Determining ability score?
1. How do you determine ability score to use? Like can weapon wielders pick either STR or DEX? Or does an archer fighter need STR? How about unusual builds, like a DEX based barbarian? Could a paladin choose CHR or STR or is it set to one
Whichever ability your character most identifies with. So if you're a DEX fighter/barbarian, then I'd allow you to use your DEX. Ideally, the person selects their higher stat and then sticks with it unless there is a good enough argument to have it changed later on in the character's life.
It is not supposed to be a gotcha, hence I also decided against using CON, which was the obvious choice having it tying into exhaustion, which would have screwed some classes.
Spellcasting
2. Is each spell slot a separate roll, or is "spellcasting" a single check?
Sadly it is not that granular. A long rest recharge, recharges ALL long rest abilities (class, racial or otherwise), similarly a short rest recharge will recharge ALL the short rest abilities. So the player needs to be careful when to call for a check.
Features with uses
3. For features with uses or charges, is the recovery for all or each? Recovering Ki for a Monk, or Superiority dice for a Battlemaster fighter.
A single short rest recharge refreshes a Battlemaster's manuevers, action surge and second wind.
If you activate the SR recharge you refresh them all in one go (it is like having a short rest without the hour constraint).
Racial features
4. How do you recover racial features like the Half Orc's Relentless Endurance? If it's a roll, what ability score does it use?
It is important to mention that after a proper
Long Rest all short rest abilities and long rest abilities are immediately refreshed, there is no roll.
When the PC orc does a Long Rest recharge he refreshes all long rest abilities whether they be class features and/or racial abilities/features. So an orc wizard would refresh spellcasting and relentless endurance.
Concerns
Short Rests same Day
5. Short rests classes are balanced against other classes by being able to be recovered several times in a day. Wouldn't increasing the DC for mutliple checks on the same day really hurt classes like Warlock?
Depends. This is where it comes down to your table, the level of your characters and the average difficulty of your encounters. I don't run 6-8 encounters per day, I do not find that practical and I find it a tremendous waste of roleplaying time. I wanted a system that works both for outdoor, city and dungeon sessions without having to change/worry about resting periods and that made some sort of sense to me.
Generally I might have 2-4 combat encounters in one day and realistically, the PCs will automake the first short rest recharge (DC 5 base). If your PCs are short resting between every encounter because every encounter is rated DEADLY well then that is different. If your PCs are higher level they can risk pushing themselves a little further without too many short rests, plus their bonus to rolling is higher (+8 usually) and then there is Inspiration as well.
My experience with this is having two groups, an 11th level party and a now 6th level party - no issues so far, and I have been running this for the better part of a year.
Furthermore travel and time are a big part at our table, so the recharge DC can rack up if characters are trying to make haste without the 24-Long Rest. My players tend to be cautious, ensuring they Long Rest in the major settlements between their travels.
Forcing ASIs
6. This seems to penalize any player who doesn't raise their character's primary ability score at every chance they can until it's maxed. If a player takes a feat or raises something else, not only are they missing out on, say, +1 to hit and +1 to damage for every single attack, but also have a harder time recovering their abilities penalizing them further.
Multiclassing
7. Also, how does it work for multiclassing? A character with multiple classes with different prime abilities scores is already at a disadvantage, is this an additional penalty that they labor that they recover one or both classes slower?
Fair points.
All I can say is (a) there are numerous creative ways of restoring/refreshing abilities that might not demand a roll or numerous creative ways of assisting such rolls and (b) it is not supposed to be a gotcha so any ability you most identify with may be used. But yes, your observations are valid.
The easiest way to do 'fix' these concerns (6-7), which I must add I will be doing, since it makes this system even better by catering to more styles (
so thank you for the time and effort put into analyzing the system and providing insight!), is to decouple the roll from abilities and instead base it solely on level (character experience).
Use Double Proficiency or Double Proficiency +1 as the modifier.
1st Level: +4 or +5
5th Level: +6 or +7
9th Level: +8 or +9
13th Level: +10 or +11*
17th Level: +12 or +13
* It is at this point that it starts differing from the ability system, but I do not believe it is too much of a concern.
+5 due to level +5 due to ability = +10 max.
8. If I'm a cleric/wizard, my spell slots are from a combination of all of my caster levels. What ability score do I use
In your (8) with your wizard/cleric example, all abilities would be recharged no matter which class, similarly as they do with your PHB short rest and long rest. I mean you could try break it up between classes and make it more granular between multiple short rests recharges but that would get messy/complicated and you'd have the racial abilities mucking things up.
