[Goober4473]

I had an interesting idea a few days ago, and I've finally gotten around to writing it down and getting some examples made.

The idea is to have a set of powers that the party uses, rather than a specific character using. The pwoers would have some activation requirements, and would essentially be the end of a combo. Since this has no cost, it would make characters a bit more powerful, which is fine with me, as it would hopefully speed up combat a little, and if I need a tougher fight, the enemies can have a unity or two as well.

This document contains all the basic rules, and a few examples: http://www.edanet.com/goober/Unity.pdf

I could use some more ideas for triggers, activation requirements, and effects if anyone's interested. I figure at-wills should be specific and challenging to activate, since they're essentially free bonuses. A clever party will maneuver themselves into situations where they can use them a lot though. The encounter powers should be pretty basic to activate, since you want to see 1-3 activated in an average fight, which could be 5-10 rounds. And the dailies should be very specific, perhaps requiring luck to get readied, but then just some coordination to finish up.

Thoughts?

[elliott20]

It's like I'm reading Chrono Trigger 4E!

[lgm]

Quote

A party begins with two at-will unity powers, one heroic
encounter unity power, and one heroic daily unity power.
At 3rd and 7th level, the party learns a new heroic
encounter unity power, at 11th, 13th, and 17th level, the party
can replace one heroic encounter unity power with a paragon
encounter unity power, and at 21st, 23rd, and 27th level, the
party can replace one paragon or heroic encounter unity power
with an epic encounter unity power.
At 5th and 9th level, the party learns a new daily encounter
unity power, at 11th, 15th, and 19th level, the party can replace
one heroic daily unity power with a paragon daily unity
power, and at 21st, 25th, and 29th level, the party can replace
one paragon or heroic daily unity power with an epic daily
unity powe

This is a good idea and has very good potential. The one downside is that you are adding more powers to the group without having something to balance this out. Basically, these powers aren't replacing other powers. This would be an excellent idea for a low magic campaign however. Since you would not be handing out much in the way of magic items, you could add the necessary bonus to attack/damage from magic weapons according to player level (as per DMG advice) and then use your Unity Powers to supplant missing magic item powers. Your current powers should be Encounters at least in my view and I wouldn't do any at-wills unless they were much more tame. If I used these in place of magic item Daily's, I'd try to mimic the mechanic closely as well.

[Goober4473]

So I ended up implementing something else for my current D&D game. I printed a bunch of cards, and hand out one to each player after his/her turn at random. The cards have some sort of activation, which once done gives the written benefit, and the card is kept as a sort of resource. As a unity card is activated, a unity attack can be activated by spending the used unities, at a written cost (whete # is the number of party members). A player can have up to two non-attack unities ready at a time (so I don't hand another if the player has two).

The cards here are specific to my party, and I've actually removed three because we lost a player. http://www.edanet.co.../UnityCards.doc

What's cool about these is that they make the players pay attention to eachother's actions, and I can add cards specific to an encounter. For instance, some special boss fight cards that work only in the one fight. They've worked out pretty well so far. They make combat take a little longer, but it's more interesting. The extra power they give isn't much of an issue. I can easily just make enemies tougher if I need to.

[elliott20]

these are cool. I like the idea of a team powers in general simply because it encourages team play. But if I'm reading you right, these are given out completely randomly? doesn't that make it less reliable of a tactic to depend on?

[Goober4473]

The players need to adapt to the flow of battle, and coordinate appropriately. There aren't a whole ton of them (3 per player, plus the daily one), so holding off on a power that you know will trigger a unity later may be worth it, and once you get one, you can suggest another player do somethign that will trigger it.

[lgm]

If you're having the infamous and alleged "grind" issue with 4e, I can see how unity powers are your solution to the HP "issue" of monsters. I've found that a DM making adjustments to how he's running encounters in general is a far better fix IMO.

I still hold to the earlier statement that you're tipping the scale of power too much towards the players. That aside, your daily unity power as a big issue. From a flavor point of view, your description doesn't portray why the power works or how it comes into affect. From a design perspective, merely saying choose your highest ability score for the attack is poor. I would suggest labeling 3 specific attributes (one from each of the three pairs) that a character could use. Your lack of keywords makes the power very ineffective for every character. Minus the use of a weapon or implement bonus, the power would be very subpar as it would have a great chance of missing the majority of the time. The higher the level of the group, the worse this power becomes. A simple fix is to add the implement or weapon keyword but not both. Both keywords would make it too strong for a sorcerer and other classes that use a weapon as an implement as well as leading to confusion on whether you double up the same bonus due to both keywords.

Another solution would be to simply label something like "Str. +2 or Int. +2 or Cha +2 vs. Fortitude" to compensate for the missing bonuses character would have to hit. If you do so, you would need a Special at the end of the power showing how it scales up to +4 at paragon and +6 at epic. If you expand upon Unity Powers, you would need to separate the powers in levels or at least by tier which would allow more room to work within the design.

I understand my suggested changes make the power better for some characters and weaker for others. I personally think this is a better concept as it would make groups that have a certain makeup of characters to favor specific Unities over others. Different group builds would seek out what would benefit them most and allow for more Unity powers to fill different needs instead of a one-size fits all solution.

(edited to remove negativity and add constructive comments)

This post has been edited by lgm: 28 June 2009 - 09:21 AM