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Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-16, 02:21 AM
I've been chatting with a friend about what sort of kinks remain in 4E to be worked out, and he mentioned an interesting idea for Dailies.

Make all Daily Attack Powers "Reliable" and remove any Miss effects, or effects that occur regardless of hitting.

He thinks that this will make people more willing to use their Dailies, which can, particularly for new players, be a stumbling block in encounters. It seems that many of his players tend to hold back on all their Dailies until it is clear that they are fighting the last encounter of the day, at which point they begin using all of them at once. If all of the Daily Attacks were Reliable, then players would be assured of, at some point, getting the benefit of their Daily Power, and so they would feel more comfortable trying them out.

In my experience, Reliable powers aren't a defining feature of Fighters in play, so I don't think there will be any class destruction. In addition, few people would prefer the Miss effect of a power over getting to hit with it at some point. As such, I don't see much of a downside from trying this alteration, and I can see some upside. I'm thinking of trying it out; what do you think?

KKL
2008-12-16, 02:24 AM
My initial gut reaction would be to say no, probably because it removes all risk in using the power in the first place.

Grynning
2008-12-16, 02:30 AM
I think it really depends on what tier of play you're at - at Heroic, most dailies aren't substantially better than encounter powers anyways, so this change won't make a big difference one way or the other. At higher levels though, dailies do some fairly impressive damage, so you may need to alter the encounters a little to account for the fact that your monsters will most likely be getting hit with one or two dailies fairly regularly.

I wouldn't play with this house-rule personally, because it would lead towards even greater homogeneity of character builds. Making all the daily powers reliable means that there's no reason not to just take the highest damage power available since you know you're always (well, eventually) going to connect with it. I think the powers that are reliable are good choices because of that keyword, but the non-reliable dailies all have their uses as well, so it's still a choice.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-16, 02:30 AM
My initial gut reaction would be to say no, probably because it removes all risk in using the power in the first place.

Well, there is still the risk that your power won't work when you needed it.

Many Dailies (particularly for Leader classes) are pretty situational - they provide extra movement, or a bonus to hit, or otherwise take advantage of a particular configuration of the battlefield. Missing with the Daily means that you have just wasted your turn, just like if you miss with any other power. There is plenty of risk involved with wasting your turn, particularly if it means other temporary effects (a dazed opponent, combat advantage, a bonus to hit) expire before you can use the power again.

I can see how it might make Daily Attacks better than Encounters (though I don't remember any Reliable Encounter powers off the top of my head), but since that doesn't seem to be a problem with Fighters right now, I don't think that's a big issue either.

EDIT:
@Grynning - good point. But until now nobody except for Fighters (and the Divine Oracle) had Reliable Powers, so I'm not actually removing choices within a class. The only way class homogeneity would be affected is for MC Fighters, and even then it would only be for a single power.

OneFamiliarFace
2008-12-16, 02:33 AM
I would say it could definitely work for newer players. I think you would have to add the "effect" lines of a lot of powers to the "hit" line, so they didn't lose important effects (especially with warlock powers).

For more veteran players though, I think the miss and effect values of daily powers are part of an important choice they can make. A Rogue or Ranger, for example, might choose powers that deal half damage on a miss, so he can add his precision damage to them no matter what, or they might want to just be guaranteed some damage at some point.

That, and when players get a little more used to the game, I can see them loosening up and using daily powers when they would be most useful, rather than waiting for the end of the day. That is especially true in campaigns in which death is a threat. I say this because players usually save their dailies knowing the encounter they are in is beatable without them.

Daily powers can also be teased out by having encounters with solo or elite monsters earlier in the day.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-16, 02:37 AM
I would say it could definitely work for newer players. I think you would have to add the "effect" lines of a lot of powers to the "hit" line, so they didn't lose important effects (especially with warlock powers).

Naturally I would be doing this. I'm sorry I wasn't clearer. :smallredface:


Daily powers can also be teased out by having encounters with solo or elite monsters earlier in the day.

This is problematic because it can encourage 5 minute adventuring days. While a fine choice for occasional use, if it is used all the time it will just expose the party to the sorts of pressures that result in narcoleptic adventuring parties. No, the question is how to get players to smooth out their expenditure of Dailies over the course of a day.

KKL
2008-12-16, 02:38 AM
(though I don't remember any Reliable Encounter powers off the top of my head)

There's a somewhat painful way to get Reliable on Encounter attacks. MC Warlock and pick up Sacrifice for Caiphon.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-16, 02:42 AM
There's a somewhat painful way to get Reliable on Encounter attacks. MC Warlock and pick up Sacrifice for Caiphon.

Mmm, yes. I suppose I should have specified I'm sticking to Core, since I continue to be highly suspect of the quality of materials that WotC is releasing these days. That goes double for Dragon Magazine articles :smalltongue:

OneFamiliarFace
2008-12-16, 02:58 AM
This is problematic because it can encourage 5 minute adventuring days. While a fine choice for occasional use, if it is used all the time it will just expose the party to the sorts of pressures that result in narcoleptic adventuring parties. No, the question is how to get players to smooth out their expenditure of Dailies over the course of a day.

That is certainly true. I have been thinking about this a lot too, as I have just really started getting into the grits of DMing (only over PbP, so it is sooo slow). I've noticed that a lot of my harder combats, which require the players to expend a decent amount of resources, drive them to an almost immediate nap. (Fortunately, I have time limits on one and an invasion on the other group, which mildly averts this.)

Like you said above, many dailies are situational, and I think some of it can come about by bringing up those very situations. The hard part is somehow letting the players know that NOW is the time they need their daily and then somehow preventing them from hopping in their tent immediately afterwards (or at least preventing them from wanting to do so).

Lengthy diatribe:

Right now, I think there is still quite a bit of mind-stick about the way 3.5 worked versus the way 4e works. And by this, I mean the addition of Healing Surges, and them being misinterpreted poorly. They too are a daily resource, and there are often many circumstances where the use of a daily power can save many healing surges.

But I don't seem to see players considering Healing Surges to be an expendable resource. In part, this can be because it is difficult (and sometimes weird) to try to fit 4-5 encounters in a day to properly deplete all of their resources. As a result of knowing this, I think players would rather cling to their dailies and lose healing surges than the other way around.

Maybe with enough playtime, more veteran players might come to realize that, and use their dailies when it would be most beneficial, rather than when they "might as well," and when it is most useful can depend on its miss and effect lines.

Granted, it still seems like a problem with the 4e system that Powers seem to root people's minds in their importance, to the exclusion of other things (like healing surges and improvising attacks from resources and terrain pieces in the battle).
All that being said, I don't see a particular problem with your solution (especially for beginners), and it certainly seems worth a try.

Just out of curiosity: What do people think is the ideal use of the limited powers per encounter in a 5 man group? (I was thinking a quarter of their surges, one daily attack power, and half their action points. All of those being from the group in total, of course. Utility and Magic Item powers, on the other hand, seem like they don't need a per encounter rough depletion rate.)

Grynning
2008-12-16, 03:02 AM
EDIT:
@Grynning - good point. But until now nobody except for Fighters (and the Divine Oracle) had Reliable Powers, so I'm not actually removing choices within a class. The only way class homogeneity would be affected is for MC Fighters, and even then it would only be for a single power.

Well, if you make all dailies reliable, it would reduce choices for all classes. Everyone would just choose the powers that let them roll the most dice for damage and ignore the ones with other effects - death is the most effective form of control, etc.
Also, this would make a lot of AoE powers kind of wonky. Say you roll against 4 monsters, and only hit one. If you've removed the miss effects because the power is reliable, then you do full damage to one monster, but waste your daily completely on the others. Something to think about.

KKL
2008-12-16, 03:08 AM
Mmm, yes. I suppose I should have specified I'm sticking to Core, since I continue to be highly suspect of the quality of materials that WotC is releasing these days. That goes double for Dragon Magazine articles :smalltongue:

Being completely honest, I'd say most of 4e's Dragon material is perfectly fine, the rest can be fixed rather easily, and some of it is just badly worded or so out there that all you can really do is shake your head. Also,


Sacrifice to Caiphon [Warlock]
Prerequisites: Con 13, warlock
Benefit: When you attack with an encounter power that has targets and you miss all targets, then you can deal damage to yourself equal to the level of the power. If you do, you immediately recover the power.

That's Sacrifice to Caiphon. Take it as you will. I kinda like it.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-16, 03:10 AM
Well, if you make all dailies reliable, it would reduce choices for all classes. Everyone would just choose the powers that let them roll the most dice for damage and ignore the ones with other effects - death is the most effective form of control, etc.
Also, this would make a lot of AoE powers kind of wonky. Say you roll against 4 monsters, and only hit one. If you've removed the miss effects because the power is reliable, then you do full damage to one monster, but waste your daily completely on the others. Something to think about.

Hmm... yes, this I can see. It certainly makes Wizards act strangely, at the very least. That is a serious problem.

I don't know how I feel about the argument of "always taking the highest damage power" since for several classes (Clerics in particular) the damage a power does is far less important than the other effects. Heck, even Rogues rarely care about [W] values since they're using daggers.

KKL
2008-12-16, 03:12 AM
Heck, even Rogues rarely care about [W] values since they're using daggers.

Some use Rapiers or (ugh) Double Swords, though.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-16, 03:15 AM
Some use Rapiers or (ugh) Double Swords, though.

True, but the Rapier Rogue is still fairly rare, at least in my experience. Does anyone play one?

I have excommunicated all Double Weapons from my games since 3.0. Spike Chains too.

Grynning
2008-12-16, 03:20 AM
I don't know how I feel about the argument of "always taking the highest damage power" since for several classes (Clerics in particular) the damage a power does is far less important than the other effects. Heck, even Rogues rarely care about [W] values since they're using daggers.

I guess that could just be my perspective...I've noticed that a lot of times I could care less about the extra effects of my powers on my Warlord because the party isn't set up to make any use of them. If my 3[W] powers were reliable, I would love it, because I pretty much always use them up before we're close to resting.

I'm just saying as it is, a lot of dailies are fairly situational, but the game is also designed with four encounters per game day in mind (the rules for Milestones most clearly indicate this). Players shouldn't hold back their dailies or blow them, instead, they should know when the time is right to use them.

PS: Oddly enough, both the 4th ed. group I play in and the one I'm DM'ing for have or have had Rapier Rogues in them. Both players had pretty good reasons for taking it. (My player is RP'ing as a pirate-y/swashbuckler type and it fit, the halfling who used to be in my party was just trying to do as much damage as possible, and 2d8 plus sneak attack is a lot bigger than 2d4 plus sneak attack).

KKL
2008-12-16, 03:22 AM
True, but the Rapier Rogue is still fairly rare, at least in my experience. Does anyone play one?

I have excommunicated all Double Weapons from my games since 3.0. Spike Chains too.

Rapiers are considered the best weapons for Brutal Scoundrel Rogues as they're a +3 1d8 Light Blade. Artful Dodgers get more use out of Daggers. Of course, BS Rogues can use Daggers too, if they're so inclined.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-16, 03:40 AM
Rapiers are considered the best weapons for Brutal Scoundrel Rogues as they're a +3 1d8 Light Blade. Artful Dodgers get more use out of Daggers. Of course, BS Rogues can use Daggers too, if they're so inclined.

I don't see why that would be the case.

Brutal Scoundrel just adds STR damage on the Sneak Attack die, so it shouldn't matter what weapon you're using. Plus, it would seem to me that instead of spending a feat to boost your weapon from a 1d6 to a 1d8 is worse than spending a feat to upgrade you Sneak Attack from 2d6 to 2d8. If you're going to spend a feat anyhow, that is.

I do like Rapiers, mind you, because they are cool, but they are not particularly advantageous mechanically. Save for a few attacks that grant more than 2[W] in damage, that is. Perhaps I am missing something? :smallconfused:

Kurald Galain
2008-12-16, 04:28 AM
Make all Daily Attack Powers "Reliable" and remove any Miss effects, or effects that occur regardless of hitting.
This strikes me as a bad idea. It's not like 4E tactics are particularly difficult to learn; if your players are unaware as of yet that holding back dailies isn't such a great idea, teach them. Don't hold them back like this.

skywalker
2008-12-16, 04:36 AM
This is problematic because it can encourage 5 minute adventuring days. While a fine choice for occasional use, if it is used all the time it will just expose the party to the sorts of pressures that result in narcoleptic adventuring parties. No, the question is how to get players to smooth out their expenditure of Dailies over the course of a day.

I've seen this happen a lot. 4e didn't really fix that, because players still don't want to go into an encounter without their dailies. Of course, I've only been DMing at extremely low levels so far. But I find that if players only have one daily, they'll continue adventuring if only one player has used his daily. If 2 or more (which is half the party) have used theirs, then the day is done. But usually they don't use their daily until in dire straits.

One way to get them to use more dailies, at least in my case, is for them to have more dailies to begin with :smallbiggrin:

OneFamiliarFace
2008-12-16, 05:19 AM
One way to get them to use more dailies, at least in my case, is for them to have more dailies to begin with :smallbiggrin:

That is interesting. So they select two dailies and can use two per day then? Does this still result in them saving one daily until the clear end of the day?

KKL
2008-12-16, 05:26 AM
That is interesting. So they select two dailies and can use two per day then? Does this still result in them saving one daily until the clear end of the day?

Start at level 5.

Yakk
2008-12-16, 10:42 AM
So let's look at the math of it.

From 1 to 20, at-will attacks do [W]+X damage.
Encounter attacks tend to do 2[W] to 3[W]+X damage.
Daily attacks do 3[W] to 5[W]+X damage.

If you take your at-will as the baseline, we get:
Encounter: +1[W] to +2[W] over at-will.
Daily: +2[W] to +4[W] over at-will.

In essence, a Daily boost over a per-encounter has twice the boost as an Encounter has over an At-will.

If you use up 1 daily and 3 encounter in a 6 round fight, that leaves 2 at-wills. In short, when your daily misses, it eats up an at-will.

You are doing 3*W + 2.5*EBonus damage (roughly) in that fight, ignoring the miss and/or reliable keyword on the daily.

A missed daily does half damage, or is reliable.

Half damage on miss daily:
3.5*W + 3*EBonus

Reliable daily is a bit more complex.
HWWEEE P=1/2 D=3.5W+3.5EBonus
MHWEEE P=1/4 D=3W+3.5EBonus
MMHEEE P=1/8 D=2.5W+3.5EBonus
MMMHEE P=1/16 D=2.0W+3.0EBonus
MMMMHE P=1/32 D=1.5W+2.5EBonus
MMMMMH P=1/64 D=1.0W+2.0EBonus
MMMMMM P=1/64 D=0

Avg D=3W + 3.359375EBonus

As the length of the fight goes to infinity, I believe this converges on D=3W+3.5EBonus. You'll notice that this tends to be less in the Reliable case, because the damage bonus from a hit, plus the at-will damage dice, tends to dominate the Encounter damage bonus over an at-will power.

On the other hand, this does encourage the use of daily powers outside of "one big fight", because reliable powers used in a single fight tend to start eating up per-encounter power actions if you miss too many times.

On the other hand, it removes some of the mechanical differences between powers. So it should requires justification.

Artanis
2008-12-16, 01:51 PM
I don't think it will work. Whether the power hits or not, if it works, it's still unavailable for future fights, and having it available is the entire point of hoarding the powers.

And that's just for single-target powers. Powers with multiple attack rolls (like the vast majority of Wizard and Ranger powers) open up a whole can of worms. The more targets a power goes after, the higher the chance that at least one roll will miss, thus letting a power go unexpended. Even the smallest AoEs give a LOT of chances to go unexpended, and balancing that would be absolutely required...and really damned hard to do without screwing up the balance.

Mercenary Pen
2008-12-16, 02:31 PM
I don't think making all dailies reliable is gonna make much difference at all. Players are still gonna use their dailies for encounters that don't really justify them, and they're then gonna demand that they can rest to recover them- and probably claim that you're a bad DM in the process... at least until such time as you can educate them in more effective use of their powers...

It's as much as anything the challenge of changing to a new system that does it, and until they are comfortable with the system, they'll still go for overkill at the first opportunity.

All you need to do is be patient while they learn that the moose is best defeated with a shotgun, NOT a guided missile...

Artanis
2008-12-16, 02:34 PM
That's the exact opposite of the OP's problem :smallconfused:

Saintjebus
2008-12-16, 04:47 PM
When I have players taking random rests in the middle of an adventure(for whatever reason) I look at the next encounter, and then roll some sort of dice to see if they get attacked while they are sleeping, with at least part of the the next encounter showing up.

OneFamiliarFace
2008-12-16, 08:34 PM
When I have players taking random rests in the middle of an adventure(for whatever reason) I look at the next encounter, and then roll some sort of dice to see if they get attacked while they are sleeping, with at least part of the the next encounter showing up.

(Don't get me wrong, I like this idea and use it on narcoleptic parties, as Oracle rightly put it.) Of course, if this is common enough, then it only compounds the primary (OP) problem. The players might start saving their dailies and sleeping less, but heck, they might not spend their dailies at all, in case they are attacked when asleep and, thus, at a disadvantage.

I do think a few people have been touching on an interesting subject, which is basically, "Why do players save their dailies?" That is important, because it will determine a proper solution for them. With Oracle_Hunter's guys it is because they don't like missing. My parties seem to save them in case they meet a "boss encounter" of some kind. Other people's players tend to use them like copper pieces and then conk out for 6 hours.

I don't really have an answer, other than it seems to me like powers encourage people to metagame more than class abilities did (Rip Van Winkle wizards aside). Or, what is probably more like the truth, they have required the whole party to stop and rest, instead of just wizards and clerics. But I can't really complain here, as I see metagaming as the best solution in this case (by explaining the saving of healing surges by using dailies when they are most useful).

Gads, I am a windbag.

Yakk
2008-12-17, 12:33 AM
You can just change the Daily power refresh from "you take a break" to something else.

I use a "refresh 456 on milestone" myself.

This means your dailies have a chance of refreshing as you adventure. And if you are 'friendly' with your milestone placement, players will begin to expect a milestone right before a boss encounter. So any dailies used up in previous fights will have a 50-50 chance of being back for the boss fight.

OneFamiliarFace
2008-12-17, 12:43 AM
I like the idea of new refreshings, but I had been taking them in different directions:

Arcane and Divine powers could be refreshed in the presence of certain magical or holy areas or altars. I think that would work with pretty much any power source. But, I couldn't really figure out how to do that for Martial characters. This, of course, doesn't solve the problem totally. Rather, it just makes for some interesting areas and places, and presents game effects for "This place is especially holy." (And, of course, this place would probably only ever be available to the character once in his whole career.) Likewise, players can charge certain areas by expending daily powers into them. Maybe a magical conduit room, when charged with a daily spell with an energy descriptor, deals a certain amount of damage to everyone in it of a type equal to the spell and the damage scales based on the level of the spell.

Another option for the daily recharge is that once per level, players get a Power Point (or whatever you want to call it), and they can use this to recharge a daily power they have already used once per level (but can still only use a daily power once per encounter). Still, this would slightly water down certain paragon and epic abilities.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-17, 12:45 AM
You can just change the Daily power refresh from "you take a break" to something else.

I use a "refresh 456 on milestone" myself.

This means your dailies have a chance of refreshing as you adventure. And if you are 'friendly' with your milestone placement, players will begin to expect a milestone right before a boss encounter. So any dailies used up in previous fights will have a 50-50 chance of being back for the boss fight.

That is an interesting idea.

It gives PCs a bit more flexibility without requiring a dramatic change. You would need to taper this off in the Paragon and Epic tiers though; otherwise it interferes with the refresh powers available to some PPs and EDs. Maybe cut it entirely in the Paragon? Or make it a 5+, and a 6 for ED?