Idea on keeping Vancian casters from novaing

[Mishihari Lord]

Limiting spells to X number before a short rest can work.

My preferred solution is that a week (or a month) of downtime is required to recover spells. This usually means that the mage has to ration his spells over the adventure. A week of downtime during an adventure is rarely practical. It doesn't interfere with usage from one adventure to the next either. It's easy to handwave that at least a week has passed during downtime. This also helps to equalize power between casters and others without totally nerfing the casters.

Another solution I like is that each successive cast is weaker or harder to do until a reset period passes. (Probably a long rest) This provides a motive for not nuking now because you might really need it later.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Another solution I like is that each successive cast is weaker or harder to do until a reset period passes. (Probably a long rest) This provides a motive for not nuking now because you might really need it later.

There is a lot of potential in there that could go in a bunch of directions...which I'll discuss over here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-ho...-blurring-lines-between-spells-rituals-3.html

 

[haakon1]

Grr... this is actually my exact point! With the rule I suggested in the OP, ideally, Bob can let his group face one encounter a day without having the wizard dominate the combat. Class balance would no longer be completely dependent on the seemingly unrelated factor of how many encounters the party faces between rests.

I don't think we're talking about the same thing.

For my campaign, balance between characters is not a goal, whereas making the players do resource management is absolutely a goal. So "balance" restrictions that remove resource management are a big negative for me.

The simplest way to explain it is the "Combat as War" versus "Combat as Sport" thing. For me, the game is about the party pulling together to overcome whatever obstacle they encounter, with any resources they can muster, deployed with as clever tactics as they can come up with. It's not a sport, it's a war, where each side is trying to kill the other, players versus bad guys. D&D is a team game, there's no "I" in team, so balance is largely irrelevant.

Obsessing about interclass balance seems to me like worrying about whether the Forward Observer/Radioman, Machinegunner, Pointman, or Sniper is more "overpowered" in RECON (modern warfare RPG). Each is very good at what they do, but it's not a competition, it's cooperation where everyone is needed to survive. Yes, only the Forward Observer can do big boom stuff like call in airstrikes . . . but if you don't have a good pointman, you're likely to die in your first ambush, before you even get on the radio. Maximum potential DPS is not the only measure of usefulness or fun to play . . . not by a .50 sniper shot from a half-mile off.

 

[haakon1]

The first non-D&D example that I heard of was in a mundane Special-Ops type game some guys were in. Whenever the demolitions guy ran out of stuff, they retreated and camped until he could replenish his stock. They would absolutely not advance unless the guy with the most potential punch had something significant to contribute beyond using his Colt .45 or combat knife.

Special ops with resupply is an odd scenario to me.

I used to run a lot of RECON, about Long Range Recon Patrols (renamed Rangers in 1969) in the Vietnam War. Getting resupplied was not a realistic option . . . in like 4 years of playing, no one ever even considered that. It would give away your presence even worse than the initial insertion (which could happen in several clever ways), and a day where the enemy knows where you are is a very bad day for a 6 man team in "Indian Country".

I used to really like (as a player or GM) the rule that "if it's not on your character sheet, you didn't bring it with you, so you'll have to do without". You can damn well bet every character in our campaigns wrote down how many rations, how many canteens, how much ammo, that they had a compass, K-bar, emergency radio, medical kit, etc. P38 can opener . . . nobody ever forgot that. Or waited around for a chopper to bring out extra Kool-Aid.

If you read a Vietnam veteran novel like "The Things They Carried" or "Matterhorn", you realize logistics and resource management are super important in a real war, and can be a source of drama. Hand-waving logistics or making them unrealistically easy in a "Combat as War" RPG would make no sense to me.

 

[haakon1]

I like to keep my players on their toes. You always have their attention when you start rolling dice.

True.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Special ops with resupply is an odd scenario to me.

Which just reinforces what I said- any game system with ablative resources can have the 15MWD if the DM allows rest & recuperation without consequence.

The natural consequences of resupply should have been just as you stated...but those consequences were never realized, resulting in 15MWDs for that group.

 

[Tony Vargas]

For my campaign, balance between characters is not a goal, whereas making the players do resource management is absolutely a goal. So "balance" restrictions that remove resource management are a big negative for me.

Balance shouldn't be a goal of your campaign - if it turns into one, you're likely playing a poorly-balanced game. Similarly, forcing a play style seems, to me, like an odd goal for a campaign.

Though, logically, if you don't care about balance, and do want to force a play style, a game that is imbalanced in such a way as to reward that playstyle and punish others would clearly be ideal. If 5e were to deliver on it's improbably goal to support all playstyles and bring them together at one table, it would be singularly un-suited to such a campaign.

The simplest way to explain it is the "Combat as War" versus "Combat as Sport" thing.

I can't easily describe the depth of my contempt for that metaphor. It's nothing but a snide personal attack against anyone who might want to actually approach a game, /as a game/.

 

[haakon1]

I can't easily describe the depth of my contempt for that metaphor. It's nothing but a snide personal attack against anyone who might want to actually approach a game, /as a game/.

Wow. Please just block me. You don't need the aggrevation ("depth of contempt", "personal attack"), and neither do I.

If anyone cares, where I'm coming from on this is that I like wargaming in my D&D (a game created by war gamers, after all), and I like RP in my war games too, honestly. (One of my friends noticed when I was playing elves in LOTR Risk that I wasn't trying to win by the game's rules, I was trying to save traditional elvish lands -- in other words, I was role playing "what would an elvish king do".)

Interest or disinterest in wargaming might be a key divide in the D&D community, one where people often can't understand the other side.

For example, wargamers love "swinginess", resource management, and marshalling resources, like getting NPC's to help. Other people honestly can't understand how "swinginess" and beancounting aspects of the game could be anything but bugs, or why you'd want a game where NPC's might grab some of the "screentime" or make the fight too easy.

Other folks love balance -- balance between PC's, balanced encounters for the PC's levels and class mix, lack of "swinginess" in combats, and balance across encounters by making powers reset quickly. Wargamers honestly can't understand why PC v. PC balance matters, or how lack of "swinginess" and removal of resource management aren't bugs.

I'm sure other folks are in between, but with a sample size of 1 (me), gamers who love "swinginess", resource management, "marshalling resources" really do exist, and they're not just making it up to annoy everyone else.

 

[Fifth Element]

Wow. Please just block me. You don't need the aggrevation ("depth of contempt", "personal attack"), and neither do I.

I think the issue with the metaphor is that Combat as Sport can imply that combat is a fun thing that you do, it ultimately doesn't matter and no one gets hurt, while Combat as War is deadly and serious, and very important.

Sport is ultimately meaningless diversion, while war changes the course of history.

I don't necessarily read what you wrote that way, but I can see where someone can take issue with how you've characterized your own play style versus that of others.

 

[Splurch]

I get what Haakon is saying and I don't think he is making light of war if that is what is being implied. All fantasy stories are about overcoming obsticles and surviving such as (saving the princess, village, country, etc.), if not there would be no story. And I know I'll get flack for this but if overcoming odds and survival are not part of the game and all you do is see numbers and not the imagined situation and characters, you are not role playing, you are simply playing a game. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that and I like wargames (Battle Tech/ Warhammer) and even when I play them I like to think about the characters and not just treat them as pieces on a game board.