D&D 4e: The Problem with Powers

I'd like to start this post by saying that I really like D&D 4e. It is, without a doubt, a fun game to play, and I regularly dream up characters for it that never see the table because its flavor inspires me with more ideas than I ever have time to play.

That said, after thinking about powers for a while, I can finally put my finger on what bothers me about them. Powers turn characters into broken records.

When I watch a martial arts movie, one thing I hope for is a great deal of variety in fight scenes. I want to see the heroes and villains mixing it up in creative ways throughout the film. High attacks, low attacks, kicks, punches, thrown props, and terrain exploitation all sensitive to the context of the environment and the opponent generate excitement and maintain audience attention.

Another thing I want out of fight scenes is growing tension as the fight goes on. The fighters start by throwing basic kicks, punches, or weapon swings. Finding themselves evenly matched, they start to get creative by taking advantage of high ground or causing distractions to gain the upper hand. Perhaps they also drive the fight toward a balcony or ledge, each hoping for an opportunity to knock the other off of it in a high-stakes gamble for a quick victory. These things help to keep an audience invested in the scene as the tension grows.

The player-logic that drives the use of powers in D&D 4e sabotages both of these goals during in-game fights. Encounter powers don't look clever or creative when they're used in every single fight. Take the Rogue encounter power "Sand in the Eyes." When you use it, you cast sand into your enemy's eyes, blinding him. You see this happen in movie fight scenes often enough that it's easy to imagine, but you don't see it again and again and again in every fight scene of a single movie. You see it once, and it's clever. You see it repeatedly and the audience says, "That's nice. What's new?" This wouldn't be too problematic if there were any kind of incentive to not use every one of your encounter powers in every encounter, but players understand that when they have a resource usable once per encounter, for any encounter in which they don't use that resource, they've been inefficient with their power.

This leads into sabotage of the second good fight scene rule. Since players don't want to waste a resource that they've cared to put on their sheets, they tend to front load the fight with per encounter resources to ensure that they're spent in a fight. It's worse in fights that get recognized as "boss fights," because then they front load the fight with daily powers only to end up feeling like lumberjacks in the second half of a fight as they chip away at remaining hit points.

I'm not running a D&D 4e campaign right now, but I've considered testing out a house rule to remedy this in the future. This rule comes in two pretty simple parts, and would apply to both PCs and NPCs.

(For NPCs, encounter powers are powers that have any sort of conditional recharge. Daily powers would be those that can never be used more than once per fight.)

-Any round in which you expend neither encounter nor daily resources, you gain a +1 to attack rolls. This accumulates on itself in consecutive rounds if you continue to fulfill the condition.

-Any round in which you expend at least one daily resource, the bonus to attack rolls from this mechanic decays by 1 (to a minimum of 0).

In my experience, players love bonuses to attack rolls, and absolutely hate missing with limited powers. I think this would provide enough incentive to change behavior and create more exciting and tense fights as players have to weigh the benefits of cutting loose early with the drawbacks of missing out on increased accuracy.