D&D 5E Can mundane classes have a resource which powers abilities?

Ahnehnois said:

Which again conflates two unrelated ideas. Wouldn't you rather be able to do more stuff than charge and not have a resource system? You know, just say what you're going to do and do it.

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It would totally depend on the implementation of such a system, so I don't know how I can reasonably answer this question. If it's "You can try anything, but you have a very low chance of success," then no.

It also sounds like a great deal more mastery would be needed in such a system.

Obryn said:

It would totally depend on the implementation of such a system

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No doubt. Before the board shutdown [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION] listed a pretty decent spread of possibilities. There are plenty of ways to go about this.

Of course, a resource system would also depend on implementation, but since we've seen so many poorly implemented resource systems in D&D, I think it might be time to try something different.

Ahnehnois said:

No doubt. Before the board shutdown [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION] listed a pretty decent spread of possibilities. There are plenty of ways to go about this.

Of course, a resource system would also depend on implementation, but since we've seen so many poorly implemented resource systems in D&D, I think it might be time to try something different.

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Well, as I see it, there's pretty much three ways to go about this.

(1) Use-limited. We know how this works - you can do {cool stuff} 1/day, 1/encounter, whatever. This includes "pools" of whatever, too.
(2) Penalized activation. In order to do {cool stuff}, you need to declare it and suffer a hefty penalty to your success roll.
(3) Randomized activation, which is a benefit after getting a certain kind of die roll - often a crit, but maybe an "even" or "odd" result ala 13a.

There's a lot of varieties of (1), and honestly it's my preferred choice of the three.

Dausuul said:

You know, I think it's shortsighted to focus on "resources" for the fighter. D&D already focuses too much on resources as the limiting factor for abilities: Got an ability that's too powerful to allow use at will? Make it dependent on a limited resource which must be replenished. Too often, the designers seem to reach for that without even thinking about other possible limiting factors.

Here are just some of the ways you can limit ability usage:

Briar Patch: You can only use the ability when an event occurs over which you have no direct control (e.g., an enemy takes a specified action).
Assembly Required: You can only use the ability when an event occurs, but the event is one which you can cause to happen (e.g., a creature dies).
Feeling Lucky: The ability does not always work, and there is an opportunity cost when it doesn't, maybe just the waste of your action for the round.
Way of Pain: Use of the ability incurs some kind of penalty.
Please Wait: The ability takes a significant amount of time to use, such that it can be interrupted.
[X] in the Gas Tank: You have only a certain amount of gas in your tank. Once you burn it all, you have to refill somehow before you can use the ability again. Refilling is limited by some other factor, which is [X]. For example, if refilling your tank requires an event over which you have no direct control, it's Briar Patch in the Gas Tank.

D&D relies overwhelmingly on Feeling Lucky (attacks, skill checks) and the Gas Tank (spells, per-day abilities, stuff that costs money) as its limiting factors. I'd like to see the others get a lot more play.

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Great post. Several folks have mentioned a fatigue mechanic to model fighter or rogue maneuvers - which would be closer to your Way of Pain than to Gas in the Tank (i.e. daily spells). That makes a lot of sense to me.

Another idea that [MENTION=63]RangerWickett[/MENTION] presented is kinda neat, with certain maneuvers overcoming certain defenses, the idea being that there's a defensive barrier of some kind you need to bypass in order to make the target easy to hit...I think that basic idea is that AC wouldn't be a static thing but would depend on the conditions of the attack. I'm thinking the Princess Brode sword fighting scene here, but I might be off...

Oh, the second part of my being perplexed after this PF thing was this:

My Cavalier had a few x/day options. I could do this Challenge thing which was fine, 2x/day. I could also share my "Teamwork" feats 2x/day.

And I guess I'm confused why this is kosher whereas "swing sword real hard and knock people down" 2x/day is all of a sudden insanely dissociative. It seems rather ... um ... inconsistent ... is what I'm saying.

Obryn said:

And I guess I'm confused why this is kosher whereas "swing sword real hard and knock people down" 2x/day is all of a sudden insanely dissociative. It seems rather ... um ... inconsistent ... is what I'm saying.

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Personally, I think the Pathfinder abilities are just as bad. Likewise the same type of ability in 3.X, and even in AD&D on the few occasions it showed up. Daily limits for ability use almost always bug me.

Dausuul said:

Personally, I think the Pathfinder abilities are just as bad. Likewise the same type of ability in 3.X, and even in AD&D on the few occasions it showed up. Daily limits for ability use almost always bug me.

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I concur. The 3e PHBII knight generated some significant issues, but then the barbarian and a few other esoteric examples preceded it (and then there was TOB).

My point above is that one of three things happen with these types of abilities: people run out of uses and complain that there's no good reason their ability doesn't work, people become paranoid and never use their limited resources, or the resource is sufficiently plentiful when compared to the demands placed on its use that it rarely runs out and is simply irrelevant. In the third case, no one complains of dissociation because they're never in a position to notice it. Which one of these scenarios will play out depends on factors like how many use-limited abilities the character has, how many uses he has, how central they are to his success, and so on.

But as I see it, it's always going to cause one of those three scenarios, and they're generally all bad.

Dausuul said:

Personally, I think the Pathfinder abilities are just as bad. Likewise the same type of ability in 3.X, and even in AD&D on the few occasions it showed up. Daily limits for ability use almost always bug me.

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I agree.

When I see abilities that are X times per day, I understand the intent of the design as modeling something that is extremely taxing/fatiguing to do. However, I don't think is does a convincing job of communicating that intent. X times per day is either (a) metagame logic that doesnt map to any kind of in-game narrative, or (b) an easy way out for the designer.

Metagame logic can work if the rest of the game is designed around the use of resource points to model some sort of genre, but D&D isn't one of the game systems anybody associates with that. For example, D&D casters have a story behind them - they literally forget spells after casting them - that explains the daily limit on spells and the need to rest and study to recall spells.

It's not that the intent (stronger limited use powers) is an issue for people like me, it's that the execution doesn't model what I think a warrior making a bunch of really demanding sword strokes would look like. Some kind of fatigue track would map to my conception of what is happening in the narrative far better.

Quickleaf said:

When I see abilities that are X times per day, I understand the intent of the design as modeling something that is extremely taxing/fatiguing to do. However, I don't think is does a convincing job of communicating that intent. X times per day is either (a) metagame logic that doesnt map to any kind of in-game narrative, or (b) an easy way out for the designer.

Metagame logic can work if the rest of the game is designed around the use of resource points to model some sort of genre, but D&D isn't one of the game systems anybody associates with that. For example, D&D casters have a story behind them - they literally forget spells after casting them - that explains the daily limit on spells and the need to rest and study to recall spells.

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I guess I've always seen these as balancing limitations first with no real explanation for them. The way I see this is like this:

"So, wizards can only cast a couple of spells per day to balance them."
"But WHY can the only cast a couple of spells per day in the game world?"
"There isn't a reason. It's for balance purposes."
"That's not good enough, I want a reason!"
"Fine... they... umm... forget the spells after they cast them requiring them to rememorize them the next day"
"Awesome."

"This fighter power needs to be limited, allowing them to use it constantly would be very overpowered but the class is kind of bland and boring unless we give them a couple of powerful options to use."
"Great! Why in the game world are fighters limited to the number of times they can use this?"
"There's no reason. It's a balancing method to the game."
"That's not good enough, what's the reason?"
"Umm... I got nothing. Sorry, can't come up with a reason but the game would suck if we removed those powers and would be overpowered if we allowed them at will. Guess you'll just have to ignore the fact that there's no reason."

To me, the entirety of D&D HAS been designed with metagame resources. Things like spells, god granted abilities, and magic items. They've just come up with an adequate(and I only say adequate since it's not a very good one) reason to justify the metagame resources for spells because it's easy to do so. Magic doesn't really exist so people are willing to accept nearly any justification. That doesn't really make the resources any less metagame. They just have a thin coating of honey on them to make them go down smoothly.

I see it like this...and, pretty much always have, though when I was younger the "they forget the spell" didn't really bother me at all...still, for consistency's sake, now I see it like this...

Majoru Oakheart said:

"So, wizards can only cast a couple of spells per day to balance them."
"But WHY can the only cast a couple of spells per day in the game world?"
"There isn't a reason. It's for balance purposes."
"That's not good enough, I want a reason!"

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"They only have the skill and stamina to harness and direct enough magical energies [that power their spells] for x many spells at a time. As they increase level/gain experience, they get better at it [more spells]...build up their tolerance, if you will. Otherwise the <unknown/occult/arcane/divine/raw energies of magic/the cosmos/the gods> would shred their minds and bodies to confetti so they wouldn't be able to effectively cast more spells...likely resulting in their demise.

Majoru Oakheart said:

"This fighter power needs to be limited, allowing them to use it
constantly would be very overpowered but the class is kind of bland and
boring unless we give them a couple of powerful options to use."
"Great! Why in the game world are fighters limited to the number of times they can use this?"
"There's no reason. It's a balancing method to the game."
"That's not good enough, what's the reason?"

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"They only have the skill and stamina to push their strength and/or endurance to the limits x many times per day. As they increase level/gain experience, they get better at it [more uses]...build up their tolerance, if you will. Otherwise the
<maneuver/ability/feat/attack/exertion> would exhaust their minds and bodies to so much mush so they wouldn't be able to effectively make normal attacks...likely resulting in their demise."

Majoru Oakheart said:

"Awesome."

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Majoru Oakheart said:

To me, the entirety of D&D HAS been designed with metagame resources. Things like spells, god granted abilities, and magic items. They've just come up with an adequate(and I only say adequate since it's not a very good one) reason to justify the metagame resources for spells because it's easy to do so. Magic doesn't really exist so people are willing to accept nearly any justification. That doesn't really make the resources any less metagame. They just have a thin coating of honey on them to make them go down smoothly.

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I see very little impediment or reasons needed that the honey can't be put on the martial classes' spoons as well/easily as the casters'.