Generic, non Ravenloft 4E-Martial Power

[alhoon]

Is it me, or some of the Martial power rules seem to again lead in the 3E pitfall? While most of it is balanced, I managed to quickly find some ways to make "brokenly powerful" characters.
Sure, these broken characters aren't as broken as 3E broken characters. Also it still takes more effort to make a broken character than in 3E.

On the other hand, even if difficult, it's easier than before. And we're just in the first two supplements (combined with the equipment book).

After all, if you double the choices for each martial class powers you double the chances for powergamers to make broken characters. Also when you devote 150-200 pages to new magic items some of them will be unbalancing.

[Jester of the FoS]

There should be fewer martial power books though.

This year is all about Arcane, Divine and Primal. Next year will be about the new power sources (likely Ki and Psionic) in both the PHB3 and the related books.
And there's still Shadow and Elemental the year after that.
They might not make a Martial Power 2 or 3, or when they do it might be full of optional rules, variants, and new rules to test for 5e.

That said there is always going to be a power creep with new books.
If they new material is the same or weaker then it's going to be less desirable. The trick then is to make it seem more powerful or make it the same but different enough to still stand out.
Hence the "holding things back" or 4e. In 3e you really had to try hard to make things seem cool and must-have, now you just need to re-introduce something that used to be common (2-weapon fighters, animal companions, summoning, familiars, etc).
But if it's seen as sucking it still won't be used. The option must seem viable or superiour.

You aim to make 70% balanced with 15% overpowered and 15% underpowered. The sheer number of powers required for each new build without redundancy means that you need to try alot of things and that can lead to unbalance.
That's the big flaw of 4e: every character is a 3e sorcerer with all the balance issues that come with having to make dozens of spells on a regular basis.

And testing is also impossible.
They have hard numbers they stick to (likely maximum/minimums) for PCs and items, like they have with the monster (only they're not releasing them or everyone would be able to make official-balanced powers).
But it's the added effects on top of the damage that really push powers into "overpowered".
They can try to playtest as much as possible, but there's no way they're testing every power in the book from L1-30.

Let's do the math.
There's enough powers, roughly, for 2 characters per build, and MP introduces 6 new builds. So that's 12 characters or 2 6-person parties. So we could assume they divided the workload and playtested simultaneously although, they'd probably split into 3 tables of 4 w/ an extra controller (so we'll assume that).
They'd want to test every power at every level so you'd need at least 30 fights (90 in total). You can generally average 1 fights per hour (some faster, some slower) and a good session is at least 4 hours. So that's 7.5 sessions. A full week and a half of playtesting on the company's dime.
But one-fight will hardly tell you balance (you could miss with that attack, very likely since you have a 55% chance of hitting on average). And to test dailies you either need to be short other resources or fight harder combats. So for an accurate test you'd want 2-3 combats (15-90 sessions).

That's as much as 360 hours of game time or 45 eight-hour workdays. Or 9 months of 5-day workweeks.

There's NO way they have the book done 9 months ahead of time to begin testing. Even if they start at the low levels and work ahead it's improbable that they have a staff of 12 spend 3/4ths of the workyear on each book.

Realistically, you spread out the workload. People test the new material and mix the powers and get as many employees playing as many games as possible and testing multiple books at the same time. And you hope you catch the worst of the worst or see flaws and can modify multiple powers based on how one power plays out.

[Archedius]

one of the best explanations I've read. GJ as usual Jester : )

[Twin Agate Dragons]

With D&D, power creep is inevitable. BTW, Martial Power 2 is coming out next year.

Whether it is acyually coming out in February or not is beyong me.

[Jester of the FoS]

I am a little surprised it's so soon. Still, we get three new sources books this year (Arcane, Divine, and Primal) and we know there'll be a Psionics book in 2010, but with only one new source in that book they probably had to fill a gap.

PHB3 was likely supposed to be Ki and Psionic with maybe one or two other classes, so there'd be a Ki and Psionic book. But since they've dumped the Ki power source it makes sense they'd dump the book and have this gap in the schedule.
Hence why PHB3's cover announces "Divine, Primal, and Psionic Heroes"; they took most of the ki and shoved them into other sources, possibly one or two into divine and primal.


Meanwhile, we look at the content of MP1. A BIG part of it was the racial feats. Feats for races to make them more appealing for non-synergistic classes.

A big flaw in 4e is the races and classes combos. One of the points of dumping penalties was to make all classes appealing for all races, to avoid the pitfalls of attempting a half-orc wizard or sorcerer. However, due to the uneven math at higher levels and the inherent power gamer mentality, you *need* a 16-18 in your primary attack stat. The character builder really hammers this home, with it the auto-build feature always adding an 18 to your main attack.
So, suddenly, any race without a +2 in a relevant stat is under-powered as that 20 is all but needed or you miss 5% more than the rest of the party.
(in my 4e homegame, Mrs. Jester plays an eladrin warlord with a 16 strength and is not hitting very often at all, especially compared to the disgusting halfling rogue).

MP1 did a reasonable job of making all the PHB1 races have a good feat to make the various classes and builds work. There are some very interesting eladrin warlord feats. I imagine MP2 will do the same for PHB2 and Eberron races, in addition to many new builds.

[Jester of the FoS]

Here's an interesting debate on 5e and why the author things there won't be a hit/miss mechanic:
http://elevenfootpole.blogspot.com/2009 ... onale.html

Providing that an eventual 5th Edition continues in largely the same direction as 4th Edition, the next edition of D&D will eliminate the concept of rolling to hit. Powers will always be effective to some degree; only their degree of effectiveness will retain a random element.

I both agree and disagree with the assessment.

I think that he's right that 5e (if it's designed by the same types of people as 4e with the same mentality) the dynamic of crit/hit/miss will change. I imagine a crit/ hit/ graze/ miss mechanic where only a "natural 1" misses and non-hits just have lessened damage. And most powers have an effect so even on a "1" you do something.

At the same time, I also envision races being muted. Already the power level of races has been nominalized, with drow and doppelgangers being equal in power to humans. I foresee stat boosts being removed altogether and races being differentiated by their powers.

[alhoon]

Remember our wild guessings for 4E when 3e was a couple years old?

Most of us weren't even close. 4E along with the new staff, is closer to the 2nd Edition in mind set. For example, monsters give a set XP and 4E supports 1 monster/player while 3E was made for about 1-3 opponents per fight.

So I believe 5E will be less simplified and would allow more immersion in the world than 4E does. It will be again I hope, more a fantasy world simulation and less a game.

And of course, this will complicate mechanics and all. But I think I'll like 5E more than 4E.

[Jester of the FoS]

I *hope* 5e is more like 3e (compared to the 4e is 1/2e). I'd like a hybrid game/reality simulator and something with more meat.
I'd like fewer powers for most classes (so using a power felt special), less magic especially at lower levels, etc.

I called alot of the changes for 4e in the late days of 3e, and most are fairly easily explained through chains of logic. My problem was I often stopped a step too soon; 4e was more radical that I wanted.
But my hit/miss speculation is based on someone else's work and moving that forward.

And 5e speculation is aided by knowing the type of people working on the game know and what kind of system they'd design from the problems (real or perceived) the current one has.