Reynard
aka Ian Eller
That would be a weird way to spell "Earthdawn."Do the best fantasy RPG games need to start with a "D" ?
That would be a weird way to spell "Earthdawn."Do the best fantasy RPG games need to start with a "D" ?
Dawnearth. Uh...DeartheawnThat would be a weird way to spell "Earthdawn."
For me, resource attrition is a large part of play; and IMO the best way to achieve this is to make the resources somewhat harder to recover than 5e has them.
A single overnight rest, for example, should only get you back a small-ish portion of your hit points, not all of them. It should get you back all your spells but they should be limited in number (i.e. no at-wills), forcing you to either ration them or - with whatever consequences it might entail - spend 23+ hours out of every 24 resting.
It doesn't have to be disciplined. Believe me, disciplined play at my table does not work.That said, sure there'll be times when they miss some treasure. But not-so-gently encouraging them into a disciplined para-military playstyle* isn't the answer - not for me, anyway; it's probably my least-favourite way to play the game.
* - this seems to be where you're going here; if I'm wrong on this, apologies - I've misread you again.![]()
No, sorry that doesn't seem like a a game that I'd like to play.I prefer my mages to not be powered by capitalism.I mean, absolutely, what I'm proposing is about making recovery much more expensive than it is in a normal D&D game. The number one thing that needs to be tossed, what really is the core problem with D&D-style attrition, is the idea that sleeping it off restores all your magic.
At its core, magic should be about the transformation of acquirable resources into desired effects. Making healing potions requires reagents. A wand of fireballs costs reagents. Deific power requires sacrifices and tithes.
The amount of innate magic that caster character has, that bubbles up in them from some internal mana generator, and that regenerates like health, should be relatively small. No character should be recharging multiple 5th level spell slots in effect every single day. The point of a caster character should be to take the earned resources from adventuring them and converting them into the effects the party needs.
It doesn't have to be disciplined. Believe me, disciplined play at my table does not work.
It's simply this. A mage doesn't have 1 fireball a day. Instead, the mage used several hundred gp of their last haul to make a wand with 5 charges of fireball. If they choose to trivialize the first five encounters they face with 5 fireballs, that's great, but they probably haven't earned enough money back to rebuild that wand. Now they're going to walk into the rest of the dungeon without the backup of a fireball. Resting 24 hours won't change that. If they want fireball, they have to earn enough money to pay for it.
And if you don't want to pay money for your special powers, be a fighter! Of course, see how long you last without fireballs, or haste spells or stoneskins or, you know, anyone to cure you.
This is my core argument. Everything that people complain about in terms of encounters per day, 5 minute work days, class balance between casters and noncasters, between short rest and long rest characters in 5e, etc., all derives from the fact that recharging abilities is cost-free. When the core gameplay becomes "spend resources to adventure to acquire more resources", the entire game engine suddenly locks into place, AND the verisimilitude of the world increases, as a bonus.
I'd probably include the dimension of having played 5e at all, so that you would have "lapsed" 5e players (i.e. people who have run or played 5e in the past, but are currently not running 5e or a variant). But that might complicate things a bit.Realizing this is beyond the scope of a simple yes/no poll, but I legitimately wonder how answers would break down if you controlled for the following variables:
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(Dungeons & Dragons)
Rulebook featuring "high magic" options, including a host of new spells.