Too Many Powers

[kent_allard_jr]

4th edition D&D has always had a flavor problem, and this is never more clear then when reading the power descriptions. This is true even though each power has a colorful name and a short bit of flavor text. Quick: Can you name all of your PC's powers? I've been playing a rogue in kokoinai's campaign since 4th edition came out, and gotten to 16th level, but I could only name half of his exploits from memory, let alone say what each of them did.

Part of the problem, no doubt, is that rogue exploits -- unlike, say, wizard spells -- are all going to sound a bit alike. There are only so many ways to describe one guy stabbing someone else. So you get abilities like "Crimson Edge," whose name tells you nothing at all, so its no surprise I couldn't tell you what it does.

This may get to the core of the issue: There are just too many attack powers, all doing more or less the same things. In some future edition of D&D there should be far fewer of them, perhaps only one new power every 5 levels instead of every 2-3. If you want more variety for spellcasters you can expand the size of the spellbook (from 2-3 spells to 4-5), or give them powers from their pact, totem, guild or deity.

Alternatively characters can get powers as frequently as they do today, but only up to low Paragon tier. After that they can Enhance existing powers: Add extra dice of damage; push, pull or slide targets farther; add more conditions to the effects. After all, you can find many powers -- such as "Deep Cut" and "Biting Assault" for rogues -- that do more-or-less the same thing, only one is better than the other. Instead you could have a single power ("Deep Cut") and an Enhanced version at later levels ("Enhanced [Level 25]: Increase damage to 3[W], and target is weakened on hit (save ends)"). It would save space and make all of the powers easier to remember.

Comments

[kokoinai.livejournal.com]

Note psionic characters essentially work this way already, having a smaller power pool but the ability to enhance them on the fly.

[mneme]

I think this is -more- a martial problem than that for other power sources--I've never had a similar issue for a sorcerer or a wizard (where every power tends to have a very distinctive effect), or, for that matter, my 16th level Avenger (I do tend to use the checklist from CB--but mostly I can run without consulting anything except a list of what powers I've got unused and a list of damage expressions for odd powers like Fury's Advance--the specials are distinct enough that I can usually keep them straight, particularly as one only has 3 encounter powers (sorry, four, but the paragon power is easy) and two at-wills to remember (and for an avenger, all dailies are buffs, and all dailies I've taken are 3W wis vs AC buffs).

I think what would help a lot would be standardizing titles. I mean, if you look at their keywords, they're basically tossing darts onto a board to decide that, say, Fury's advance is the Avenger minor-action attack power (which also does a push, so ok, the Advance makes some sense), wheras Focused Fury and Desperate Fury are standard action attack powers, a bunch of furies (Wizard's, Battle Fury Stance, Fighting Fury, Spark of Fury) are stances or might as well be, and there's even a Fury that's a summon (Summon Stormstone Fury).

And if you look at the "crimson" powers (one of their favorite words), there's Crimson Edge (ongoing damage--a "bleed" power), Crimson Spear Strike (immobolization), Crimson Stride (the awesome Avenger teleport you/teleport enemy E13 power--which does have a special I always forget, but that's because it does negligable damage and I almost never fulfil its conditions anyway), Crimson Agony Tide (blinds and pushes) and Crimson Phoenix Rage (fire damage and auto-heal. I do see why they don't want to call every power by a directly descriptive name -- Thunderstaff sound a lot better than "Pushing Staff Strike" or some such--but by coding common elements into names and staying consistent; make "crimson" used for only bleed, or only teleport-other powers, and "fury" only used for attack stances, and, say, Edge or Flash used only for minor action attack powers, etc--they could have flavorful names that still gave you a clue to what the power actually did; maybe enough to remember the rest of what it did.

At least "blinding" powers almost always blind. Yes, almost--Blinding Glare from Dragon makes you invisible instead, Blinding Torrent (also Dragon) grants concealment, Blinding Clarity only blinds when maximally augmented, Blinding Assailiant makes you invisible (another Dragon one), and Blinding Sun Technique only blinds as a granted crit effect [awesome buff, though, at least until you get a better way to up your crit range]. But still, in comparison to most of the rest of their stuff, that's a great track record--every non-Dragon element with Blinding in the title involves Blind at some point, and out of the 23 elments with that in the title, all but 4 blind on a hit (in at least one mode).

They have, in fact, been producing more powers that auto-boost if taken at a higher tier. The problem is, they've mostly mis-designed these to provide the same benefit at each tier except for damage expression--and the standard is that instead each half-tier of power should provide a bit more in the way of a benefit beyond the damage expression. For a power to scale well and feel satisfying at a higher tier, damage boosts need to be higher, ranges and areas of effect larger, and status effects generally more potent (if only because of the increased fragility of status effects in higher tiers). Buffs and debuffs can also probably afford to be larger--but as is known, they currently tend to overdo Buff/debuff scaling now (with higher level powers it's -probably- ok, though).