Level Gating Power Pools as a penalty
For your specific issue:
You can get temp phase shift powers. There are several in the game, from the recipe to the warburg temp power. You don't have to use the concealment pool. (Similarly, there's temporary stealths and invisibilities. Short of wanting someplace to stick a global IO, I almost never use the pool any more.)
Hi,
I was sitting here looking at the Concealment pool because I want to get Phase Shift and there are three invisibility based powers that I have to pick two of to get it and my character has no interest in invisibility powers..so I was thinking that there simply has to be a better way of doing this and then I remembered a thread I read a long time ago that had something like this in it. Not sure what that thread was but have to give credit where it is due.
Anyhow, Why not level gate the Power Pool tiers and accelerate that rate based on how many powers you have taken? When you think about this there are several really key levels where you get certain powers and you could easily make that the choice points, either take a cool power pool or your cool power from your primary or secondary. This already sort of happens with Ancillary/Epic pools because if you want all 5 powers from a pool you have to give up one of your top two secondary powers.
The idea is simple:
You can pick a tier 1-2 power or a travel power starting at level 4 by itself (this will in turn allow you to pick a tier 3 power at 14th and if you pick two you can also choose tier 4 or 5)
You can pick a tier 3 power without picking a tier 1-2 or travel power starting at level 24
You can pick a tier 4 or 5 power without picking another power from the set starting at level 34
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In this way if you want that tier 4 or 5 by 14th level you have to take an early power or two, just like it is now, but if you don't want that power you can just wait and get it at 24th when you would normally be picking a different power. Also, simply skipping to get the tier 5 power that normally requires you have two powers picked is balanced by putting it at the 35th power choice because you are having to choose between that power, your top two secondary and your epics.
Anyhow, I think something like that would work and still have checks and balances because simply grabbing top tiers from each power pool would count against that epic/top secondary group and help control a lot of the min/maxing that might be possible by allowing people to pick top pool powers without prerequisites. What do you think?
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