Let's Talk About Character Resources To Power Abilities

[Bill Zebub]

What I mean with this is that something like a cooldown is also a kind of ressource, (which one can of course prefer!).

I've long thought that random cooldowns (e.g. you roll a die at the beginning of your turn to see if you can use an ability again) would be fun in terms of gameplay....except for keeping track of which abilities are on cooldown, and all the extra dice rolling. Advancement could be reducing the cooldown (smaller die, or wider range on the same die).

If somebody could think of a simple & elegant way to manage cooldowns...supporting each character potentially having multiple cooldowns with different odds...I'd be all over it.

 

[Tigris]

I've long thought that random cooldowns (e.g. you roll a die at the beginning of your turn to see if you can use an ability again) would be fun in terms of gameplay....except for keeping track of which abilities are on cooldown, and all the extra dice rolling. Advancement could be reducing the cooldown (smaller die, or wider range on the same die).

If somebody could think of a simple & elegant way to manage cooldowns...supporting each character potentially having multiple cooldowns with different odds...I'd be all over it.

Well D&D 4E literally had this ability for monsters. Roll dice on X you get ability again.


Well the simple solution for cooldowns is to not have odds, but fixed cooldowns and a track. Several cardgames use this mechanic. You just have a time track, at the end of your turn / the next players turn, you move all your abilities on cooldown down to the left on the time track. (Abilities are on cards for easy tracking).


Abilities with cooldowns have a number, when used you put them on that number on the track. And once it comes of the track, you can use it again. Advancement could reduce the numbers.


In general in physical play, the easiest thing to track abilities is cards, thats why boardgames use that and why D&D 4E used cards.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Well D&D 4E literally had this ability for monsters. Roll dice on X you get ability again.

Yeah it has it in 5e, too. But I meant for PCs.

Well the simple solution for cooldowns is to not have odds, but fixed cooldowns and a track. Several cardgames use this mechanic. You just have a time track, at the end of your turn / the next players turn, you move all your abilities on cooldown down to the left on the time track. (Abilities are on cards for easy tracking).

Abilities with cooldowns have a number, when used you put them on that number on the track. And once it comes of the track, you can use it again. Advancement could reduce the numbers.


In general in physical play, the easiest thing to track abilities is cards, thats why boardgames use that and why D&D 4E used cards.

Ok, but....c'mon....maybe by one metric that is indeed "easy" but it's also undeniably a whole new dimension added to a kind of game that, let's face it, is confusing enough already for a lot of players. Never mind finding table space with all the books and dice and character sheets and battlemats and minis. What are the odds the cards are going to get messed up? (Especially for that ONE PLAYER, and every single turn....)

EDIT: On the other hand....

If it isn't ALL abilities, but just a couple special abilities per player, then you could have a card for each such ability, with the ability description on one side and the die roll needed on the other. For example, assuming it's always a D6, it could just be "6" or "5+" When you use the ability you flip the card face down, odds up. At the beginning of your turn, you roll once for each card facing down, and flip over the ones where you succeed.

I don't think I would try to fold that into D&D, but I could see a new game that was designed from the ground up with that premise in place. (Hmmm....maybe for the new Sci Fi game I've been designing. Which might also morph into "Weird West + Pirates"...)

 

[Tigris]

Yeah it has it in 5e, too. But I meant for PCs.



Ok, but....c'mon....maybe by one metric that is indeed "easy" but it's also undeniably a whole new dimension added to a game that, let's face it, is confusing enough already for a lot of players. Never mind finding table space with all the books and dice and character sheets and battlemats and minis. What are the odds the cards are going to get messed up? (Especially for that ONE PLAYER, and every single turn....)

Sorry people who cant handle cards in a game, are not people I ever want to play a game with. Thats like going to eat with people who are unable to keep their sauce in their plate.


Also you can literally put cards on or under the player sheet, if its made for this. And or replace parts of the player sheet with cards, because you dont need to have the abilities written on the player sheet if you have them on cards.


Cards make things also less confusing because they are so good for tracking things, thats why boardgames, the industry which is way bigger than RPGs and way more advanced in gamedesign, uses cards for complex games.
People play gloomhaven without problems, which is more complex than 5E in combat.


People get confused because RPGs use badly made player sheets where abilities are hard to find, sometimes not even spelled out (just spell name) and the games use clunky mechanics like spell slots instead of just cards.

 

[VHawkwinter]

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.

Sounds good. These are fun.

How do you fee about the inclusion of these sort of resources in TTRPGs?

I like them so long as they make sense from an in-character perspective.

Willpower as a cognitive strain / split focus tracker against dopamine reserves, for instance.

Or a Qi pool in a dantian.

Or spell slots if those slots are constructed metaphysical pockets in your body or soul in which you store prepared spells so you can release them on demand.

Or, something like Ancient Magus Bride could work, where his spells are crafted and stored in physical talisman on a chain which he breaks to use.

Or Shadowrun's general strain system where you roll to not accumulate strain and the odds of failure are based on your current capabilities and the power of the spell / ability you're activating.

Are there alternatives that you prefer

I also appreciate 'ability functions with a chance of real repercussions'. GURPS Powerups: Limitations has some of these, and the Rolemaster and Buffy miscast tables are kind-of like that. It also kind-of mirrors the thing you see in shonen anime like Bleach, where Ichigo powers up when he's losing, but it leaves him unconscious for days after or bed-bound for weeks, during which time he is dependent on his friends taking care of and saving him. But the Badstuff could be anything. A chance of debilitating injury, attracting attention chance of misfire, etc.

(time based cooldowns, for example)?

I don't normally care for cooldowns unless it's like a literal plasma cannon which needs to actually cool down before you fire it again. Or maybe a gun that needs to charge up before you can fire it.

But I like logical in world recharge conditions. Your phone needs to have the battery recharged, your lunar powers might require the light of the full moon to recharge, you might need to be in an appropriate environment to recharge your mana or qi or whatever. You could well need to take appropriate actings in game to charge them.

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?

I prefer that more powerful or game bending abilities be limited in some way, but lesser abilities can be at-will.

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?

Well, I am okay with tracking resources. If you want to avoid that, a single shared resource pool where you activate abilities with a chance of subdual damage / cumulative penalties like Shadowrun's is probably best, and you could combine that with big stuff having "chance of Bad stuff" like the Buffy miscast tables or the like as described above.

As usual, thank you for your participation and insights.

These threads are fun. Thanks for making them.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Sorry people who cant handle cards in a game, are not people I ever want to play a game with.

Ok, well, happy gaming. I guess.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I don't normally care for cooldowns unless it's like a literal plasma cannon which needs to actually cool down before you fire it again. Or maybe a gun that needs to charge up before you can fire it.

But I like logical in world recharge conditions. Your phone needs to have the battery recharged, your lunar powers might require the light of the full moon to recharge, you might need to be in an appropriate environment to recharge your mana or qi or whatever. You could well need to take appropriate actings in game to charge them.

Random cooldowns, as discussed above, could represent not ability but opportunity. E.g., a special melee attack. A 1/6 "cooldown" really means "there's about a 1/6 chance per turn that you see an opportunity to use it".

 

[VHawkwinter]

Random cooldowns, as discussed above, could represent not ability but opportunity. E.g., a special melee attack. A 1/6 "cooldown" really means "there's about a 1/6 chance per turn that you see an opportunity to use it".

Except that if it's a cooldowns once it has cooled down you can use it at any time against anyone.

I would be much more okay with something that randomly enables or disables abilities this turn against that opponent, but one that is keyed off of their defensive stats and your offensive stats rather than flat 1/6 odds would be preferable. I don't know the exact mechanic I would like there, and whether it's digital vs cards vs dice changes which mechanics are practical.

 

[Kannik]

In general, I'm fine with them, if well-implemented. But then, there are few game design elements I am against just on principle.

I want to give this many thumbs up both for its sentiment and because it well articulates (in a way I might not have myself been able to put my finger on it). Just about any mechanic has examples of where it was executed with great elegance and examples where it was poorly done. Similarly, there are examples of inclusion in games where it supports and emphasizes from the games' intent/genre/tone/etc, and those where the mechanic undermines the same.

So yeah, to that end I am totally fine with the concept "spendable resources to fuel abilities" if the sum of all its parts supports the game. To use Reynard's examples, END in HERO was classic and I enjoyed it (even if doing supers today HERO wouldn't be my prime inclination anymore). But the fueling resources in Draw Steel left me cold, perhaps because of their varied rates of accumulation that both felt arbitrary and that the difference didn't seem to affect the play or the narrative in a meaningful way.

The name escapes me at the moment, but there's an Anime-influenced RPG that tracks a couple of resources, one of which is needed to inflict stress/damage/whathave you on an opponent. Except when you begin a scene, you have none of that resource. You must instead generate it through other actions that don't directly "attack" the opponent but are more around the margins (could be social, might be throwing them off their game through verbal sparring, could be changing the environment, could be things like boxing them in or taking their stuff, or...). This works to create the genre conventions that characters in stories don't go in and take down someone in one shot; they have to work hard to get them into a position where they become vulnerable and/or open for the attack. Alpha striking is off the table. (Though now that I think about it, there might be some mechanism where some amount of that resource could be banked or be made available so that opening with an alpha strike is possible for those perfectly dramatic moments.)

 

[Bill Zebub]

Ok, so I keep thinking about "cards" and I could see an RPG in which cards replace the character sheet, instead of being in addition to a character sheet. So your hand of cards is your character sheet. Not exactly like M:tG because you lay all of your cards out on the table at once. So maybe it's more like Munchkin, but....more SERIOUS dammit!

So some cards, like your kin, are just core to your character. Others, like maybe some gear, you keep until you lose them. And some are abilities you have. Some of those abilities are the ones that, when you use them, you flip over, and on the back are the rules for when you can flip them face up again. Which could be the aforementioned "random cool down", or it could be "when combat is over", or really any other conditions.

I think I'd want it to be not a lot of cards....maybe a dozen or fifteen max...so they can be laid out in a few rows and columns without spreading out too far. And I wouldn't want to have separate cards for every item in inventory: maybe there are some different "backpack" cards to choose from, each with a different list of items.

Except that if it's a cooldowns once it has cooled down you can use it at any time against anyone.

Ok, sure, it's not a perfect simulation of random opportunity, but it still means that you don't always have it when you want it, without having to track "charges".

I would be much more okay with something that randomly enables or disables abilities this turn against that opponent, but one that is keyed off of their defensive stats and your offensive stats rather than flat 1/6 odds would be preferable. I don't know the exact mechanic I would like there, and whether it's digital vs cards vs dice changes which mechanics are practical.

I mean, that sounds awesome to me, too, but I also don't know how to track something like that unless it's a computer game.