On the Third Edition design team, we were tasked with rationalizing the game system, but there were some big elements of the system that we didn’t question. We inherited a system in which spellcasters get better in three ways at a time as they level up; they get more spells per day, higher-level spells, and more damage with spells of a given level. In retrospect, that problem is easy to see, and we didn’t fix it. We also inherited a system that balanced powerful class features, notably spells, by making them usable once per day. The problems with that system are less obvious, and we didn’t fix this system, either. But the 3E system laid bare its own inner workings, and so soon enough designers saw that there were issues with this system, and over the years several of us designers have tried to address it one way or another.
In classic dungeon crawling, the default best strategy is to take each room one at a time and regain your hit points and spells after each one. That’s no fun, so people usually don’t play that way. For 3E, we spelled out that the game was balanced for four average battles between heal-ups, but actual practice varied. Whatever per-day powers are balanced at one rate of fights per day are necessarily unbalanced at faster or slower rates. Classes with lots of per-day power are too strong when there are one or two fights per day and too weak when there are five or more. Individual Dungeon Masters might be able to schedule the action in such a way that they maintain the sort of balance they’re looking for. If that works, it represents the DM’s efforts and not anything we on the design team could accomplish through system design. Many Dungeon Masters might find the per-day rules convenient precisely because they allow the DM to modulate the threat level up and down. DMs rule on how many encounters the party has in a day and whether they can suspend their mission long enough to reset their spells and other per-day powers. A dynamic I’ve seen over and over again, however, is that players with spellcasting characters are adept at talking the DM into letting the party rest. When the spellcaster is out of spells, they need a night’s rest a lot more than the other characters in the party need to press on. When a mission goes south and the encounters burn up more per-day resources than the DM figured they would, the party often simply camps out for the night and sets out the next day with spells reset to full.
Limiting spells by day also means that a spellcaster’s power level is different when they’re in a preliminary skirmish compared to when they’re in a climactic showdown. When it’s a high-priority battle or when the player knows that there’s a long rest afterwards, the spellcaster can use their best spells without worrying about holding back. This effect is something of a game-wrecker when the party arranges to jump the big bad guy after prepping up to full. With a well-placed teleport, the party’s spellcasters can unload all their best “per-day” spells for the one battle that matters that day (an “alpha strike”). Classes with at-will powers can’t “unload” the way spellcasters can.
The per-day system also changes up balance for NPCs. Generally, when a party attacks an NPC boss of some sort, that NPC is in a fight for their life, and they cut loose with every per-day power they can manage. Fighter NPCs aren’t particularly dangerous because they have no such resources to unleash. In my campaign, I found the psionicist NPC the most dangerous because they could use the point system to cast at full capacity every round. As player-characters, psionicists have all the balance problems of the wizard and then some.
Seeing the issues with per-day powers, the designers started experimenting with per-encounter powers in supplemental material. The psychic warrior, for example, had a “focus” that they could expend once in the battle in order to have a special effect. At that point, designers were still in simulation mode, and encounters that were “per-encounter” by fiat seemed too artificial. The psychic warrior had a believable, in-world reason for their “per-encounter” abilities. Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords (2006) introduced special, limited-use powers for martial classes. By 4E, the designers fully embraced per-encounter powers.
Fourth edition established balance among the classes by giving all of them per-day and per-encounter powers. That’s one way to solve the balance issue. 4E is so well-balanced that it’s hard to make bad choices in character design. This approach had the unfortunate effect of making the classes all feel sort of the same.
With 13th Age, Rob Heinsoo and I took a different approach. We turned 3E’s four-fights guideline into a hard rule. You get your spells and hit points back not just by resting but only if you have engaged in a minimum amount of fighting. After your fourth fight (or after four fights’ worth of fighting), the party gets to reset to full. Alternatively, the party can admit defeat and get a heal-up without “earning” it, but admitting defeat entails a “campaign loss,” as determined by the GM. This system creates a lovely rhythm, with characters feeling flush and confident in the first fight, feeling hard pressed in the last fight, and then feeling good again when they heal up. I play a cleric in a 13th Age campaign, and the last fight before a heal-up is tough going. The last fight is so tough that we player all know that the decisions and rolls we made in the earlier fights all mattered in terms of what we have left for the last one.
In classic dungeon crawling, the default best strategy is to take each room one at a time and regain your hit points and spells after each one. That’s no fun, so people usually don’t play that way. For 3E, we spelled out that the game was balanced for four average battles between heal-ups, but actual practice varied. Whatever per-day powers are balanced at one rate of fights per day are necessarily unbalanced at faster or slower rates. Classes with lots of per-day power are too strong when there are one or two fights per day and too weak when there are five or more. Individual Dungeon Masters might be able to schedule the action in such a way that they maintain the sort of balance they’re looking for. If that works, it represents the DM’s efforts and not anything we on the design team could accomplish through system design. Many Dungeon Masters might find the per-day rules convenient precisely because they allow the DM to modulate the threat level up and down. DMs rule on how many encounters the party has in a day and whether they can suspend their mission long enough to reset their spells and other per-day powers. A dynamic I’ve seen over and over again, however, is that players with spellcasting characters are adept at talking the DM into letting the party rest. When the spellcaster is out of spells, they need a night’s rest a lot more than the other characters in the party need to press on. When a mission goes south and the encounters burn up more per-day resources than the DM figured they would, the party often simply camps out for the night and sets out the next day with spells reset to full.
Limiting spells by day also means that a spellcaster’s power level is different when they’re in a preliminary skirmish compared to when they’re in a climactic showdown. When it’s a high-priority battle or when the player knows that there’s a long rest afterwards, the spellcaster can use their best spells without worrying about holding back. This effect is something of a game-wrecker when the party arranges to jump the big bad guy after prepping up to full. With a well-placed teleport, the party’s spellcasters can unload all their best “per-day” spells for the one battle that matters that day (an “alpha strike”). Classes with at-will powers can’t “unload” the way spellcasters can.
The per-day system also changes up balance for NPCs. Generally, when a party attacks an NPC boss of some sort, that NPC is in a fight for their life, and they cut loose with every per-day power they can manage. Fighter NPCs aren’t particularly dangerous because they have no such resources to unleash. In my campaign, I found the psionicist NPC the most dangerous because they could use the point system to cast at full capacity every round. As player-characters, psionicists have all the balance problems of the wizard and then some.
Seeing the issues with per-day powers, the designers started experimenting with per-encounter powers in supplemental material. The psychic warrior, for example, had a “focus” that they could expend once in the battle in order to have a special effect. At that point, designers were still in simulation mode, and encounters that were “per-encounter” by fiat seemed too artificial. The psychic warrior had a believable, in-world reason for their “per-encounter” abilities. Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords (2006) introduced special, limited-use powers for martial classes. By 4E, the designers fully embraced per-encounter powers.
Fourth edition established balance among the classes by giving all of them per-day and per-encounter powers. That’s one way to solve the balance issue. 4E is so well-balanced that it’s hard to make bad choices in character design. This approach had the unfortunate effect of making the classes all feel sort of the same.
With 13th Age, Rob Heinsoo and I took a different approach. We turned 3E’s four-fights guideline into a hard rule. You get your spells and hit points back not just by resting but only if you have engaged in a minimum amount of fighting. After your fourth fight (or after four fights’ worth of fighting), the party gets to reset to full. Alternatively, the party can admit defeat and get a heal-up without “earning” it, but admitting defeat entails a “campaign loss,” as determined by the GM. This system creates a lovely rhythm, with characters feeling flush and confident in the first fight, feeling hard pressed in the last fight, and then feeling good again when they heal up. I play a cleric in a 13th Age campaign, and the last fight before a heal-up is tough going. The last fight is so tough that we player all know that the decisions and rolls we made in the earlier fights all mattered in terms of what we have left for the last one.
. Ideally, I should strive for designing pre-BBEG encounters (meaning those immediately preceding it i.e. occurring on the same day) in such a way that they can be dealt with only using at-will or encounter-based powers, and only cause a few scratches at the PCs, and make a dent in their daily resources only if they make some tactical mistake or when the dice rolls are on a bad day.
