D&D 4e: Why Powers System Works (And a small addition to the last rant)

I had noticed online a random suggestion, from a random person I don't know, another use for healing surges: to spend an amount of them to regain the use of an encounter or daily power.

At first, many people might think this to be a good thing. You get to use your most powerful spells more often. That's exciting! And it works well, because you expend a limited resource to get your powers back.

Or so you think. Hold up for a moment, you D&D 4e fans out there, before you get excited about this idea, and let's talk about why the powers system works well, and why it is capable of replacing the old 3e system of spells.

Vancian spell-casting works well for a specific reason: you have a limited supply of spells. This causes you to cast your spells more strategically, and to actually think carefully about your next move. This is the way spell-casters are *supposed* to think, or at least how people perceive they should think. They're supposed to have higher intelligence, and thus be smarter than your average fighter. So they are supposed to think ahead about the battle, in much the way a skilled chess player imagines the next dozen or so moves of play. Sorcerers aren't quite like that, of course, because they use in-born magic talent, but this was portrayed through the old 3e system of spontaneous casting (and high Charisma).

The new 4e system, (using powers that are limited to encounters, once per day, or once per round), works for the same specific reason: you have a limited supply of abilities. It's just *less* limited, and now we're able to apply it to everything, not just spells! In fact, I dare say, 4e is STILL using the Vancian spell-casting system, if you look at it hard enough. How else do you explain what happens with your daily attack powers? You forgot it. It isn't expressed that way in the D&D books anymore, cause it makes you sound like a lackwit. It's merely stated that those powers are so powerful that they exhaust your mind and body, and thus they can only be used after an extended rest. But that's just a fancy way of saying that you forget your daily powers once you use them. Technically, all the old spells were daily attack powers, every single one!

And so using a healing surge to regain the use of an encounter/daily attack power is a bad idea, and severely unbalances the system. Granted, you can do this with action points, (using certain Paragon Paths and Epic Destines), but action points are much more annoying to acquire, and you have to give up your extended rest, (which recharges your encounter/daily powers and your healing surges), in order to get more than one each day. Thus doing this with action points isn't so bad. Doing this with healing surges, on the other hand, turns D&D into an MMO, (which I thought D&Ders don't want!). It turns a healing surge into the equivalent of a mana point.

This is the main thing that differentiates D&D and MMO games. In an MMO, you DO have limited resources...but you can spam your most powerful spell all you want, at least until you run out of mana. In D&D, you don't really spam anything. Okay, I admit, you spam your At-Will Attack Power. I would hope, of course, you don't; I would prefer that you utilize ALL your attack powers, choosing whichever one would best fit whatever situation you happen to be in. But you don't spam your most powerful abilities. You can't! Because you can only cast them once per day. Or once per encounter, as the case may be.
This means that you don't have as much strategy in an MMO. This is why WoW PvP has always been so open to casual gamers: it requires no real amount of thought. You don't need to be a genius to totally "pwn" your enemy. This is also why I had always enjoyed raiding more than I did PvP: it involved tactics and strategy.

In D&D you have to think about how to apply your resources. 4e has basically made only a small change. Instead of spamming your basic attack repeatedly, in the case of people who attack with weapons, you will more likely use your at-will powers repeatedly, and choose from encounter/daily powers for more strategic applications. You might knock your enemy prone, you might force them to move into a different square, you might blind or stun them.
In the case of a caster, you now have the option of using a repeatable ability every turn; in 3e, casters didn't really have that option so much, unless you were a Sorcerer. Why else do you think Sorcerer was more popular than Wizard? At least, it was in my book, and I doubt most people disagreed with my opinion on which was better. I HATED having to prepare your spells each day. I never played a Cleric because of this; I always used the Favored Soul instead. Anyways, this allows casters to retain their strategic application and wide variety of spells, while giving them something that is repeatable, when they're in a certain kind of mood that day.

This also allows for different playing styles to emerge within each class! You might be a Wizard and use your Encounter/Daily powers often, controlling the enemy ranks as strategically as you can, and truly you would rarely use your at-will powers. This means your party will need to rest more, or else not utilize you to your full potential, but it's certainly a playing style that would still be effective.
But you might also prefer the ease-of-use with at-will attack powers instead. You might not think quite so much about how to set up the positions of your enemy just right for your party. Or maybe you just hate the limited nature of Encounter/Daily powers, and hoard them like a packrat for emergency use. (I do this with curative items in console RPGs: I often go through entire Final Fantasy games without once using the limited supply of Ethers, because I'll be worried I will direly need one. But at the same time, I will often let myself die, instead of giving the cleric an ether so he can heal the group. Backfired logic, for shame!) Whatever the reason, you're essentially always using At-will powers, and never using the powers that make you more versatile.
The second option isn't necessarily an ineffective way to play your Wizard, it's just a different way. And you can now have these alternatives with a Fighter, or a Rogue, or a Monk. Whereas before, those classes were all fairly simple to play, now more thought can be applied to them. Especially Fighter. It is rare to find a D&D player who did not get bored with the hack-and-slash Fighter.

On the flip side, you can no longer, as a Wizard, memorize Fireball half a dozen times, and then memorize a lower spell-level of it for each lower spell slot that you were able to. Wizards COULD spam spells: if that was the only spell they have.
You can't do that with Daily Attack Powers, (not without action points), for which I am quite glad.

Maybe it's this specific aspect of the game, that make people cry about D&D being like an MMO: the fact that you can now "spam" abilities.
The irony is, you always could spam them. Wizards could prepare a Fireball multiple times. In fact, they most certainly did. They gave up spell slots and their advantage of variety to spam it. Sorcerers gave things up, too. But they gave up their spell uses per day, rather than the spell itself.
Fighters were all about spamming in 3e. How many times did the Fighter attack monster X with his sword in a specific battle? I lose count. That's spam if I ever tasted it.

The only thing 4e did was allow spell-casters to spam, and let Fighters stop spamming. Is this regime change, this freedom of choice, really such a bad thing?
It's not like an MMO. The whole point of this wasn't to allow wizards to spam Fireball. The whole point of this was to give all classes more options. You now have the option to spam as a Wizard. You now have the option to not spam as a Fighter.

...and isn't options what everybody wants in D&D?