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Hey, I actually made a 29th-level Spell just for the fun of it that doesn't deal actual damage, based off of Kefka:

Fallen One
A single horrifying word reduces your enemies' strength immensely, practically killing them.
Daily; Arcane/Divine; Necrotic; Psychic
Standard Action - Close burst 20
Target: each creature in burst
Attack: Charisma vs. Fort
Effect: Any creature hit with this Power is reduced to 1 hit point, weakened, and slowed. They cannot be healed, nor can these effects be removed. However, a successful Save ends all negative conditions on the creature, and restores them to their full hit points.

EDIT: Yeah, I actually thought about it last night, and realized it would make more sense as Arcane/Divine and targeting Fort. Makes it much more balanced.

Warweaver wrote:

I don't think the "large number" of utility powers is as big as you claim. Though it would be interesting to be proven wrong.

I'll just go over a single class because I don't feel like going over the whole list... so here's the list of useful out-of-combat utility exploits for rogues.

• Fleeting Ghost: biggest use would be avoiding combat in the first place. Another purpose would be maintaining speed with the party while remaining hidden while traveling forest, for instance.
  
• Great Leap, Master of Deceit: kinda obvious.
  
• Quick Fingers: could be quite handy for stealing something while doing something a little more time consuming... pickpocketing someone standing beside you while juggling, for example.
  
• Chameleon: again, usually for avoiding combat rather than something done within it. Very useful for infiltrating a locale.
  
• Mob Mentality: the only thing that beats information out of people better is doing it as a team.
  
• Nimble Climb: Obvious.
  
• Certain Freedom: "Oh noes, I hate being tied up like this! Whatever shall we do?! We are doomed, doomed I tell... the guard gone yet?"
  
• Shadow Stride: another "useful for avoiding combat".
  
• Foil the Lock, Hide in Plain Sight, Leaping Dodge: all fairly obvious, Hide in Plain Sight being another "avoiding combat" one.
  
• Cloud Jump: one of the best and zaniest jump exploits.
  
• Hide from the Light: the absolute best "useful for avoiding combat" power.

That's 14/21 utility powers for the rogue... 2/3s ain't that bad, and the ratio could be better (or worse) for other classes.

Warweaver wrote:

And yet, 3e also has more variation in said spells. Not to mention the classes that do "heavily overlap" (cleric/druid, sorc/wiz/bard...you can pretend the paladins/rangers do too, but it's a fractional class feature - it'd be like a 4e class that got Powers at half the progression of the others) have a wider variety of options than 4e powers do.

In 4e, they could've come up with a "power rubric" instead of listing out all those powers for each class (in fact they nearly did with page 42). "It does X damage at Y level plus Z. If you want it to inflict A status, reduce damage by B. If it has a range/area/# of creatures C, reduce damage by D." Personally I don't like it when half the sourcebook I paid for looks like it was created purely via plugging in numbers and making sure they keep to a specific range. I'm all for balance, but I don't buy an rpg to look at pages of math that I could almost figure out the Master Formula for in my head. It's wasted space that could be spent on expanded options.

There isn't an exact formula, since every status is going to have different usefulness depending on your current level of play. More importantly, it's disingenuous to claim they have a wider variety of options... the overall spell list is smaller than the total power list from 4th Edition by around 100 powers, and there is minimal overlap. If we compared them piece by piece 4th Edition would come out on top for overall variety, and the only real complaint seems to be "how dare they not allow my cleric to take dispel magic... this game sucks". If your argument is variety = a several hundred spells each usable by multiple classes, as opposed to variety = several hundred powers with only a couple usable by more than a single class, then I suppose we'll always disagree on this.

Warweaver wrote:

I dunno, but here's a shot in the dark:


Squee-Gee's Mold (Wizard Attack 29)
Daily + Arcane, Implement, Necrotic, Charm
Standard Action Close Burst 20
Target: Each Enemy in Burst
Attack: Int vs Will
Hit: The target is stunned (save ends), loses the use of their minor action (save ends), and suffers a -2 to all attacks until the end of the encounter.
Miss: The target is dazed (save ends), and suffers a -1 to all attacks until the end of the encounter.

Other fun ideas would be powers that: decrease the numbers a monster power is Recharged on, negate interrupts/freeze action points for its duration, reduces their resistance to other spells of the same element for its duration, etc. Since NPCs work by monster rules now, these ideas are more applicable than ever.

This is a little beside the point, as I just flat-out don't like where they've put the balance bar - but I'm working with what I got. Personally, I'd be fine with rituals that create permanent structures (like Wall of ___) for little to no cost. By a certain level, you should be able to make a big maze out of ice walls with nothing but time. "But oh noes" you say, "what if they do the wall of iron thing and then sell all that scrap iron and break ze economy!" And you would say this as if adventurers haven't been pulling the carpets and armoires out of dungeons and selling them in town for decades. As always, it'll work if the DM wants it to, no more no less. (General "you" here - I don't think any of you folks would actually make this argument.)

I don't see how stacked effects would really balance or improve gameplay. In fact, I can already imagine the dozens of nerd-rage threads along the lines of "ervyting is about statuses in 4E!!! it's WoW!!! lololololololol!!!!!" that would have come down the pipeline if they did that.

Moreover, I'm not particularly a fan of bypass mechanics (mechanics that bypass or completely eliminate other mechanics... save-or-dies, sneak attack and crit immunity, anti-magic field), so I doubt I'd enjoy such negation mechanics being introduced to the game. My eyes rolled over when I saw things that reduce damage reduction as is, I don't know if the game needs more than that.

As for your last part, I don't think it's necessarily just about breaking the economy. My question is what logic denotes that high-powered magic shouldn't cost anything outside of "it's magic"? I mean, I actually like the fact that they have added the "there's no such thing as a free lunch" concept to the game... it's balancing effect on the economy is tertiary to toning down the godlike nature of spellcasters and ensuring that such godly effects don't become cheap parlor tricks on a massive scale....

[INDENT]"Okay, what douchebag surrounded the entire continent with an ice maze? just because it doesn't have a component cost doesn't mean you have to be a **** about it!"

"I wouldn't have done it if you wouldn't have thrown my house into the Abyss!"[/INDENT]

Besides, I can see powerful archmages having an extradimensional pouch containing millions of gold worth of reagents seemingly pulling such effects out of nowhere. That seems more sensible to me than that same archmage literally pulling such effects out of nowhere.

Ah, you misunderstand. You are not REDUCED to 1 HP, your MAX HP is SET to 1. :D Basically, a successful Save ends the entire Effect line.

EDIT: Hrrmmm...I'll have to edit it. Thanks, Decivre.

Warweaver wrote:

I don't think Leaping Dodge counts, as it only works in response to an enemy attack. Regardless, the rogue certainly isn't the norm when it comes to non-combat utilities - every time I hear about "every power being for combat" I hear "well except maybe the rogue" tacked on, due to those utilities.

Comparing the Rogue to another common "non-combat monkey" from 3e, the Ranger, we find the ranger with...4, maybe 5 Utilities usable outside of combat (I would count Forest Ghost according to your criteria, but not Expeditious Retreat or Safe Stride, as their bonuses are very negligible in a non-combat situation).

By these same criteria, the Fighter has a whopping...uh, zero (0). Unless you count Iron Warrior, but I wouldn't. I think you'll find the rest of the classes (possible exception: wizard, I haven't checked) more in the Fighter-Ranger range of Utilities that are useful out of combat. Which is to say, nearly nonexistent.

Ooh, that's what I get for skimming the power list looking for a total number. So the total is 13/21... still a decent amount. As for ranger: Crucial Advice, Skilled Companion, Longstrider... yeah, he doesn't have much. Fighter is definitely at a straight 0 for utility exploits that have non-combat effectiveness, but to be fair he isn't worse off than he was before (and it's kinda hard to come up with out-of-combat utility exploits for a class called "fighter"). The cleric had 3 powers (at a glance, didn't read them all) that aren't healing or protective in nature. I'm guessing the warlord isn't much better off than the fighter (I'm not even going to check), and the paladin not much better off than the cleric.

In converse, however, The wizard, in much the same manner as the rogue, had 14 utility spells at first glance that had non-combat use (not even counting the four cantrips). Warlocks also have 13 as the rogue does (which actually leaves me believing that WotC made sure to maintain to some degree the utility effectiveness that arcane magic has always wielded in D&D).

Considering that, and the fact that most of the utility spells that aren't on the total list (scrying being the biggest one) exist in ritual form, a large amount of the utility that existed in Editions prior is still there if you look for it. It's a shame they couldn't find more non-combat utility for fighters and such, but I have hope for later releases (and if they even release one non-combat utility for the fighter, they are far better off than 3rd Edition was).

Warweaver wrote:

I guess so. I'll always consider "lots of options that other people also get some of" to be preferable to "fewer options nobody else gets".

Well, when you think about the fact that we were previously arguing that classes feel the same, and yet power access barely overlaps especially in comparison to 3rd Edition, I'd say that this is almost an impossible to win scenario. Either they feel identical while having almost completely separate power lists, or they feel unique while having fairly homogenous power access. It's almost lose-lose for the developers.

Warweaver wrote:

I really don't see how that could be any worse than it is now. :P

I really don't see how that could be any better. :D

Warweaver wrote:

Even mechanics that just allow you or your companions to do more damage later? I think spells that assist the team or hinder the enemy's ability to do damage are just fine - as long as they don't end the encounter by themselves. Likewise, I'm fine with straight hp loss being the most common way of taking baddies down (though I wish they'd kept vampire-staking and rakshasa-bolting, myself), but there should be options that contribute in less direct ways than "I deal it some damage too".

Actually, I've already houseruled in vampire-staking in our games. You can't stake it until it's low enough in hit points to kill in one hit (every successful hit counts as a crit with a stake, so as long as it's hit points are exactly equal to 4 + whatever modifiers you get for melee damage, you can stake it), but it can't die until you stake it (it gains immunity to all damage but staking when it hits 1 hit point). You can do the same with rakshasas, werewolves, and more... the key is simply ensuring that you don't create a bypass mechanic to hit points.

Warweaver wrote:

I like the concept too - I've always been a fan of the "magic is sacrifice" school of thought. But reducing it to mere gp values (and high ones at that) seems to do the concept a disservice to me. masochistic Blood mages, addicted Lifedrinkers, giving up your name, or simple fatigue after casting - these are interesting ways to take magic. Straight-up gold for "fairy dust" you turn into magic items (must...avoid...WoW...reference...) is much less so, especially when you calculate the totals to come up with some kind of contrived ban on magic ever doing anything as or more easily than mundane effort. Maybe I'm just a penny-pincher, but when I get Tenser's Floating Disk, I want to use it - not wait three levels for the gp cost to be miniscule.

And if it's a choice between giving it an actual resource cost in-game to ensure people don't go crazy, and leaving it up to the DM to insert "sacrifice fluff" when they want to (but the players being able to use Rituals more often), I know which one I'd rather have.

There are means around it. I can see feats which allow you to use other things besides component materials for casting ritual magic. You could have a feat called "Blood Ritual" which allows you to coup de grace people who are prepared on an altar and gain an amount of "component gp" equal to the hit points lost. They can drain them dry, and bring a few other victims to cast bigger spells. Could actually add quite a bit of flair to the game even, since you could introduce the corrupting effects of blood rituals, as well as neat roleplaying hooks (madman learns blood ritual magic so he can sacrifice a half dozen children to bring back his dead wife).

The reason behind the gold cost is to set a standard. If you want, you can simply have your wizard look for components as opposed to buying them. You can create new component types that fit your setting better. The gold cost just gives you a gauge... something that costs 25 gp in base rules is 1/8th the cost of something that costs 200 gp in base rules... but it doesn't have to be gp that you pay for it.

Warweaver wrote:

You win for that.

I thank you. First thing that popped into mind when you mentioned a free Ice Maze spell. :D