D&D 5E Balancing "consumable" powers vs "per time" powers (Alchemists, Grenadiers etc) - the search for an alternative

Hello

tl,dr: I am looking for an alternative method to "x times per day/rest" to balance powers, I think I found one but I need help to fine tune it

In D&D (and many other gaming system), powers are often at will (a sword swing, an cantrip) or "per day" (you have 3 level 1 and 2 level 2 spellslots, renewable daily). 4e and 5e also have more "intermediate" powers (encounter powers, powers renewable after a short rest) but they are all "per time" powers. And this is fine. It makes a lot of sense (you can only cast so many spells before your mind gets tired, your god only is willing to give you a bit of power at a time, etc etc) and it is also a very good way to balance powers and manage them. It's such a great mechanism that it seems almost universal.

But... but... some days I wonder if an alternative wouldn't be nice. I'm thinking of powers that are centered around the use of "consumable objects". An example would be a grenadier (some kind of modern/sci fi class concept). If the grenadier has one grenade, she can use one grenade. Buuut if she happens to find a case of grenades... then she can use dozens of them. Of course, a high level grenadier can probably use those grenades "better" somehow, but the "X per time" concept doesn't really make sense - the number of grenade that the grenadier can use should be dependent on the number of grenades she has at hand.

An alchemist is the same. If all he has with him is a handful of flashpowder, well... that's all he has. If he also has 3 acid projectors, a potion of healing and a salve of invisibility, then he can do more. A higher level alchemist would be ample to create more powerful concoctions , of course... but the number he can use is dependent on on how many he has available to him .

This makes a lot of sense..... buuuuuut it's really hard to balance. If the consumable-using class has too many at hand, they can "nova" like crazy... but if they don't have enough (or spend them all in one go) then their are seriously limited. The grenadier without her grenade is probably a second rate fighter, and the alchemist without any concoctions prepared is a third-rate mage, at best.

I've been thinking about this for a long time - in fact I created a thread but the great database crash deleted it. So I'm trying again!

A few false leads, briefly, and why. One, encumbrance could be used - grenades and alchemical fire vials are heavy. True enough... but then the balancing "lever" can be circumvented by a bag of holding, a mule or a luggage-droid. Another is cost. But this is fraught with difficulties for the GM. Suddenly the amount of money available is directly related to the power a character has, and that puts all sorts of constrain on the GM. And what if other players donate some of their cash to the alchemist/grenadier/consumable class PC?

The best idea I've found so far - and this is what I need help with - is a "special ingredient(s)/resource(s)". This resource is/are rare and difficult to come by - even if the alchemist has 50 000 gp, if there are only 7 doses available... that's all he can get. Of course, as the character increases in level his capacity to access this special resource(s) increases.

A very clever system I saw was in a little booklet published in 1991 called "Lore of the Crypt Book IV: New Rules, Races, and Classes". In this system, there were 4 "activators" - special ingredients that the alchemist could use to power his concoctions, the source of the magical energy (there were other ingredients but they were just "flavor", the important part was the activators). The simplest was just incantations - but that resulted in alchemical spells that were much weaker than what a wizard could do, ie the alchemist was a 3rd rate wizard. But the other 3 activators were rare ingredients of increasing rarity and power. (These rare activators were all magical herbs - bloodroot, mandrake, and nightshade - but really they could be whatever the GM wanted them to be... gems? dragon blood?)

So the GM didn't have to limit access to money to "rein in" the alchemist, rather limit supply of these rare activators - the magic sauce. The presence of the cheapest activator (incantation) insured that the alchemist always had access to some kind of magic, and the relative rarity of the activators limited how many more potent "spells" the alchemist could have ready.

Unfortunately, the little book never gave any indication on how rare or common these activators should be, ie providing very little guidance on how to balance this beyond vague "at this level, the alchemist should know where to get activator X" recommendations. I've never managed to find a solution. Should a level 5 alchemist find 3 activators per adventure? 20 per level? No idea.

Insight on how to balance this would be very appreciated. (especially so if it's not just another version of "X per time unit"! )

Well, lets look at it this way, what you are describing is a "material components have to be hunted down" sort of system.

IMO and IMX tracking inventory levels is *not* usually considered that much fun in role-playing fantasy. It happens and has to be done sometimes but... not a ton of the "oh oh oh tonight is going to be inventory night" like i expect next week when we start the fight that we cliffhung them on last session.

Second, the "balance" of this power suite is even more "up to the GM" which makes it fairly less predictable across different games. Now, of course, all real balance stems from the Gm to a large extent but this one puts it firmly in the GM control in a way that IMO a good number of players would find uncomfortable.

third, even then it would tend to reward "ingredient hunts" which likely are not all that much fun. Sure once in a while it can be a story but... over and over as the character levels up with (presumably) tougher and tougher ingredients... How much fun would it be to have to roleplay the fighter getting his magic sword sharpened **again**

As an alternative... i might consider creating class abilities and features which apply **bonuses** in certain circumstances - using maybe the ranger "favored terrain" and "favored target" as a rough go-by for the circumstantial bonus. make the "at risk" thing an enhancement kind of thing not a limitation on core stuff.

Ancalagon said:

Another is cost. But this is fraught with difficulties for the GM. Suddenly the amount of money available is directly related to the power a character has, and that puts all sorts of constrain on the GM. And what if other players donate some of their cash to the alchemist/grenadier/consumable class PC?

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The obvious solution is to give other classes something equally-worthwhile to spend their money on. There is precedence for this in 3E, based on the wealth-per-level and encounters-per-level guidelines. Those rules weren't what doomed the concept of the wand-of-fireball-user class; that was just down to the formula for calculating save DCs from items. All you need to do is to let the items be worth the cost, or give this class some ability that makes them worth the cost.

Ancalagon said:

The best idea I've found so far - and this is what I need help with - is a "special ingredient(s)/resource(s)". This resource is/are rare and difficult to come by - even if the alchemist has 50 000 gp, if there are only 7 doses available... that's all he can get. Of course, as the character increases in level his capacity to access this special resource(s) increases.

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It seems like that would place a lot more constraints on the GM, to always make sure that the appropriate number of critical reagents were available. I mean, I know that not everyone cares about GM meta-gaming as much as I do, but what you're saying sounds a lot like the main ability of this class being limited only by GM fiat; which, even if you were great at managing it, may well be untenable from a political standpoint.

For comparison, Pathfinder addresses the concept by making it uses-per-day, and explains that the alchemist has to personally mix the reagents every morning in order to keep them active for 24 hours. I like to think that there's a narrow window during which the process has to be performed, before one of the chemical process finishes, and that's why high-level characters can create more per day; but the book basically just says that it's magic, and not to worry about it.

My personal preference is to not have a single class that focuses entirely on consumables, though. That's kind of the point of potions, is that they can be used by anyone, even people who aren't spellcasters. I would rather fill out the list of alchemical items available, including bombs that can be usable by anyone, which are effective enough to justify their cost. Maybe you have an actual 8d6 fireball grenade, but it costs 500gp. The price tag alone would be enough to keep it rare, but still make it worthwhile if someone really wants some for whatever reason. And if you really wanted to have some characters that were better at using consumables, you could sneak it into a feat or sub-class or something.

No matter what you do it will still end up being an X uses/rest mechanic. It's just that there will some small variation of X from rest to rest. Your goal is to make a class that relies on expendable materials, but then you rightly want to balance the class so they get some, but not too many of those materials. That's uses per rest.

I'm currently running a sand box game. In it I have introduced 2 ways to spend money between adventures.

#1 - There is a magic shop with a random assortment of common magic items (XgtE), potions, and scrolls.
#2 - Downtime activities

The party also finds a decent amount of consumable items on their adventures as those are prolific in the magic item tables.

Let's say the party wants to explore a dungeon and in the dungeon they discover a friendly settlement where they can take refuge.

In this adventure the party will likely have:

2 Long Rests
4 Short Rests
X Consumables

The consumables are independent of the rests, but are replenished between adventures. Though in effect the X consumables are refreshed here after 2 long rests.

X times per whatever powers are used because they are simple to understand and manage.

The real question should be how much complexity/work are you willing to accept to achieve more believable power structures?

I think you may be interested in the Codex Martialis though. That may be what you're looking for.

The Engineer homebrew class dealt with exactly the grenadier problem by making the grenades something the engineer had to craft (during a long rest), and there were a limit to how many could be created per day. I believe it was Level + 'Spell' modifier. A level 10 engineer might have 14 or 15 grenades, and that's all that would be available over the course of the day. It was probably a bit much, particularly since they did fairly low damage individually, so the character wouldn't be using them for all his attacks the way a gunslinger would bullets. Or maybe the number was balanced given the damage, but you'd certainly never run out. But that's a different balance issue. (And in fact there's a lot of balance issues with that class, so be ready to tweak it for personal use.)

Anyway, it still costs money and resources to make the grenades, but the main point is that you can't just go down to the shop and buy them. Each one is individually crafted, and the engineer would be the only one to truly know how to make them work. (Not that other players can't try. A person in my game stole a grenade from my engineer, and then botched the activation. Boom.) It's time-consuming, and the limit can be interpreted as, "How many of these can I be sure will remain stable for the next 24 hours?" Then just balance it based on expected number of uses vs power per use.

Easiest method might be to just treat the grenadier/alchemist as a full casting class and use the Spell Points variant in the DMG just to give it a different flavor from the other spell slot casters. The grenadier/alchemist can only safely craft enough combustible material up to the spell point total per day. Then when they use it, then can make their bombs more or less powerful based upon how they spend their points, the same way a wizard can make a particular Sleep spell or Fireball more powerful by using a higher level slot.

Now at the end of the day this basically is just a refluffed Wizard or Sorcerer since you're using virtually the same game mechanics. There's no "new" mechanical system in play. Which is probably not what you want... you probably are looking for an entirely new mechanical system separate from standard D&D spellcasting. But at least if you want to give the representation of the flavor of the class while keeping the rules in the already-balanced realm... Spell Points might be the easiest way to go.

MichaelSomething said:

X times per whatever powers are used because they are simple to understand and manage.

The real question should be how much complexity/work are you willing to accept to achieve more believable power structures?

I think you may be interested in the Codex Martialis though. That may be what you're looking for.

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Thank you for replying.

In what way does this product address my question though? I fail to see the relevance... I'm not saying it's a bad suggestion, you just didn't say what it was about that product that would help me. Details man!

DEFCON 1 said:

Now at the end of the day this basically is just a refluffed Wizard or Sorcerer since you're using virtually the same game mechanics. There's no "new" mechanical system in play. Which is probably not what you want... you probably are looking for an entirely new mechanical system separate from standard D&D spellcasting.

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Thank you for reply

Exactly. The more recent versions of the alchemist (pathfinder, 5e) are better at making the class distinct (in 2nd ed the alchemist was just a wizard + a few potions, lame), but it still the same mechanism.

What I'm hoping to get is advice on how to balance the alternate system I suggested, but apparently no one can manage to reach that point, everyone balks at not X per day.

So... would roughly 3 activator per level per adventure make sense? Something completely different? I'm not expecting the "right" answer from anyone, I just want suggestions so we can hash it out.

Ancalagon said:

Thank you for reply

Exactly. The more recent versions of the alchemist (pathfinder, 5e) are better at making the class distinct (in 2nd ed the alchemist was just a wizard + a few potions, lame), but it still the same mechanism.

What I'm hoping to get is advice on how to balance the alternate system I suggested, but apparently no one can manage to reach that point, everyone balks at not X per day.

So... would roughly 3 activator per level per adventure make sense? Something completely different? I'm not expecting the "right" answer from anyone, I just want suggestions so we can hash it out.

Click to expand...

Well dealing with your specific 3 per level or "Should a level 5 alchemist find 3 activators per adventure? 20 per level? No idea. "

To me the answer is 24. Or maybe 16. Or maybe 8. But it could be more orvless depending on "facts"

Facts like:
What is the effect being generated?
How powerful is it?
Does the "class have other stuff they do or is this the thing they do most of the time."

See my answer to :throws a 100d6 fireball" would be different from my answer to "provides advantage on one attack roll."

As a rule though i would be extremely unlikely to embrace "uses per level" as a balancing mechanic or mechanic in general. Even more if its able to be held over from level to level and applied at higher levels.

Time, rest, dawn - those are all relevant and measurable entities the character can see, experience and use/trade/choose during a game play. "Level" is not, its out of their hands and it really reeks of more a case of GM fiat than enabling character driven results.

To me change, design and mechanics need to serve a goal and a result. This seems to be trying to make a significant part of a character power very subservient to GM choice and i cannot see how that really is a desirable goal/result.

Magic items, allies, lots of different parts the GM has that level of control in already.

What is gained and desired by expanding that control into the basic class options?



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