D&D General Gaining spell slots (and other resources) during the fight

[loverdrive]

So.

In card games, there's this Aggro vs Control contrast. It is omnipresent: even between two most aggressive monored decks, one of them is gonna be faster, and even if they are equal, one of them is gonna have first turn advantage. In basic terms, one side wants to drag the fight out, while the other wants to end it as fast as possible. Similar dichotomies can be observed all over the gaming landscape: Rushdown vs Zoning in fighting games Rush vs Economy in RTS etc, etc

But not in D&D (and most RPGs? I don't really know any counter-examples), because in D&D, there's nothing to be gained by proloning an encounter, five rounds into the future you are going to have less resources, not more — this means that the only thing you can possibly hope for is depleting enemy HP faster than they deplete yours.

Your strategy, both at individual player level and part level is always the same, with very few minor variations.

But what if instead (or in addition to) waking up with spell slots and superiority dice and whatnot, you had to generate them during the encounter?

Benefits, I think, are numerous;

1. More texture to fights: an enraged troll that is dangerous early forces the players on the defensive, while a powerful lich makes them act and act fast.
2. Makes healing much more impactful: currently, in-combat healing is kind of whatever outside of restoring downed characters to 1HP—removing threats is almost always much more worthwhile, but if to win players need to just survive a few rounds until the enemy runs out of gas...
3. Adds another way to give classes unique identities: a Sorcerer can be an aggro spellcaster, while Wizard can be all about stalling until she can cast a powerful fight-ending spell, Warlock can screw with enemy resources, etc

 

[jmartkdr2]

Exalted 3e does something similar: you can attack to gain initiative, or you can spend initiative to do damage (after hitting with an attack) - so you want to build up to the big hit rather than start with your best attacks.

Also, gather power for certain spells is an action. Of course, these spells aremore powerful to compensate.

13th Age gets a similar result through a different method: most daily powers are expended before the attack roll, so you lose the resource on a miss. You also get a +1 to hit after each round (to a max of +6, this is called the Escalation Die). This means you can use your best attack on turn 1, but probably want to wait until the Escalation Die gets up to a decent number to lower the risk of "wasting" the resource.

Anyways this is a really cool idea and I would love to see some houserules exploring it.

 

[Stormonu]

Chronicles of Ramlar uses something called momentum. You start with access to basic attacks and as the PCs gather more and more successes, it builds points to let you do more complex actions - including allowing spellcasters to throw bigger spells. It's a group effort, so the better the group is doing, the more the group has to drawn on big, fancy abilities. Players can either slowly use up their momentum as it is accumulated to improve their chance of scoring a hit or dealing slightly more damage, or save up for one truly epic action several rounds into the action.

It's also a "push your luck" system - you only gain momentum while the party is succeeding, and if there is a failure you can lose some or all of the collected momentum before it's spent.