Can someoone explain the "Daily Hate" for me?

[DEFCON 1]

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

I would suggest it's pure storytelling nonsense.

This is fantasy. Not real life. And in fantasy, characters are able to make that "one big push". Whether it's in a roleplaying game, a novel, a movie or whatever. The hero makes the big shot, grabs the edge of the cliff, successfully throws his rapier in the air and does a series of flips before catching it again as it comes down... etc. etc. etc.

These things happen because they're cool and makes for fun additions to drama. Having mechanics that allow for this is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

[keterys]

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 don't make sense.

I dunno about you, but I can mostly do things that require a certain amount of muscle / concentration almost all day (I will eventually get fatigued).

There are some things, though, that I can only do very briefly, and I won't want to do them again afterwards.

For example, I can walk almost forever. I like walking miles at a time. I can only sprint in short intervals, however, with big gaps in between. I can go right back to walking right after sprinting, though.

Similarly, I can lift say a 20 pound weight in my arms for many many many reps of varying kinds. But the other day when I had to lift a 120 lb exercise machine up the stairs, there was no way I could have done so again without a rest. But I see no reason I couldn't have gone right back to the 20-lb weights. That's just my comfort area.

Now, 4e had potential problems in that you could do one type of encounter power then another different encounter power. I suspect it would have gotten more buy-in from folks who think like you if martial characters had gotten, say, the ability to do 2-3 encounter powers, and then they could decide which ones to use at any point, rather than being "too tired" to do one, but okay to use another.

Then again, 4e powers were more about narrative control of the moment. It's not that you're too tired to knock someone prone - the moment's just passed. You exploited it.

 

[Underman]

Buying potions and scrolls and wands, or spending money to buy components to craft potions and scroll wands, is already a possible mini-game. An artificer class or theme could be a way of expanding that concept. I just don't want to see it applied to the general wizard class. The usual wizard archetype is not a gold looter. The most successful wizards will be the ones with the most money, ugh, capitalism run amok.

 

[steeldragons]

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.

Oh for goodness sake, avin.

I think for anyone who knows me 'round ENworld, it can safely be said I am, by no stretch a "gamist" or concerned with "gamism". However, this is, after all, a GAME and I do not require stringent "real world reality" in my 'fantasy world game."

THAT said, someone already used the example of an Olympic swimmer most handily. If they win a race and/or break a world record, it is HIGHLy unlikely they can climb out of the pool, jump right back in and automatically win a race or break a world record a second time in five minutes or less. But I bet you anything they could still swim faster than you or I, and/or keep doing laps at a "normal pace" for some time.

Or, for a purely physical strength example, someone who does that...what's it called?...when you just stand and lift ungodly amounts of weight on a barbell...Doing that and then doing it again right after? Probably not or not too many times...but could they go over to a weight machine or bench press and keep lifting/pressing lesser amounts of weight (which would undoubtedly still put me to shame) like it was nothing? I bet they could.

So there's two "real world" examples for you.

The explanation that a trained fighter could swing his sword whenever he had to throughout a "day" (i.e. the waking active period between when he sleeps/rests and gets to sleep/rest again) and a few times a day push himself beyond what he can normally do and/or finds (or causes) an opening/edge in a particular battle to cause more damage (or knock them down or whatever) is really pretty basic, believable and makes sense in the context of a heroic fantasy tale. My "verisimilitude"/immersion/whatever you want to call it is not going to be broken by this.

And in closing...HALFLINGS! ;P lol.
--SD

 

[Neonchameleon]

When you have pre-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.

You mean all wizard and cleric spells in pre-4e D&D made D&D into video games? Ever since 1974? Go play DDO then - there's nothing for you in any edition of D&D.

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.

Or it's an adventure problem. You literally can't run something that resembles The Lord of The Rings on a daily recharge cycle. It's quite obvious reading LotR where the recharge points are (Bombadil's, Rivendell, Lorien being the obvious ones). And for me, especially with spell inflation it ruins sandbox hexcrawls - the wizard is at full strength almost every time you enter a new hex. Which means that whatever's in the hex must be big enough to face a caster-nova, which means that the casters are going to nova it. And then you spend about 8 hours simply crawling the rest of the hex and mapping it (as you are supposed to).

The stories that work are therefore sharply and unnecessarily limited.

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"?

Yup. This. I want the recharge setting to be meaningful to the characters or the story (or both). Recharging a hexcrawl back in town or a dungeoncrawl only outside the dungeon. Recharging a travelling AP at waypoints. These all make for much more interesting player decisions and meaningful resource management without having to either have impatient villains every time, or a lot of rolls on the wandering monster table.

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

There isn't. The best I can come up with is a dial. I've indicated one of them above (extended rest: One Night/Quest Waypoint/Long Weekend somewhere safe (where the cleric has a temple and the wizard a lab or library)) but a second one's needed as some people hate fighter daily powers.

 

[Underman]

THAT said, someone already used the example of an Olympic swimmer most handily. If they win a race and/or break a world record, it is HIGHLy unlikely they can climb out of the pool, jump right back in and automatically win a race or break a world record a second time in five minutes or less.

A swimming race is not the equivalent of a single action round. In olympic javelin throwing, they have 3 attempts to throw a javelin. Same with the shot put. If they had the equivalent of action points, I bet the athletes could physically try again. I really don't think the olympic analogy helps all that much.

 

[Steely_Dan]

I think for 4th Ed they should have gone all the way and made Daily powers Encounter, and Encounter powers Recharge or something.

 

[Shadeydm]

I would rather Fighters had a robust suite of at will "powers" that could optionally be augmented perhaps with a dice pool like the CS dice already proposed or some sort of endurance/stamina point pool. I don't really care for artifical limits on sword swinging like once per encounter or once per day.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Daily powers in D&D are somewhat analogous to democracy--the worst form of government except for all the others one ever tried. There's a certain "least common denominator" aspect of daily powers that works "well enough" across a wide variety of playstyles and preferences, but rarely sings in any of them. Most of the benefits are in ease and simplicity of handling, though, not simulation, gamist, or narrative concerns.

Whereas things like spell points or fatigue points or the like are more like the theoretical "philosopher king" or "benevolent dictator". Yep, you absolutely can get more done smoothly in certain cases under one of those, but it's not like it doesn't have its own major risks and drawbacks. It's merely that people get fed up with daily powers and see more benefit than drawback in those other methods. Try to make those other methods standard, and those drawbacks become a lot more important under some scenarios. That is, there is a "grass is always greener" effect going on here, that is compounded by the simple fact that if you work hard at one of the carefully chosen alternatives, the grass probably is greener--for you.

Besides that, there is the flat issue of the time period itself. Daily makes far more sense and has far less issues as the "big gun, long recharge" option when you are doing dungeon crawls in AD&D 1E with 10 minute "turns"--even when that adventure takes several days. Change the scope of the adventure to a city, or weeks long wilderness trek, or the like, and it simply doesn't hold up as well in that "big gun, long recharge" capacity.

Finally, supporting TwoSix (can't XP yet), there is nothing saying that the "long recharge" part can't be made to work independently of the rest of the system. For example, you could have Vancian slots that operate exactly as they do now as far as casting goes, but recharge on a curve. They recharge pretty fast in a given time frame/cost once, but rapidly escalate from there. A 1st level slot might take one night of rest, 5 minutes of preparation, and simple components costing 1 sp to recharge--if this is the first time you've done it since some longer time frame, costly ritual, big event, very long rest, time in your tower, etc. Then it goes up rapidly from there. Then modest and normal use of such abilities takes a steady but very minor cut of treasure found, while heavier use eats into treasure in a hurry--not so much that you'd avoid it in a pinch, but enough that you don't do it routinely just because.

That is, part of the problem with "dailies" in D&D is not merely that you can do them only zero to 1 times per day, but that you get them back so effortlessly. That doesn't fit the original "big gun, long recharge" purpose.

 

[Underman]

Then modest and normal use of such abilities takes a steady but very minor cut of treasure found, while heavier use eats into treasure in a hurry--not so much that you'd avoid it in a pinch, but enough that you don't do it routinely just because.

I never thought I'd hear a new serious dealbreakers until I heard this awful idea going around. There seems to be enough players who hate the idea of a fighter who is reliant on magic weapons and armor to be effective; I am fairly confident that a wizard class that relies on gold to recharge spells will never see the light of day. Keep it to an artificer class or scroll crafting side mini-game please.