[edition neutral] No more dailies?

[Votan]

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.

Balancing things based on actions (economy of actions) is a really nice way of thinking about power levels (and makes the issues with monsters intended to challenge a party by themselves a lot more clear as a design goal). I agree that casters and non-casters are not balanced, as is, but I am concerned that the 15 minute rest period will accentuate these differences rather than minimize them.

In AD&D the trick was to make memorizing spells very lengthy and to make sure that there were no "risk free" ways to implement the 15 minute adventuring day (teleport being the modern example).

I suspect that focusing on these elements might be more productive . . .

 

[I'm A Banana]

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.

FFZ's limits cross encounter boundaries -- they're things you're expected to use against big boss monsters, but not in normal combats.

What I like about a system like that is that it parallels the narrative sway of HP. As your HP get lower, your Crisis Level gets higher, and then you get to unleash a tremendous up-ending maneuver.

You could "get at" such a thing in 4e by having there be requirements for daily or encounter powers. That might be similar to an Iron Heroes style "token" system, but you could do it with less accounting, too. Maybe you can't use an encounter power until after your second wind, and you can't use a daily power while you still have Healing Surges left. The ability to use your big nova powers is triggered by how close to the end of your resources you are.

This would mess with a few powers (daily powers that last the "entire encounter" are less useful if you can't use them at the beginning of the encounter), but it would help out the dramatic tension, which IMO, trumps most things.

 

[Dausuul]

Something I've been thinking about - the opposite of the direction most people seem to be going, take the "per day" stuff and make the refresh time longer. Instead of refreshing after a night's sleep, make it so that stuff only refreshes when you have a chance to rest up for a few days in a safe and friendly environment. Dungeons and wilderness obviously do not qualify, and if you try the "go into the dungeon, kill some monsters, go back to town and rest up, go back in" trick, you can expect the dungeon denizens to have rested up too... and they might even have followed you home.

Not only does this reduce the likelihood of the 15-minute adventuring day, it also makes it easier as DM to add an "endurance test" element to scenarios where the PCs would otherwise have plenty of time to rest up between fights - e.g., wilderness journeys.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Hmmm....So maybe it'd be best to go in two separate directions...

(and I remember Kamikaze's excellent post/thread when I write this)

1. Design for the "encounter"...and drop dailies.

2. Design for the "dungeon"...and keep long term resource management.



Thoughts?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

IME, the 15 min adventuring day never happens, it's only something I hear about on the internet.

It's happened to me, particularly with classes of weird make-ups who don't have the ability to load-balance properly.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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?

Given that it's a D&D adventure, and that most 15th level adventures aren't based on Jane Austen novels or comedies of manners, I'd say it's entirely likely they're going to fight multiple battles in a day.

Unless they're peeking at the adventure ahead of time, and know what the toughest encounters are, it's a judgment call on their part and sometimes, they'll shoot their wad early and be out of their dailies for the rest of the adventure. And it's a perfectly logical response to say "well, now we're at significantly lower strength and there's still a whole lot more crap -- some of it probably as tough or tougher than what we just faced -- ahead. Let's recharge."

Relying on ecological constraints is a losing proposition for game balance.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

I've never been to Tibet, but I'd never declare that it doesn't exist as a result, or that people who claim to have been there are making stuff up.

Your experience != all of reality

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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.

Another vote for this answer. Haven't seen that happen in 33 years of gaming, covering 3 states, about 10 game groups, and dozens of systems.

The 15 minute adventuring day is a playstyle issue, not a system issue.

 

[Nifft]

Relying on ecological constraints is a losing proposition for game balance.

Yep yep yep. Especially when you start going extraplanar.

The 15 minute adventuring day is a playstyle issue, not a system issue.

System X disproportionately rewards playstyle Y.

This is the fault of playstyle Y?

Cheers, -- N

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Another vote for this answer. Haven't seen that happen in 33 years of gaming, covering 3 states, about 10 game groups, and dozens of systems.

The 15 minute adventuring day is a playstyle issue, not a system issue.

I'm not sure this makes sense.

The only way to not use all your resources up "too early" is to cheat and know the adventure in advance.

Assuming your players (or the DM) aren't cheating, then sometimes they'll use up their resources too early.

The most logical thing to do is to have maximum resources available for the toughest encounters -- which are typically at the end of the adventure.

So the most logical thing to do is to stop and rest when it turns out the players have guessed wrong and the worst is to come.

Now, this is a "playstyle issue" in the sense that the players are deciding to play as smart as they're able to, instead of soldiering on. (Obviously, there are ways to goad them into soldier on -- time limits, races against other parties, etc. -- but there's a limit to how many times you can do this without it getting very dull.)

When "smart play" leads to this problem, it's not a "playstyle issue," it's a system design issue. Especially since the alternative amounts to "come on, guys: Go ahead and probably lose. That way just feels more 'pure.'"