Once, Twice, Three times a Daily

[Dausuul]

IMO, there should be five different categories of powers:

At Will: we know what this is from 4e.

Encounter: you can use once, and then you have to catch your breath before you can use it again. And, yeah, we know what this is from 4e.

Daily: you can use once, and then have to have a good night's sleep before you can use it again. We know what this is from 4e.

Always On: You activate this power, and it stays on until you turn it off. If you want, you can turn it on or off many times per day/encounter/whatever. (Probably need a rule that you can only have one always-on power at a time, but that you can switch them as a free action on your turn.) A good example would be the 3e Paladin's holy aura power.

Conditional: This power has some trigger condition. Whenever you meet the condition, you can use the power. (Again, you probably need a rule that if you have multiple powers with the same trigger condition, you can only activate one at a time.) A good example would be the Rogue's sneak attack.

I think that covers everything...

Technically, yes, this covers everything, but only because you threw in the catch-all "Conditional." You could get rid of all the other options and just have "Conditional" and "At-Will." A Daily power is a Conditional power where the condition is "You have not used this power since your last extended rest." An Encounter power is the same for short rests. An Always On power is an At-Will with an ongoing duration.

However, I don't see why the Daily, Encounter, and Always On conditions should be given special prominence while everything else is crammed into the catch-all. Some other usage limits that deserve note:

• Power Points. You have a number of "power points" that you spend to fuel your abilities. Once you run out, you're out, until you recharge in some way.
• Tokens. Similar to power points, but you get more each time some event occurs in combat (you get hit, you hit an opponent, etc.). Yes, the Iron Heroes version was too fiddly, but it could be streamlined.
• Threshold. You can only use the ability once some event or series of events has occurred (you become bloodied, you kill an opponent, etc.). After you hit the threshold, you can use the ability for the rest of combat.
• Triggered. When a certain event occurs, you can use the ability in response, but you have to do it right then--you can't hold it for later.
• Material Components. You must expend some long-term material resource, such as cash or charges from a magic item, to power the ability.
• Cast From Life. You must weaken yourself in some way to power the ability. This could mean imposing a temporary condition such as weakened or slowed; sacrificing hit points, surges, or Constitution points; etc.

I dare say there are others. Those are just the ones I thought of.

Another thing to keep in mind is that some of these mechanics are front-loaded (daily, encounter, power points, material components, cast from life), others are back-loaded (tokens, threshold), and others are neither (at-will, triggered, always on). Front-loaded mechanics use a resource that you have a lot of when combat starts, and spend down as the fight continues. Back-loaded mechanics use a resource that you have little or none of when combat starts, but accumulate as the fight continues.

D&D has long favored front-loaded mechanics. This is a problem because front-loaded mechanics are bad for pacing and encourage "nova tactics." At the start of the fight, everyone unloads their big guns, and one of two things happens. One, the battle ends right there, which is often unsatisfying and anticlimactic. Two, the battle does not end, and everyone has to slug it out with the little guns, which easily descends into grind.

I would like to see 5E use a mix of front-loading and back-loading. With back-loaded mechanics, the intensity of combat builds rather than falling off; as the fight progresses, bigger and bigger guns come out, and combat ends with a bang rather than a whimper. That's not to say front-loaded mechanics should go away entirely, but there should be less of them.

 

[dkyle]

Yeah, I really dislike Daily resources. I think most long-term resources should be Adventure resources, and that's essentially what I did in my 4E campaign. I extended the time needed for an Extended rest to the point where it was infeasible to do it in the middle of an adventure.

The problem with Daily resources is that it makes a nights' rest incredibly powerful, with little to no downside defined by the rules. Which means the DM has to constantly come up with reasons why the PCs shouldn't just rest as much as possible. Ultimately, the rules are simply unbalanced. In almost any other case, if the rules were so clearly imbalanced, and left fixing them to the DM, it would be seen as a clear design flaw. But the sheer power of a nights' rest seems to get a pass.

Ideally, I think I'd have most abilities be At-will or Encounter abilities, with a "Fate-point" style system, refreshed once per adventure, that could be used to pump up those Encounter abilities, and make them "Daily"-like in power, with a nights' rest recovering maybe a couple of those points. But the big thing would be that the DM would get those points to, and gain them when the PCs do. It would be up to the DM to describe, in-game, what those points he's getting represent (the monsters making better preparations in the time they now have, etc.), but at least there'd be balance built into the rules.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I would like to see 5E use a mix of front-loading and back-loading. With back-loaded mechanics, the intensity of combat builds rather than falling off; as the fight progresses, bigger and bigger guns come out, and combat ends with a bang rather than a whimper. That's not to say front-loaded mechanics should go away entirely, but there should be less of them.

I'm not sure how easily it would be to rationalize it in game, but you could always go with a limited token system that works less and less well the more of your "front-loaded" resources you use, but accumulates more frequently as those resources are used.

Take a typical wizard. He has access to some kind of arcane token that puts some extra oomph into any "at wills" he might possess. When all of his daily spells are prepped and loaded, his "arcane attention" is at its peak. He can get maximum effect out of those tokens, maybe even doubling his damage or other effects with those at wills. But his ability to build up such might is limited, because he already has a lot of it devoted to those daily spells. So he only gets maybe 2 such tokens per fight. But every daily power that is gone is less focus on power, and more power on flow. Use all of his dailies, and he may only get 1.5 effect from at wills, but now those tokens are flowing freely.

You can use your "mana flow" to maintain what you have ready and peaked, but as you can release what you have ready and peaked, your "mana flow" increases.

 

[Ratskinner]

You could always go by an encounter-based resources, but we all know how many people like that!

I'm starting to like the idea of a "rest based" center to resources replenishment. That is, if you have/take an opportunity to rest for 5-10 minutes, you can recover most of your abilities and perhaps even HP. There's room for some uber-abilities to burn you (or their slot) out for longer, and uber-spells can be rituals or require goofy expensive components. I can understand the idea of general fatigue or burnout better than I can the whole Vancian "I forgot it till tomorrow" thing.

 

[delericho]

Technically, yes, this covers everything, but only because you threw in the catch-all "Conditional." You could get rid of all the other options and just have "Conditional" and "At-Will." A Daily power is a Conditional power where the condition is "You have not used this power since your last extended rest." An Encounter power is the same for short rests. An Always On power is an At-Will with an ongoing duration.

Ah! I left out a key point, and in doing so explained poorly.

In this model, the key thing that sets Conditional powers apart from Dailies with the condition "you cannot have use this today" is that to use a Daily power you use one of your actions for the turn (Standard, Move, Minor).

With a Conditional power you do not - if you meet the condition then you can activate the conditional power freely. (So, the Rogue's declared action is not "I Sneak Attack", it's "I use <Power X> (or a basic attack, or whatever)", and then when he hits, provided he has Combat Advantage then he gets Sneak Attack on top.)

Now, all of that said, you've raised a number of very interesting possibilities, so my scheme is not as all-encompassing as I had (rather foolishly) thought.

 

[delericho]

Yeah, I really dislike Daily resources. I think most long-term resources should be Adventure resources, and that's essentially what I did in my 4E campaign. I extended the time needed for an Extended rest to the point where it was infeasible to do it in the middle of an adventure.

The problem with Daily resources is that it makes a nights' rest incredibly powerful, with little to no downside defined by the rules.

One suggestion I saw that I thought was very interesting was to trigger some effects off of the number of Healing Surges that had been spent. If the characters have some effects that are becoming more powerful as they go, rather than being strictly weakened as the day wears off, they suddenly have much more incentive to keep going.

 

[Frostmarrow]

How about a 3rd Round Power? I.e. a power that can be used in the third round of combat. Not in the first or the second and just maybe in the fourth.

In that case we could have 1st round powers instead of At Wills, 2nd round powers instead of Encounter powers and 3rd round powers instead of Dailies.

I think it would be kind of nice to build up to your best moves (by surviving). Short combats/skirmishes would see less of the 3rd round stuff whereas those would show up in bigger battles.

Mind you, 3rd could actually be 7th if that suits the game better (depending on how much hit points characters will have).

 

[DEFCON 1]

I would like to see 5E use a mix of front-loading and back-loading. With back-loaded mechanics, the intensity of combat builds rather than falling off; as the fight progresses, bigger and bigger guns come out, and combat ends with a bang rather than a whimper. That's not to say front-loaded mechanics should go away entirely, but there should be less of them.

I think this is a very astute observation. I almost think that ANY more powerful so-called "Daily" power should ONLY be activated when a PC has reached the Bloodied condition, to really make its use worthwhile.

Once a PC reaches Bloodied, they know that this is not going to be a cakewalk fight. It's been bad up to this point, and is going to continue to hurt. It's at this point when the PC should then decide to open up the "big guns", because he knows that if he doesn't, those remaining HP will drop just as quickly. So using a Daily power now is opportune.

With this rule in place, you avoid PCs going 'nova' right at the top of the encounter (thereby making the encounter trivial); you avoid PCs 'wasting' their "for the rest of the encounter" Dailies at the top of a fight because don't know how bad the fight's going to be but they want to get the biggest bang for the buck out of them; and you avoid PCs getting mad that they end the day not using them at all, because they only become available on those fights that are going badly (and thus they should use them just so they survive.) After all... if they reach the end of an Adventuring Day not having used any Dailies because they've never found themselves in a position when using a Daily at Bloodied ever came up, then that's a good thing!

 

[Ahnehnois]

I hate use per time abilities. I think they're a crutch for designers and I'd be happy to see them 100% gone. Vancian magic, however, is a D&D classic and has its charm. Everything else should be different.

Balance-wise, everyone plays so differently it's hard to say what limitations mean. Some groups complain that these types of abilities force them to rest when they don't think they should have to, others never fight more than one battle in a day, and still others pack in battles but never worry about running out of resources.

Simulation and story-wise, per-day abilities don't represent fatigue well at all, nor is daily use a particularly appropriate way of delineating narrative control. These abilities create strangely nonsensical and "unfun" situations where a character seems fine but somehow can't use his best ability because he used it earlier that day. (my take on barbarian rage).

I think there are several better ways to delineate character abilities:

Abilities that are inherent, at-will, or always on.
Abilities that are limited by situational factors.
Abilities that have a meaningful centralized cost (instead of drawing from some mysterious use limit).

Any new mechanic outside of Vancian magic should fall under one of these categories, for everyone's sake.

 

[SkidAce]

DEFCON 1, mechanically your ideas are spot on.

But that's my problem. If a character has a power he should be able to use it beginning, middle, end, their choice.

If I throw my only grenade at one guy, then a nice clump comes around a minute later, that's the way it went.

You shouldn't know how bad the fight will be at the beginning, unless there are clues (which I tend to put out).

It's the choosing that's important and if we build a game where the choosing is obvious, then there is no risk/reward.

Your mileage may vary.