D&D General 5e System Redesign through New Classes and Setting. A Thought Experiment.

[Steampunkette]

Please note I'm not here to get caught up in semantics and super sharp definitions, that is not my game here.
But generally speaking it represents predominantly players who do not enjoy player facing mechanics that do not have necessarily a strong tie to in-game fiction (Inspiration mechanic) and place a high value on internal consistency of the setting which they see tied to the established mechanics (i.e. very anti mechanics that break that mold - minion mechanic comes to mind).

And nothing above is meant to be disparaging, it is just highlighting preferences of a part of the roleplaying community and actually @Micah Sweet brought this up very early on in the thread (in fact your reply I quoted, is a reply to him where he mentioned sim).
Hence my response as I do not think you address his concern from a sim perspective.

So if there were an in-narrative reason for an AEDU structure you would be more receptive to it?

Like a structure where it relied on not just expending nebulous "Spell Slots" but actual narrative 'energy' or 'power' that wound up resulting in a comparative weakening? Like, say, a Psion being limited in how fast they can spend Power Points before the nosebleed and headache shut them down?

Because AEDU as presented is in-your-face gamist.
Tying your abilities to an exhaustion track makes it attractive in that it builds a "realistic" model for how abilities affect a character's exertion and their pool of reserves as opposed to the gamist term ENCOUNTER.

The way I look at AEDU without an exhaustion track is "here you have these playing cards every combat now lets play a mini-card game"
And this is not me picking on 4e only, 5e has the most stupidest rest system wherever everyone is refreshed at dawn. I mean what is that nonsense.

I forget the name of the Enworld user, he was pretty prevalent back in the day, where YEARS AGO he addressed the Rest issue as a massive 5e flaw in design that not even the AP's were adhering to (we didn't have to hear it from Mearls and Co 15 years later).
It became a 200-page thread where the Enworld collective provided 20+ options on possible different rest mechanics for 5e.

Oh, I don't intend to call things "At Will" or "Encounter" just, y'know. You can use this ability twice in a fight or something similar. Or map it to exertion or spell slots or something similar.

... what about a Recharge mechanic? If combats are supposed to last between 3 and 5 rounds, setting up a "Use it and lose it 'til you recover it" mechanic that goes for 5 rounds on your exertion with the idea that you've done something big and it takes a second to get your wind back. Would that work?

 

[Steampunkette]

I actually really like this thought, and think it could really help differentiate the classes if their encounter abilities are in different numbers and power.

Like a fighter getting four exertion/ki/etc per fight, with a recharge of 5. On every fifth round you get one back. So a fighter could use an encounter power every round for 5 rounds, then have to wait 'til round 10 to do it again. The Fighter's encounter powers would, obviously, be individually weaker than a Sorcerer, who only gets 2 encounter powers before waiting 3 rounds to recover one on round 5... but the sorcerer's are more immediately impactful.

That would kind of mimic an exhaustion mechanic without creating a Death Spiral, since it would only kick in on long encounters if the goal of an encounter is 3 rounds.

And then -very- long encounters which go out to 10 rounds would result in the character exhausting themself in the first few rounds, pulling out one big trick on round 5... and then finishing the fight with encounter powers on round 10 for a nice dramatic finish. Or, y'know, they could pace themselves to maintain a fairly strong overall pace by interspersing encounters and at-wills from the start.

Definitely provides some tactical considerations and gives a coherent in-narrative structure for encounter powers: You have only so much power at once and it takes a moment to recover. (Technically 25 seconds to recover enough to do one more 'big thing')

What do you think? Decent "Winded" mechanic to give sim players a narrative?

 

[Micah Sweet]

You still aren't addressing how a DM determines strength relative to size. I'm making a dungeon for third level PCs. Can I put an ogre in room one without a TPK? How about two? What about a troll? What about a troll and six goblins? What about a mummy? A drider? A shambling mound?

Id rather have a CR system that breaks over nothing but hoping every DM will study the Monster Manual and learn how to eyeball encounters.

I'm actually fine with looking over creatures appropriate to the setting circumstances and eyeballing it, or even just putting in what I think makes sense regardless of the party. It's not like the monsters exist in the setting to provide a fair fight to the PCs, after all. I don't have use for a CR system in general, and IME trying to use one just increases the chances of "getting it wrong" and having a disappointing evening, one way or another.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Obviously that is the best scenario. The problem is that it's hard to teach the skill needed to eyeball challenges because that's something learned and if the DM is expected to learn without guidance, they will either learn it wrong or become frustrated with failure and quit.

People managed to muddle through before 3e introduced CR. It's not IMO needed.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I would love to hear your description of a "Sim Crowd" and how they function! I'd love to know your particular interpretation for how things work and why, and in what way an exhaustion track would improve things!

I'd also love to know what your idea of an exhaustion track is in relation to this concept!

I'm not being facetious, here, though I know my exuberance might make it seem so because of text. Sincerely: Tell me anything that will give me a better understanding of the audience and ideas to make a system better!

I'm part of the Sim crowd, and how I define that is very much on record. Can't speak for anyone else of course, but I've some agreement from folks around here, at least in part.

 

[Pedantic]

I actually really like this thought, and think it could really help differentiate the classes if their encounter abilities are in different numbers and power.

Like a fighter getting four exertion/ki/etc per fight, with a recharge of 5. On every fifth round you get one back. So a fighter could use an encounter power every round for 5 rounds, then have to wait 'til round 10 to do it again. The Fighter's encounter powers would, obviously, be individually weaker than a Sorcerer, who only gets 2 encounter powers before waiting 3 rounds to recover one on round 5... but the sorcerer's are more immediately impactful.

That would kind of mimic an exhaustion mechanic without creating a Death Spiral, since it would only kick in on long encounters if the goal of an encounter is 3 rounds.

And then -very- long encounters which go out to 10 rounds would result in the character exhausting themself in the first few rounds, pulling out one big trick on round 5... and then finishing the fight with encounter powers on round 10 for a nice dramatic finish. Or, y'know, they could pace themselves to maintain a fairly strong overall pace by interspersing encounters and at-wills from the start.

Definitely provides some tactical considerations and gives a coherent in-narrative structure for encounter powers: You have only so much power at once and it takes a moment to recover. (Technically 25 seconds to recover enough to do one more 'big thing')

What do you think? Decent "Winded" mechanic to give sim players a narrative?

Different resource models for different classes is absolutely a good start. I personally think running Fighter/rogue powers through general systems is also good, like having them do skill checks or modify weapon properties, etc.

One risk with your recharge model above (and in general, if you add more variant systems) is encounter length. There's not a ton of design space for 3-4 round combat, but any more than 5 rounds will feel like it's dragging.

 

[Corinnguard]

Try leaping over her igniting a lightsaber may work.

DM: I am going to need you to roll for a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check with Disadvantage because she has the high ground. Cue Obi Wan Kenobi's line to Anakin Skywalker on Mustafar.

 

[zakael19]

So DS! exists as a game which tries to extract the core ideas of 4e and get rid of a bunch of the D&D sacred cows that were left over. It does a bunch of I think interesting things to get there, the core of which is giving each class a build/spend mechanic for your powerful abilities. None of them are limited by rest, they're instead limited by "how well can you build up your counters." This directly ties into avoiding the 5mwd design via the accumulation of Victories, which you gain from each Encounter (which is inclusive of Montage scenes which can go for anything from a short chase through a city up through crossing a desert; along with high-stakes Negotiations) and stack until you declare a Respite - 24 hours of chilling. As your Victories stack up, they give you more of your class power at the start of a combat encounter, so you can nova harder - perhaps opening up with a 7 or 9 cost power that significantly defines the battle.

Conversely, your Recoveries (Surges but now we call everything Stamina which feels a little bit better fictionally when we use Catch Breath to recover in combat etc) are depleted along the way via combat or as a consequence to Montage failures etc. Those recharge in full on a Respite.

So you've got this tension between "as we push further, we can push faster" vs "ok but do we have enough available to Recover still."

And then a lot of the basic class fantasy stuff is baked in as a Maneuver (Bonus Action basically), eg: the Cleric equivalent's healing spell is core and allows them to trigger a Recovery on self/ally in range. Nothing special, but they can spend their class resource to boost that significantly - healing the entire party at once, curing conditions, triggering two Resources on a single target, etc.

One other clever thing that DS! tries to do with the Heroic Resources is add a bunch of thematic triggers to get bonus amounts based on events that occur during a combat. This is a mechanical way it's trying to a) have players keep their focus on the flow of combat even off turn and b) set up additional tactical combos to power bigger abilities.

 

[Zardnaar]

You still aren't addressing how a DM determines strength relative to size. I'm making a dungeon for third level PCs. Can I put an ogre in room one without a TPK? How about two? What about a troll? What about a troll and six goblins? What about a mummy? A drider? A shambling mound?

Id rather have a CR system that breaks over nothing but hoping every DM will study the Monster Manual and learn how to eyeball encounters.

CR doesn't do that anyway.

You can win vs almost double your level.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Can I put an ogre in room one without a TPK?

What does your gut tell you? Since 1st edition that has been the most reliable method.