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

[Scorpio616]

Can mundane classes have a resource which powers abilities?

It's called HP. But it seems some folks think certain players will fail to utilize abilities powered by HP.

 

[Quickleaf]

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.

D&D's magic is based on the Dying Earth by Jack Vance. How you claim that Vancian magic is "not a very good reason to justify metagame resources for spells because it's easy" is beyond me. Sure, it may have the happy effect of balancing metagame resources, but the reason Vancian spellcasting is in the game is because the designers wanted to emulate the kind of magic that appears in Dying Earth.

 

[Quickleaf]

It's called HP. But it seems some folks think certain players will fail to utilize abilities powered by HP.

It's not just an idle thought. It is a fact.

I ran a game of Radiance (which allows you to spend vitality...HP essentially...to perform cool abilities) for some friends, and what we immediately noticed was the system put players in this unenviable position; You're hurt, and if you spend vitality to call on your more powerful abilities when you need them most, you're also making yourself more susceptible to getting killed (or at least taken out of the fight). It might make sense from a "movie logic" standpoint as far as scene-pacing goes, but just because a boxer or swordsman executes a complex/tiring move doesn't necessarily mean he's now more likely to be one-punch-dropped. Narrative concerns aside, my group found it disincentivized using high vitality cost powers in dangerous combats.

A word about Radiance: besides this one feature - which I now consider a flaw - its an awesome work that is absolutely worth checking out.

 

[Ahnehnois]

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:

...

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.

Actually, it does change things. Magical resources are not metagame; they exist within the game. The cleric prays for spells, knowing how many he will get and what his options are. Then, when he casts them, they are expended and he can't cast them anymore. The reason why may be arbitrary (since the gods are ostensibly deciding what these spells are and no one knows why), but that's not the point. The character's experience maps perfectly on to the game mechanics. Nothing meta about it.

It's much easier to justify magic because magic is not real and follows no real set of rules. A fighter, conversely, is not praying to anyone or memorizing his abilities from a spellbook. If he runs out, it can't be because some mystical being arbitrarily sets a limitation on their usage, because they didn't come from said being to begin with, they came from him.

"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."

I wouldn't call that a typical response to wizard spellcasting. For one, it isn't really a thing that provides balance, and I think that's immediately clear to most people at this point. For another, I don't think "Awesome" is a typical reaction. Memorizing spells is a headache.

I think more typically the answer is something to the effect that Vancian magic is a traditional D&D-ism; a genre conceit specific to this game.

 

[Hussar]

D&D's magic is based on the Dying Earth by Jack Vance. How you claim that Vancian magic is "not a very good reason to justify metagame resources for spells because it's easy" is beyond me. Sure, it may have the happy effect of balancing metagame resources, but the reason Vancian spellcasting is in the game is because the designers wanted to emulate the kind of magic that appears in Dying Earth.

This is just flat out mistaken. Gygax and co in no way wanted to emulate Dying Earth. Or if the did then they failed spectacularly in doing so since DnD casters pretty much resemble in no way a Dying Earth character.

Vancian casting was always a game balancing element. Full stop.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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.

I tend to prefer (1), too. Each method has its advantages and flaws, and it's probably a thing you have to decide for yourself.

I know that I dislike (3) because it means I have no control over what really happens. I don't like that, I want to make meaningful decisions.
I know that I dislike (2) because it often means you're better off not pulling off stunts because they are not worth it, or you become so good that you repeat the same over and over because it's just that reliable and good. (Which can also break immersion, if my Fighter is making a trip attack every turn or whtaever, that doesn't feel right to me. But it doesn't just that, it foremost can be a balance issue and a problem of lessening the number of meaningful decisisons to make, since what is the inferior or superior option becomes clear very fast and often independent of the situation at hand.)


What I personally might prefer for (1) is to have a system where the "resource" is not purely abstract, at least give me a feel what it is - collecting mana, maneuvering, aiming, stuff like that, and still ensure that I can't do the same thing over and over again (like I collect 3 mana tokens, and then shoot fireball, I collect 3 mana tokens, and then shoot fireball) because that is the optimum way to do it. (It migth be "I collect 3 mana tokens, and then shoot fireball. Since now Fireball is recovering, I'd need more than 3 mana tokens to use it again, so I try to pick something else that will work now - Maybe I erect a force shield to defend myself for a while, or thunderwave to push the enemies away...)
And that all ideally that it's not too complicated to manage and if necessary can hide some of its complexity so you can make it easy to new players but increase the complexity for players that want more.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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.

Let's say I want to do more than just charge. (I am not Obryn, however).

Let's say you tell me:
"Okay, don't charge, do something else. You could try disarm the enemy."
"How do I do that?"
1)
"Learn the martial maneuver "disarm". If you do that, you can charge once per encounter, and it's one of 3 possible maneuvers you can do per combat."
"But why can I do it only once?"
"Game Balance. We can imagine that once you tried that trick, the enemy is prepared."
"But what if the other enemy hasn't even seen me try, he's behnid cover after all."
"Abstraction. Maybe his comrade told him about it?"
"But they are headless monks, how do they talk?"
"Then charge, dang it!"

2) "Use the Maneuver "Disarm". Make an attack at -5, if you suceed, you disarm the enemy, instead of dealing damage."
"Uh, that's difficult, and I don't get anythnig if I fail. I think I'd rather charge."
"Well, you could take a character perk that allows you to negate the penalty."
"Okay, I take that perk. But wait, seems like it's really good idea to always first disarm my enemies, if they use weapons at all?
"Maybe. Why not. Oh, and there is another perk, if you take that, you can also deal damage on a succesful disarm"
"But then I am better off disarming every turn! That's almost like charging every turn! That sounds a bit repetitive."
"Oh, then charge and shut up!"

3) "Use the Maneuver Disarm". When you roll an odd number and hit, you can choose to not deal damage but instead disarm the enemy."
"But what if I want to try to disarm the enemy specifically now? Can I do somethnig about that?"
"Nope."
"But then I can't really play tactically, since I never know what my dice will come up. I don't like that!"
"Oh, shut up and charge!"



Every system has its flaws... You must min/max your game choice to get the most amount of features with the least amount of flaws that bother you.

 

[Obryn]

Good stuff

Yep, that's it exactly.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Actually, it does change things. Magical resources are not metagame; they exist within the game. The cleric prays for spells, knowing how many he will get and what his options are. Then, when he casts them, they are expended and he can't cast them anymore. The reason why may be arbitrary (since the gods are ostensibly deciding what these spells are and no one knows why), but that's not the point. The character's experience maps perfectly on to the game mechanics. Nothing meta about it.

Back in the day when we played 2e, our group would argue about Vancian spellcasting endlessly. No one thought that it sounded realistic in the slightest. It seemed very metagame. After all, when you pray for spells why does your god limit you to 2 of them because you are first level? He doesn't trust you enough to give you 3 or 4 or better yet as many as you need to spread his teachings and protect and heal his followers? Same thing with a Paladin. You can smite evil 1/day...but twice? Seriously, your god would rather you die than give that kind of power to a neophyte. You might abuse it by...smiting more evil?

But your character can't ask for more because you need more on that particular day? There's no negotiation or method to use more spells, just game rules that say "You get X spells from this list". You also can't make up your own spells. You need to choose from a specific list of spells that exist. That list somehow changes based on which splat books are released. They are organized in levels and slots which make no sense at all. How would a character even talk about this in game: "Can you cast Cure Light Wounds today?" "No, my god only gives me 3 slots which he calls 'first level' and I decided to fill the slots with 3 other spells instead. Tomorrow, I will clear one of those slots and prepare that one instead." "How come the other priest can cast 5 'first level' spells?" "I don't know. I think he has killed more monsters or our god likes him better or something."

The same thing applies to Wizards though because Wizards use books and a system of magic that they pretty much invented, weird rules are a little more expected. Still, the concept that you could only prepare 2 'first level' spells then you killed 10 Orcs and could now cast 3 'first level' spells didn't make much sense to any of our characters. How come I can memorize more now? Did my brain get bigger? Did I install a new stick of RAM? Did my memory exercises finally pay off and I can add more things to my 'mind palace'? How did that happen because I killed some monsters?

It doesn't feel like a natural part of the world at all. It feels like something that was tacked on to the ruleset in order to balance the game. Which we eventually all agreed to accept and move on with playing the game instead of making a big deal about how vancian spellcasting made no sense in game at all.

It's much easier to justify magic because magic is not real and follows no real set of rules. A fighter, conversely, is not praying to anyone or memorizing his abilities from a spellbook. If he runs out, it can't be because some mystical being arbitrarily sets a limitation on their usage, because they didn't come from said being to begin with, they came from him.

And that difference doesn't mean anything to me at all. There is no mystical being arbitrarily telling a Wizard he can only prepare 2 spells rather than 3, that ability comes from him but somehow his limitation "makes sense" to people. "It's magic!" simply doesn't do it for me as an explanation. Even a god arbitrarily restricting the number of uses doesn't make much sense to me. It's all pretty much the same thing. A limitation to make sure the game doesn't get out of control that we ignore and simply don't mention in character to avoid pointing out the silliness of the situation in the game.

I think more typically the answer is something to the effect that Vancian magic is a traditional D&D-ism; a genre conceit specific to this game.

Yep, and I don't see why that same reason can't apply to any non-magic system within the game as well? "Why can't I use Trip more than once a day?" "It's a traditional D&D-ism; a genre conceit specific to this game."

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

D&D's magic is based on the Dying Earth by Jack Vance. How you claim that Vancian magic is "not a very good reason to justify metagame resources for spells because it's easy" is beyond me. Sure, it may have the happy effect of balancing metagame resources, but the reason Vancian spellcasting is in the game is because the designers wanted to emulate the kind of magic that appears in Dying Earth.

As [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] says above, it does not emulate Dying Earth well at all. The restrictions on wizards in D&D are quite a bit different from the restrictions on wizards in that book. It was inspired by that book, I'm sure but it was not trying to emulate it. Plus, it applies to clerics as well which receive their spells in an entirely different way than wizards so the same explanation can't hold for both of them.

Gygax needed a way to make sure spell casters weren't overpowered and decided to limit them to a certain number of spells per day. Then he looked for justification anywhere he could find it and found that Jack Vance had written a book where a similar but not quite the same thing happened and said "Yeah, it's like that."

It doesn't make the explanation make anymore sense in the game. But it's enough to make at least half the players playing the game say "Yeah, I can see that."