Let's Talk About Character Resources To Power Abilities

[Reynard]

NOTE: this threads is yet another in my "series" to get me thinking about a specific aspect of TTRPG design, as I try and build a conceptual foundation for my own RPG.

As it pertains to the subject, the resources I am talking about here are things like spell slots, power points, Hope (not as a metacurrency but as fuel for abilities), etc... I am not talking about torches, arrows, or hit points, but things like "stamina" that work like hit points but also power abilities might qualify.

Many TTRPGs have some resource or collection of resources that the player uses to power their characters abilities. This can be as general as END from Hero system, or as specific as the long list of class based "points" in Draw Steel!

How do you fee about the inclusion of these sort of resources in TTRPGs? Are there alternatives that you prefer (time based cooldowns, for example)? Or do you prefer systems that don't include them at all (if you can do it, you can do it -- many modern supers games work this way)? Is there a middle ground or "why not both?" system you prefer?

What RPGs do these kinds of resources well, and which ones do it poorly? What RPGs manage to let PCs have cool powers without forcing players to count beans?

As usual, thank you for your participation and insights.

 

[Bill Zebub]

This thread may make more sense for what I posted in the metacurrency thread:

As I've said many times, I don't like the underlying design premise of so many RPGs, which is that 'smart game play' is about knowing when to spend your metacurrency currencies, and when to save it for a more important event (often a battle). (Also, "3x/day" kinds of abilities count as metacurrency currencies, even if no metacurrency is named.)

So two design constraints that appeal to me:

• Limit metacurrency currency to "meta" applications. Meaning, don't use it to fuel standard abilities such as spells, instead reserve it for narrative intrusion, where the player is interceding on behalf of their character.
• Otherwise try to design abilities around risk or trade-offs (Barbarian Reckless Attack) or with situational requirements (Rogue Sneak Attack).
• When metacurrency isspent, it should be applied after the roll, not used as a modifier to the roll, for a bunch of reasons:
  • People tend to hoard scarce resources, so many players hope a roll will succeed without spending their resource, and eventually end up forgetting they even have it.
  • If they do spend it it's often wasted, either because the roll would have succeeded anyway, or because the initial roll was so bad the modifier couldn't save it. Which is always a /sadtrombone moment.
  • When it's spent after the roll it is more likely to turn a failure into a success, which is both more reliably dramatic, and which means less metacurrency can achieve the same overall benefit.* And that means it can be scarcer and thus feel more special/precious.

*Does that make sense? A metacurrency currency that turns a success into a failure 100% of the time, instead of 33% of the time, means that players only need 1/3 as much of the currency.

 

[Reynard]

This thread may make more sense for what I posted in the metacurrency thread:

Yeah, I wanted to distinguish since it can get a little fuzzy with things like hope. here I am talking about power points and spell slots and such.

 

[TwoSix]

Preferences aside, whether or not managing finite resources "matters" is a pretty fundamental distinction between different kinds of RPGs.

If they don't, the game is going to function primarily as a prompt engine with randomizers for generating narratives. The more resources the game wants you to track, and the more the lack of resources puts the characters at actual risk, then the more game looks like a dungeon crawl or tactical engine, where the goal is achieving a task before the resources run out.

The weakest model, to me, is a game where the players track lots of resources, but the game handwaves whether or not their depletion actually matters to some kind of win-loss metric. (5e is like this, and is my main problem with the game engine.)

 

[Scribe]

I can do without this kind of overhead these days, and agree that how 5/5.5 has gone is really not it.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Preferences aside, whether or not managing finite resources "matters" is a pretty fundamental distinction between different kinds of RPGs.

If they don't, the game is going to function primarily as a prompt engine with randomizers for generating narratives. The more resources the game wants you to track, and the more the lack of resources puts the characters at actual risk, then the more game looks like a dungeon crawl or tactical engine, where the goal is achieving a task before the resources run out.

I think I understand what you mean by "a prompt engine...for generating narratives" but I don't understand why it follows from not managing resources. Could you elaborate on that?

I get why if we assume zero resources to track (even no HP) then it prevents the kind of attrition-based dungeon crawl that is pretty common. But why must that necessarily turn into a prompt engine for generating narratives?

 

[Cadence]

Number of things per day has been part of D&D for a long time, so I guess I'm used to that. I want to say I originally thought I would dislike short rest mechanics, but if so, they don't bother me now. But now I'm even fine with Barbarians getting another daily rage recovery when they short rest.

The one I hate is the 13th age recovery/recharge where its based on number of encounters instead of something like a day or a rest.

 

[TwoSix]

I think I understand what you mean by "a prompt engine...for generating narratives" but I don't understand why it follows from not managing resources. Could you elaborate on that?

I get why if we assume zero resources to track (even no HP) then it prevents the kind of attrition-based dungeon crawl that is pretty common. But why must that necessarily turn into a prompt engine for generating narratives?

What else would you call it, if the game doesn't have any resources that can be consumed? The gameplay is more than likely going to have some sort of chance-based resolution method (dice, cards, etc.), which provides a success or failure based on the narrative input, and resolves into a curated narrative output.

Whatever character-based assignments the games gives you (skills, backgrounds, attributes, features, etc.) are going to feed into the randomizer and drive the next narration. That's the gameplay.

 

[JohnSnow]

I like short rest mechanics, and only like daily abilities if they are adequately explained by the virtue of a good night's sleep.

I like roll to activate abilities, because I prefer things that don't always succeed but am totally okay with something like stamina or spell points. I think I kinda like the system where you have base abilities that you can use even when you're "wiped out," but can be juiced with some kind of resource pool. But, and this is key, there shouldn't be traps in how the resource gets used.

I'm somewhat inclined to say that it should just all be "stamina," and have everything run off that. Great magic? Stamina. Particularly stressful stunt? Stamina. That also neatly solves (to my mind) the "magic warrior" problem: since they only have so much resources to use, it would more or less automatically keep them from being overpowered. It's kinda how magic works in The Dresden Files.

YMMV.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

Another question near and dear to my developer heart.

I think Cypher does a neat thing here by making it a loot-crate game. Where you have slots, you can overflow the slots at a risk. And instead of refreshing with same spells you adventure to get more spells to replace the ones you used, which may end up being same or totally different. I thin Numenera does the loot play better than any rpg ever made. it feeeeeel like I want to go explore to crack open chests to get more cyphers... you just need a GM who understands that and puts the loot there, can't run it like D&D and starve players of goodies...

In my implementation of magic in my BRP game, we have mana points BUT they are only an expression of extra will, so each spell does not require their use at all. but If you want to affect more targets, more damage or do whatever 'more' then you can spend mana to do so. That is a big hit with players as it requires little to no bean counting but does offer a way to "push" in case that's your jam.

In my Final Fantasy 8 game, based on Cypher, we went with the FF8 way, so you Draw spells off monsters, and that was very fun! You can go farm monsters for spells or you can risk new encounters for new spells.

Did play Draw Steel, it was fine. Fun game that like a boardgame, refresh each round. Can save, can spend, can level to get more. is fine. It feels more "boardgame" than RPG in the way they implemented it, but hey, in a game mostly about fighting monsters , that's cool. I don't want that in roleplaying, but it was fun for what it was.

Which is kinda the thing... the more knobs and buttons and levers and counters you have the less we are roleplaying and the more we are boardgaming. So I enjoy games like Cypher that blend this kinda stuff into roleplay more.