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D&D 5E Tedium for balance. Should we balance powerful effects with bookkeeping?

Is Tedium a valid form of balancing?

  • Yes. Tedious bookkeeping is a valid way to balance poweful effects.

    Votes: 6 7.2%
  • No. Tedious bookeeping is not a valid way to balance powerful effects.

    Votes: 68 81.9%
  • To a certain degree. As long as it doesn't take too much time, but your skill should be rewarded.

    Votes: 9 10.8%
  • I don't know. I don't have an opinion on it.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
Good lord. Yeah, that's Pathfinder alright.

Right now I'm kicking around the idea of using the Recharge mechanic to balance out the class features and spells. It's still in the development stages, with lots of tweaking and adjustments, but it goes a little bit like this:
  • A "Recharge die" is an unmodified d8.
  • You roll it at the end of your turn.
For spells and spellcasting:
  • Spellcasters have one spell slot per spell level. A 5th level cleric would have one 1st level spell slot, one 2nd level spell slot, and one 3rd level spell slot, for example.
  • The Recharge number for a spell slot is equal to its spell level.
  • When you cast a 3rd level spell (for example), you can't cast any more 3rd level spells until you roll a 3 or higher on your Recharge die. If you want to cast Fireball again, for example, you will have to spend your 4th level spell slot, or wait for your 3rd level slot to Recharge.
  • Each Reset roll applies to only one spell level. If you have multiple spell levels that are depleted, you choose which one Recharges.
  • The Arcane Recovery class feature lets you Recharge all of your spell levels once per long rest as an Action.
  • All spell slots automatically Recharge after a Long Rest.
  • Cantrips are considered "level zero" for the purpose of this rule, and they automatically recharge at the end of your turn--no need to roll.
  • 9th level spells effectively become "once per day" spells under this rule (you can't roll a 9 on an unmodified d8). This is a feature and not a bug.
For other abilities and features:
  • The Recharge number for most features is equal to their equivalent spell level. A Tiefling's Hellish Rebuke ability, for example, has a Recharge 1 since it's a 1st level spell.
  • The Recharge number for non-spell abilities and features is (8 - Ability modifier, minimum 2). A dragonborn with a Con score of 17 (+3) would have a Recharge 5, for example...after using their breath weapon, they cannot use it again until they roll a 5 or lower on a d8.
  • If that dragonborn is also a sorcerer, and he has been waiting for his 5th level spell slot to recharge for three rounds before he finally rolled a 2, he has to decide if he wants his breath weapon or his spell slot to recharge that round.
Anyway, it's a work in progress. But the more I tinker with it, the more I like it.
Consider checking out 13th Age for how they've done this stuff. Some spells or abilities in it can be reused if you roll sufficiently high on d20. As an example, in Overworld (think the physical and logical mirror of the Underdark--a world in the clouds full of magic and eldritch weirdness where magic is powerful), Wizard daily spells instead become Recharge 16+, meaning if you roll 16 or higher on a recharge roll after the combat where you used that spell, you can use it again. I'm not sure if you keep rerolling recharge every time you take a quick rest (=short rest in 4e/5e terms) or just the first time after you use said spell/ability.
 

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EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
No I don't see any balancing from the tedium. It adds a bit of randomness that makes the spell less reliable and makes the player do the math for no reason other than doing the math. Tedium to balance things out is tracking your components, makeing sure you actually have that piece of chalk you want to mark the dungeon with. does that spell sound tedious yes. does the Tedium actually do anything with balance no. that's just complicated for the sake of being complicated because someone thought complicated was cool.
The balancing from the tedium is that this feat is a lot of work to use, so fewer people will want to use it. That's...literally the whole idea of (so-called) "balance" by tedium. It also requires you to invest into a skill--Knowledge (Engineering)--which is otherwise pretty much worthless. Tedium and bookkeeping in exchange for potentially enormous power.

Like, if your argument here is that this doesn't actually limit the power, then yes, you're absolutely right. There's a reason I said this is a design technique that should not be used.
 


EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
For those wanting another example of something along these lines, consider someone trying to design a video game and its save function.

The designer doesn't want players to save scum. They want players to have a "natural" experience, even if that means failure some of the time, for whatever reason. But the game as currently designed makes save scumming a very powerful tactic. Too powerful, actually. It allows players to grow in power extremely quickly, trivializes many of the difficult parts (e.g. fail a puzzle, find out the correct solution, reload, re-do the puzzle, win.)

Instead of altering the game design so as to make save scumming provide no value, which would take a lot of work and effort and might require some heavy alteration of the fundamental game...the designer makes it so that saving and loading games is REALLY tedious. It adds nothing whatsoever to gameplay. It just requires going through like five different menus that aren't easily reached, and there's seven dialogue boxes to ensure you're saving correctly, and it's just generally a big PITA to save or load more than once per session. Save scumming still has all the power, but it takes a minute or more to do it, rather than sticking with the experience.

A few players might be encouraged to not save scum if exposed to this setup. But most people who wanted to do it will still do it. It will just be very annoying--tedious--to do.

Would you consider this good game design, or poor game design?
 

Do you think a tedious amount of bookkeeping, even if the tedium is light, is a valid way to balance effects?

No. It doesn't balance spellcasting in any edition of D&D, including editions where they kind of expected you to track spell components.

Ammunition quantity and availability can balance some weapons. Think of the more powerful weapons in run-and-gun FPS shooters. But the tedium of tracking ammunition? That just makes people want to play a different game.

For example, if an effect could revive the dead, but only after at least 30 full moons has passed since the last usage otherwise it destroys itself, would this be a bad way of balancing this?

Seems not great to me. If the campaign is shorter than 30 full moons, then this is an unrestricted ability. A 5e D&D character can go from level 1 to level 20 in a few weeks of adventuring days.

But assuming that time scale problem is resolved, there also isn't a penalty for failure to track time correctly, or really any way for the DM to verify that the timekeeping is correct except to also do the tedious task. Counterintuitively, the player is rewarded for not tracking this correctly. If they get it wrong and go over, then their ability lasts longer or the DM has to police it.

I would prefer an attrition model of sorts, because it's really easy to see that the player does it. It that can also encourage the controller to do something with the army or otherwise do something to maintain it. Say at the end of N days, the maximum HP of each undead creature is reduced by 1. A creature reduced to 0 hp turns to dust. An undead creature that feeds on an adequate amount of whatever it's preferred form of food is returned to maximum health, but begins deteriorating again. Other forms of healing might work, too, or staying in a crypt or out of direct sunlight might prevent deterioration.

That does still seem like a lot of bookkeeping, though, so I would just recalculate the total whenever more undead are added. If you've got 100 zombies at 12 hp, and add 30 more zombies at 22 hp, you total up the hp pool and redistribute, rounding down. You'll end up with 14 hp each for 130 zombies. If the results make every zombie weaker, well... don't do that. Power slips away in numerous ways, and an inadequate attempt to bolster it simply doesn't help. Attrition is gonna attrit.

Now you've got an army of zombies, and you either keep restocking it, give them lots of brain food, or store them in a crypt where they're not much use to anybody except small-time adventurers looking for a quick level.
 

Fanaelialae

Legend
And if they want to change the rules and announce that realism doesn't matter to D&D and folks should just accept that (you know, be honest about their design intentions), that would be enough for me.
IMO, whether you like it or not, their design speaks for itself. I'm not aware of them having claimed that realism is core to 5e, so why do you consider their not outright stating that less than honest? Why would you need them to tell you something you already seem to know? D&D has never been a hard realism game. Admittedly, in the past it had a few more nods to realism (which plenty of groups ignored, often due to tedium), but there are far better games for realism out there than any edition of D&D.
 

Fanaelialae

Legend
Well to be fair. at 50 percent that means a lot of people are still having fun tracking thier stuff. (probably). Some people like to live in the weeds focusing on the details and some don't. No reason a table full of detail oriented people can't spend thier time tracking thier stuff if they find it fun.
If 50% of players dislike the rule and 50% love it, then it's a bad rule for the core ruleset. It would likely be a good optional rule (for the 50% that may love it), but not a core rule (because 50% find it tedious).

Keep in mind that I'm referring to a target audience. If the 50% that dislike it are folks who probably wouldn't play your game even if you removed that rule and dispatched ninjas to make them play, then that's effectively 100% of your target audience being good with it, meaning it's an acceptable (or better) rule.
 

Good lord. Yeah, that's Pathfinder alright.

Right now I'm kicking around the idea of using the Recharge mechanic to balance out the class features and spells. It's still in the development stages, with lots of tweaking and adjustments, but it goes a little bit like this:
  • A "Recharge die" is an unmodified d8.
  • You roll it at the end of your turn.
For spells and spellcasting:
  • Spellcasters have one spell slot per spell level. A 5th level cleric would have one 1st level spell slot, one 2nd level spell slot, and one 3rd level spell slot, for example.
  • The Recharge number for a spell slot is equal to its spell level.
  • When you cast a 3rd level spell (for example), you can't cast any more 3rd level spells until you roll a 3 or higher on your Recharge die. If you want to cast Fireball again, for example, you will have to spend your 4th level spell slot, or wait for your 3rd level slot to Recharge.
  • Each Reset roll applies to only one spell level. If you have multiple spell levels that are depleted, you choose which one Recharges.
  • The Arcane Recovery class feature lets you Recharge all of your spell levels once per long rest as an Action.
  • All spell slots automatically Recharge after a Long Rest.
  • Cantrips are considered "level zero" for the purpose of this rule, and they automatically recharge at the end of your turn--no need to roll.
  • 9th level spells effectively become "once per day" spells under this rule (you can't roll a 9 on an unmodified d8). This is a feature and not a bug.
For other abilities and features:
  • The Recharge number for most features is equal to their equivalent spell level. A Tiefling's Hellish Rebuke ability, for example, has a Recharge 1 since it's a 1st level spell.
  • The Recharge number for non-spell abilities and features is (8 - Ability modifier, minimum 2). A dragonborn with a Con score of 17 (+3) would have a Recharge 5, for example...after using their breath weapon, they cannot use it again until they roll a 5 or lower on a d8.
  • If that dragonborn is also a sorcerer, and he has been waiting for his 5th level spell slot to recharge for three rounds before he finally rolled a 2, he has to decide if he wants his breath weapon or his spell slot to recharge that round.
Anyway, it's a work in progress. But the more I tinker with it, the more I like it.
under this rule, your first level slot is also guaranteed to recharge (you can't roll lower then a 1). i'd make it so that a spell slot's recharge number is 1 higher then the spell level (that way your 1st level slot isn't guaranteed to come back and your 8th level slot - which RAW is also once per day - can't come back either).

might also be worth having the recharge die scale as you level (maybe a d4 at level 1, d6 at level 10, d8 at level 19, just as off-the-cuff examples).
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
Thing is what i call Tedius naughty word in a game some OCD people call fun. But I'm not doing that tedius stuff so they can have fun. I don't expect them to give up thier pages of notes and lists of names and all the details they find as fun. But i don't care if it upsets them that I don't care.
Until and unless all that info they're gathering and recording comes in useful for the party, or for your character in particular. Then what? Do you still not care?
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
What if all but one player finds it tedious? Should they all have to do it because the one prefers it that way? Would that not also be "tyranny of the individual"?
No, it just means - given that the work has to be done - one individual gets stuck doing all of it.
On the other hand, the resource tracking for Five Torches Deep is core to the system. You take that out and you lose a big part of what makes that game what it is.
One could say that's exactly what's happened to D&D over the editions: tracking resources used to be a key part of the game in the early days and has slowly been whittled away since, as has the whole idea of long-term attrition of other resources e.g. hit points.

Sad.
 

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