Supposed I wanted to design a class that uses nothing but at-will powers. For those who are familiar with the numbers behind D&D 4e is this possible and still be competitive with the other classes of the same role (Striker, Controller, etc)?
The would be applied to making more realistic classes like a warrior instead of a fighter, a thief instead of rogue. The powers would be equivalent to combat maneuvers or skill techniques.
Best Answer
More or less, yes. This is pretty similar to what Essentials does for fighters or rogues, although it doesn't completely remove the encounter power options. However, their encounter powers are addons to existing powers -- i.e., instead of making an encounter attack, you boost an at-will attack with one of the encounter powers.
(It is not terribly clear how this works if you've just looked at the new red box Starter Set. Heroes of the Fallen Lands is much clearer.)
The model used by psionic classes might also work. Rename power points to, say, effort points or exertion points or something. They only get at-will powers, but they can augment them by spending effort points for larger/better effects. Effort points recharge every encounter. If I were using this for a more realistic martial class, I would generalize the model to a certain degree. I.e., instead of writing a separate set of augments for each at-will power, I'd say that it costs 1 effort point to add a push effect to any at-will, 2 effort points to add a daze effect, and so on.
I am now rather excited about that idea and may need to write it up myself if you don't.