions seemed to be less effective than the surge.
Even the cure spell, now that some of the scaling is gone in 4e for how much a pc heals makes surges more effective. With potions and other forms of healing they become resource management. They obtain some high levels of value to the pc because of the limited ways to heal characters. so you have items that can heal, spells to heal, a skill to heal and then rest. This can have a dramatic effect on the next encounter and even the next day. Keeping the party healed was a little more tactical in pre-4E.
Going back to the number of times you can use a healing surge though 4E allows out of combat use of the surege linked to the CON score. Unlike the second wind you had mentioned. I have had episodes where the party just dropped out of combat, spent the max number of surges and it was like nothing really happened.
If you continue the number of encounter in a day to prevent rest is gets a little "random encounter like". Meaning that every mile or so there is another creature waiting for the PCs. Sure they can avoid them but, if you force combat you a little railroad ride.
MY DM COMMITMENT
To insure that those who participate in any game that I adjudicate are having fun, staying engaged, maintaining focus, contributing to the story and becoming legendary.
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules."
Gary Gygax
Thanks for that Gary, so now stop playing RAW games.
Member of the Progressive Front of Grognardia Suicide Squad
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1 year ago ::
Jan 24, 2012 - 4:19PM
#16
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Date Joined:
Jan 20, 2002
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One fix we did was pooled all of a character's daily attacks and then gave them one daily per fight. We also talked about pooling encounters and having them scale up to the 3/encounter they eventually became.
This way, 1 fight or 5 fights are all understandable. We also talked about reducing healing surges to something like 1/4th of what they were, and were discussing another way to make Con important instead of healing surges.
I hate daily resources, and they can only be balanced if the game forces/assumes a set number of encounters per day, or a set experience pool per day; that's bad for narrative design.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 24, 2012 - 5:12PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Nov 17, 2003
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I completely agree with the OP. Good post!
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1 year ago ::
Jan 24, 2012 - 5:16PM
#18
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Date Joined:
Dec 22, 2010
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I hate daily resources, and they can only be balanced if the game forces/assumes a set number of encounters per day, or a set experience pool per day; that's bad for narrative design.
Yep. In my games the AEDU system only seems to work well in the late teens where, assuming our general 3 encounter work day, we use roughly the same amount of resources each fight. But that's a big assumption.
I'd like to see a system somewhat similar to psionic power points in 4E. They'd remain a set number throughout a character's carreer and would be a "daily" resource that would refresh after a long rest. As the character leveled, they'd learn better ways to use their power points (more powerful abilities). Powerful effects which in 4E would be considered dailies would take a lot of power points, so they'd still feel big. However, if the narrative called for only one fight between rests, it could be scaled such that the characters could be using "dailies" every round to deal with the increased challenge, without making it a 3 hour fight or affecting the game's math in an irregular way. Likewise, if the narrative called for 6-7 fights between rests, characters would avoid big expenditures.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 24, 2012 - 5:24PM
#19
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Date Joined:
Dec 12, 2007
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I much prefer a fatigue system to handle "hard" abilities. This dovetails nicely with wanting at will powers for casters. (since an at will is just a spell you have overleveled to the point where it costs no fatigue).
It works for martial, divine, and psionic powers as well. You just set the fatigue used per ability dpending on how often you want them to be able to do it.
Since healers will quickly overlevel basic healing spells it also makes it easy to top off and remove such trivia as wands of cure light wounds.
I used a system where I set fatigue points equal to con and had abilities take 0,1,4,or 9 fatigue. It works surprisingly well. You can also let people get tired and take minuses or let them spend a round recovering doing nothing to regain a fatigue.
This along with some major focusing of the magic users and a slight decrease in their power is enough to make everything work, or at least it did for us.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 24, 2012 - 6:01PM
#20
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Date Joined:
Dec 12, 2003
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I personally think there needs to be some kind of point system, I've experienced too many boss-fights where the players held back all their dailies and then killed the boss in a single round. Sure, you can tease dailies out of players with false boss fights, mini bosses, or just long, grueling days, but it would be nice if non-boss fights actually used up resources other than just healing surges.
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