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

[Ahnehnois]

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.

Frankly, that isn't a very imaginative response. After all, it's abundantly clear that power should not be infinite (the real controversy is the warlock and all that other at-will magic). Infinite power would be bad. So it has to be limited somehow, not for "balance" sake per se, but simply because there are no perpetual motion machines, not free lunches, and no endless reservoirs of magic.

As to why the powers that be would choose this particular method of limiting dissemination, it seems like simple rationing to me. The deities know how powerful you are, and they give their better followers more spells. Arcane magic is pretty much by definition mysterious, but in general I would think the explanation would be something along the lines of finite capacitance. A wizard can only store so much power in whatever extradimensional or mental space those memorized spell energies are sitting in. The better a wizard he is, the bigger that space.

It's a tad strained, but in a world where people are made out of flubber it really isn't that bad.

"It's magic!" simply doesn't do it for me as an explanation.

Nothing about your proposal here changes that however. You're simply rationalizing that if writing some weirdness off because "it's magic" doesn't make sense to you, other completely unrelated and nonmagical abilities should not have to make sense to someone else. Nothing gets explained.

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."

Thankfully, it isn't. If anything, warrior characters who never get tired, get injured, and know all the moves in the book are D&D's tradition.

If we were going to kill some sacred cows and try to introduce some new genre specific conceits, I'd think we'd start with cutting the worst elements (spell slots and memorization, for example) not trying to copy them.

 

[Obryn]

If we were going to kill some sacred cows and try to introduce some new genre specific conceits, I'd think we'd start with cutting the worst elements (spell slots and memorization, for example) not trying to copy them.

For what it does - giving a good set of powerful options that are neither boring nor low-probability - it works.

I don't think anyone, myself included, is particularly wedded to any single implementation of a resource framework. But there almost has to be one, or else you end up with [MENTION=49096]Mu[/MENTION]strum_Ridicully 's (2) and (3) examples. If you want to chop out Vancian casting and resource-limited abilities, provide an alternative method, by all means; simply saying you want to remove them isn't enough.

 

[Ahnehnois]

If you want to chop out Vancian casting and resource-limited abilities, provide an alternative method, by all means; simply saying you want to remove them isn't enough.

I'm a fan of the Psychic's Handbook. Abilities are delivered as skills and feats that enable uses of those skills. The resource system has two key features.

One, it applies to hit points (as nonlethal/subdual damage I believe), which makes everything make sense in-world and provides a very serious balance implication. Depending on the amount of damage incurred, it might actually be wise to not use the most powerful abilities, or to use non-supernatural abilities and avoid the cost altogether. Forcing the player to make a risk/benefit decision is pretty dynamic (i.e. not boring).

However, more importantly, the cost is expressed in the text as "strain" and an appendix gives a variety of different options you can use besides applying the strain as hp damage. Which is the sort of modularity that a broad-based game is supposed to aspire to. Some of those options radically change the seriousness of the cost, which has significant balance implications. So, you decide how powerful you want your psychics to be, and it's an easy dial to move.

By comparison, "per day" looks pretty weak.

 

[Obryn]

I hate, hate, hate using HP pools (or, worse, XP pools!) to power everyday abilities. It's one of the reasons I've given Numenera a pass.

However, you're still looking at a resource-based system, so that's a workable starting point and pretty much supports the point I'm arguing - that a resource of some sort is almost necessary for reliable "cool stuff."

 

[Ahnehnois]

I hate, hate, hate using HP pools (or, worse, XP pools!) to power everyday abilities.

What do you know? I hate, hate, hate, hate using per-time use limitations to power abilities.

However, you're still looking at a resource-based system, so that's a workable starting point and pretty much supports the point I'm arguing - that a resource of some sort is almost necessary for reliable "cool stuff."

The system essentially creates three separate domains.
One, the character class, simply tells you how many powers you get and when. It tells you nothing about how they work.
Two, the skill/feat system that tells you how you can create fun effects, and then assigns a cost to them. The cost, in this context, is simply a relative measure of how hard it is to teleport someone vs read their mind.
Three, the supporting rules, which include the default strain option but a number of separate but equal variants.

I think this separation is very useful. I do think that it provides a model that could work for magical or nonmagical abilities. As I've said before, I wouldn't be opposed to a fatigue-based resource system. And if it were presented in the form of "doing this costs 5 strain, strain means whatever option your DM picked as a cost" it would enable someone like you to create a separate "strain pool" if you didn't want to run it off of hp. But we could still use the same rulebook and make characters with the same suite of abilities.

You can hack any system do to that. I'm sure someone out there has taken AEDU and changed it so the use limitations work differently. I just think it's better if the system is built for that kind of variation from the start.

***

However, I still would not look at the resource system as a balancing mechanism between characters. It isn't good for that and it serves other purposes better.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Frankly, that isn't a very imaginative response. After all, it's abundantly clear that power should not be infinite (the real controversy is the warlock and all that other at-will magic). Infinite power would be bad. So it has to be limited somehow, not for "balance" sake per se, but simply because there are no perpetual motion machines, not free lunches, and no endless reservoirs of magic.

No, infinite magic is not bad because of those reasons. In the same way that infinite breathing or infinite sitting isn't bad. There are things that are perfectly fine being something you can do near constantly.

It's only bad when things are infinite if they are very powerful things that can throw game balance and the story out of whack. Otherwise, I have no problem giving my PCs the equivalent of a lighter. Make small fires all you want. But if you want the ability to blow an entire house up, it better be limited in some way to prevent you from blowing up every house you see.

It's likely we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one since I don't think you'll agree with my assessment.

As to why the powers that be would choose this particular method of limiting dissemination, it seems like simple rationing to me. The deities know how powerful you are, and they give their better followers more spells.

Wait...you are only more powerful because you can cast more spells. Unless we are considering hitpoints to be the be all end all of "how powerful are you". It obviously differs from editions to edition but in 2e, for instance the difference between a 1st level cleric and a 9th level cleric is nearly non existent if they can both only cast 1st level spells.

Basically, the god giving them more spells is what actually makes them more powerful. Which is circular logic: They are more powerful because they are more powerful.

Plus, if deities are infinitely powerful, why ration anything? Give all their followers 9th level spells immediately and theirs would be the most powerful clergy. The only real reason I can see is that they use higher level spells as a reward for dedicated service more than anything else. Either that or the god isn't actually granting the spells directly and is instead a mortal magic that just requires a divine power source.

Either way, the explanation is sort of grasping at straws. Gods have infinite power, their followers should have infinite power as well. They don't because the game would be no fun if you can resurrect people at will or heal people to full hitpoints every round. We have to limit those powers for the good of the game.

Arcane magic is pretty much by definition mysterious, but in general I would think the explanation would be something along the lines of finite capacitance. A wizard can only store so much power in whatever extradimensional or mental space those memorized spell energies are sitting in. The better a wizard he is, the bigger that space.

It's a tad strained, but in a world where people are made out of flubber it really isn't that bad.

Honestly, it's simply no better or worse than "I reach into my stamina reserves and perform a powerful maneuver. But I can't do that very often."

That's exactly my point: People are made of flubber, explanations for spells are kind of silly, and plot hooks tend to fall out of the air whenever 4-6 adventurers are gathered in an inn. There are so many silly things built into the rules because of genre conventions, fairness, balance, and fun that picking any particular one out and saying "That is the worst offender" is kind of difficult.

Nothing about your proposal here changes that however. You're simply rationalizing that if writing some weirdness off because "it's magic" doesn't make sense to you, other completely unrelated and nonmagical abilities should not have to make sense to someone else. Nothing gets explained.

That's correct. I'm perfectly ok if nothing gets explained. It's a game. If it's fun, it doesn't need an explanation for everything. Attempting to explain everything has only caused huge problems in my games in the past. Now I'm more than willing to say "That's the way it is, there's no explanation for it."

If we were going to kill some sacred cows and try to introduce some new genre specific conceits, I'd think we'd start with cutting the worst elements (spell slots and memorization, for example) not trying to copy them.

I'm not the biggest fan of spell slots and memorization. But they have a lot of advantages. They create a decent amount of game balance if done right while still giving players some amount of choice over the customization of their abilities.

 

[LegendaryGames]

Sure

I think they can. I think there are some who will rebel at using that nomenclature, though. If you call it "rounds of this ability" or "points of that ability" or "uses per day of something" people are okay, but when you start talking about some kind of power source some folks get up in arms feeling like "oh, now it's just another kind of magic."

Even if it's logically true it might be a bridge too far conceptually to get some people to accept it for how the game *feels* to them.

 

[Emerikol]

If you truly want a martial combat system where PCs and players are as close to a 1:1 match with respect to experience and decision-making as possible, it all but demands that martial characters have an encounter-based, ablative resource scheme that fuels, and allows them to pace, their martial output (fundamental to aenerobic activity and energy expenditure) + an action resolution system predicated upon a suite of resources which can be activated by (in-fiction...with attendant mechanics) triggers that map to the Observe, Orient, Decide, Activate loop that martial actors make in real time.

Accepting your definition (for these purposes, lets go ahead and do so), anything less than the above is "dissociative" in the extreme...which is what you're advocating for. D&D's historical martial combat interface is so deeply abstract and so fundamentally removed from what truly happens, real time, in the minds and bodies of real martial actors, that on the spectrum of <process simulation ============ utter gibberish>, its definitely on the right side of the mid-point. It facilitates a contraction of table handling time and it minimizes mental overhead, but neither of those goals serve the interest of unifying the legitimate experience and processes of being a martial actor with the table experience of "dude with dice and character sheet." They are, in fact, antagonistic toward that end.

I don't see how a truly abstract system can be criticized the way you criticized it. Everything you are talking about is covered by the to hit number and the die roll. In 1e, my fighter was feinting, dodging, and ducking. He was luring his enemy into making a mistake and then hitting him hard when it counted. In a simple system the abstraction covers everything you mentioned. I prefer the simple approach.

You don't even know what dissociative is despite those who do repeating the definition over and over. There are plenty of unrealistic elements in a game that are not dissociative. It is purely about the player and the character being on the same page. No director stance basically. I have major verisimilitude issues with damage on a miss but it's not dissociative. Try to learn what you are talking about before just spouting off. Go figure out the real definition and understand. Then we can have a civil discussion.

 

[Hussar]

I don't see how a truly abstract system can be criticized the way you criticized it. Everything you are talking about is covered by the to hit number and the die roll. In 1e, my fighter was feinting, dodging, and ducking. He was luring his enemy into making a mistake and then hitting him hard when it counted. In a simple system the abstraction covers everything you mentioned. I prefer the simple approach.

You don't even know what dissociative is despite those who do repeating the definition over and over. There are plenty of unrealistic elements in a game that are not dissociative. It is purely about the player and the character being on the same page. No director stance basically. I have major verisimilitude issues with damage on a miss but it's not dissociative. Try to learn what you are talking about before just spouting off. Go figure out the real definition and understand. Then we can have a civil discussion.

No, it really, really doesn't. You cannot actually know what happened because the system is so abstract.

Put it another way. In AD&D, a shield adds +1 to AC. Does that mean that a shield only, ever, applies to 1 in 20 misses? When does the shield come into play? Whenever I miss by 1?

Prove it.

What mistakes did your fighter ever lure someone into and then hitting him hard? How did you do that in a system where you make exactly one attack roll and then roll damage?

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't see how a truly abstract system can be criticized the way you criticized it. Everything you are talking about is covered by the to hit number and the die roll. In 1e, my fighter was feinting, dodging, and ducking. He was luring his enemy into making a mistake and then hitting him hard when it counted. In a simple system the abstraction covers everything you mentioned. I prefer the simple approach.

You don't even know what dissociative is despite those who do repeating the definition over and over. There are plenty of unrealistic elements in a game that are not dissociative. It is purely about the player and the character being on the same page. No director stance basically. I have major verisimilitude issues with damage on a miss but it's not dissociative. Try to learn what you are talking about before just spouting off. Go figure out the real definition and understand. Then we can have a civil discussion.

Well, first off I don't see how I was being uncivil. Second, I know what you mean by dissociative.
I'm not sure that you understood what I wrote as I was playing with your ball on your court. I was speaking specifically to the issue of character perspective and player perspective being married. I was breaking out what happens in a martial contest, perspective-wise, that is a fundamental prerequisite for a player to share if you want the two perspectives to be coupled or "associated." Let me try again.

Are you familiar with basketball? It is an international game that is understood all over the globe so I'm going to assume you have some familiarity. In basketball, there is an important segment of gameplay between offender and defender that takes place with the offender's back to the basket, 8-12 feet (typically) from the goal. This typically takes place anywhere from one freethrow stripe to the other ("the paint"). This is called "playing the post."

Playing the post is extremely physical, strategic, and tactical (for both martial actors - offender and defender). In many ways it is a perfect analogue to what happens in a melee skirmish. The offensive post-player is typically going to have an array of "post moves" akin to "combat maneuvers." These will be either on the "left block" or "right block" and oftentimes the player will have different moves depending on which block they are on. I'm a proficient post player so I'm going to provide the array of moves of which I am confident I can get a high percentage look from:

Left block:

1) Spin baseline to weakside, reverse layup.
2) Shoulder/head fake middle and shoot baseline, fadeaway jumper.
3) Shoulder/head fake baseline and shoot middle, fadeaway jumper.
4) Drop step baseline.
5) Up (pump fake jumper) and under baseline either strong side or weak side lay-in.
6) Up (pump fake jumper) and under middle to weak side lay-in.

Right block:

1) Spin base line to weakside, reverse layup.
2) Spin baseline to stronside, layup.
3) Shoulder/head fake middle and shoot baseline, fadeaway jumper.
4) Shoulder/head fake baseline and shoot middle, fadeaway jumper.
5) Drop step baseline.
6) Up (pump fake jumper) and under middle to weak side lay-in.
7) Baby hook middle.

The vectors I'm considering in a 6 second interval in the post are the following:

A) Is the defender playing me particularly physical? Is he particularly long (tall and/or arm length)? Is he particularly athletic? Has he shown any tendencies I can exploit (such as shading me baseline or being overaggressive on pump fakes)?

B) Are they double-teaming? If so, from where and by whom (including determining the info in A above about the double teamer)? Is the person that the double teamer is leaving a good shooter (especially from that location)? Are they rotating hard such that we can swing the ball weak-side and get an easy look after I pass out of a double team?

C) Did I just spend a ton of energy on defense? Is my overall defensive assignment exhausting?

D) Do I have any other offensive players I can lean on to carry the scoring load or am I primary?

This is the Observe and Orient aspects of the OODA Loop that I will typically perform in that interval. Depending on the outcome of that evaluation, I will Decide and Act.

The issue that I'm trying to outline is that for someone "playing Manbearcat" in the "melee skirmish" that is post-play in basketball, this OODA Loop is necessary to associate their perspective with my own. This is fundamental to the mental/emotional experience, the perspective, and the process. You appear to be trying to say that deep abstraction has no bearing here. Of course it does. If there is considerable "information loss" relative to the above experience/perspective/process, then the process itself becomes "unphysical" and the perspective of the player of Manbearcat and the actual Manbearcat in the melee skirmish are completely decoupled. They are not associated at all. The two cannot be sharing perspectives, orienting based on those perspectives and the inherent evalutions therein, and then deploying resources based on evaluative judgement, tactical relevance, and stamina reserves.

Now I personally don't care so much about this as I'm trying to emulate genre in my play. A system that abstracts actions (and accordingly, the model loses some spatial and temporal resolution) is no problem for me or my group. In fact, it is a serious boon (necessary) for our dynamic play that functionally and consistently emulates genre tropes and for consistently bringing about climax. However, if you do care deeply about legitimate association of the OODA Loop of the player at the table and the character in the fiction being mapped (associated), then you must stridently care that the resolution (temporal and spatial) is high, the OODA Loop processes are well-derived by the mechanics, and the abstraction is minimal. The deeper the abstraction, the more information you are losing, up to a point where the processes that the character "should" be carrying out are rendered incoherent, possibly up to the point that it becomes totally unphysical, when cross-referencing it with the perspective of the player.

If you can't Observe coherently, you can't Orient coherently. If you can't Orient coherent, you can't Decide coherenty. And if you can't Decide coherently, then you can't Act coherently. Abstraction, and its inherent information loss (up to rendering a process unphysical) 100 % affects your thesis. You may have internalized the basic conceits of the mechanics such that "you don't care." But make no mistake about it, it matters. Then we just get back to "stuff that you can tolerate (because you've internalized it) and stuff that you cannot tolerate."