D&D 4e Powers: Does anyone miss them?

Dunno man, my players keep coming up with off the cuff actions. Then again, I'm and 4E worked pretty well for us

There are a some games which I consider to be following up on the design of 4e's powers.
Most obviously and explicitly is Strike; there's not really much to say about it.

Rule of Cool's mostly-dead game, Legend, takes a bit of influence from it in some subtle ways. It also places a few things into its skill system that in 4e would be Role-defining and, along with Iconic and Style feats and 'places of power' abilities, build up to the same sort of weight and narrative connotation to character growth as Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies.
Plus the rules assume a Final Fantasy-esque fusion of magic and technology, which is a fun change of pace from the usual fare in a fantasy RPG.

And then there's Open Legend, which has a universally accessible list of 'banes' and 'boons' that are pretty much just open-ended 4e powers: so long as you meet one of the prerequisite attributes (and it's not something totally inexplicable) then you can attempt to use them. Or, if an attack lands by a wide enough margin, you can add the effects of a bane to it.

Honorable mention: Fantasy Craft.
While it came out at basically the same time as 4e, Fantasy Craft converges with it in some interesting ways when it comes to their treatment of weapons and how they reinterpret the idea of wealth by level, while also having something functionally reminiscent to 4e's powers: feats give you passive bonuses which modify other abilities, as per usual with a feat system, but most also give you either Utility-like abilities or stances and 'tricks.' The options there are robust and reward both specialization and generalization in different ways which can even redefine how classes operate thematically. The system is very malleable but, compared to 4e, quite verbose.

Stop shilling Strike!

Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?

Do you have this text saved somewhere or do you type it out each time?

Except 4urries used it CONSTANTLY to tell everyone how bad PF/3.5 was. Why should it surprise you that it's okay for 4e but not for other games?

4e players are the worst sorts of hypocrites.

Could you please take your hurt pussy elsewhere?

Simple, just have short rests last 15 min to half an hour and long rests lasting 1 hour to 8 hours.

Why should I not state the truth, user? Does the truth hurt you in some way?

But we're talking about 5e, not 4e.

>Except 4urries used it CONSTANTLY to tell everyone how bad PF/3.5 was.

...

Don't you have that backwards? Since 3.PF is really only playable if you either ignore or don't know the rules

>"The game is good if you ignore the rules! Only shitty players/DMs run the game the way it's written to be run!"

is exactly the argument you see the mroe devoted fans making.

This is just my conjecture, but I think it's because 4e had too many rules that it was hard to improvise actions. Not because the action couldn't be modelled mechanically (in fact the exact opposite) but because what you were trying to do probably already existed as someone else's power, so being able to do it for free would be unbalanced.

DMG, page 42, iirc.

>but because what you were trying to do probably already existed as someone else's power, so being able to do it for free would be unbalanced.

You can then just do a worse version of it.

The guidelines for improvised actions were basically made so your improvised action can't be as good as someone's non-improvised one, unless the circumstances are very specific.

So yeah, you can't attack+mark like a Fighter, but you can prepare an action to attack off turn, which in the fiction is basically doing the same thing but worse.

It only becomes a problem when some idiot goes "well, if the rogue can shift 1 before or after the attack as an at-will, my fighter could just do the same footwork, right?" as if martial skills weren't something you have to learn, and you could just "do" it.

4e DMG has a whole section that suggests how to allow for player improvisation and encourage it with your set pieces; even going as far to suggest Terrain Powers that are available in a given situation (riding a chandelier; tipping a burning brazier, riding along a current, etc)
It's way more than 5e, which boils down to "I dunno, maybe roll an ability check or do 1d4 + Str damage." And while I've seen plenty more people try to improvise strange or cool things in 5e, I think that's more due to the lack of built in interesting options than the framework. 4e allows players much more interesting combat by default.

Sure, I agree with you. Why was your post a reply to mine?

meant to reply to

I miss 4e powers, no two ways about it.

Firstly, without them, we're back to martials having very little if anything to do that doesn't amount to "smack it in the face with your weapon. Yeah, maybe the wizards aren't as quadratic as they were in 1st-3rd edition, but that's not the same as fighters being boring.

Secondly, 4e ws the only edition where every caster's spell list was completely unique. With 5e, we've ended up with warlocks & sorcerers getting just watered down versions of the wizard's spell list.

I liked the video gamey feel but I'm not sure I could stand a long campaign of it.

>Secondly, 4e ws the only edition where every caster's spell list was completely unique
As someone who plays casters primarily this was fucking amazing.

Every martial player I've played with complained about martials doing nothing in previous editions and casters doing everything, I complained about wizards being able to do everything every other caster could do so what was the fucking point of playing another caster class.

With 4e and its Powers the individual Arcane classes actually felt like distinct and flavorful options and not knockoff wizards, and since martials where actually able to do shit other than full attack every round I ended up getting out of my comfort zone for a campaign and played a Warlord since it was all about that battlefield control

I wouldn't mind not having powers if the Battlemasters' """maneuvers""" weren't both the only thing like it in 5E and complete and utter shit. They're by far the least interesting and least powerful implementation of anything like it in the past 3 editions and that's including Essentials classes.

>One of which will always be spent on Armor of Agathys
>The other which will always be spent on Hex

or, you know, not.

You can forgo Agathis, but not using hex is just stupid.

(hex being a level 1 spell and EB being a cantrip instead of both being class abilities scaling with Warlock is even stupider, since it makes them ideal to poach by dipping).

What if, and hear me out here... What if it's not a combat encounter?

You already got invocations for those. Very few of your spells (especially the higher level ones) are actually worth the slots out of combat, unless you can always rest 1 hour guaranteed (in other words: would you use your 3rd level warlock slot that you need an hour to recover or have the wizard cast spider climb from his way more plentiful, and by this time, quite useless for combat low level slots?).

Admittedly, that one time when I circumvented an adventure by flying everyone over a chasm over a few hours was pretty fun.

Still doesn't make it better not to have Hex and Eldritch Blast/Strike as class features instead of spells

>the video gamey feel
Define please.

I can definitely agree with that feel, since I can pretty easily separate my 4e players into two groups.

The first are the guys that aren't creative at all, like I had one guy that would only play Rangers and at that only use "Twin Strike" if he wasn't going to use his daily.

The second are the guys that're a little more creative, like I once had one that was an assassin that would use his "Executioner's Noose" to basically become Indiana Jones but in all black.

So I can agree that while 4e encourages people not to take risks since powers are usually good enough and just sitting right in front of them, 5e feels like I'm on shaky ground the entire time since there's no guarantee that doing anything more than just punching the guy will give me some sort of advantage. Basically I could do all these fancy maneuvers, but if the DM treats it mechanically the same as just slashing then what's the point?

This is a big part of the martial/caster disparity that doesn't get brought up enough. Godlike casters who can do everything are fucking dull and samey.

It's one of the reasons I get confused when people claim all 4e classes are too similar. A 4e Wizard and Sorcerer are significantly more different from on another than the 3.PF/5e versions.

>but because what you were trying to do probably already existed as someone else's power, so being able to do it for free would be unbalanced.
The thing is, powers don't use skill checks. Wanna do something a power would let you do with just an attack roll? Add a skill check. There, done, balance restored.
It's literally no different than how you'd improvise in any other edition.

Except 4e actually gave you guidelines. They weren't ideal, but they're still more support for improvisation than the other editions ever had.

>like I had one guy that would only play Rangers and at that only use "Twin Strike" if he wasn't going to use his daily.
In his defense, that is pretty much how you play a ranger

One of the big things about those complaints is that they care more about broad structure and "ownership." Fighters "own" 11 feats to customize with. No one else gets 11 bonus feats all their own.

Wizards "own" the ability to have a spellbook and to specialize in a school of magic, giving them options to be masters of everything or specialists in everything.

Clerics "owned" healing spells and domains, allowing them to be painted by their choice of god.

Druids "owned" everything and were a walking army.

Paladins "owned" smiting and laying on hands and all kinds of features.

Monks "owned" flurry of blows and not needing equipment.

Sure a lot of it was massively redundant in the end (monks, fighters, rangers all full attacked and the sorcerer, wizard, and cleric all used spell lists that had a large overlap).

When people look at 4e classes, they see them as all being the same "forest" of AEDU instead of looking at the "trees" of each having their own power list to call their own.

I think this is exactly what I'm trying to get at. The "freedom" of 5e is nice, but without any suggestions on what to do its really easy to just get lost.

This is something I've noticed a lot. The complaints do very often seem to be more structural than practical, focusing entirely on how things look and are arranged instead of how they work in practice.

Because they com from people who never actually played (some not even read) the game. And for them the consistency of the rules that everyone could do the same since they where used to structure difference was the only actual difference.

Superheroics is like the worst possible genre to use that sort of thing in, as a universal thing. Superman doesn't run out of fist. Neither does the Hulk. In fact, the Hulk only gets MORE fist as time moves on and Superman can get more fist if he flies into the goddamn sun.

Because 3.5/PF is such a hilariously overcomplete game that the problem isn't that there's nothing there (like in 4e), it's that what's there has been thought up and is more rules to remember, which is lame for some fairly rare things, since they're usually in the realm of 'too much shit to care about for such a rare and circumstantial case'.

But you're kind of missing the point of what powers represent and how they actually work in practice.

In practice they don't work with superheroics. If any of those heroes needs to pull out a bigger fish attack, they can, assuming they have it/the author remembers they have it. The only guys who run out of crap (as per the way 4E uses them) are the guys using some types of technology (like missiles and rail guns), and like 90% of the time 'just hitting them harder' is the order of the day.

Again, you're kinda missing the point. Powers don't necessarily represent discrete in universe things you can do. They're much more or a narrative conceit, from the general nature of fight scenes.

People don't just spam their biggest attack all the time. Instead they stick to a few basic options, default and archetypal actions that make up the majority of any conflict- These are your at wills. Then, a few times in a fight, they'll bust out something special. It might not look any different to the normal, but based on the time or the context or the scenario, or just on the flow of the fight, it'll have a commensurately greater effect. Those are your Encounters. And then, every now and then, someone will pull something fucking ridiculous which turns the tables or ends the fight right there- And those are your dailies.

In that context, it makes perfect sense.

D&D is a game crippled by tradition. If it isn't adhering to the same mechanical practices it always has, regardless of how outdated, impractical or outright broken they are, it isn't D&D.

Yes and the Narrative of these characters is not 'oh, they can only pull this trick off once per encounter' or 'we only need to perform this trick once per encounter'. I don't give a shit how many different ways you try to shoehorn it in, but some motherfuckers can use the same trick repeatedly in the same fucking encounter. If you want that to be your daily, you're going to have to remember two things: 1) those asspulls end encounters instantly. No ifs ands or buts, the fight's over. 2) they can't pull those things out all the time either, meaning (once more) that it doesn't fit your stupid, inane, idea.

I'm not quite sure you entirely grasp the idea of narrative abstraction.

As a side note: those also don't come up very often, even in comics, and it's generally just Reed Richards who does that shit, though Iron Man also does it.

Sometimes I think the ttrpg genre is hopelessly restrained by literal autists

I think you are obsessed with a mechanic you ran across once in a shitty edition of a shitty game.

Insult me all you like, if you don't have a real argument, you're the idiot.

Make short rests five minutes, that can only kick in up to once an hour.

The funny part is that you even justified the existence of dailies as a narrative conceit

>) they can't pull those things out all the time either, meaning (once more) that it doesn't fit your stupid, inane, idea.

This is literally part of the narrative abstraction of Daily powers. They're not shit you can use all the time, so you (OOC) only pull them out when really necessary, which represents IC meeting the right conditions to make use of it.

Dude I just used a superhero pic so the thread would look flashy and not boring. This has nothing to do with actual superpowers, but instead the "powers" of the 4e combat system.

It really is. I mean, I know we call them "traditional games" and all but it seems like if you don't try to ape D&D (specifically 3.PF), you just get lost in the haze and accused of being a bad system.

Wait you weren't saying that at all. Nevermind.

Nah, it's cool.

In a way that doesn't actually match what we see in the comics or... frankly in any type of storytelling except, like, Naruto. If you wanted to run the powers in Naruto, that'd be fine

Think about how often the Flash actually decides to use his speed to its fullest potential vs. times when he gets shot and goes into a lightspeed seizure.

It makes sense in comics, though admittedly that's probably because capeshit is inconsistent by design.

...A fundamental part of the narrative flow of fight scenes only works for Naruto? The fuck?

When he does that, he doesn't just use it for "a round" it's often (whenever he's fighting Zoom or any other super fast type) an ongoing thing. When Thor decides he's had enough of these silly games and pulls out all the stops, he doesn't just blast one dude, or a radius of dudes, he demonstrates the literal godly super soldier nature that he possesses for the rest of the fight. You'd have to extend these abilities to end motherfuckers throughout the rest of the fight in prety much every case, and dailies would be so broken and overpowered that it's like ultimates in Overwatch only everyone already has them cocked and loaded at the start of the fight, and they do 5000% more damage.
Yes, because it's a shitty representation of the narrative flow of fight scenes in a roleplaying game.

Well if you really think about it most systems don't make much sense in a rl context either. Why can't a 5e Barbarian rage more than just 2 times per day? Shouldn't he be able to do it on command? Or what about 3.5 Paladins? Why can't they Lay on Hands whenever they want to instead of just Wis. mod. per day? They're supposed to be the champions of the gods, right? Why would Pelor bottleneck his champions just because?
So basically it just boils down to mechanical balance, and imo 4e's is the most fun for a player (and incredibly internally balanced)

What about it makes it shitty?

Oh, on that you're right, I don't like the 4E powers thing at all, but that is something that Dungeons and Dragons just isn't really willing to let go of and it's a neo-Vancian system all things told, but eh, I'm not about to disparage you your bag. I will, however, mock you furiously and call you an idiot (with valid reasons) if you decide to shoehorn them into a different genre.
Covered that in the rest of my post.

That just seemed to be more of you missing the point and failing to understand the idea of narrative abstraction, though.

If you didn't understand my point on it, then I cannot help you, but know that most superhero roleplayers aren't gonna put up with it.

I'm not saying most should, or even have to, I'm just pointing out that it isn't as ill fitting as you say.

The issue you have is that you keep trying to line up the mechanics, one to one, with what is physically happening in the scene, which is missing the point of the narrative abstraction. A lot of the time it might not look different, they might be trying the same thing, but the abstraction lets you assert greater consequences in that moment. Other systems might let things like that emerge naturally from already existing combat mechanics, but there's an advantage in putting it in the hands of the players and let them take a more active role in dictating the pace of the fight.

It's also kinda amusing how much of a big deal you're making of this, when Valor exists- A supers game which draws a lot of influence from the 4e powers system.

Yeah, but we're talking about 4e and 5e, not whatever superhero system you're running.

I would never take Call of Cthulhu's Sanity system and put it into 5e, even though the DMG has specific rules for doing just that, because in almost all campaigns they'd fit in terribly.

Any measurement of time you can give to Flash's abilities are moot because he's literally faster than time itself. "A round" might as well be "until the end of the campaign" for how fast he is.

Which to be fair, in games people care more about how things feel. After all you want the "feeling" of fun. If you look at a game and "feel" it won't be fun, odds are that guess is right.

The "big" thing that people find frustrating with powers is that not everyone wants powers. There are players who don't want *any* powers. They want to do their stuff always. And interval based power systems are saying "you can't do X more than once at all" to them. And that makes them frustrated because they want to do their stuff. Being told "the time isn't right" bothers them because it makes them feel either they aren't in control of their character, their character is just incompetent, or more often than not, powers exist in universe.

That last point is important. To a lot of players, they want to play in the universe of the game system. When you present character mechanics to them, that's something that exists IN UNIVERSE to them. And if it's an abstraction, that annoys them because mechanics need to aid in the universe first and foremost.

Since mechanics need to be in universe, they then interpret the mechanics as in universe constructs. An encounter power that has the name of Mighty Swing exists in universe as a sword technique called Mighty Swing and can only be used every five minutes because that's what Mighty Swing is. Characters in universe can talk about Mighty Swing and how it can only be used once every five minutes.

To a lot of people narrative is a product of the interactions mechanics representing the universe, rather than the direct flow of the mechanics that then echo into the universe as a result.

This of course is all a symptom of table top rpgs being emulations first and foremost to most people.

I didn't think too much of them at the time, but since I've started playing systems other than DnD I kind of do miss 4e and it's powers. It's a fun and fairly simple way to handle a gird-based combat game. It gives you options on what to do, resource management, party synergy, and the dailies help give every character a moment to shine.

My main problem with it at the time was the narrative issues. I don't have a problem with dailies or encounters, I can handwave the abstraction and narrative conceit. What really annoyed me was the strict divide between combat and non-combat actions. For example, one power I recall described the character as reaching into the target's mind and forcibly ripping out the memory of the character. The effect was to do some damage and become stealthed. Now, if my character can rip out memories, wouldn't that be useful outside of combat? Yet it is clearly not intended to be used outside of combat, and has nothing even mentioning the possibility.

The system is not designed for narrative games. The rules for nonviolent interactions are inadequate for games where non-combat interactions are any more than generally brief, inconsequential interludes. This is true for all editions of DnD, but the fact that there was no reasonable way to deal with using powers outside of battle really exacerbated the issue.

Also, I found it very off-putting that you could literally summon angels down from heaven at first level to do 1d6+3 damage. Maybe it was really just intended for you to ignore flavor text.

The point I've been driving to is that 4e's power system is great for dungeon crawls, but you are better off using a different system for any other type of game. In my opinion, DnD only really does dungeon crawls well, and 4e does it the best of any edition. 4e has issues with narrative, but if narrative and non-combat interaction are meant to be an important part of your game then you really ought to consider a system other than DnD anyway.

I'm working on a game that tries to address the exact kind of feelings you have, OP. I can't go too much into specifics but the short version is that 4e-style Powers are derived from Skills, and each Skill gives passive benefits that make you fit a specific Role better in a particular way. For example, characters with Stealth get a sneak-attack like passive bonus and access to combat maneuvers that centre around flanking enemies, exploiting openings, and other assassin-like effects. There's pretty good rules so far for doing off-the-cuff stuff, especially combat tricks and inflicting status effects, and Skills basically let you specialize in specific kinds of effects and actions.

Instead of using Short and Long Rests, try this:

After spending five minutes outside of combat, characters may spend hit dice to recover hit points. In addition, a character may recover all Short Rest abilities by suffering a level of Exhaustion, or all their Long Rest abilities by suffering two levels of Exhaustion.

A character's first level of Exhaustion has no ill effects. The second level inflicts disadvantage to ability checks, the third halves their speed, and so forth as normal. Characters with six levels of exhaustion may not choose to gain a seventh in this manner, as that would kill them. They are just too tired to regain the use of their abilities.

A character that gets 8 hours of sleep, as well as food and drink, removes a level of exhaustion, plus one for each of the following that applies:
- They are staying in good quality lodgings representing at least a Comfortable lifestyle
- They receive medical treatment from another person (DC 20 Wisdom (Medicine) Check)
- You receive the benefits of a Greater Restoration spell

Greater Restoration requires a 1-hour ritual in order to reduce the target's exhaustion level by one, and a character cannot benefit from it more than once per day. Alternatively, don't let Greater Restoration remove exhaustion levels.

You're right in that 4e's non-combat side was weak. Rituals were under supported, guidelines for using the themes of powers outside of combat would have been great, and making non-combat utilities fight for space with combat utilities was a real problem.

Some friends and I are actually working on our own system, and we're really trying to take those principles and expand on the out of combat uses for them, including better support for ritual-equivalents and a dedicated slot for out of combat powers to give everyone some decent utility, along with more fleshed out guidelines for improvising based on a power.

My view is that 4E approached powers backwards for the most part (Skill Powers are a small exception to this).

It shouldn't be "I have this At-Will Power that lets me shoot fire at people, so I should be able to make flames whenever I want." It should be "I took a Power that lets me create and control small flames, this lets me shoot fire at people At Will, plus it gives me access to Fire-type Encounter and Daily Powers."

That's...literally how many daily powers work. Or in the case of a class like the barbarian, all of them.

I suppose you could design along those lines, but IMO that's kind of limiting, tying things together like that. Classes are already quite limiting, so letting people be more freeform in what capabilities they select makes more sense to me. I do agree that they needed more out of combat features and abilities like that, but I wouldn't like them all up so inflexibly.

>4urries
Did I fall asleep in a Time Machine?
Seriously, is this 2010? Because, I have some hilarious news from the future for ya'll

>Classes are already quite limiting, so letting people be more freeform in what capabilities they select makes more sense to me.
Exactly. You don't need classes at all. Instead of being a Rogue you could make a character with (for example) Acrobatics, Deception, Stealth and Thievery as your core abilities, then choose from the available Powers in those categories.

But then you lose the benefit of classes.

As I said, I can see the advantages of a more freeform system like you're suggesting, but the issue it brings along is that every set of powers needs to be compatible with every other set of powers, somewhat limiting what you're able to do if you want to avoid degenerate and ludicrous combinations.

Classes, through being exclusive and extensive bundles of mechanics, lets you create a really strong and consistent mechanical identity, doing a lot of stuff that you couldn't really risk in a more open system because doing so would break everything.

I guess it's a question of what you care about and what you want to do. Freeform gives you more combinations, but less opportunity for discrete interesting mechanics, classes gives you more ability to create those strong mechanical themes and experiment with the ruleset, but are also implicitly more restricting by design.

Why are you wasting a spell slot on Armor of Agathys?

Literally all you need to outshine most classes in the game is Hex and Agonzing Blast

>tfw wizards fucking squandered 4e
>tfw no 4e vidya ever

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

That was Atari, they had the DnD license then

They were apparently going to make an online tabletop, but all we got is that PC-creator (not that I'm complaining)

That whole thing to scuppered by the murder suicide.

Aside from the tragedy, it was a real fucking shame. If 4e really did have a complete, interconnected set of character creation and GMing tools, it'd be even easier to run and play, but it never achieved its potential.

Your truth is entirely subjective. If that's all you're going to add to this conversation please fuck back off to the edition wars hell that spawned you. Have a great day!
youtu.be/0LSGvziX_6Y

>But then you lose the benefit of classes.
The benefits of removing classes might well be greater, no point discounting it out of hand.

>every set of powers needs to be compatible with every other set of powers
>avoid degenerate and ludicrous combinations
>you couldn't really risk in a more open system because doing so would break everything
Look at Gamma World 7E and its Origins. Each gives a stat bonus, skill bonus, 1-3 passive abilities, and a Novice ability (usually an At-WIll, sometimes an Encounter), and at later levels you get a Utility Power, an Encounter Power, and a Critical Hit effect. There's 21 in the base game, another 20 in a future expansion, and you can (and are intended to) randomly combine two of them to make your character (eg. Seismic Pyrokinetic or Android Yeti). All their abilities function using the same core rules, a slightly modified D&D 4E system. Heck, the game has random powers you get and lose encounter to encounter via trading cards and it's all using a single set of unified mechanics.

Game balance is something you keep in mind while you work, but it's not the be all and end all of your system. Obvious game-breaking combinations need to be fixed of course but you can't really worry about someone taking Ability X and combining it with Power Y and Feat Z to do something they shouldn't.

I guess it's a design philosophy thing, because IMO you can and should worry about exactly that.

I'm not saying either way is better or worse, just that they necessitate different design foci and will create different experiences.

It also depends what you're going for. Gamma World is a goofy, funny game where crazy stuff happening is part of the point, so avoiding that kind of crazy accidental synergy is less important. Although it would still harm the game if someone accidentally became super OP and left the rest of the party in the dust, unable to meaningfully interact with anything.

Yeah such a great game. Your fighter was only useful once a day and your "utility" actions had nothing to do with the powers system. Anyone who thinks the 4e power system was anything but a lazy abstraction does not understand game design. Fighters didn't have much utility in 4e and anything they did have had to do with the developers bothering to put it in, not the shitty powers system.

Just because 3.5 and 5e are crap doesn't mean 4e is good. Nor does it mean 4es shitty design has anything to do with the change in balance because there are no martial classes in 4e. All 4e classes are casters. Your fighter daily attack? That's a spell. Because there is no other logical explanation why he can only do that once a day, besides post hoc bull shit rationalization.

Thanks for letting us all know you've not read 4e and have no idea how it works. It's a really useful contribution to the thread.

Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea, and new XCOMs are probably the closest we're gonna get.

This is an amazing insight to the problem that I had not considered despite witnessing the 3.5/4e edition wars in their entirety

very clever, user.

Perfect balance is impossible in any game where options have meaning. The best you can strive for is keeping PCs of the same level/xp/etc within a reasonable range of power. I strive for 15-25% maximum variance between a fully 'optimized' and completely 'unoptimized' build. Gamma World 7E approaches that margin pretty closely, and I heavily recommend that you find and read it if you want to understand where I'm coming from.

I think your fear of...
>it would still harm the game if someone accidentally became super OP and left the rest of the party in the dust, unable to meaningfully interact with anything.
...is pretty unfounded, to be quite honest. Removing classes in lieu of skill/power 'packages' doesn't automatically lead to massive imbalance between party members. I think it's pretty well founded by this point that CLASS-based systems are quite bad at this, historically speaking.

Moreover, the entire concept of mutliclassing and hybrid characters just goes to show that mixing and matching abilities can, and does, happen in these games. Someone, somewhere, is going to want to play a sneaky thief who can turn invisible and has healing magic. The only difference between a class-based system and a class-less system is how many hoops the class-based system makes you jump through to get there. A class-based system that just flat-out says "No, you can't play that" is going to either get homebrewed so that you CAN do that, or the player is going to get frustrated and want to play something else that DOES let them play that.

Quite simply, classes don't make games more balanced, they just force player characters into archetypes that players are probably going to subvert or defy anyway.

My biggest problem with 4e was never the base system of powers, I actually love it.
My problem with 4e was the number bloat, HP started high which made encounters last a long time, skills could get to an absurd number very quickly on someone that is trained and specialized, leaving the GM with trying to challenge that person and make it impossible for the rest of the party or make it easy for the person and possible for the rest of the people, defenses getting really out of hand on some people, etc.
If someone fixed the basic math of 4e it would have been one of my go to systems.

It's not about having perfect balance, it's about aspiring to it.

And, again, balance wasn't the main point I was making, it's about the design space classes open up.

Just as an example, in a class based system, you could make a class with two distinct types of power- Type A, basic attacks with relatively low damage, and Type B, bonuses applied to attacks along with an additional effect.

Within the class, it remains balanced, because the total damage of the combination is within the acceptable margins for its level and degree of power.

Trying to make that work outside a class based system, however? Either you completely lock down its design, giving it only internal synergies, losing out on some of the fun of mix and matching, or it becomes completely overpowered as you end up combining a type B boost with another attack power which already has a higher base damage.

It's just an example of the concept in action.

Again, both methods can have benefits, but with a class based system you are more free to come up with complex, interesting internal mechanical systems. There's room to mix and match through hybrid and multiclassing, true, but it's very limited and very costly, to the point that most benefits gleaned from it are balanced with respect to the amount of investment it took you to get there.

You can see examples of it in action in point buy systems like Mutants and Masterminds or Valor. They're both cool systems with a lot of options, but all of their options are quite simple and basic. You achieve the complexity through your ability to combine them together, but you lose out on some of the really weird and unusual abilities classes can have by default in class based systems, and quite often they're relatively difficult to build and emulate even in a roughly similar point buy.

Explain how anything I said was wrong.