WTF is with peoples' objections to a unified power system?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:40 am

A lot of people a priori reject 4E's power system, not because there's a lot of junk powers or that people don't start out with enough and then get too many or that it falls into Five Moves of Doom or that powers for martial characters are small and weak...

But because they're against the idea of classes having a unified power scheme at all. I have no idea why people (mostly grognards) are so against it. A unified power system is mandatory if you want any of:

1) Multiclassing.
2) A reasonable page limit; 3E D&D wasted several books' worth of material coming up with various power schemes.
3) Not fucking over sword-based classes, because they're usually the victims of authors deciding to get lazy/conserve space and saddle them with 'I full attack it!'

A unified power system is just the way to go.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 12:29 pm

Some people want to be able to do stuff all day. Some people want to not be able to do stuff all day, because they want more or better effects.

Telling me I'm never allowed to play a Stormlord or Conduit ever, because you decided that....

Wait, what are the benefits of unified power system again? Save page space you lazy bum? That's literally the only benefit you presented. Yeah, you decided that page space is more important than the ability to play a Conduit or a Wizard.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 12:33 pm

A unified power system is the easiest to design for certainly. It uses up much less pagecount and is much easier to do an apples to apples comparison. And it is less susceptible to breaking if people play the game in a way you didn't expect (as happens when you implement the five minute workday in a game where only some players have daily limits).

But it really does make everyone feel the same. And it makes people feel the same in a very game mechanical way. How would you feel if mages in Shadowrun got put on the same power system as street samurai? Wouldn't you feel the slightest bit insulted if you had to buy ammunition for your wands and then were expected to reload them during combat?

So while yes, the lazy side of me does see how making a universal power system makes balancing and multiclassing and teaching the game a whole lot easier, I am sympathetic towards people who draw the line there. I would be willing to accept the designers putting a disclaimer on Planar Binding rather than figuring out how to actually balance it. But I am sympathetic with people who would tell the designers to get back to fucking work until they had fucking solved it. Just as I am sympathetic with people who put their foot down and tell the designers that they have to get back to fucking work until they can figure out how to make the different classes be structurally distinct.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 1:28 pm

Gee, it's not like a made a numbered list in the very first post of this thread saying the advantages of having a unified power system.

Kaelik wrote:Wait, what are the benefits of unified power system again? Save page space you lazy bum? That's literally the only benefit you presented. Yeah, you decided that page space is more important than the ability to play a Conduit or a Wizard.

In addition to that, two more benefits under a unified power system:

A) It's damn near a requirement if you want to use Winds of Fate.

B) It makes it much easier to teach newbies what's going on, rather than foisting off an 'Easy Mode' class onto them or making them go through descriptions for a Santorum / Warblade / Psion / Primary Spellcaster / etc..

FrankTrollman wrote:How would you feel if mages in Shadowrun got put on the same power system as street samurai?

Street Samurai are very much the victims of not having their own power system, since they're an EZ-Mode 'I Attack The Darkness!' class once you get out of CharGen. I don't think making Street Magician feel speshul is worth having a class that you can run on a graphing calculator because that's always what happens when you don't have a non-unified power system--the game devs get lazy anyway rather than kitbashing everyone a new system.

That's really the main reason why I don't like non-unified power systems because it always ends up an excuse to screw over sword-based characters.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 1:51 pm

Lago wrote:A) It's damn near a requirement if you want to use...

I'm going to cut you off right there. Because the next thing you said could have been "mana points" or "action fatigue" or "warm up" or "cool down" or absolutely any other resource management system. And yet: that's blatantly false. While it stands to reason that having a resource management system would require every character type to get abilities in a similar fashion in order to work with it, that's just blatantly not true.

In a mana system, you could have a fire mage who burned though mana four times as fast to throw hellblasts that were twice as good as normal mana-using attacks. In a WoF system you could have a Gadgeteer who had a much wider Wheel in exchange for his actions being charge limited. In a fatigue system you could have a golem knight whose actions were limited in exchange for applying much smaller fatigue penalties. And so on and so on for every resource management system you could possibly imagine or implement.

Putting everyone on the same power system is easy. It's easy to write, it's easy to implement, it's easy to playtest and it's easy to explain. Those are all good things. But it isn't necessary. If you worked harder, you could make a system that didn't resort to that. It is a lazy way out. I personally think it is generally speaking an acceptable tradeoff, but I'm not going to pretend even for a moment that there is anything high minded about it at all.

Putting everyone on the same power system because "balancing alternate power systems is hard" is procedurally identical to eliminating multiclassing because "balancing multiclassing is hard" or chumping out on skill challenges because "making skill challenges is hard". You are cutting out part of the game that people expect and which would enrich the play experience if you did it right in order to save yourself some work and avoid embarrassing yourself by getting it wrong.

-Username17

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 2:24 pm

Yeah, it`s almost like I read your list, and think it`s bullshit.

Multiclassing does not require a unified power system, multiclassing was invented in non uniform systems, and even uniform systems don`t actually use their uniformity for multiclassing. Multiclassing exists in class based systems, ie systems in which the two things you combine are different, and not the same.

Nor is multiclassing even a particularly desired thing anyway.

And your third is some kind of retarded fallacy even if I don`t know the name of it. So what if when people fuck up different power systems they usually do it by fucking up sword classes. The solution is to not fuck up sword based classes, not limit creation tools. In all heroic fantasy games they usually screw up sword classes, the solution is to not fuck up sword classes, not to declare the design principle of "don`t make heroic fantasy games"

And a) it`s not required for WoF, but if it was b) then it would be needed for every WoF game, but not for every other game, you know, every game that has so far been created ever.

And finally, you can teach people D&D with a StormLord. And they will then be able to know what they are doing with a Wizard.

All your objections basically come down to "It`s hard to make a game well, So no one should be allowed to try."

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 2:29 pm

unified power system = classless system

In a nutshell, I LIKE the fact that there are different classes, not juat a pick and choose your ability form a master list for some build a class from random abilities or some such.

i like my screwdriver to function different from my hammer.

i dont want a spell-list for a fighter. I want to be able to grab something with my hands and bash stuff in.

there always has been that unified power system...weapons. They are basic, and everyone can use them.

what more can you really unify? the classes are different as they do different things.

Look at any game, take a co-op shooter. The medic is there with the best healing ability, the heavy arms for massive area damage, SAW for rapid fire.....

like an cooperative game, different people have different task to handle, and you need some specialized in those tasks. if everything is based solely around combat function, then you lose the rest of the game. it just becomes a combat simulator akin to Axis and Allies.

Those grognards you speak of are coming from a time where the flavor was the enjoyment of the game. Elf was a class and got different things than a fighter even though they were similar.

Today people see the combat and think competitively about the other guy is doing X better, while in the past people played cooperatively so that there wasnt any real holes or weak links. each character had its strengths at times that made all the rest seem to be a weak link, but really this class was just shining more.

Rather than being links in a chain that all do the same thing, they are different servos. While one is causing the machine to accelerate another is causing it to go forward or back, while another still turns it to avoid obstacles that would cause critical damage to the whole. Each must function in concert for the machine that is the PC party to be able to go anywhere. So while one servo can only apply pressure in one direction, another only in the other direction, and one can apply pressure in both, they all work together with their different functions to make the machine work. You just collect the proper servos for the machine capabilities you are trying to make. If you have all the same servos then you end up going nowhere fast.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 4:43 pm

Largo, I'm going to agree with you here. Unification and consolidation is the fundamental key to any major edition change in D&D. Shadzar's complaint was the same complaint I heard when they unified the experience tables for all the classes.

The fact is that if you want a "balanced" system (if you don't then go ahead and have fun playing 1E AD&D, I know I did) you need unify your systems. You need to get to the point where you have interchangeable parts. That does not mean that you have a classles system (but wait, the true goal of multiclassing is to create a classless system where adding a level to your first class at level x is functionally balanced with adding a level to your second class at level y - it demands both linearity and interchangeability at all level points).

You can't use oil and water systems to make a balanced system. Even without multiclassing, one class will be better than the other and that's how the game is going to roll. Fighters / casters or Arcane / Divine or any other system split you can name. The mose your add the harder it is to balance. (Again, if you don't want to balance try a group of various oWoD characters from different supplements.)

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 5:18 pm

i dont want a spell-list for a fighter. I want to be able to grab something with my hands and bash stuff in.

Sorry, that disqualifies you. Unless you also mean that your Bashes are Prismatic Sprays (or equivalent) at level 13, and thus barely at par with an invisible, undetecable, hovering (flying) wizard casting SoDs or "Cast and Win" type stuff (Shivering Touch, etc. via Spectral Hand, etc.).

The Knight of Lightness, getting Searing Light, Daylight, Scorching Ray, Force Wall, Prismatic Wall and their melee attacks going from casting HD uncapped auto-scaling DC Coloursprays with their melee attacks, and later to auto-scaling DC Prismatic Sprays.... is something that's pretty balanced.

Personally, I want "characters" to pick up abilities and then assign powers that go with their abilities.

So, if the nine basic abilities are:

Arms
-Physique-Force-Bersark
-Unarmed-Brawl-Sweet Science
-Technique-Florentine-Niten Ichi-ryū
Work
-Craft-Modify-Invent
-Pray-Bless-Bestow
-Nurse-Mend-Revive
Energy
-Cephlomancy (Purple)-Mk !! - Mk III
-Biomancy (Black/White)-Mk II-MK III
-Geomancy (Grey)-Mk II-Mk III

people then buy other powers that attach to one of the "basic" powers in some manner.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 5:58 pm

Judging__Eagle wrote:
shadzar wrote:i dont want a spell-list for a fighter. I want to be able to grab something with my hands and bash stuff in.
Sorry, that disqualifies you.

No it doesn't it just proves the problem with a unified, or the 4th edition power system wherein everyone has a spell-list.

Fighter can be a simple function class, that allows you to not have to keep track of a bunch of other crap to play. You need only swing and hit things.

Assuming you are talking about 4th edition powers, with all that added crap status effects to things, I don't care for it at all. There are times i just want to be able to hit things and move on. Like Tzor said the level adjustment to unify is pretty stupid to me.

I don't have to have the same number system as other players to be a part of the group. I am not competing with the other players, so my class X being a few XP behind doesn't really mean crap to me that our levels don't share the same absolute value of |4|.

It really matters in what you are trying to do. I really see no need to balance combat power across classes, otherwise what advantage does one really have if they all do the same thing, such as 4th edition did.

damage+status effect+push|pull

The spell list is the same, the outcomes are the same, how it gets done then loses anything that it had to set the classes apart.

Am I there and contributing? If so, then I, nor others I play with, care who is doing the most damage when. As long as we are all working together towards the same goal, that is what matters.

Hell hirelings didnt even compare to a leveled class PC, yet were hired by the buttloads for the extra help. They have been lost in recent editions of D&D in the attempt to balance, which makes something feel very off and missing.

Balance is required for competition....not cooperation.

The PCs need not be balanced with each other, so long as they are relatively compatible.

The balance needs to come form the two opposing sides. For D&D this is the PCs, vs the DM controlled characters. Even then perfect balance or unification doesnt need to be present, so long as there is a chance of success with chance of failure when the two opposing forces meet.

A system trying to balance out the player party that should be cooperating rather than competing, has problems with its introduction to the game in which it did not state properly that the game is cooperative, not competitive.

Which means to get them to understand if needs to be stated clearly, or just remove classes, so that everyone gets the same things, with no choice in them, so that everyone has fair acces and function, and the only thing holding them back is themselves and their choices throughout play, and their dice rolls. The system then cannot be a problem of balance to spur competition.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 6:27 pm

Congratulations JE. Shadzar and Tzor posted in a thread, but you still have the most retarded post in the thread.

Hey Roy come post something smarter than JE to finish this off.

K · Post by K » Tue Mar 01, 2011 7:28 pm

4e doesn't have a Unified Power System. It has a Same Power system, which means the powers are all set to the same balance point instead of being put in tiers; I can't honestly look at a power and tell you which level it belongs in, and most people can't either.

They don't even have to be as bland as 4e. You can just give people unique things and live with the fact that something like demon summoning is never going to be directly mappable to a scale with things like fireballs and flight.

4e took all the powers you care about and made them 1/day, meaning on average it's like not having the power at all, meaning it's like not having a Power System at all, unified or otherwise.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 7:37 pm

Even if a unified power system is balanced (which it may or may not be depending on definition), it doesn't mean that the system will work. You will still need the wizard-y and fighter-y choices to be of similar power, or else people will be using karate that turns people into newts. If D&D 3.5 made killing someone with a sword more efficient than turning them into a newt or burying them in magma then that game would work for all (at least most) classes. If everyone has access to all the powers, but only the [Magic] type powers are worth taking, it's just like 3.5, you've improved nothing. You are still going to have to put work in to balancing the system.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 8:24 pm

Kaelik wrote:Congratulations JE. Shadzar and Tzor posted in a thread, but you still have the most retarded post in the thread.

Hey Roy come post something smarter than JE to finish this off.

Hi Welcome

While shadzar fails, as usual tzor wasn't that bad, and JE actually made sense.

quanta · Post by **quanta** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 9:16 pm

A roughly unified power system is a good idea. It doesn't have to be perfectly unified.

Frank's examples of different usage amounts of the same resource (or a tradeoff between two resources) is still way more unified than 3e. Fighters don't use any resources besides actions (except when attacked), and wizards have one of the most pain-in-the-ass resource systems on the face of the planet (well, at higher levels at least). The power scheme doesn't need to be so unified that everyone gets the same number of X type of power at Y level, but there should be a very obvious and transparent ways to exchange powers and such between classes. You can add bells and whistles to increase the differences if need be, or restrict powers thematically to maintain a more distinct feeling.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 9:38 pm

Roy wrote:
Kaelik wrote:Congratulations JE. Shadzar and Tzor posted in a thread, but you still have the most retarded post in the thread.

Hey Roy come post something smarter than JE to finish this off.
Hi Welcome

While shadzar fails, as usual tzor wasn't that bad, and JE actually made sense.

And you were beating him right up until the end. Anyone who says that anything JE has ever said "made sense" is clearly on a really strong acid trip.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 9:53 pm

Kaelik wrote:
Roy wrote:
Kaelik wrote:Congratulations JE. Shadzar and Tzor posted in a thread, but you still have the most retarded post in the thread.

Hey Roy come post something smarter than JE to finish this off.
Hi Welcome

While shadzar fails, as usual tzor wasn't that bad, and JE actually made sense.
And you were beating him right up until the end. Anyone who says that anything JE has ever said "made sense" is clearly on a really strong acid trip.

JE fails often, but always? Yeah, I know this is the suck a barrel of cocks forum, but the hyperbole isn't helping here. It's also not funny.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:02 pm

I think it might be better to look at this from the other side. Instead of worrying about a “unified power system” (the source) it might be easier to look at a “unified economy of effect” (or the results). Since I come from 1E, I am familiar with the antipodal system between fighters and wizards. Fighters literally had infinite number of actions, but they were all “I use my weapon.” Magic Users (and Clerics) had a range of options, but they were limited and had to all be spelled out in advance. (Study fireball and encounter a red dragon and you were screwed.)

4E clearly has a number of problems (especially in the way it cannot seemly shift from combat to non combat time) but the idea is basically sound. Fighters need to be able to pull off the big stuff, just like anyone else, but only when “necessary” and when it’s really important to do this. Now if you really want to get picky you could even make these various types of stuff swappable, allowing each class to have their own equally impressive big stuff.

The problem is you can’t think in terms of narrow buckets; you have to think in terms of “fantasy.” What is a fireball but a fantastic way to attack an area of opponents from a distance? The balance of the various economy of effects allows each class to be able to similar types of feats with the same economic frequency. Off the top of my head, I’ve never really gone through the exercise, but I think it can be made and done.

This way you have the party all shine together and they all droop together. Having played a number of years in 1E where the magic user goes from hero to zero, and when the fighters could go on all day but the cleric is out of healing, I know that asymmetric systems often go down to the lowest common denominator. For vastly different reasons, the 1E game plays a lot like the 4E game; the only difference was that when combat was a minute per round, a lot of real time was actually spent between the searching and the fighting in 1E so it wasn’t like you adventured for an hour and spent the rest of the day hiding (as you needed to do in 3E).

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:45 pm

I think that saying players in general reject a unified power system is an overgeneralization of the actual problem. The usual bitching (which I do as well) is about martial dailies and/or encounter powers. You can have any unified system you like that doesn't include those, and I'd be happy, just for versimilitude or whatever. Offhand I can think of a couple of ways around this, that are still unified.

1) Everyone can use all their powers as often as they want (as 4E did up until the ORCUS I design phase).

2) Martial classes get 'encounter-equivalent' or 'daily-equivalent' powers, which don't have a hard usage limit but instead are probably useable about once an encounter or once/day on average, depending on circumstances. A power that works only on a charge, only when you draw your weapon, or once every 20 attack rolls is more or less equal to a 1/encounter power.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 12:15 am

I want my non-caster powers to be mechanically distinct from my caster powers. I don't want them to work the same because I like them to feel different from one another.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 1:07 am

A power that works only on a charge, only when you draw your weapon, or once every 20 attack rolls is more or less equal to a 1/encounter power.

Not so much. What it does is incentivize oddball tactics like constant charge and retreat, keeping a bandoleer of daggers to constantly draw, attack with, and drop, or other things of that nature. See: Iajitsu Focus. And "only on a nat. 20" abilities don't really add any tactics, just luck.

I am on the side of mechanically differentiated classes though. Heck, personally, I think an RPG where every class used an different resource mechanic would be fun. So for instance, Swashbucklers with WoF, Soldiers with fatigue points, Berserkers with "weakens after use" powers, Tacticians with conditional powers, all in the same party.

BearsAreBrown · Post by **BearsAreBrown** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 1:33 am

For what it counts, plenty of video game RPG classes work on different resource mechanics. WoW has mana, rage, energy, glyphs and focus.

As far as needing a unified power system to multiclass, no you don't. I mean, look at DnD. And then there are unified power system with no classes at all like M&M.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 1:51 am

Roy wrote:JE fails often, but always? Yeah, I know this is the suck a barrel of cocks forum, but the hyperbole isn't helping here. It's also not funny.

Yes always. In this case, what he fails at is speaking like a sane person.

Certainly his "this is kinda balanced" character is not even remotely balanced, and is insanely broken, absolutely, but the important part about JE "making sense" is that he then immediately pulled a JE, by transitioning from one topic to an entirely different, completely unrelated topic without any transition at all, because he actually types stream of conscious with exactly 1/42th of a second of thought between each sentence.

Absolutely if you totally deleted everything JE said, and typed it up yourself going for approximately the same conversation, but with all the 12s dialed down to 8.5, JE would be way less retarded than Shadzar, but of course, all those dials are at 12, and JE is still typing stream of conscious.

CCarter · Post by **CCarter** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 1:59 am

Ice9 wrote:
A power that works only on a charge, only when you draw your weapon, or once every 20 attack rolls is more or less equal to a 1/encounter power.
Not so much. What it does is incentivize oddball tactics like constant charge and retreat, keeping a bandoleer of daggers to constantly draw, attack with, and drop, or other things of that nature. See: Iajitsu Focus. And "only on a nat. 20" abilities don't really add any tactics, just luck.

I think the basic idea isn't unworkable, though I'd concede you need pretty tight design to prevent a given power thats meant to be 1/day becoming at-will. Iajutsu Focus might need to work with a given 'signature weapon', retreating can generate AoOs and whatnot that is a disincentive to using a Charge! power even if it does give you an extra [W], and the 1-in-20 powers need to be watched for two weapon fighting issues.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 4:56 am

In the game I'm working on (and probably will never get done at the rate I'm going) the classes all use Mana but have a different "thing" that they do to get Mana. For example:

Barbarians take damage to gain Mana. Thusly are given incentive to be Melee, to draw fire, and to take risks. Of course all the class abilities help with this.

Rogues get a random amount of Mana per turn but get max in a turn where they are "hidden" from all opponents or make a Sneak attack. This gives the incentive to be sneaky or to make situations where you get to sneak attack.

Wizards start at 3 times max Mana but have to spend standard actions to gain Mana beyond that. This gives the wizard the forward power to cast cast cast right off the bat but forces them to make judicious use of their actions when it comes to recovering Mana. Because of this they are going to want to distance themselves from the fight so that when they burn actions to recover they aren't putting themselves at risk.