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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Composer99" data-source="post: 8759468" data-attributes="member: 7030042">(1) Thanks to 4e's handling and formatting of standard weapon attacks, we know that basically any codified, discretely-defined ability a player character can use can be made up so as to come across as a "spell". Suffice to say that as a result I don't have much patience for claims that martials using "spells" (however one uses the term) is bad - they're already using "spells".(Case in point, here's Reckless Attack made up as if it were a barbarian utility power in 4e. Looks awful "spell"-like when so formatted.)[SPOILER="4e-style Reckless Attack"][ATTACH=full]260209[/ATTACH][/SPOILER]Or how about we just format it in the style of a 5e spell and be done with it?[SPOILER="5e spell Reckless Attack"]Reckless AttackBarbarian class featureAction time: None (see text)Range: SelfComponents: n/aDuration: 1 roundYou use this feature before attacking on your turn, throwing aside all concern for defence to attack with fierce desperation. Doing so doesn't require any sort of action. If you use this feature, you have advantage on attack rolls using Strength this turn. Until the start of your next turn, attack rolls against you are made with advantage.[/SPOILER] (2) If you want martials to be able to inflict some of the more potent conditions in the game, I don't think you can get away from having limited-use resources - whether that's a points pool or dice pool or whatever you want to do - because I don't think gating an ability that stuns or paralyses an opponent, for instance, behind "is this situationally useful or not?" is going to work: the answer to that question is going to be yes.That doesn't mean the limited-use resource has to tie back to short or long rests. (Especially in 5e where short rests aren't so short.) You could have a limited-use resource that works like focus points in 5e Adventures in Rokugan or the warrior rage mechanic in World of Warcraft, or that ties into rolling initiative, say. (Rolling for initiative would be the stand-in for the rush of adrenaline and focusing of the mind on combat that's happening in the fiction.) It could even be a recharge mechanic similar to what monsters use! (Roll a 5-6 and get back your Focus or Grit or whatever you want to call it, which you can use to fuel this trick or that technique.)I suppose you could then just say, "well maybe martials can get by without the kinds of abilities that need limited-use resources to ration". And, sure, if that's how you want to do it. But to my mind things like a flurry of thrown daggers, knockout blows, and even paralysing strikes all are - or all ought to be - well within the remit of "heroic" tier (up to 10th level) martial capability, and many of these abilities will be too potent to simply rely on things like action economy limits.(3) What is more, to my mind, such a limited-use resource models and reflects what is going on in the fiction, only with enough abstraction to be playable in a turn-based combat engine. You can't spam this technique or that trick or the other exploit because the circumstances (your posture/form/footing, the weapon you are wielding, the enemy's exposure to attack, whether you're unduly favouring a limb after taking a blow there, the amount of fatigue you have accumulated, among other possibilities) have to be just right - and trying to precisely ascertain those circumstances in a turn-based abstraction is a fool's game. But you can just say that "if you have the right amount of resource X at the start of your turn, the circumstances in the fiction are such that you can use this or that combat trick".</blockquote>

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