D&D 5E Players Only: How Often Should Your Character Be Able to "Go Nova"?

[GreatestHonor]

With how I’m understanding “going nova”, I think once per long rest or once per day is sufficient. My table tends to use Long rests as a day marker, so those are pretty interchangeable for me. While i think everyone should be able to contribute in every encounter, everyone being limited to a 1/day dumping of abilities allows more people to shine in various encounters during the same session or multi-session encounters.

 

[Lanefan]

And that's the problem. The game literally cannot be balanced around one recharge for multiple encounters. Because then you cannot avoid the five-minute workday, or whatever new variant pops up. Gamers will wheedle their way into whatever recharge they can to get as much of their resources back as they can before every single fight. That's just what gamers do. Any time period longer than per encounter will inevitably result in the gamers at the table trying to...well...game the system. Hell, even with a per encounter recharge they'll probably try to run away and disengage so they can get a "new encounter" when they re-engage the same enemy.

I don't think it would play out like you hope. Because that requires the gamers at the table to not game the system. That's what gamers do. So they'll hoard their resources until they get to the first fight, nova during that fight, then spend the rest of the session doing whatever they can to not get into another encounter. It might dramatically increase the amount the players actually roleplay, because they'll spend the next three hours roleplaying with every shopkeeper and random NPC they can find...even each other.

To be clear, anything that doesn't take into account the gamers desire to min-max won't work because the gamers will inevitably min-max. Whatever the recharge is, they'll want one full recharge for every fight. At least. Anything less and they'll game whatever that mechanic is to get it.

And most of the time, this is fine. If the 5-MWD is what the characters would reasonably try to do, there can't really be a valid argument against it unless you move the argument into the metagame, which has no place in these discussions.

And note if the recharge takes a significant amount of in-game time (a day, three days, a week, whatever) and the PCs spend that time every chance they get, that's time the PCs aren't spending doing anything about the enemy - which means it's time the enemy can spend doing whatever the hell it wants to do.

The recharge time needs to be long enough to make this an issue. Recharging every hour or every encounter just isn't long enough.

 

[Minigiant]

And that's the problem. The game literally cannot be balanced around one recharge for multiple encounters. Because then you cannot avoid the five-minute workday, or whatever new variant pops up. Gamers will wheedle their way into whatever recharge they can to get as much of their resources back as they can before every single fight. That's just what gamers do. Any time period longer than per encounter will inevitably result in the gamers at the table trying to...well...game the system. Hell, even with a per encounter recharge they'll probably try to run away and disengage so they can get a "new encounter" when they re-engage the same enemy

Meh. The 5MWD is not a result of having one recharge over multiple encounters. It's a result of having things that let you safely use all your charges in one encounter

• Teleports
• Pocket Dimensions
• Fast movement
• Undetactablity
• Technologically inferior opponents (the biggest one)

The 5MWD is a result of a ton of D&D fans being in love with dumb animals, nonmagical idiots, and primitive brutes as foes but loving having players with "phenomenal cosmic power".

 

[overgeeked]

And most of the time, this is fine. If the 5-MWD is what the characters would reasonably try to do, there can't really be a valid argument against it unless you move the argument into the metagame, which has no place in these discussions.

The meta is literally what the discussion is about and the central focus of this discussion. Nothing in the fiction dictates any of this. The fiction is written to conform to the meta.

And note if the recharge takes a significant amount of in-game time (a day, three days, a week, whatever) and the PCs spend that time every chance they get, that's time the PCs aren't spending doing anything about the enemy - which means it's time the enemy can spend doing whatever the hell it wants to do.

This only matters if the referee makes it matter. Not all of them do.

The recharge time needs to be long enough to make this an issue. Recharging every hour or every encounter just isn't long enough.

It all depends on what power level you want your game to be and how powerful those recharged resources are. If they're weak resources then recharging them every encounter doesn't matter. If they're powerful resources then recharging them every encounter is wildly unbalanced...unless the whole rest of the game is balanced around that same assumption.

 

[FrogReaver]

For me - the poll doesn't give my choice

It depends on the character.
*It also depends on specifically if you mean a 1 round Nova or just dumping all your resources as fast as you can into an encounter.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

unless you move the argument into the metagame, which has no place in these discussions.

This is a discussion on a game mechanic choice. The game mechanics tell us how the world works and what makes sense for the characters. You cannot have this discussion without the metagame being at the heart of it.

 

[CleverNickName]

@CleverNickName which option is Twice/Thrice per day?

Hm...that sounds like the "per short rest" option to me. Since you get to choose when you take a short rest, you could just decide that you want two/three short rests every day.

 

[Clint_L]

Depends on the class. I think the game is more interesting if classes play differently.

 

[Lanefan]

The meta is literally what the discussion is about and the central focus of this discussion. Nothing in the fiction dictates any of this. The fiction is written to conform to the meta.

Which is, IMO, the wrong way around. The mechanics should conform to the fiction. That is to say, in this case, that if the 5-MWD is what the characters would most logically do in the fiction then the design of the mechanics has to either take this into consideration or accept that it's a fact of life regardless.

It all depends on what power level you want your game to be and how powerful those recharged resources are. If they're weak resources then recharging them every encounter doesn't matter. If they're powerful resources then recharging them every encounter is wildly unbalanced...unless the whole rest of the game is balanced around that same assumption.

Spells and hit points are about the most commonly-seen resources in the game, and as both are very powerful then recharging them too often is a mistake - I think we agree on this.

And as the poll is written to imply that all resources recharge at once (i.e. there's no option where some recharge faster/slower than others), then spells and hit points drag everything else into a slow-recharge pattern where even daily might be too frequent.

 

[FrogReaver]

Which is, IMO, the wrong way around. The mechanics should conform to the fiction.

Impossible to go that direction. Once you create a mechanical resource recovery then you've already mired the fiction with meta mechanical considerations. The only way this isn't the case is if you wanted the fictional recovery to work fictionally exactly as you had mechanized - but no one wants recovery to fictionally work the way the mechanics handle it - it's just a gamified bad approximation so that we can play a game.