Old Encounter Surges (Sat)

[Zyraen]

Edit : Reorganised for Clarity, introduced Headers

As per the Google Groups threads :

Encounter Surges
Each Player has the following number of Encounter Surges, based on their "Daily" Surge value (which will no longer be tracked)
5-7 Daily Surges = 2 Encounter Surges
8-10 Daily Surges = 3 Encounter Surges
11-13 Daily Surges = 4 Encounter Surges
14-16 Daily Surges = 5 Encounter Surges (etc etc)
The Surges can be consumed as per normal, including using Potions of Healing, etc.
After a Short rest, you get back all your Encounter Surges.

When the Going gets Tough...
- Once per Encounter, a Player that is unconscious and without Surges can be returned to consciousness with a Potion that requires a Surge to be spent.
- When you Action Point, along with the standard action you automatically gain an Encounter Surge.

Short Rest Benefits
- All Encounter Heals (eg. Healing Word, Inspiring Word, Ardent Surge, etc) are Maximised during a Short Rest.
- After an Encounter, if you still have at least 1 Encounter Surge and Second Wind, you can spend your Second Wind with a bonus modifier equal to the Leader's highest Stat Mod.

Other Notes
- Non-Combat RP & Skill Challenges no longer count as Encounters (though you may still be awarded XP)
- For every individual Milestone, you get back 1 Daily Power. This includes Item Dailies, Feat Dailies, etc but only ONE per Milestone

Extra XP & Levelling Up
- For every individual Milestone after (and excluding the 1st), you get 20% more XP, up to a max of 60% more XP*
- This resets after an Extended Rest or 2 Consecutive Short Rests.
- After gaining enough XP to level up, the Character levels up at the next Milestone (inclusive) or after an Extended Rest.
ie. If the Encounter in which the XP is earned ends in an individual Milestone, the Character levels up after that same Encounter.

* - when it comes to XP, I make it a point to always Round Up to nearest % point.

Note that the option to stop adventuring to take Extended Rests is still open, but hopefully there is more incentive and possibility of being more Heroic now.

================

Theory Crafting for this System
Only for those interested. Else just ignore this segment

Surges
- 4E usually pushes 3 Encounters before an Extended Rest, or more often 3 Encounters and 1 Skill Challenge.
- Assuming Skill Challenges consume no Surges, your Daily Surges generally last you 3 Encounters.
- Not every Encounter requires every character to spend a Surge
- Hence tentatively Encounter Surges = ( Daily Surges + 1 ) / 3, rounded down
- This has an added benefit of Durable Feat generally being able to grant an extra +1 Surge per Encounter
- Surges per Encounter have no benefit if they can't be used.
- This makes Potions more valuable as well, for when "s*** hits the fan"

Daily Powers
- By same virtue as above, Daily Powers generally last you for 3 Encounters in 4E. At this level, that's 2 Dailies for 3 Encounters.
- So generally, we're looking at each Character using 1 Daily every Milestone (2 encounters)
- By current arrangement, a Character should be able to maintain a full repertoire of Dailies at all times by keeping to 1 Daily / Milestone.
- I think this is too generous since Party Resources should be somewhat depleted by every (non-easy) Encounter, and the only real party Resource carried forward is Daily Powers, so I prefer for Players to regain 1 Daily Power per Milestone, not including the 1st milestone. This should allow them space to deplete and be glad to get back that one Daily... but let's wait and see how it goes.

[Zyraen]

Levelling Up

A Player recently asked me, so I just thought to clarify here.

Normally in 4E, when you Level Up, it is after an Extended Rest, so you have full HP.

However, in this 'system', you may not have full HP when you Level Up. In which case, you gain an extra Amt of HP equal to what you would get when you level up, and the same Amt is added to your Total HP.
ie. if you have 60/75 HP when you level up, and you gain an extra 5 HP from levelling up, you would then have 65/80 HP.

Any new Powers that you gain, notably Daily Powers, also start out Available for Use.

[Zyraen]

Since there are now two Campaigns, just to clarify :
This House Rule ONLY applies for the Saturday Night game.

[Zyraen]

Recharging Dailies has been moved to a separate topic.

[Zyraen]

Let's refer to Encounter Surges as "Reserves", a bit more elegant and distinctive (thanks Jeth for feedback)

Proposal

Defenders start with 3 Reserves. If they have Con 14 or more, they gain +1.
Non-Defenders start with 2 Reserves. If they have Con 14 or more, they gain +1.
Durability etc feats can substitute for the Con 14, but do not stack. The max is always just +1 more over the Norm.

To keep some use for a decent CON score, instead of Saving against Ongoing Damage, Characters can choose to make an Endurance Check instead and beat medium DC to end the ongoing damage.
Those who wish to retrain their Skills to Endurance can do so, even if Endurance is not a Class Skill.

For those who use Unbound4E etc and intend to Role-Swap from Defender to Whatever-else for that extra Reserve, note that you lose a Reserve when you Role-Swap. ie that won't Work.

================

This is NOT Live, just for Feedback. Hope to hear from you.

Update : Proposal has not been favourably received and will not be going live.

[Zyraen]

Reserve Draining Mechanics
After some consideration, I've reviewed the Reserve (ie Encounter Surge) details to be as follows

- The first time during an Encounter when you lose a Reserve, you lose the Reserve as per normal.

- After that, whenever you lose a Reserve, you can decide whether to lose an extra Reserve, or to take damage equal to your Surge Value instead. This damage cannot be reduced or negated in any way.

- If you are under 0 HP and hit by an attack that drains a Reserve (whether it is drained or you choose to lose HP), you fall unconscious.*

* - special thanks to AlexKong for his assent that this is a fair rule