Channeled spells are great and all, but they don’t exist in 4th Edition. This entire endeavor started because I was tired of the “if you don’t make an attack, you’ve wasted your turn” design philosophy and play methodology of 4E, so of course I was eventually going to write about about multi-round actions in a system where there’s no such thing.
I knew that I wasn’t going to invent things like full-round actions or two-round actions because I want to stick with the existing capabilities of the system, within reason. This means that I had to come up with a way for actions to flow from one to another, where one or more actions serve as the setup for something that come later. I just had to come up with a way for this to happen. I didn’t expect to come up with three.
By the way, WordPress really doesn’t like the science I do with tables, which is one of the reasons channeled spells were on their own page. But this time I want to say something between examples, so this is an image-heavy post. If you’re on a mobile device or operate your Internet by hand-crank, you may want to hold off on this one. (Also, thanks for being so dedicated to the blog! Hand-cranks are hard!)
All of these examples are for hypothetical new classes. These ideas can be stapled to classes that already exist, but the new powers may interact with those classes in weird, broken ways. These are designed as thought experiments and idea seeds, not opportunities to exploit. If you read these powers and immediately think “Wow, my characters with this would be really powerful!”, you’re missing the point of this entire series of posts.
The Combo Keyword
This is the first place I went when I considered “using actions to set up other actions”. Think of a fighting game or any combat sport, where certain moves lead into other moves. If you connect with a punch the enemy can’t dodge your fireball, or you work the opponent’s leg so your submission hold is all the more devastating. In the class that appeals to this, the martial artist, all powers have one or more additional keywords unique to the class. Powers gain a bonus (or a bonus’ best friend, a lack of a penalty) when used after a power with a specific keyword:
The intent is to use powers in trades to set up other powers. It’s clear that the most powerful option is to attack with Punch -> Kick -> Punch -> Kick, etc. Each attack leads into the next, and disrupting this pattern interferes with the character’s flow; a martial artist doesn’t have another source of bonus damage, so this is the only way she does striker damage with at-wills. Encounter and daily powers work similarly. Though this is a weak example, different keywords do different things as well: Punch attacks do slightly more damage, and Kicks do more control. A player can balance her powers, trading Kicks and Punches in equal measure, or focus on one, meaning she should go back to her Kick at-will in between her Punch encounters and dailies.
Classes with the Combo keyword reject multiclassing hard. No other class has the keywords necessary to make the martial artist work, and without powers leading into each other she does no more damage than any other role. I choose to represent this not as a design flaw but as a sign of the martial artist’s dedication to her craft, because you can justify anything with enough fluff (isn’t that right, kobold werepanther rogue sorcerer raised by goliaths?)
The potential difference between keywords is better shown with a non-striker example:
A demagogue is neither a helpless supporter of his allies nor an acerbic critic of his enemies, but something in between. Rather than busying himself with only one side of the combat the demogogue is most effective when he works both sides to undermine his opponents and uplift his allies in equal measure. He flips between personas rapidly, propping up the party one instant and ripping into his opponents the next. Though the keyword names are sorely lacking (re: my channeled spell names), his Offense powers harm enemies and Defense powers heal allies. Even assuming no variance in class features, demagogues can vary wildly based on where their powers, feats, equipment, and play styles lie in the Offense-to-Defense scale. The demagogue’s minor-action heal and utilities may or may not be affected by the last power he used, depending on where we want to go with the class.
Combo Points
This one is pretty shamelessly ripped from World of Warcraft. It’s a logical follow-up to the earlier example of the fighter who works his opponent’s legs, eventually cashing in all that preparation for one devastating move. Or think of a smart character in a shounen series, gradually pushing their opponent bit by bit into the perfect position for them to spring a trap. The mastermind slowly goads or maneuvers his opponent, building reserves until it’s time for a finishing blow:
A mastermind* starts an encounter with no combo points. As he enacts his plans, he adds combo points to this pool, up to some maximum (again, it’s from WoW, so I’m thinking five). These points do nothing on their own, but encounter and daily powers leverage them for much of their awesomeness. A mastermind is encouraged to save his encounters and dailies so his plans will have maximum effect. It’s not the class for players who love blowing all their dailies in the first fight or churning through encounter powers before trying any at-wills; it’s the class for players who like controlling their enemies even when it doesn’t look like anything’s happening, gradually leading them to a point where they realize the battle was decided long ago.
If it sounds like the mastermind shouldn’t be a striker, you’re not wrong. Imagine, for example, an arcane character who deals in sigils:
Besides the uniqueness of being an implement-based defender, the geometer differentiates herself by drawing, painting, tracing, or outright slapping magic symbols on everything within range. She marks creatures with symbols, then uses the energy from attacks to form a magical word in her head (or around her head, or in the book she carries, or tattooed on her arm). This word amplifies her most powerful defensive spells, though it means she can’t bring them to bear one after the other because the magic needs time to build back up. She certainly can use her spells with a shorter arcane word and those spells will have some effect, but having more stored energy will let her unleash that much more energy when she really needs it.
It’s worth noting the cumbersome phrase “the number of X in your Y when you use this power”. This is to prevent the power’s effects from changing over time and to make sure that the dailies actually do something. There’s no point in “-X penalty to saving throws” if X immediately becomes 0 as an effect of the power, so we take a snapshot of X. The bonus or penalty is static, so taking all the X out of Y doesn’t affect it. I expect this could be better explained in the class description.
Charge Powers
Both of the above examples are backward-looking (“Because I did X, now I can do Y”). I wanted something that was also forward-looking (“Since I’m doing X, my next Y will change in this way”), especially since 4E is a very “do things right now” system. Think of a warrior charging a ki attack, a robot readying their laser cannon, or a woodsman taking careful aim with a bow. They’re all preparing for their next move and anticipating what they’ll do when it happens.
The sniper aims before every shot as long as he has the opportunity. The more time he spends aiming, the more his shot will incapacitate his opponent. This is represented by the Focus keyword. A sniper can only be under the effect of one Focus power at a time. Essentially, he spends a minor action aiming every turn to get his striker damage, but his trickier shots require both more concentration and more time.
The action economy here is very interesting. A move action is a significant cost for a character, especially a melee character. I expect the sniper has a basic attack that lets him shift before or after his shot so he can get away from enemies who have closed with him. A standard action is an even greater cost, so the daily Focus powers have to give a benefit at least equal to another basic attack including his at-will Focus. That’s why the daily power lets the first-level sniper do more damage than almost any first-level rogue and doesn’t go away if the sniper misses his next attack, and I’m still not sure I’m happy with it.
So why go with a class that needs a minor action to charge their striker damage when every other striker class gets it for free? Utility. A sniper can use his minor action to get 1d6 extra damage on his next attack, or he can use a different at-will and gain 1d8 damage but a penalty to AC. Or another that deals 1d6 acid damage, running the risk of resistance but the chance of vulnerability. Like an Essentials ranger’s aspects, a sniper can learn different at-wills that do different things and decide which to use every turn. For the cost of his actions he gains great flexibility, which should be reflected in the breadth of his powers.
By the way, this example is why we’re using hypothetical classes. In no way should any other character be able to get the at-will Focus power to increase damage, because it stacks with other sources of damage like sneak attack. The sniper is an Essentials characters who focuses on basic attacks, and Essentials largely did away with multiclassing I believe for this exact reason.
Non-striker example? Non-striker example.
The groveborn is half-tree, because if vampire is a class, why not plant? Jokes aside, her go-to attack is probably fairly bread-and-butter, just a ranged implement power that can be used as a basic attack. What makes it interesting is that she has a number of Focus powers that she can use based on what she needs. If she wants to slow an opponent, she summons vines. If she wants to push an opponent, the roots shift under them. As with the sniper, if she focuses for longer the local flora are more inclined to bend to her whim, and she has more variance than other controllers in how she exercises her battlefield manipulation.
Note that I said the groveborn probably has a ranged basic attack. But it’s not required in the power anywhere that the attack be ranged. A groveborn can wade into melee and smack her opponents with a staff to get the same effect from her powers. This only increases her versatility, and it means that neither she nor the sniper is incapacitated if they can’t get out of melee.
I’m sure there are other ways to implement multi-round actions in 4E, but this post is long enough as it is. The real challenge comes not from thinking of ways to have actions affect each other across turns, but ways to make players want to try them. 4E does not encouraging thinking about strategy from turn to turn besides making sure that your enemies are in range, and as such its characters tend to be short-sighted, leap-before-you-look fighters whose current damage is much more important than anything that could happen tomorrow. These options appeal to a certain type of player, the kind who is willing and able to delay their gratification. That is, after all, the point of multi-round actions.
* — Yes, I know a “mastermind” class should really be Int-based, and Dexterity doesn’t need another striker. Work with me here., I was looking for ability score parity. Pretend that the sniper is Wis-based and the groveborn is Con-based…actually, that sort of works.