Can someoone explain the "Daily Hate" for me?

[The Red King]

When you have per-day or per-encounter resources it reduces it from an RPG to a video game where you have to write everything down. If I want that, I will go play DDO.

 

[TwoSix]

Honestly, I'd prefer a baseline D&D to chuck time restrictions entirely. It's too obvious to map a refresh based system to a fiction where abilities are physically and mentally exhausting. While I know that's an extremely common magical paradigm, it shouldn't be assumed.

I'd rather see abilities classified as:

At-Will
Conditional
Consumable

At-Wills are abilities you use all the time. As simple as swinging a sword or shooting a crossbow, or more complex like a combat manuever or shooting a magic ray. At-Wills should often apply conditions, like dazed or prone or "on fire".

Conditional powers are powers that require triggers, thus tying them into the narrative flow. This accounts for abilities as diverse as a backstab (triggered by the target being unaware of you), turn undead (triggered by undead enemies), or complex combat manuevers (triggered by enemies having a condition, that could be applied by an at-will power).

Consumables are powers that can only be once. Don't start characters with cure light wounds or sleep spells. Start them with the ability to craft healing potions and scrolls of sleep. Potions and scrolls take a day to make and a relatively safe place to make them. They cost money. Need money? Go adventure. It reinforces the classic D&D paradigm of adventurers in a small town, going out and looking for loot. Getting loot efficiently lets you create more powerful scrolls to challenge stronger creatures.

Most importantly, consumables aren't tied to a cycle, they're tied to the overall narrative structure, just like conditional powers. Achieve something in the larger story (get loot), you're rewarded with a stronger ability. Achieve something in the immediate narrative (execute a condition), you're also rewarded with a stronger ability.

Modules can then adjust these conditions with whatever recharge mechanics and abilities are needed to suit the desired play type. Vancian casting is just a subset of consumable abilities. A spell slot is a consumable item, except the item is the caster's mind, and the recharge is based on achieving a condition of 8 hours sleep, an hour to concentrate, and access to a spellbook. Sure, it breaks what I feel is the optimal D&D paradigm (quest, gain rewards, translate rewards to tangible abilities, which enables more challenging questing), but it's your module.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Consumables are powers that can only be once. Don't start characters with cure light wounds or sleep spells. Start them with the ability to craft healing potions and scrolls of sleep. Potions and scrolls take a day to make and a relatively safe place to make them. They cost money. Need money? Go adventure. It reinforces the classic D&D paradigm of adventurers in a small town, going out and looking for loot. Getting loot efficiently lets you create more powerful scrolls to challenge stronger creatures.

The problem with this format though is that the classes who are required to do this (the spellcasters) end up not getting to actually keep much of the loot they get. It all gets funneled back into powering abilities for later adventure. Thus, the martial classes who don't require consumables to function end up getting richer faster. It makes playing a spellcaster less desireable because you're adventuring not to get rich, but just to fuel the next adventure.

The only way to combat this is to "take off the top" a level of treasure that goes into powering the consumables of the spellcasters. Which admittedly many groups already do (and which our group did during the playtest, where a percentage of the treasure up front went to covering the costs of the Healer-themed cleric's Herbalism abilities)... but to have that be par for the course for every spellcasting class? It's kind of a self-defeating purpose in my opinion. To know that you have to take 25% of all treasure off the top just to power up your spellcasters later is kind of pointless... because I suspect most groups would just say "You know what, Mister DM? Just give us 25% less treasure and we'll assume our casters are always full up." And if that's the direction most groups go (which I would suspect it is)... then it'd be the "paying for consumables" side of the equation that would end up being the module, not the other way around.

 

[TwoSix]

The problem with this format though is that the classes who are required to do this (the spellcasters) end up not getting to actually keep much of the loot they get. It all gets funneled back into powering abilities for later adventure. Thus, the martial classes who don't require consumables to function end up getting richer faster. It makes playing a spellcaster less desireable because you're adventuring not to get rich, but just to fuel the next adventure.

Doesn't all treasure eventually turn into "powering abilities for later adventures"?

 

[TwinBahamut]

I don't like daily resources simply because the "day" is a terrible unit for measuring time and refreshing resources in RPGs. I don't think it makes sense from a story perspective, and it doesn't work at all from a gameplay perspective. It forces the story to conform to a "per-day" structure, which is awkward and completley unnecessarry. It breaks the rythym of events and forces a presumption on how the story is supposed to work. It takes control of the restoration of resources and the pacing of the game out of the players hands entirely, and limits the options available to the DM. This is a problem regardless of edition or nature of the daily resource, as well. 3E vancian spellcasting and 4E daily abilities are equally flawed in this respect.

There are a lot of good alternatives to per-day adventuring that preserve all of that system's strengths and can avoid most or all of of its problems. "Per adventure" mechanics while refresh only when the heroes completley leave a dungeon and return to a town, for example. "Per rest" mechanics which are refreshed with a long rest, but don't link that rest to a strict cycle of time, are another. "Per supply" mechanics, which refresh when the characters gain access to additional material resources, is another. There are countless ways to track attrition and the refresh of resources that both make sense within the story and don't have the problems caused by per day mechanics. There is no reason to not use one of the superior alternatives.

 

[steeldragons]

Ok. Thanks for the multitude of responses (feel free to keep 'em comin'!).

So it sounds like a lot of the sticky point, for many, is not about having a limited "rechargeable" resource...but the time allotment of that recharge and/or the recharge mechanic itself.

Isn't saying "I can do this really cool X, but only 3 times a day" not exactly the same thing as saying (with different words) "I have these 3 tokens that let me do this really cool thing, whenever I want to use them."...? In the former you just don't have any actual tokens...or special dice or action points or whatever. They're all the same thing.

Then there's the consideration of what that recharge/time cycle/definition does to the "implications" of adventure building and/or encourages a 5MAD...or adventure by encounter instead of full quest...which I don't really necessarily agree with as that is a people problem not a system problem.

The players want to blow their big guns in the first hour/first fight of the day and then decide to rest for 8 hours so they get their guns back...and the DM essentially doesn't do anything to dissuade that or continue the story while the PCs just kinda hang around (or worse, "sure, go ahead and camp, you've been awake for 2 hours, go back to sleep" ?!)...that's a people problem.

Other quarters are essentially calling for "I wanna/should be able to do whatever I want whenever/however much I want"...and I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for that. Again, not a system issue.

I dunno. I understand some of what people are saying...but if the game says "Here's the baseline: This is how these [extra special tidbits of your class] work" then what's the issue? Don't wanna game set on "Daily"? Do you simply not gage/track/guesstimate "in game" time? Then make it "per Encounter" or "per Round" or "per Cheese Doodle Break [or Extended Rest]"...to suit your games' (or really, your players') needs. Strip out all of the special extras and play the classes without them...or make them all at will, if that's what you want?!

Seems like a catch 22...if you put the Daily "power" (and I'm using power, small "p", just to mean "Special Limited Number Class Abilities" not "4e Powers") in, which is already is/has to be for traditional (if I never hear the term "Vancian" again, it'll be too soon) slotted "Fire and Forget" spell use...then people want the non-magic classes to have stuff too. Totally understandable.

But then if you have certain classes WITH extra powers and certain without...or certain classes with MORE daily uses than others...people cry "IMBALANCE!?! KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!"...if, instead, you opt to 1) ADD daily powers for everyone, then it's, "SAMENESS! DROWN IT IN THE RIVER!!!"...or 2) REMOVE daily powers from everyone, then it's "BORING! or TOO SIMPLE/Not KEWL ENOUGH! KILL IT! COVER IT WITH HONEY AND BURY IT IN AN ANT HILL!"

I still don't really get it...I think this is a lot more semantics than any objective "wrongness" with any part of the mechanical item.

For sure though, I really don't see a way "out" for 5e that's not going to piss off somebody.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Doesn't all treasure eventually turn into "powering abilities for later adventures"?

Depends on how long term and wide-angle you're looking it. Is spending the treasure you've acquired on a castle "powering abilities for later adventures"? Well, insofar as the DM will probably have the castle being a plot point at some point in the future, then yeah, you could look at it that way. But that's much different than just saying to the spellcaster that to allow him or her to actually function on a day-to-day basis... some amount of your money goes away automatically just to allow you to do what you do. The fighter and the rogue don't have to pay anything to get their full suite of abilities... but the casters do.

If that's the case, and the casters are making THAT much of a sacrifice... then those abilities have to be MUCH more powerful to justify the expense. But then you're really potentially screwing around with the balance. Because I suspect most caster players would just rely on their at-will spells, and maybe buy a "big boom" spell every once in a while when they thought they might need it.

 

[TwoSix]

Depends on how long term and wide-angle you're looking it. Is spending the treasure you've acquired on a castle "powering abilities for later adventures"? Well, insofar as the DM will probably have the castle being a plot point at some point in the future, then yeah, you could look at it that way. But that's much different than just saying to the spellcaster that to allow him or her to actually function on a day-to-day basis... some amount of your money goes away automatically just to allow you to do what you do. The fighter and the rogue don't have to pay anything to get their full suite of abilities... but the casters do.

1) Everything you do in D&D (that isn't playing around and making Monty Python jokes) comes down to playing out a scene or framing the parameters of the next one. Having a castle frames the scene in your favor when the orc warlord you've angered comes to destroy your home city. Having a teleport scroll also frames the scene in your favor when you need to invade the warlord's lair. Same effect.

Plus, my assumption would never be that higher-level casters would be totally dependent on consumables. I assume they have at-wills and conditional powers as well, just as everyone else does.

I also assume that consumables are used just as much by the non-casters as the casters. If you want a haste effect, pony up or find a haste potion.

If that's the case, and the casters are making THAT much of a sacrifice... then those abilities have to be MUCH more powerful to justify the expense. But then you're really potentially screwing around with the balance. Because I suspect most caster players would just rely on their at-will spells, and maybe buy a "big boom" spell every once in a while when they thought they might need it.

Again, I don't see it as the casters sacrificing (since I don't see it as casters only have consumables and warriors get at-wills.) Most magic items aren't craftable. There are no magic marts, just a variety of hedge witches and alchemists and tinkers who can sell you something that you might need. One thing I've deplored in both 3e and 4e is the necessary items (or Big Six) to allow you be competitive. Items with permanent bonuses or abilities should be rare. Most treausre should be going back into investments into stuff that will give you an edge on your next battle, and that battle only.

 

[avin]

The fighter can "push themselves to the limit" to make an extra forceful attack, extra damage, tap dance maneuver while swing their sword, push over the ogre only so many times before they are simply, physically, spent...and while they can still fight and manuever in the "normal" sense, they just don't have the strength to "give it their extra all" all of the time.

Please, give us one real life example where one do such feat of strenght that can't be replayed and still have strenght to do other normal moves.

It's pure gamism nonsense. It works very well in 4E, provides balance and fun... but just doesn't make sense.

 

[keterys]

It will be interesting to see if DDN somehow avoids the need for +X weapons and armor. I suspect it won't, though. Too D&D.

At which point, unless they go the 4e route, the fact that a fighter needs a +X weapon to function will put him lower in treasure than a spellcaster who doesn't need one. So maybe the consumable route for big spells has more merit...