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Message: <blockquote data-quote="IanArgent" data-source="post: 3777965" data-attributes="member: 21673">I'm going to add my personal hate-on here for being required as a DM to put certain items in treasure - which is what Raven Crowking suggests I do to work around the limitations of per-day resource management.The system should work with no access to one-shot items. Period. Every class should be able to use their "core competency"  roles/abilities, in every encounter, with minimal specific equipment. The fighter can, by and large, pick up any random sword and use his basic class features/abilities with it. Likewise the rogue (though he needs a somewhat more specific toolkit if he has to open locks).Hence, the requirement that all classes work their resource management for their primary roles more or less the same.It is perfectly possible, with little or no prep, to run an adventure that is fun, challenging, and has encounters than run the gamut from easy to OMGWFTBBQ, with every variation between, in a system with NO per-day resource management. Theoretically, in Shadowrun, ever encounter the PCs are fresh as daisies in; there is very little way to ablate the PCs' capabilities by throwing encounters at them. I did this, fr 7 years, in a running campaign that had anywhere from 2-12 PCs at any one session (SR is easier to deal with missing characters, I will admit), from my GM experience being very low (Essentially, SR was the first game I ever ran, and I had very little RPG experience in general to bring to the table; I had never played SR before running it) to "I don't have to crack a book to run this game, and my players don't have to crack one while I'm running, because I have internalized the system". (I'm nowhere near that level with D&D right now, incidentally; mostly because the rules are too complicated and too beholden to the sacred cows).In short, resource management above the at-will level is unnecessary for game design, if the abilities are balanced.Now, I'm not pushing for purely at-will resources in D&D - I believe there is a place for the per-encounter and per-day abilities in D&D. I believe that the "meat and potatoes" of any characters role should be at-will however; just as the fighter's attack is at-will. Then their "advanced" abilities, (say Stunning Fist for the monk, and yes, I know that's technically per-day right now) should be per-encounter, and finally the "big guns" (fireball, etc) should be per-day. I also believe that every class should have roughly comparable abilities to affect a combat when used with the same level of player skill (but not the same ability with different names) at each level. Balance at each level, balance for each class. Otherwise you're either waiting to get cool, or holding the coats of the characters who got cool.I may be looking for something in a gaming system that you're not. That's fine. But what I'm looking for is what will allow the 6 teens in the basement with a brand new set of the core rules and no experience whatsoever in the game to sit down with paper, pencil, and dice, and have fun. Because without those 6 teens in a basement, the hobby dies. Complicated resource management is Not Fun to the inexperienced gamer.</blockquote>

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