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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7420450" data-attributes="member: 16814">That's DM overhead, though -- the DM now has to plan and push encounters onto the party to find a reason to prevent players from using their encounter powers during encounters based on the possibility that they need to reserve some for later.  I've already mentioned that as a workaround for day/encounter balance issues.  The problem I have with that is that it falls entirely on the DM's shoulders to make the encounter budget work.  For me, there's already a lot I have to work on as DM, anything that adds to that overhead (like balancing the game through encounter pace planning) isn't something I'm keen on.Also, this concept doesn't work in sandbox play, where the players set their own pace.  In the threads on encounter pacing here, this is a common theme -- how do I allow the players their freedom to choose while making adventuring days balance against the different recovery mechanisms?Regardless, we're talking about how to work around issues caused by ability recovery mechanics, which is much better than if classes are balanced in a given edition.  It's addressing a way to analyze games.  I think there's a lot of value in looking at how games govern character ability recovery, as this gives strong indications as to what kinds of play that game is well suited for.  D&D through 3rd used daily recovery almost exclusively, and the style of play best supported is the more traditional, strategically focused play.  This aligns.  4e shifted to a strong encounter based recovery mechanism (hp recharged per encounter with short rests, most abilities recharged per encounter, etc.) and that strongly affected play.  For the first (and only) time, an edition of D&D reasonably supported a much more narrativist gamestyle without heavy hacking.  5e has moved the needle back towards a blend, with both kinds of balance discussed so far in evidence.  This has led to some incoherence in daily encounter balancing, depending on party make-up, but there's a broad width of play mechanics being used with 5e, from more permissive, character driven story styles with framework worldbuilding rather than adventure planning, to traditional DM-led play.  It's interesting to look at just this narrow analysis of ability recharge and see how it impacts play.Non-D&D games can use this as well.  One of the things I did in learning Blades was look at how abilities are used, the frequency available, and the recharge mechanics.  Blades uses a mix of recovery mechanics to create a focus of tension in the scene framework (or encounter) by how abilities are spent.  The most common recover mechanic is more of a spending mechanic -- you can use X ability Y times this score.  Equipment works this way.  But some mechanics randomize the costs, like how denying an outcome works as at variable cost in stress (too much stress and you're out of the score).  Wounds are interesting as well, because their earned negative conditionals rather than taken away from a resource pool, and removing them takes expending other limited resources (downtime actions) with variable results.  All of these interlocked and variable recovery mechanics (and expenditure mechanics) function to make Blades a very fluid game where you cannot count on an outcome.  This means that it's very much in the player interest to maximize the immediate action results, because failure will limit next actions, sometimes gravely.  So play is in the moment with long term strategic consequences emerging from play rather than the focus of it.Looking at how players can spend and recover PC abilities is a good way to get a handle on the type of play a ruleset enables.  Fighting against that ruleset due to a misunderstanding of the incentivized play will lead to bad outcomes.  4e suffered from this as traditional play was tried with a ruleset that didn't work as well with that objective.  5e doesn't do Story Now well at all, as so many abilities for many classes are daily balanced requiring strategic expediture and so fight against the focus on the now of that playstyle.  Blades would be absolute pants at trying to do a dungeon crawl.  Looking at games in this way is useful, and doesn't say that a game is bad -- games cannot be everything to everyone, so choices limiting some playstyles and play objectives are to be expected and welcomed, not dismissed.  There's a lot of dismissal going on, and defensive thinking.</blockquote>

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