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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cbas_10" data-source="post: 3870118" data-attributes="member: 55767">I'm not a fan of "per encounter" abilities.  Then again, I am not a huge fan of the current "X number of spells per day" as a caster, either (however, it's the system we have and not yet taken my time to houserule and modify).  I don't care for the arbitrary and videogamey (yes, I'm including vancian spellcasting) "recharge when the combat is over" or the "cast all the spells in your allotment without any worries...and then suddenly have none, as if a switch is turned off."  The presence of these abilities don't bother me....just the artificial limitations on how often they can be used bothers me. Why can a character only use so many spells? Why does an ability only make itself available once in a given fight?Here are my ideas for spells per day or per-encounter abilities: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Based upon Constitution (or some other mechanic that actually is derived from the character instead of an arbitrary rule), characters would have X number of "points" to spend.  Each maneuver or ability would cost one or more of these points.</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Using more than the "allowed" points would be possible, but at a penalty for the character.  This could be a Fatigued/Exhausted Conditions type of thing (penalties to Strength, Dexterity, and movement) or could be represented as exhaustion via non-lethal damage (i.e. risking passing out in combat if you take too much damage and are too "spent" from doing these extra maneuvers) or could be hits to the Constitution score (probably only in the cases of BIG or powerful abilities...who knows; these are rambling thoughts at this point)</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">These points would return at some sort of rate when characters are not exerting themselves.  Walking, eating, riding horses down the trail...whatever is not making you break a sweat like fighting, climbing, riding a horse at full speed, etc.  In most cases, these points would effectively all return before the next encounter.  Unless you are running an encounter-after-encounter gauntlet.  However, this would solve the debate of "when is an encounter over for purposes of getting my abilities refreshed?"</li> </ul>Thus, any maneuver, special ability, spell, or whatever would have, in its description heading, 2 additional entries: Fatigue Cost (or whatever we'd like to call these "points") and Fatigue Penalty (do you take Str/Dex/Move penalties, non-lethal damage, or Con damage?).  It requires basically only an extra amount of bookkeeping relative to tracking your hit points.  Sure, there are two extra tidbits to know for each spell/ability, but it would replace the need to know how many you can cast per day/encounter and more rationally explains why you can only do things so many times in a given time period.Wow...already house ruling 4e?  Okay....it is a bit soon for that.  But my thoughts on house rules for my own 3.5 game seemed to apply to this Per-Encounter discussion.Afterthought: then if we go for this system in regards to spell-casters, there is a totally new topic to be tackled...spellbooks or other ways to determine how many different spells a character knows.  But that is for a different topic...</blockquote>

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