[edition neutral] No more dailies?

[RangerWickett]

I'm in favor of getting rid of daily abilities, because I like for my adventures not to be constrained by the need to introduce X threats per day to be considered balanced. However, I prefer games with an option for long-term character risk and consequences (physical, not just plot- or social-based). Like, there ought to be a possibility to lose limbs, or have your weapon destroyed; it just should only occur rarely, and when dramatically appropriate.

In 4e, I'd like something akin to 'once per encounter you can second wind to get a surge worth of HP back,' and then make stuff like healing/inspiring/majestic word only work once per encounter per PC. As in, you can catch your second wind, and your buddy can yell at you to make you keep fighting, but that's all the healing you get (except in niche cases like regeneration and such).

I'd get rid of dailies, and instead implement various class- or power source-based options to ramp up to stronger powers. Basically 'Limit Breaks' a la Final Fantasy. Maybe each combat you start at 0 on your Limit Meter (rename to be more appropriate to D&D), and each round it increases by 1. Barbarians might get an additional 1 when they are first bloodied. Necromancers could get an additional 1 if they spend a minor action drawing mana from a recently dead foe. Etc. And when your meter reaches 4, you can Do Something Awesome. Afterward, your meter resets.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Ok, maybe I shouldn't have started my example list with the 15 minute adventuring day which is something of an urban myth in some groups and in others a reality.

Please don't focus merely on that.

I'll give some examples I've seen from posters about some potential pitfalls of dailies:

1. 3e. My group had to houserule the "sudden metamagic" abilities so that they couldn't raise the spell level higher than one the caster could naturally cast. (i.e. a lvl 5 wizard with sudden maximize could not use it on fireball, but a level 11 wizard could). Even then it's a free usage of turning a lower level spell into potentially another one of your highest levels spells in that day.

Players would save these feats for the BBEG and then waste him...leading to my either letting them waste him (i.e. not making changes) which they found unsatisfying, or making changes and making the final battle more difficult, which basically ensured that they save these dailies for the final nova effect. Both solutions were not how they wanted to play.


2. 4e. Combat grind. I've seen many posts about this. I wonder if a solution might be to have more encounter powers and more at wills. This could increase the tactical and diversity experience of many encounters, allowing for more than "encounter, encounter, at will at will at will at will at will at will at will at will....etc" which I've seen some post/complain about.



I agree with what some have said...that healing also needs to not be "daily" ideally. However, overall, I don't have a problem with things recharging on a daily basis (like 3e spellcaster powers)...I mainly have an issue with balance versus rarity of use (i.e. it's extra powerful, but players can only use it once per day). So, in such an example, where 3e has vancian casting, I'd not feel a need to get rid of clerical powers to heal, but I would perhaps want to get rid of a magic item that cast heal once per day and was low priced because "it was only once per day".

In 4e I think the healing surges per day does not really fit with the rest of the model of encounter powers and such...and is in fact a bigger factor in resting than whether or not players have used all of their dailies. I'd definitley agree with some of the suggestions about having healing surges (or amounts of healing?) come back on some recharge basis tied to encounters.

EDIT: Perhaps healing surges are per encounter, but of diminishing returns? The first use in an enounter could heal 1/2 of the character's hp, the second use 1/3 of their hp, the third 1/4, and no fourth use or beyond...but the next encounter this would all reset.

 

[Votan]

I agree, it's way overblown. I find it somewhat rare that a party would face two challenging combat encounters in the same day, and if they do, I don't have a problem with them being worn down after the first one.

The Trailblazer rule though, is worth mentioning. Basically, it takes every "per day" resource and makes it "per rest". A 15-minute rest heals hp, recovers spells, etc. For anyone who does have this problem that's an easy (and again edition-neutral) fix.

The Trailblazer option only works if going NOVA is not balanced by rariety; the D&D 3.5 psion would seem very powerful under such a scheme if it permitted the full recovery of power points. In a similar vein, allowing the most powerful spells to be used every encounter might increase the 3.5 gap between high level spellcasters and non-casters.

 

[TerraDave]

I am 99% sure they did drop dailies (or their equivelent) for a while in developing 4E and then put them back in.

The big issue I see with this is that its another step to making all fights equal, and reduces strategic, versus, tactical thinking. Daily (and longer term resources, like potions or charged magic items) let players rise to the challenge when they really need to, while avoiding overkill on lesser challenges. And by their very nature encourage thinking across challenges.

(the "wait for" power approach noted above is interesting, but might just encourage players to be defensive until their cool powers are ready to go).

If anything, I wish 4E was a little more like past versions of D&D, and put more emphasis on daily resources.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The Trailblazer option only works if going NOVA is not balanced by rariety; the D&D 3.5 psion would seem very powerful under such a scheme if it permitted the full recovery of power points. In a similar vein, allowing the most powerful spells to be used every encounter might increase the 3.5 gap between high level spellcasters and non-casters.

Given that the assumption is typically that each opponent begins battle with no damage and all his limited-use abilities available, one could argue this is actually fair: strength against strength.

It might make casters somewhat advantaged at high levels, but again, I find the chances of a 15th level character fighting two challenging battles in one day fairly slim. How many monsters that powerful are there in the world?

In any case, per day limitations are never going to balance casters with noncasters, so changing those limitations doesn't fundamentally change the balance of the game. The problem is that casters' spells are just too good and fighters don't get enough abilities (problems that various 3.5 derivative such as TB & PF have attempted to address). In TB, a fighter actually has extra minor actions available per round; becayse what you can do in a round is a much more important balancing factor than what you can do in a day.

 

[Aus_Snow]

IME, the 15 min adventuring day never happens, it's only something I hear about on the internet. So I see no reason to get rid of daily resources.

Indeed. If I could give you XP, I would've already.

It's all about play style, and so forth.

Much like the whole 'Wizards, Clerics, Druids' mantra. They never turned out to be on top IME. Or if they did, only so much as any other classes (and multiclass examples) being played might've.

Amazing how 'powerful' a Wizard really isn't, when they (gasp!) run out of spells. Shock, horror, blah. But you'd never believe that for a second, if you subscribed to interweb. . . wisdom. Funny how Clerics without significant spell slots remaining (again, gasp!) are never compared to Fighters in those 'discussions'.

 

[Gundark]

I would like to see the end of Dailies as well. I like how Warhammer FRPG 3rd does it with recharging powers. There are then effects which can prolong or shorten the recharge time. Something like this for this for D&D 4 (or even 3rd) would be cool. The 15 minute workday never really existed in my games. What I see instead is the same thing that would happen in 3rd ed. happen in 4th ed. That is the party holds on to their big powers for when they know that they are gonna need them (boss fight or just before they know that they are gonna take a big rest).

 

[Gundark]

If folks figured in the misses into their assessment of the Daily's value, the value drops precipitously, as does the need to horde it.

IME this seems to be cause for people to horde the power even more for the bigger payoff. Different strokes and all.

 

[TheNovaLord]

Ditto, on the 15 minute adventure day

in 27 years gaming i just cant recall any such incidents, though im sure there must have been a few

getting rid of dallies in 4e /adding more interesting at wills would be better

 

[the Jester]

I am currently working on a system that uses action points as a spendable resource that you gain and spend every round to do your tricky maneuvers. So instead of a power being daily, a power has an action point cost that you have to meet to use it.

Of course, there might be too much bookkeeping for this system to be viable; I'm eager to playtest it a little bit and get feedback on that. I'm thinking actually using physical tokens, like glass beads, might be a good way to handle this. We'll see...