Winds of Fate needs to be tested in a non-D&D system.

[DSMatticus]

Cutting options off forcefully is NO BETTER than someone cutting them out themselves.

Every resource management system anyone has ever made forcefully cuts out options. I cannot say that strongly enough. This is a moot point. If you don't like WoF because it cuts out options, you don't like Vancian magic because it cuts out options, you don't like 4e dailies/encounters because they cut out options, you don't like mana because it cuts out options, you don't like recharges because it cuts out options. I understand that you don't like WoF, but that is a bad argument. "Cutting out options is okay, but not WoF. Fuck that, I won't let it take away my options."

Furthermore, "NO BETTER," by what metric are you saying better? If that metric is speed, removing options is objectively better. If that metric is encouraging a full tactical analysis of all available options, removing options is objectively better. Having a 6x6 matrix is measurably and objectively better at getting people to consider each option and make decisions faster. These are just mathematical (and slightly psychological) truths.

Now, you may not think those things matter. You may think "it's okay if players script their actions and deviate only when they need to," you may think, "it's okay if the decision-making process takes 2-3 times longer," etc, etc. Those are subjective problems, in that some people won't consider them problems. To those people, I challenge you to play a game where a character has 25 roughly equivalently good abilities on their character sheet, and then you can see what that's like. You will then realize what WoF does well - it allows you to NOT trim down the number of abilities on your character sheet, and still be able to tactically evaluate the abilities available to you each turn.

But that's literally all it does.

I am. The Overhead from WoF is never going to be Zero, so it's always going to be an issue. Ignoring it is unfair, as you've said.

Then let's be realistic about the way the brain handles sets larger than 6-12 (or whatever the individual's magic number happens to be): very poorly. It loses track of what evaluations it's already made, because it's incapable of storing them in readily accessible form.

E.g., let's say you have three items, A, B, and C and you want to find the best. You find "A < B" and "B < C." Your brain won't bother evaluating A and C, because it remembers A < B, and A can't possibly be a solution in light of that.

But when it becomes A, B, C, ..., Z, your brain will never remember the result of A < B. It will seriously forget that it's already eliminated A. And if you are not careful (i.e., you approach the problem in a naive way), you will end up making comparisons twice. In the worst case scenario, your brain will default to an algorithm that is polynomial time (it verifies each new best against all previous results to see if anything displaces it). That is, it takes N^2 units of time instead of N units of time.

And yes, it will forget these comparisons - it can no more store the results of 25 comparisons than it could operate on all 26 original elements at once. What actually happens in these cases is that usually people's brains go "derp" and they default and movespam, or go through the list until they get frustrated and pick the current best.

Yes, there are deliberate ways you can improve this. You can train yourself to run through mental algorithms that make your decisions linear time for any size input, but it's not a satisfying experience because it's not an intuitive decision-making process. You're emulating a computer, and it never quite feels right (even though it is).

[LR]

And they can't come up with a better heuristic after a bit of observation? How is making a bad decision or two and learning from it worse than getting a couple of bad WoF rolls?

It's not that they can't. They won't. If people find a system that's "good enough", then they'll avoid trying to change it because an alternative system might be worse. That's what risk aversion is.

And if the idea is that WoF never has a "bad" roll because each column has something for each situation, then why do we need to roll in the first place if those six moves (or whatever) are good enough for each situation?

Okay, let's generate a very simple 2x6 matrix for a 3e caster.

	1	2
AoE Blasting	Flare Arrow	Fireball
Restricting Terrain	Grease	Black Tentacles
Single Target SoD	Hold Monster	Flesh to Stone
Wall	Wall of Ice	Wall of Fire
Grabbag	Halt Undead	Silence
	Gust of Wind	Dimensional Anchor

We'll just assume that all the numbers are balanced and everything scales by level so that only the unique effects matter.

AoE Blasting: Flare Arrow has a wider area and than Fireball and no friendly fire, but it also has target limits, making Flare Arrow useful for opposing SWAT teams while Fireball is better to throw at a phalanx of mooks.

Restricting Terrain: Grease works better against brutes, effectively immobilizing them, but Black Tentacles ruins anyone without a high Grapple or Escape Artist bonus.

Single Target SoD: Hold Monster targets Will, which makes it generally stronger, but Flesh to Stone takes out an opponent permanently with no extra effort.

Wall: Wall of Ice forces the enemy to make a hole, can be used to trap creatures, creates a cloud of steam if the enemy tries to melt it, and deals damage even after they break it. Wall of Fire deals more damage and shoots out waves of heat, but it can only discourage people to walk through it.

Grabbag: Halt Undead is Mass Hold Monster for Undead (zombies don't even get a save), and Silence offers complete protection against destrachans. Gust of Wind clears out fogs of acid, and Dimensional Anchor forces outsiders and blink dogs to use mundane forms of movement. Each has niche applications and you might not even consider any of them unless the niche comes up.

All of the spells are recognizably different even though each column has a fairly strict loadout. You're never caught without a spell that you can use, and you have a couple hard counters available all the time. If you wanted to risk a bad roll, you could toss all the niche spells into one column and get all of your counters at once.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Every resource management system anyone has ever made forcefully cuts out options. I cannot say that strongly enough. This is a moot point. If you don't like WoF because it cuts out options, you don't like Vancian magic because it cuts out options, you don't like 4e dailies/encounters because they cut out options, you don't like mana because it cuts out options, you don't like recharges because it cuts out options. I understand that you don't like WoF, but that is a bad argument. "Cutting out options is okay, but not WoF. Fuck that, I won't let it take away my options."

My personal opinion:

People think WoF cuts out their options 'more' than spell charges or whatever because their eyes are bigger than their stomachs and people are also blithe about borrowing from the future to benefit themselves now. Someone on mana points or charges at the end of a workday has fewer options from both an objective and subjective standpoint than WoF, but people tend to imagine their long-term strategy in terms as if they had all or most of their options available at the start i.e. before they start depleting resources. This is why it feels like WoF cuts out options more than other systems, because people compare a best case vs. best case rather than an average case vs. average case and WoF comes up short because people see 15 options versus 6 rather than also comparing 6 vs. 6 or 3 mediocre ones versus 6 good ones.

Of course even the best case of spell charges/warmups/whatevers have their problems, but I strongly believe that what I said in the previous paragraph is the sticking point and what causes people to go 'derp'.

[Kaelik]

And what exactly is the disadvantage of having both columns open to them at the same time?

[DSMatticus]

And what exactly is the disadvantage of having both columns open to them at the same time?

Evaluating 12 options is slower and more prone to "fuck it, I'll do blah" than evaluating 6 options.

This becomes much more obvious with a full-blown 6x6 matrix. Surely you can see the disadvantage of having 36 powers available at any given moment.

[Kaelik]

And what exactly is the disadvantage of having both columns open to them at the same time?

Evaluating 12 options is slower and more prone to "fuck it, I'll do blah" than evaluating 6 options.

This becomes much more obvious with a full-blown 6x6 matrix. Surely you can see the disadvantage of having 36 powers available at any given moment.

Look at that matrix. There is a row called "AoE blasting" and a row called "Single target SoD".

When facing a deal, you are going to first narrow by column before narrowing by row in WoF. But in "everything at will" you just start by narrowing by row, which makes your decision more important anyway. Because you first narrow by situation, and then you have a choice between six different AoE blasting powers, so you make two meaningful choices between lists of six choices, instead of having your first choice made for you by the dice, and then making a really simple choice between using Flesh to Stone, or Fireball against the 14 kobolds.

[LR]

Look at that matrix. There is a row called "AoE blasting" and a row called "Single target SoD".

When facing a deal, you are going to first narrow by column before narrowing by row in WoF. But in "everything at will" you just start by narrowing by row, which makes your decision more important anyway. Because you first narrow by situation, and then you have a choice between six different AoE blasting powers, so you make two meaningful choices between lists of six choices, instead of having your first choice made for you by the dice, and then making a really simple choice between using Flesh to Stone, or Fireball against the 14 kobolds.

One of the "AoE Blasting" spells summons a few darts that you can shoot at multiple people for damage. Not super useful against a bunch of kobolds. That means that if you were going into the battle expecting to nuke the kobolds with Fireball and your WoF comes up 1, then your heuristic is broken and you have to reevaluate your options between nuking a few kobolds, laying down some difficult ground, knocking them prone with Gust of Wind, or putting a physical wall up between you and them to give you more time.

[Kaelik]

Look at that matrix. There is a row called "AoE blasting" and a row called "Single target SoD".

When facing a deal, you are going to first narrow by column before narrowing by row in WoF. But in "everything at will" you just start by narrowing by row, which makes your decision more important anyway. Because you first narrow by situation, and then you have a choice between six different AoE blasting powers, so you make two meaningful choices between lists of six choices, instead of having your first choice made for you by the dice, and then making a really simple choice between using Flesh to Stone, or Fireball against the 14 kobolds.

One of the "AoE Blasting" spells summons a few darts that you can shoot at multiple people for damage. Not super useful against a bunch of kobolds. That means that if you were going into the battle expecting to nuke the kobolds with Fireball and your WoF comes up 1, then your heuristic is broken and you have to reevaluate your options between nuking a few kobolds, laying down some difficult ground, knocking them prone with Gust of Wind, or putting a physical wall up between you and them to give you more time.

Um... Except that I'm specifically talking about not using Winds of Fate.

In one case, you roll a die, and get stuck with 1, and then you have to decide whether killing X kobolds with your X darts, vs Black Tentacles on the group, vs whatever.

And that's what you do in WoF, and what I'm saying is that that's a different, but not better heuristic than "group of kobolds, need to use one of my AoE blasting spells" and then evaluating in specific, the six AoE blasting spells for which one is best, and using that against the Kobolds. Which is what you do if you are doing if you have every single ability in the WoF matrix at will.

What I'm getting at is that Lago, and by extension, everyone else asserting WoF is super better than at will usage from all the same abilities, is complaining about the use of heuristics to narrow down options as being bad, but I don't see much of a difference between:

1) Player makes choice to only look at AoE blasting in this situation, then evaluates best AoE blasting spell. AKA EVIL HEURISTICS ARE BAD!

2) Rolls WoF, gets one of each type, and then decides which is best, usually the AoE blasting, but sometimes, depending on the AoE blasting choice, limited to something else, like Grease, or sometimes gets Black Tentacles which is better than many AoE blastings.

Or rather, I see some differences, but those differences don't appear to make WoF a favorite.

And 1 even provides the option for people who are better at making heuristics or can handle more choices to not just choose from AoE blasting, and instead include all their AoE choices, and use Black Tentacles instead of Fireball if it can get a couple more Kobolds based on position.

[DSMatticus]

Look at that matrix. There is a row called "AoE blasting" and a row called "Single target SoD".

That matrix is a bad example of anything, because it's 2x6, and that's just weird. If you pick look at three rows at once, that's still only six powers.

Let's look at a 4x6 matrix, and pick a fight where you have a bunch of little kobolds and one or two 'kobold warleaders.' This is a reasonable encounter.

Does the AoE row apply? Sure. You can destroy a bunch of kobolds at once, maybe damage the bosses.
Does the restricting terrain row apply? Sure. Removing kobolds from the fight is exactly as good as killing them. You can get a bunch of little ones or a boss, maybe some a boss and some minions.
Does the SoD row apply? Sure. You can target one of the bosses and maybe take him out of the fight.
Does the wall row apply? Sure. It's good for the same reasons terrain control is good, cutting a fight in half makes it easier to beat each half.
Does the grabbag row apply? Who knows, depends what's in it, let's check.

And voila. We are now considering all rows, and therefore all 24 options. This is less noticeable in the 2x6 matrix, because who cares? considering 3-4 rows at a time is still only 6-8 options, and that's manageable. But now each row has 4 options, and we're looking at considering 12-16 before we even get to the grab bag, which may or may not have some miscellaneous goody you don't want to miss.

You're making the assumption that there will always be a tactically superior row. That every combat is exactly one situation with exactly one set of tools for the job. And I genuinely hope that's not true, because that would probably make for a boring combat.

[Kaelik]

You're making the assumption that there will always be a tactically superior row.

No, I'm assuming players will use a heuristic to narrow their choices down to one row, or if they are really good about handling lots of variables, or if you are really good at sorting into categories and making heuristics, you can have even more meaningful and better choices than WoF, but that even if you can't actually manage those choices better than WoF, just by applying a simple heuristic like "Which do I want to do, AoE blast, Battle Control, Wall, or ST?" followed by "Which of those is best?" provides a situation in which you can generate a choice about as quickly as WoF, and about as well.

Yes, sometimes, it may be true, that using a Wall instead of a BC would have been better, but sometimes you roll a 1 against Kobolds, and you can't use a good AoE blasting spell when it would be best either. And in a situation like the one you described, where everything might be useful, the heuristic is less likely to produce the theoretical best choice, but more likely to produce a good enough choice, that is still just as good enough as the choice you were going to get from WoF.

[Wrathzog]

Yes, there are deliberate ways you can improve this. You can train yourself to run through mental algorithms that make your decisions linear time for any size input, but it's not a satisfying experience because it's not an intuitive decision-making process. You're emulating a computer, and it never quite feels right (even though it is).

I actually do think like this. Maybe it's because I'm a programmer, or rather the type of person who would be drawn into that career field, but I have no issues stepping through a strict algorithm to determine what action I'm going to perform.
If you've played Dragon Age or Dragon Age 2, I eventually figure out a set of combat algorithms for my characters that look almost exactly like the AI Tactics screen in those games. If there's a solo or an elite, I do these things. If enemies are clumped up together, I use Whirlwind. Am I going to die? Second Wind. Eventually, I'll default to my Mark and Smash script.
I know that some people have issues with Scripting And Defaulting, but I don't because it speeds up the game immensely.
I'll also admit to playing and building characters that are generally specialized or simple to play while purposefully avoiding things like 3E Generalist Wizards.
But that's just me.

But when it becomes A, B, C, ..., Z, your brain will never remember the result of A < B. It will seriously forget that it's already eliminated A. And if you are not careful (i.e., you approach the problem in a naive way), you will end up making comparisons twice. In the worst case scenario, your brain will default to an algorithm that is polynomial time (it verifies each new best against all previous results to see if anything displaces it). That is, it takes N^2 units of time instead of N units of time.

This only applies if options A-Z are completely unique, equally viable, not organizable, and you have limited information with which to base your decision off of.
Realistically... that's not going to be the case.

Gonna step back from the discussion. I don't understand why I'm arguing with you. I like the reasons behind implementing WoF and I think it'll be successful if it's paired up with a game designed to use it.
The only issues is that you guys may be over-exaggerating how terribly hard decision making is... but that's about it.

[LR]

That matrix is a bad example of anything, because it's 2x6, and that's just weird. If you pick look at three rows at once, that's still only six powers.

Yeah, sorry about that. I was trying to make the side-by-side comparison as easy as possible. A real matrix would be something like 4x6 and you wouldn't even try to compare between wheels.

[DSMatticus]

Yes, sometimes, it may be true, that using a Wall instead of a BC would have been better, but sometimes you roll a 1 against Kobolds, and you can't use a good AoE blasting spell when it would be best either.

I'm not really concerned with what's better. Resource management systems force you to make suboptimal choices (you only get so many level 9 spells per day) by turning those choices into non-choices. Blocking them out. Turning them grey. Whatever. I am concerned with what's quicker. What's the best way to put 36 abilities on a character sheet, and not have people's head explode?

But there is something you are completely correct about - categorizing powers on the character sheet will raise the threshold for option paralysis significantly, in a similar way that WoF raises the threshold. But it's probably not as quick. And this is because people probably won't pick by category first. They'll pick an initial category, find something they like, then wonder if another category doesn't have something better? The grass is always greener, etc, etc. So what you'll end up with is, "I will find the best power in each category, then find the best of those bests." And this is still quicker than just looking at 36 abilities and going, "which one do I choose?" But it's also still probably not as quick as tossing a die and seeing what comes up. It also requires that the player perform decision making in the correct way, or else you lose the benefits you've crafted.

All in all, it is probably easier (and more likely to succeed) from a game design standpoint to mechanically restrict options than to try to teach players how to organize powers to make quick decisions.

Maybe it's because I'm a programmer, or rather the type of person who would be drawn into that career field, but I have no issues stepping through a strict algorithm to determine what action I'm going to perform.

If you don't understand the algorithm, it won't feel satisfying. You'll feel like a man turning a crank. Of course, if you do understand the algorithm, it's not nearly as jarring a feeling and you'll probably be happy with it as long as it has some decision input.

P.S., I've nearly finished my degree at OSU in computer science. Everything but this quarter has gone fantastically. I don't know if I'd recommend it to everyone, but I love it.

This only applies if options A-Z are completely unique, equally viable, not organizable, and you have limited information with which to base your decision off of.

WoF should be designed to support as many viable options at a time as possible. That's sort of its point - it can support having more viable options on the character sheet than most other resource management systems, and not taking advantage of that would be foolish and a waste of the WoF mechanic. But yes, some options are going to be dead options in certain situations that you can trivially discard. Cutting 26 down by a third still leaves you 16+ options though, more than you can comfortably handle.

Also, ironically, if you try to prune more than 6-12 items, your brain will start to lose track of which ones its discarded. Oh the hilarity. It doesn't know how to declare an array larger than 9.

Yeah, sorry about that. I was trying to make the side-by-side comparison as easy as possible.

Okay, I was wrong to say bad example of anything. It was a good example of how to structure a WoF matrix to cover all bases at a time, it's just not very useful for the option paralysis debate because having the entire matrix available at once probably wouldn't even cause option paralysis, especially if it was prior-organized like that.

[shau]

Did someone write up a WOF rule set while I was not looking, or have we been reduced to having furious ad hominem laced arguments about games that don't even fucking exist?

Going back to the op, I think if you wanted to adapt WOF to urban fantasy, or at least Shadowrun, you would want to make the whole game more abstract. So instead of role playing sneaking around an office building and then hoping you rolled a four when the combat music starts so you can take cover then shoot people, you'd just be given a run from Mr. Johnson and start making WOF rolls. The rolls would open up options like disable the security systems, talk your way into a restricted area, summon an elemental etc, that helps the team get complete the run. You would probably want to limit the available opinions based on skills or something though.

[MGuy]

Let me clarify. I don't think WoF gives you less options. I actually don't know what the fuck this system is going to actually look like or how it'll function (melee/vs ranged, item use, healing, movement, interrupts, etc) so I can't reasonably say how many options you'll actually have. What I am pointing out is that any argument that includes "people cut down their own options" or "people don't make the most optimal decisions" doesn't make WoF better because it just forces you to do the same damn thing via die roll. It has also been pointed out that, depending on what actual abilities are in a given matrix, WoF may in fact just lead to/encourage, people to use the same tactics over and over again anyway.

I can't say the last part for sure because I still have no good idea of what I should expect to appear on a given Matrix. However the assumption is that people are lazy and risk adverse and if this holds true then they are going to construct Matrices that allow them to do one specific kind of thing as much as they can. Why? Because reevaluating your choices each and every turn is apparently difficult for most people to do so the natural thing to do then is make it so most of your abilities are pretty much the same.

[hogarth]

Did someone write up a WOF rule set while I was not looking, or have we been reduced to having furious ad hominem laced arguments about games that don't even fucking exist?

Frank claims to have playtested a Winds of Fate system. What game rules and powers he was using, he didn't say.

[Lago PARANOIA]

It has also been pointed out that, depending on what actual abilities are in a given matrix, WoF may in fact just lead to/encourage, people to use the same tactics over and over again anyway.

WoF is supposed to stop people from ability spamming because of:

A: Option Paralysis
B: Inflexible Heuristics
C: Not having enough options in the first place.

For people in the first three categories it does help, because they're making shallow decisions because of inadequacies in the power presentation system. Presumably if you took those away then they wouldn't resort to maladaptive responses.

If someone is all 'I am only going to use fire powers!' or 'I refuse to use anything but forced movement effects' and seeds their matrix/wheel/deck so that they only have fire or sliding powers then it's not going to guide these particular players to better tactics. These people are called Rat Flail players and no system is going to help them because they want a garbage output.

[Orion]

This business about defaulting to "AoE moves" is straight unacceptable, if you ask me. Deciding which nuke will hit the most enemies is not the kind of tactical choice I want to be making. If confronted with a group of kobolds, the questions I *want* to be asking myself are things like

Should I wound them all with an AOE? Or do we benefit more from me killing one with a targeted spell and reduce the incoming damage? Or do I actually need to reduce the incoming damage more, by hitting them with an area debuff? Is softening up their leader more or less important than the mooks?

When you have enough spells that you default to "I'm gonna use an AOE" all the interesting choices are gone. Picking the best AoE of the lot is tedious optimization. I'd much rather choose between lightning bolting two-thirds of them, glitterdusting all of them, magic missiling two of them, or paralyzing their leader, than choose between lightning bolting two thirds of them and fireballing all of them.

[MGuy]

It has also been pointed out that, depending on what actual abilities are in a given matrix, WoF may in fact just lead to/encourage, people to use the same tactics over and over again anyway.

WoF is supposed to stop people from ability spamming because of:

A: Option Paralysis
B: Inflexible Heuristics
C: Not having enough options in the first place.

For people in the first three categories it does help, because they're making shallow decisions because of inadequacies in the power presentation system. Presumably if you took those away then they wouldn't resort to maladaptive responses.

If someone is all 'I am only going to use fire powers!' or 'I refuse to use anything but forced movement effects' and seeds their matrix/wheel/deck so that they only have fire or sliding powers then it's not going to guide these particular players to better tactics. These people are called Rat Flail players and no system is going to help them because they want a garbage output.

That's the thing. I don't really think that WoF prevents these. In a game of MAGIC/Yu-gi-OH I've seen option paralysis far too many times and in those games you only have 5-7 cards in your hands. Generally the only time I don't see it is when people who either know their decks back and forth play and have formed mental scripts to deal with various situations or when they are following a nigh unbreakable script that straight up wins the game.

WoF forces people to reevaluate their choices every turn because their moveset isn't going to be the same turn to turn. If your assumptions about people being inflexible holds true that would mean you'd have to assume that the offending party will just default to similar moves no matter what is rolled on the matrix especially if you actually want them to be engaged in other people's turns (which is something you claimed you wanted).

And what exactly are "enough" options?

[JDSorenson]

Okay, so my understanding of the WoF system is that players roll on a grid to determine what spells and/or special abilities are available to their characters at certain intervals.

I have two questions about this:

Do players do this at the beginning of each round? At the beginning of an encounter?

And, if power determination is handled exclusively in combat, how does the system account for things characters do outside of combat with their powers, such as using Detect Undead to figure out if a corpse is going to eat you if you loot it's sarcophagus, or using a Fly spell to traverse a wide canyon?

[RadiantPhoenix]

Rolls are made once at the beginning of an encounter and then again at the end of each of your turns.

For non-combat challenges I guess you would just need to find some way of defining a "turn" for that challenge.

[JDSorenson]

Rolls are made once at the beginning of an encounter and then again at the end of each of your turns.

For non-combat challenges I guess you would just need to find some way of defining a "turn" for that challenge.

I'm actually using a similar resource management scheme in my current project, and it would be helpful to see how other randomized power systems handle utilitarian abilities in non-combat oriented challenges.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Generally the idea is though that someone can 'take 6' (or however many rows in the column) and automatically gain access to the row that they want. It's okay for people to pour over every power outside of combat since, you know, the volume of actions is nowhere near as frenzied as during combat and deciding on which power someone is going to use tends to be more democratic anyway.

That's the thing. I don't really think that WoF prevents these. In a game of MAGIC/Yu-gi-OH I've seen option paralysis far too many times and in those games you only have 5-7 cards in your hands.

Even if option paralysis is inevitable, the degree of paralysis is not the same. If someone is balking at having to pick from 6 options, they're still going to take less time and be less demotivated with the selection process than having to select from 12.

If your assumptions about people being inflexible holds true that would mean you'd have to assume that the offending party will just default to similar moves no matter what is rolled on the matrix especially if you actually want them to be engaged in other people's turns (which is something you claimed you wanted).

Did you just ignore everything I told you? It's not supposed to help everyone because you can't do anything about the terminally stubborn 'I want to use jumping attacks and you can't make me use anything else nyah nyah' dumbshits. It's supposed to eliminate a layer of inflexibility caused by using heuristics, which affects everyone, even relatively open-minded people.

[MGuy]

Its not that I ignored everything you said nor am I suggesting you can help those who choose to ignore their options. What I'm saying is that if that's your assumption, that if people will, by default, ignore their options this system in no way prevents this at all. Even with the suggestion that heuristics is the primary demon then those heuristics/scripting aren't prevented at all from engaging in similar behavior by this system.

You'll have to start with a bunch of abilities up front in order for people to be able to make multiple builds out of the same class. The large amount of choices is going to be subject to a person's heuristics. Once battle is engaged heuristics (as per your assumption) are still actively guiding people toward using certain attack patterns and they will, as a knee jerk reaction to the system, build their matrix to support this behavior. This is because what you'd be asking people to do otherwise is reevaluate all of their abilities every turn. This would, by what you've laid down, naturally lead towards people choosing to build their matrices so there isn't a lot of variability for sake of being able to grasp various tactical situations more easily. It is also the most tactically viable thing to do (IE having the moves you'd generally need vs niche moves you probably don't then using the general moves until the niche comes up).

I'm not saying that your argument is that this system is some kind of miracle cure for this, but that by going by the assumptions you've laid down it most certainly doesn't prevent it for the crowd that you're trying to help. If someone is curious enough to want to use something different then most likely they'd already try to do it anyway in any system. Those who don't choose to most likely won't be changed by what this system lays down.

[Previn]

Rolls are made once at the beginning of an encounter and then again at the end of each of your turns.

For non-combat challenges I guess you would just need to find some way of defining a "turn" for that challenge.

Determine how long a turn is in combat. Multiply that by the width of your grid, and assume that players have access to all their abilities at least once in that space of time.

So a 6x6 grid and a 10 second combat round means that at the end of roughly 1 minute, you should have had the ability to use that power come up at least once. Same rough concept as taking 10 in 3.x.