[4E] Low level encounter powers as at-wills?

[AgentPaper]

So, one of the main gripes I've heard about 4E is that, once you've used your encounter powers and a few dailies, you're pretty much stuck wailing away with your at-will powers, which don't really do that much and tend to be uninteresting. Well, in the interest of making at-will powers both more powerful and interesting, I came up with an idea. What if, instead of having to replace your now sub-par encounter powers with high-level ones, you instead can now use them as at-will powers?

Of course, this would make normal at-will powers useless past heroic play, but that could be helped by increasing their damage to 2[W] at level 11 instead of 21, and then increasing their damage to 3[W] at 21 instead.

This seems to be at least somewhat balanced, though it's definitely a buff for the players. However, it also helps encounters that become mindless slugging matches end much faster, so that 6 rounds into fighting that dragon, you don't run out of stuff to do and then sit there and wail on him for another 4 rounds with your dinky little at-will attacks.

For example, at level 13, a ranger would be able to have Two-Fanged Strike as an at-will attack. As well, Twin Strike would now deal 2[W] damage per attack. This seems to make them about equal in power, since Two-Fanged strike adds strength to the hits, and does bonus damage if they both land, while Twin Strike gives you more damage from the extra 1[W].

Of course, there's probably a lot of problem-powers that would be out-of-control if you did this to them, but it's an interesting idea that I think could add some variety for players that don't mind managing the extra powers.

Another idea, that I'm less sure about, would be to do a similar thing to daily attack powers: Instead of losing them, they become encounter powers. This, though, doesn't seem as much of a good idea, though, since many of the daily powers don't really fade in their usefulness, and are only reasonable because you can use them once, period.

Anyways, what do you guys think? Any immediate problems that would make this a game-breaker?

[Mando Knight]

You could also allow the players to replace their at-wills with encounter powers that become at-will.

Of course, this means that the Psion doesn't get anything new out of this at all, but they get at-wills that become domination powers, so there.

[Yakk]

By level 11, your character has 3 utility powers, 3 encounter attack powers, 3 daily attack powers, and 2 at-will attack powers. And probably a racial encounter power.

In a 6 round fight, 3 rounds will be taken up by your encounter attack powers, leaving 3 rounds of at-will use. If you have a 4 encounter day, 3/4 of a round will be taken up by a daily attack power. That leaves 2 1/4 rounds of at-will, 3 rounds of encounter, and 3/4 round of daily. Somewhere in this you'll be using your utility powers, magic item powers, and racial power.

So at that stage, you aren't likely to run into a huge amount of at-will spam. But in order for fights to be this short, the players have to be pretty heavily on the side of damage output monsters. . .

Practically, if you just 'kept' your old encounter powers, the variation in how fights went would be higher than if they changed to at-wills. (You might also buff at-wills).

Note that Twin Strike gains a bigger buff from this than most at-wills (2[W] to 4[W] to 6[W]).

[AgentPaper]

Note that Twin Strike gains a bigger buff from this than most at-wills (2[W] to 4[W] to 6[W]).

True, but not as much as you might think. Unlike most at-wills, Twin Strike doesn't get to add an ability modifier to damage, so the extra [W] increase each tier mostly just makes up for the lack of a scaling ability modifier. This does buff it a bit, but Twin Strike's main advantage is still that it gets to add damage bonuses twice, not it's high [W] attack, and this doesn't change that.


Edit: Also, this probably won't come into play much in a normal encounter, which probably lasts about 4-6 rounds. It's mostly intended to make longer fights, like a climactic encounter with the BBEG, more interesting. It's mostly for the fights that last 8-10 rounds or more, which really start to get dull after the fifth round of "I use twin strike". It's no fun to spend your entire adventure looking forward to a huge, cinematic battle with Orcus himself (plus lackeys) only to end up spending half the fight picking away at his HP with your at-wills.

[Shadow_Elf]

True, but not as much as you might think. Unlike most at-wills, Twin Strike doesn't get to add an ability modifier to damage, so the extra [W] increase each tier mostly just makes up for the lack of a scaling ability modifier. This does buff it a bit, but Twin Strike's main advantage is still that it gets to add damage bonuses twice, not it's high [W] attack, and this doesn't change that.


Edit: Also, this probably won't come into play much in a normal encounter, which probably lasts about 4-6 rounds. It's mostly intended to make longer fights, like a climactic encounter with the BBEG, more interesting. It's mostly for the fights that last 8-10 rounds or more, which really start to get dull after the fifth round of "I use twin strike". It's no fun to spend your entire adventure looking forward to a huge, cinematic battle with Orcus himself (plus lackeys) only to end up spending half the fight picking away at his HP with your at-wills.

This is why you use terrain abilities and story power to recharge the PCs arsenals during such a fight - there's a lot of advice on preventing grinding in the DMG2.

[Yakk]

True, but not as much as you might think. Unlike most at-wills, Twin Strike doesn't get to add an ability modifier to damage, so the extra [W] increase each tier mostly just makes up for the lack of a scaling ability modifier. This does buff it a bit, but Twin Strike's main advantage is still that it gets to add damage bonuses twice, not it's high [W] attack, and this doesn't change that.

Adding 2[W] instead of 1[W] is intended to make up for the stat boost from level 1 to end of epic.

Adding 4[W] instead of 2[W] is going beyond that.

And yes, it is strong because it double-dips bonuses by standard; you are also making it strong because it gets a die count boost.

Edit: Also, this probably won't come into play much in a normal encounter, which probably lasts about 4-6 rounds. It's mostly intended to make longer fights, like a climactic encounter with the BBEG, more interesting. It's mostly for the fights that last 8-10 rounds or more, which really start to get dull after the fifth round of "I use twin strike". It's no fun to spend your entire adventure looking forward to a huge, cinematic battle with Orcus himself (plus lackeys) only to end up spending half the fight picking away at his HP with your at-wills.

At level 30, most characters have ways to break the encounter budget. From doing rituals as standard actions, to using encounter powers at-will.

On top of that, they have 4 daily attack powers and 4 encounter attack powers. So an 8 round fight .. easily uses no at-wills at all.

[Hashmir]

Don't forget magic item encounter/daily powers, of which a higher-level player will have plenty. Even more if they hit milestones.

Speaking of which, do paragon path powers just get added, or do you have to swap existing powers for them?

[AgentPaper]

Magic item powers tend to be used either as a free action or as a minor action, so they don't really count. Similar with Utility powers. Even some encounter powers and some dailies don't take up a standard action, instead going off on a minor or immediate action/reaction/interrupt. Not to mention that you'll be using an action point about every other encounter. It's not hard to imagine a situation where you're 4 rounds into combat and out of standard attack options, even at level 30. And again, this isn't meant to be a thing that comes up all the time, it's just a nice way to give your players some more options.

Anyways, if you're really worried about the balance (and there's plenty of reason to be, mind) then you could try doing something like lowering the damage of all the powers by 1[W] or so, instead of increasing the damage of the at-wills.

[Yakk]

Good point.

At level 13+ you start replacing encounter powers. Instead of level 13+ powers replacing level 1 powers, they are added, but they deal 1[W] less damage.

Powers that only deal 1[W] are increased in level by 5, and left at their current damage.

Non-weapon powers are dealt with on an ad-hoc basis.

[AgentPaper]

I'd say that 1[W] powers instead do 1d4 damage, or something.