Can someoone explain the "Daily Hate" for me?

[Underman]

In Enworld Vietnam, nobody wins. What's the next subtopic? How about how to eliminate or at least reduce dailies from the game with an alternative elegant mechanic (seems to be a popular idea here) so that everyone's happy. What's 5E's track record on that?

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Then why do you choose D&D of all things? D&D started out as a pure pawn stance hobby and there is no edition I would choose as positively supporting actor stance (many simply get in the way).

D&D is my secondary system - not my primary. And I have never had issues going into complete actor stance in D&D most of my life - I was doing it when I was 16 years old playing 1st ed. I have never found D&D to get in the way of that. Now things like Fate that have plot tickets really stop me from getting into character (which is why I only GM the Dresden Files RPG). But I like D&D, and most of the time it doesn't get in the way of what I do.

My primary system, for reference, is Hero.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's early, but the playtest includes both daily abilities (Vancian magic, Channel Divinity, Fighter's Surge) and non-daily abilities (fighter bonus damage, rogue sneak attacks, cantrips). The playtest seems dedicated to ensuring that the abilities are well-explained in terms of the world.

They've promised alternate spellcasting systems as well, and one assumes that one of those options is an "infinite spellcaster," (possibly via the Warlock or Sorcerer classes). Likely, they'll also include a way to perform "martial dailies," (possibly via the Monk class, who can use the "Out Of Ki" excuse, possibly via additional variety in the Fighter's Surge mechanic). Chances seem good to me that these subsystems won't just be locked into classes.

It's also easy to get rid of all of your daily abilities, if that's your problem.

I see a lot of possibilities.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Maybe not in the real world, but this is a fantasy world that we're talking about. I'm not going to talk about overtly magical things like dragons and fireballs. It's a world that has apparently non-magical creatures that shouldn't exist in the real world - things like giant insects, hill giants and purple worms. So why not apparently non-magical martial daily abilities, as well?

Yeah - and if there were a mechanical backed in character reason for dailies I'm fine with them. It explicitly calls out in the rules that the magic is something that flees from your mind. In world that is the fiction. I never saw anything like that for non magical dailies. If one were in the game as part of the game fiction, then I could deal with it - as long as it was internally consistent.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

The character has the Daily available: He sees that there could be an opportunity to use it and direct his allies.
Later that day, he no longer has that Daily available - he sees no opportunity for using that ability and does direct his allies to different choices according to the options he has now.

My problem with this kind of explanation - it isn't the character choosing the time of the attack, in world. He sees and opening and uses it - the character has no in game control of what that opening is.

A wizard has a choice to throw his fireball (in character) but the fighter has to wait for an opening (again in fiction). That seems unfair (in fiction) to the fighter, and it's why that particular explanation never worked for me.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

This isn't the Daily Hate thread. This is the "Can someone explain the "Daily Hate"?" thread. And apparently not.

I'll answer for myself:

I don't hate dailies as a concept, but some dailies break in character immersion and that is the primary purpose for which I game, so I dislike them.

 

[1of3]

So...why/what is it about have abilities of any kind limited to uses per day that gets everyone so annoyed or resistant if not outright "dealbreakery/I won't play if..."?

The limitation "per day" uses a measurement that is part of the fiction as a measurement in the rules. This kind of rule encourages certain structures in the narrative. For example with a certain number of daily uses, there must be a certain threat level during the day to challenge the character.

If you do not want to use that daily pacing, you have a problem. I guess that many players complaining about "per day" would be OK with "per story" / "per adventure" limitation.