Unified Powers Mechanic

So one of the major changes in the 4.0 rules is the creation of a single power mechanic. Every class has the same kind of number of encounter and daily powers. Each has a couple additional powers beyond these that give the class flavor. This differs from 3rd edition where there are different power mechanics. Spell casters have spells, barbarians have rages, fighters and rogues tend to have no limit on the powers they use.

So is a switching to a single mechanic a good thing? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

First I want to take a quick look at World of Warcraft. This MMORPG has essentially 3 power mechanics. They have a 'mana point' system where you recover mana points when not using them and you spend mana points to perform actions. They also have a 'rage' system where you acquire rage by doing and taking damage. You then spend rage like you would mana. The third system is 'combo' points. Certain classes have powers that cause targets to accumulate 'combo' points. These classes also have 'finishing moves' whose effects vary based on the number of combo points applied. In addition to these mechanisms all three systems include the notion of a cooldown. Once you use an ability you have to wait a certain amount of time before you use another ability and a certain amount of time before you use that particularly ability. D&D has seen some hints of cooldowns and mana points, but unfortunately I have seen very little use of rage or combo point mechanics.

So World of Warcraft, a much more balance conscious game than D&D, has managed to maintain multiple power mechanics so have differing systems isn't inherently unbalanced or anything. But obviously how these mechanics are designed can have a large impact.

One issue about the power mechanics in 3rd edition is encounter durability. Fighters and rogues generally have no abilities that are used up during an encounter. They just take damage that is fairly easy to heal between combats. Wizards and clerics, however, have no abilities that aren't used up during an encounter. Typically you run into a situation where a party has to decide whether to push on and the fighters and rogues are fine to push on, but the spell casters are begging to stop. This isn't horrible, but it is a notable outcome out these varying power mechanics.

Let's look at melee versus spells in another way. (I am ignoring other resourced effects because they essentially are like spells for the most part.) Imagine a 2D graph with the y-axis being how useful you and the x-axis being encounters. Melee fighters would be like a flat horizontal line. They have about the same use in each encounter. Spell casters would a a spikey line. For some encounters they would be more useful and for others they might be less useful. This isn't really a problem in my mind. If you get to shine sometimes and take a backseat other times it is okay, but what will often happen is that the spell casters will 'blow their wad'. They will be more focussed on being effective than on nebulous resource management issues. They will want to do useful things every round. So the graph will then have the spell casters well above the melee for early encounters and then well below it for later encounters. But at this crossing point the spell casters will want to take an extended rest.

I am kind of all over the place in this post, but I want to get back to the idea of a single unified mechanics for powers. I think it has advantages and disadvantegs. It makes your game less complex, but often complexity in the mechanics of a game makes the game interesting. Many D&D players actually enjoy the complexity of the game. But an overly complex game is also bad and can easily become slow and the pace suffers.

I think the problem with the single mechanic of fourth edition is that it is so frelling boring and simplistic. An interesting and flexible mechanic would have been great, but the universal mechanic is the so mindless. You have X powers you can each use once per encounter and Y powers that you can each use once per day. Each class actually builds on this a little built. Wizards actually get a little bit of choice, some abilities allow you to recover powers, but the fundamental mechanic is just ridiculously simple.

So I actually think a universal mechanic isn't necessarily bad, but it should be one that has more flexibility. Here is an example of one. You have 'points'. Using an ability costs a certain number of points. Different abilities cost a different number of points. You recover point either at the end of an encounter or at the end of the day. This gives you a lot more flexibility to have different classes handle the system differently. To go back to the warcraft example, wizards could recover points every round while a warrior might get a point every time he hits or is hit.

This post kind of mentally wandered, but I guess I just wanted to make the point in the first sentence of the preceding paragrah.