So, continuing my 4th edition analysis after a little over two months of running two separate groups in 4E, I now take a look at the Power system of the new edition.
Essentially, powers are the reservoir of "Cool Things to Do" for your characters. Mostly in combat, but the powers can and do tend to apply outside of the battlefield. Powers are divided in to a couple categories, and by "power source." Martial, Divine and Arcane are power sources, for example. Power types are spells and exploits. Within these boundaries you have at-will, encounter, daily and utility powers. The type of power is a quick way to figure out how often you can use it.
The power system does something I thought 4E would originally do using the feat system, uniting a range of different abilities in to one category, then treating them with the same essential rules. Powers are all action-based, and require either a standard, move, minor or instant reaction to use. A lot of the new strategy in 4E comes from figuring out ways to use powers you have with powers other PCs have to better effect.
One of the chief effects of a unified power system is that it makes balancing classes really, really easy. Feats are now passive effects, for example; if something is going to give you a bonus that always comes in to play when a certain condition is met, then it is most likely a feat. Powers are "burnable" and you need to rest to recover them. The good news is, resting now is a 5-10 minute affair to recover encounter powers, and you need to rest a minimum of 6 hours once a day to recover dailies. Note that you can't, say, use a daily, rest six hours, then immediately recover and use that daily again; it's a once-a-day thing.
Mechanically, it made classes very balanced. In fact, they are so balanced in 4E that until this edition showed up, I always felt that they were pretty much as balanced as they could feasibly get in 3rd edition, and this one blew that out of the water; 3rd edition now looks to me rather shifty and arbitrary in a way I hadn't seen since the old Player's Option days of AD&D 2nd edition! Gah!
The downside of "supremely balanced" is that people who like unbalanced systems will find this deplorable. People who liked the fact that if you stuck out long enough in 3rd to get a high level wizard or cleric were (apparently) rewarded with the toughest characters you could make. Of course, getting there meant surviving a lot of low levels as one of the wimpiest dungeonpunks around.
Which gets me to the at-will powers. Now, everyone can use a basic attack in 4E with no problem, at will. But the At-Will powers and exploits are a selection of cool maneuvers or spells you can get that are inherently familiar to you. Fighters get things like cleave, which in 3E was a feat, but is now a basic maneuver that a fighter can opt in to. Wizards can get magic missile as one, along with all their cantrips, for example. The balance is that magic missiles now don't scale as much, and you need to roll to hit (using Int as a base stat for your chance to attack against reflex iirc.) This does create some preposterous "what ifs" for people who like to bend the rules to see where they break, in the name of Murphy's Rules: a wizard could technically fire off a new magic missle every six seconds for the rest of his life and there's nothing specifically forbidding it. Actually, I already decided that (should it ever come up) a wizard can only contunuously cast spells for a number of minutes equal to his Con score before passing out. That's still a lot of magic missles, but it will keep crazies from weird abuse (you know who I'm talking about! There's one in every town.)
The end result of all this is: every character in the game now has a pool of abilities, some which can be used all the time, some used during each battle, and some which are very impressive and work once a day. Mechanically, when a fighter uses his daily and kicks ass, he now needs to wait for it to recharge after an extended rest. In terms of the world, it means he's too friggin' tired to get his fight-on up again until he's had a chance to recuperate. Likewise, for wizards it means they've expended their magical goodness and need another rest. Which is pretty much just like 3rd edition, except now the same rules apply to some unique and potent fighter abilities.
So this means the following, as has been demonstrated in my group:
1. Wizards are now playable at low levels without intense frustration. All classes operate on the same basic rules, now, so a wizard is as viable a beginner's class as a fighter, something never before seen in D&D. Complicated classes are now the funky ones like the warlord, ranger, and possibly the paladin.
2. Fighters are no longer "duh I pick up the big sword and hit him" types any more. Now they are performing tricks and maneuvers with much more visual flair, and when you use minis on a tabletop they really come to life.
3. Parties and spell casters are no longer faced with prolonged down-time. One of the best things is that the "dead weight" syndrome of a cleric or wizard who has spenthis spell use for the day and is now tagging along or resting somewhere while everyone else adventures is gone. Now, everyone can at least do
something in combat that's interesting, even after depleting all your daily and encounter abilities.
4. Because the classes are finally balanced, you can now choose a class because of it's flavor rather than its effectiveness. This is the biggest thing for me. I have now seen at least two new players to the game choose wizard or warlock as a class, and play them well, simply because the classes are now balanced and operate on a unified set of rules. No longer must I subject a new player to the role of fighter in order to ease them in to the game!
An important note: yes, most all powers are now aimed at combat situations, though many can be exploited by creative players outside of battle. But the non-combat spells of earlier editions are not gone; they have polymorphed in to a new beast, called ritual magic. I'll talk more about that, along with skills, in my next blog...
Tags: 4E D&D RPGs
