Let's Talk About Character Resources To Power Abilities

[VHawkwinter]

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.

I have a few ideas kicking around but they have some kinks to work out.

You could make it easier by making it less individualised in the tracking.

Example: You have your Attack Bonus + 10. They have Attack Bonus + 10. You announce your target and you both roll +1d8-1d8. The amount higher than them that you are determines how how severe of options beyond basic attack they've left themselves open for. If that's enough filtering you're done. If it's not, you need a bit more.


It would be trivial if you're using a VTT, of course.

 

[MichaelSomething]

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.

Doesn't Daggerheart, the Critical Role TTRPG, operate (more or less) that way??

 

[Bill Zebub]

Doesn't Daggerheart, the Critical Role TTRPG, operate (more or less) that way??

No idea! Does it?

The only thing I know about Critical Role is the Vecna's Hand thing.

 

[Reynard]

Doesn't Daggerheart, the Critical Role TTRPG, operate (more or less) that way??

No idea! Does it?

The only thing I know about Critical Role is the Vecna's Hand thing.

Cards in Daggerheart just hold information that is just as easily placed on the character sheet. And there are plenty of character aspects on the sheet that aren't on cards.

 

[dbm]

Phoenix Dawn Command is a fully card driven RPG, co-written by Keith Baker of Eberron fame. As characters advance they get to do some deck building, adding and removing cards from their deck.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

I love cards in RPGs! I especially love spells in cards. So much fun to sort through your spell deck and cast one.

 

[Staffan]

But it occurs to me that how resources drain, and how they are refreshed, is an important factor. I can think of a few different categories:

1. Ability-gating resources: points or dice that fuel abilities and refresh automatically (such as on a clock). E.g. mana, "3x/day" abilities, expertise dice, uses of rage or shapeshift, etc.
2. Resources that do drain automatically but don't refresh automatically. E.g., rations, water, torches.
3. Resources that reset after an encounter. E.g., per-encounter special abilities, or HP in some games (e.g., where 0 HP means "you've run out of luck and the next hit is gonna hurt")

There's also:
4. Build-and-spend within the context of an encounter. Over the course of an encounter you gain some form of resource, either automatically or by performing some kind of action, and this resource can be spent on various abilities. This is the model Draw Steel uses.
5. Short-term cooldowns: Once you use this ability, you need to wait X turns before using it again. I rarely see this in TTRPGs because tracking it is a pain, but it's a major component of the combat system in e.g. Divinity: Original Sin.

One advantage of cooldowns is that they enforce some variety in ability use. With a fungible resource (e.g. "mana"), it can often be easy to find out what ability gives you the most bang for the buck and use that all the time unless there's a specific situation that makes something else better. With cooldowns, once you've used an ability you need to wait a while before using it again even if it would be advantageous right now. But I'm not sure that milk is worth the moo in TTRPGs.

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.)

Exalted does something along these lines, differentiating between "withering" attacks and "decisive" attacks. Withering attacks create some form of cumulative positional advantage, which you then spend when making a decisive attack in the hopes of actually hurting your opponent. That's just a Doylist separation however – in the fiction, combatants are generally trying to kill one another from the word "Join Battle".

 

[Bill Zebub]

There's also:
4. Build-and-spend within the context of an encounter. Over the course of an encounter you gain some form of resource, either automatically or by performing some kind of action, and this resource can be spent on various abilities. This is the model Draw Steel uses.
5. Short-term cooldowns: Once you use this ability, you need to wait X turns before using it again. I rarely see this in TTRPGs because tracking it is a pain, but it's a major component of the combat system in e.g. Divinity: Original Sin.

I would include both of those in the "refresh after encounter" category. Or, perhaps more accurately, they all belong in a supercategory of "encounter-based resources". The important distinction, in my opinion, is that it avoids the metagame strategizing of wondering if something should be saved for a "more important" encounter later on.

One advantage of cooldowns is that they enforce some variety in ability use.

Yes, exactly! And adds an element of unpredictability other than success/failure.

 

[Tigris]

I would include both of those in the "refresh after encounter" category. Or, perhaps more accurately, they all belong in a supercategory of "encounter-based resources". The important distinction, in my opinion, is that it avoids the metagame strategizing of wondering if something should be saved for a "more important" encounter later on.



Yes, exactly! And adds an element of unpredictability other than success/failure.

Cooldowns per se dont need to add unpredictability. Like if the cooldown is just X turns (like some 3.5 classes had), then you know exactly what happens.


Also I agree ressources which build up in an encounter like in Draw Steel are just per encounter ressources. Its a more complicated (and more prone to repetition) way of doing encounter powers. Its just inverse power points.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Cooldowns per se dont need to add unpredictability. Like if the cooldown is just X turns (like some 3.5 classes had), then you know exactly what happens.

Right, that's true. I was assuming the random cooldown model but it could be fixed cooldowns.

(I vastly prefer the random ones.)