Solutions to the 15 minute adventuring day: carrots and sticks.

[Lwaxy]

Ahem...

Spell points don't need to have anything to do with rest, they don't over here.

Just saying

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Ahem...

Spell points don't need to have anything to do with rest, they don't over here.

Sure, but spell points have even more serious nova issues, which is why something like Vancian slots were used in the first place.

Before I'd use spell points, I'd go all the way to a fatigure or endurance or similar system for magic, which would at least pick up some extra benefits to go with the drawbacks.

 

[Lwaxy]

But that's what spellpoints essentially are, a magical fatigue system.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

But that's what spellpoints essentially are, a magical fatigue system.

Yes. The problem there is that they are only a magical fatigue system. Which means the only trade-off is do you use your points for this spell now or some other spell later. And then you run into the math problem that with scaling, where if you use a simple system you tend to favor lots of overly powerful small effects or rolling all those little effects into a few big effects (one or the other, not both). It's very hard to get that scaling right, in practice. It's particularly tough in D&D when effects range from detect magic to wish. (It works pretty well if you gear the math to about 3 levels worth of D&D spells, which is why I think a lot of people like such variants. A lot of people do most of their play within about 3-4 spell levels.)

Whereas, with Vancian magic it's still all magic, but you get the siloing effect of the slots by level. Or if you go to a real fatigue system, say like Dragon Quest or close to one, like early RuneQuest, then using magic drains the caster of resources that matter outside of magic. In DQ, "fatigue" is burned a lot like real D&D hit points to avoid the more serious damage effects, meaning that casting spells has consequences beyond not casting a spell later (and in DQ, means that they can skew the power point math, letting the side effects counter-balance it). Or you can have a system like default Fantasy Hero, where "endurance" is coming back very fast after combat, but becomes a serious tactical consideration when exhausting yourself makes running away a problem.

I think both true fatigue system and siloed slots have a lot to recommend them, but "power points" tends to take on the disadvantages of both, with the only thing to show for it being an easily grokked tactical system that has a thin veneer of strategic depth. If the veneer didn't scrape off so fast in play, I might like it more, but power points tend to get "solved" in the strategic sense, fairly rapidly.

Or to drag it back around on topic, the carrots and sticks inherent in actual power point systems, when applied to something as wide as D&D magic, tend to be perverse if your goals are to manage rest and nova issues. If you complicate a power point system into a broader "fatigue" system, you'll tend to have enough richness in the broader system to deal with these issues some other way (e.g. require food for mid-day partial fatigue restoration).

 

[Umbran]

Spell points don't need to have anything to do with rest, they don't over here.

Well, you can build a vancian system that doesn't have to do with rest for regaining spells, too. But the iconic mode for both is that you get them back with time.

The official "rest" is not really all that important. So long as you get them back by something other than continuing the adventure, they'll do. So long as you can start with a full pool, spend them all fast, and retreat to regain them, they'll serve.

You want a magical fatigue system, look at Shadowrun - actual fatigue, as in, each spell risks stun damage to the character, and they can knock themselves out (or even kill themselves) if they try to cast something too potent.

 

[Lwaxy]

Yes. The problem there is that they are only a magical fatigue system.

Actually, we changed that, the magic users tire when using spells, just like a fighter does when fighting Concentration may also lead to headaches making further spells harder. Also, if they are already physically exhausted, they might not be able to do spells until they took a breather. Which can lead to funny situations like the barbarian carrying the halfling mage so he would be useful later.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Ok, so "Remove Vancian Casting" is another option. If we're to do that, what module could we put in its place?

Quite a lot of possibilities. If we're solely concerned with eliminating the 15MWD symptom, eliminating Vancian as part of eliminating hard-coded daily resources would be a way to accomplish that. Casters could work like the Warmage, for instance, having fewer and less wildly powerful spells that they can cast with no particular limit. Or, the game could be encounter-based, with resources refreshing after each each encounter regardless of the campaign's pacing. Or...

Alternatively, what ABOUT vancian casting is problematic...perhaps we can modify that aspect of it (as I"ve mentioned earlier by varying the availablility of spells or the rate of recharge) in some way to discourage the 15mad or encourage the full adventuring day.

The core problem, IMHO, is the arbitrary choice of the 'day' as a recharge cycle. That makes deciding to stop and re-arm a long process that can seem out of place in many campaigns and stories, and a lot less than 'heroic.' OTOH, a 'day' can seem like too short a time to recover from really severe injuries - that's a flip side of the issue.

One obvious solution given the customizeable 'modular' approach that has been promised for 5e, would be borrow an idea from Hero's "Fuzion" and use a "Dial," a rule that changes along some continuum with a setting chosen by the GM. The GM could thus set recovery of resources to generally happen each day, or each hour, or each encounter, or each week, or each 'story' or 'chapter' (thus making re-charging virtually arbitrary). With the ability to adjust resources recovery to his campaign instead of having to adjust his campaign to deal with resource recovery, a big chunk of the issue disappears - the DM is free to keep the number of rounds between recoveries close to the balance-point for the system, consistently and without having to mess with the pacing of his campaign. On the downside, it could turn resource recovery into another 'mother may I' case of DM-fiat.


There's also a closely related issue of class balance, if some classes have daily resources, some encounter resources, some unlimited-use resources, and others varying combinations thereof, then, if daily resources are compensated for their reduced availability with greater /power/ than encounter resources, which, in turn are more powerful than unlimited-use resources, then class balance is completely thrown off anytime the number of encounters in a day or rounds in an encounter deviate from whatever norm they were theoretically balanced around.

One very powerful and effective solution to that problem is to give everyone the same proportion of such powers. The powers can be quite different, they just need to be comparable in power and number at each level of rechargeability. The 15MWD remains, but it no longer trashes class balance.

Another, would be to do what Hero System and some other games do: make limited use powers 'cheaper,' but no more powerful than other powers. Thus, for instance, a wizard might know dozens of spells and be able to cast 10 of them each day, and they'd each do very different things, giving the wizard a great deal of versatility and the price of a good deal of resource-management headaches. But, they wouldn't be a source of severe class imbalance if they were no more powerful than the basic abilities of classes with unlimited-use abilities (who would simply have only a few such, by way of compensation). That could, perhaps, be an even more radical departure from D&D tradition than was AEDU, and it probably wouldn't be as robust a balancing mechanism - tending to make the more versatile classes have more stunning spotlight moments when they have just the right spell for the job, but also leaving them sadly non-contributing when out of spells.


IMHO, the best solution might be to combine the "Dial" option with classes getting the same proportion of unlimited-use and limited-use (how limited based on the dial) abilities. In that way, there's no need to coerce resource balance to retain class balance, and the DM is free to run the campaign at a pace he and his group find reasonable.

As it stands, WotC is doing the same "add advice, but not mechanics" to work on the 15mad. That may be fine for some and not for others.

It's definitely not fine - personal preferences aside, if for no other reason than that it abandons 5e's mandate to be 'inclusive' by spelling out a 'one right way to play.'

 

[Tony Vargas]

You misunderstand. I don't set assassins on the pcs juust because they chose to rest. I roll for wandering monsters every two turns (20 minutes) in a dungeon and every hour or two (depending on location) outdoors. These rolls happen whether or not the pcs rest. I'm not twisting anything.

Unless the that's a very low percentage roll, that's a pretty frenetically dangerous world you've got there.

 

[pemerton]

It isn't an issue with Vancian casting, specifically - you'd have the same issue with any resource that you can spend quickly and regained upon rest (like, say, a spell-point mechanic).

Yes. Rolemaster has big issues with the 15-minute day for just this reason.

The only way to never favor a "fast & furious, then run" approach is to have no resources to spend.

As I said in another thread, I don't think this is necessarily true. If resources are recharged on a short rest/per encounter cycle, then you can have a (tactical) resource management game without generating the 15 minute day (this is mostly how 4e plays in my experience, at least until surges get low). You can also have non-rechargeable resources (in RQ that is some forms of spellcasting; in D&D, that would be potions, scrolls etc) which only generate an incentive to run/rest if they can be reliable replaced - and that is more doubtful, and more easily made doubtful as a feature of world and scenario design, than recovering resources via resting.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Unless the that's a very low percentage roll, that's a pretty frenetically dangerous world you've got there.

1 in 6. Pretty much the standard for 1e.