FrankTrollman wrote:I don't think that's the question at all. I think the question is "is this incredibly shitty?" And unfortunately, the answer for 4e powers is yes.
It doesn't matter if Ardent Strike is competitive with Enfeebling Strike or not, because the fact is that both attacks are incredibly boring. It's a small amount of damage, a largely unnoticeable secondary effect, and you spam it or your other at-will power six times or more every single combat without respite. It's a shitty power.
Well, Frank, what do you want, exactly?
Here's the thing: you don't want to be doing something different every round, but you don't want to be doing the same thing every round either. Moreover, if you have cumbersome rules you make the game worse because it takes longer to do boring bullshit.
Moreover, while the effects are small, they do have tactical value - there's a difference between giving them a -2 penalty to their attack roll, marking a separate target, and dealing extra damage to the guy you marked. There's a difference between using Cloud of Daggers on the artillery and using Thunderwave to push some guys around.
Yeah, at-will powers are not the most amazingly exciting of things, but they give you some real options which have some tactical differentiation, and they take little time to execute.
Frankly, 85% shitty powers is incredibly generous. The only powers in the entire game that aren't completely shitty are the ones that can vaguely be used to do something to the campaign world. And calling that even one in six seems severely unlikely to me. What, you could use Valiant Rush to sprint a little... or something? Fuck, there's page after page after page of absolutely nothing but shit. Shit that doesn't do anything. It's just a series of sword swings. Some of them glow. Some of them don't. Some of them move healing surges around. Some of them give one turn AC bonuses or attack bonuses or penalties to the target. Or whatever. But they don't do anything.
-Username17
Of course they do something. They make combat more interesting and enjoyable. That is their purpose.
Now, you may not like this, that's fine. But when you say they don't actually do anything, you are simply wrong. When I use Skullcrusher on someone, I'm doing something, and it isn't the same as if I am using Paralyzing Strike on them, or Fangs of Steel, or Warrior's Urging. They are different narratively and have a different impact on how the combat flows. When I use a power that allows me to jump onto a monster's back and stab them, that feels very different from throwing blades to blind nearby creatures.
And all of this is much, much better than 3.x's "I make an attack" garbage. It is far more interesting and far more fun for the vast majority of players. You may not enjoy that stuff, but I, and most people I have played with, find this sort of thing fun, just as we found the Tome of Battle enjoyable.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "Do something", but it strongly sounds like you mean "3.x garbage that wizards did which derailed campaigns and made everyone else feel useless".
The reality is that there are games which do stuff like that, and handle it well.
Another reality: that game isn't D&D, and will never be D&D, because that is not what the majority of the audience wants. So if that's what you're after, you're probably better off fishing for another system, like Exalted.
This isn't to say that what characters do in D&D cannot MATTER, but when you have people who fight goblins and whack them in the heads with swords, another person in the party can't cast a spell which raises a fortress around them in 10 seconds, or which does five times as much damage to a cluster of enemies. You have to have equity between them, which means that you let fighters and similar martial characters do cool shit and you make it so that wizards cannot blow up mountains.
Moreover, there's an optimal amount of rules text. Look at Fireball in 3.x vs 4th edition. Yes, the 4th edition fireball isn't very good, but it does the same thing as the 3.x fireball - it creates a ball of fire which deals damage to those hapless enough to be caught by it. 4th edition does this in 9 very easy to read lines. 3.5 took eleven lines just for the rules crap at the top of it, and then it takes three paragraphs to describe the effect and two more lines to talk about the material components which cost nothing and therefore are found in your spell component pouch by default. That's a hell of a lot of space to waste on such a simple effect.
Incidentally, as for the "pacing themselves"... well, I do think they're releasing a few too many books, but how many books should they be putting out? I'd say a book per month, plus adventures, is not an unreasonable print schedule. I think the real issue is a question of when they release what.
I think a PHB per year should sell just fine and dandy, assuming you can come up with 8 classes per year for 6-8 years (about how long an edition is expected to last). And I don't think coming up with 8 new classes per year is at all onerous, and coming up with several new classes isn't a problem either. I think they could rather easily print a PHB every year which contained 5 new races, 8 new classes, a new magic item section to support those new classes, and I'd probably wager a lot of people would continue to purchase them because they have value.
I think two power books per year is fine. I am not going to purchase power book 2s, however. Maybe if they had put a 4 year gap in between them, I'd consider it. But they didn't. MP 2 is coming out in 2010, 18 months after the first one. I haven't even used most of the original MP, and I'm the DM, so that's across my whole table, in two campaigns, and a dozen characters.
I think an AV per year is too much. They simply do not have the content value. There are only so many items you need.
I think a draconomicon per year is far too much.
But I'm not WotC, and who knows, maybe they're selling like hotcakes.
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