X/day mechanic; what's the problem? (Mercule, looking your way...)

[Crothian]

You know, Crothian, I agree it's not tons of rolls. Nonetheless, personally, I'd rather avoid it. Why is the "wiff factor." Some players get intensely annoyed at their luck with dice rolls, and hinging the ability to even use something on a dice roll sounds like it would really spoil the fun of an entirely too large subset of gamers I know IRL.

Sure there is the "wiff factor" and on the other side there is the potential for using it more often. Yes, gamers hate it when they roll dice and fail especially at simple things. At the same time how many good moments are there when the gamers roll well and get to do that impossible hard thing. I see it working both ways.

 

[Enkhidu]

Chalk me up as another one who doesn't care for the x/day mechanic. But for our low magic game I reworked a lot of the D20 rules and folded in a new hero/endurance/willpower point system called Resolve....

I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a more in depth write up of this today!

 

[Mercule]

Okay, late to the party, but I'll give my reason: Suspension of disbelief. I'll use rage to illustrate.

Krusk has Rage 2/day. One day, his party encounters something at, say 4pm and 6pm. Krusk rages each time. Day ends. Next morning, at 6am, they have another fight and Krusk again rages. Ditto at 8am. That's four rages in 14 hours. The party basically camps all day, and Krusk takes his first watch at 10pm, and a troll wanders into camp. Regdar says, "Krusk, rage!".

What does Krusk say? Any answer he gives is either going to be inconsistant or purely metagame.

I think that x/day is a wonderfully simplistic mechanic for a game. It is beautiful in how easy it is to use in play as well as how to apply to design.

It forces metagame constraints, however, to be pushed into in-character rationale/conversation. I strongly discourage (okay, smack-down is more accurate) players who state character classes in-character ("Hi, I'm Lidda, the rogue!"), even going so far as to give some in-game meaning to certain terms -- it's possible to be a Ranger and have no levels of the ranger class, for example. I certainly don't want any mechanic that does not have any good way to explain it away.

I do recognize that D&D is a rather large-grain system. And I actually appreciate that in many regards. Most of the time, though, it's easy enough to narrate around the mechanic. X/day tends to get in the way, though.

 

[JimAde]

Chalk me up as another one who doesn't care for the x/day mechanic. But for our low magic game I reworked a lot of the D20 rules and folded in a new hero/endurance/willpower point system called Resolve.

Resolve points handled a quite a number of D&D issues such as Will Save effects (which now inflict RP damage), energy drain, magic item creation, fear, madness, powering high level spells, metamagic and a number of heroic abilities - such as Rage, our customized Power Attack, bonuses to d20 rolls, etc. If I had the opportunity I would have folded this mechanic even tighter into the game - especially feats and more class abilities. They heal essentially like HPs.

The catch, of course, is you have to be conservative with these points as they are your mental buffer against a wide variety of mind affecting attacks. If you're Resolve is brought to 0, whatever effect brought you there now takes hold. IOG, many scary/powerful creatures can inflict RP damage with their presence and/or attacks. A flesh-mutating squamous icky from the Far Realm for example would inflict "Horror RP" damage in addition to the flesh mutation damage. That sort of thing.

I'd love to see something like this mechanic folded into 4e as it's pretty comprehensive and self-balancing.

Cheers!

A'koss.

A'koss used "squamous" in a sentence. That's our word of the day. Give the player a prize.

That Resolve point mechanic sounds like the very thing to bring some horror into your D&D. Very cool.

 

[LostSoul]

I don't like the x/day mechanic, not for the way it runs, but for how it feels.

Some time back I suggested something similar to Crothian's idea. I think that would feel better in the game to me, but you have all the problems discussed here.

For Barbarian rage, you could set the DC low - say 10 - and the next rage can be 20, the next 30, and so on. The roll could be a special one (that you note your bonus in next to the Rage line on your character sheet) that's 1d20+Con mod+barbarian level.

And to get rid of the whiff factor, let him Take 10 even under stress.

 

[A'koss]

Originally posted by arnwyn:
Something I absolutely do not understand. "Forgetting your abilities" is something completely and utterly alien to me.

That gets a big, giant "WTF?" from me.

Actually, I see that in higher level games all the time. Players either don't keep track of their uses or they get lost in the sea of their other abilities/magic items. It can be even more daunting for a DM running encounters with HL NPCs and monsters with hordes of abilities inc which case you will inevitably miss something...

Originally posted by Enkhidu:
I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a more in depth write up of this today!

I'd love to but it's very much tied into our low(er) magic game and many elements of the game have been reworked & rebalanced. That and the fact that most of it is still just on paper makes it difficult but I can give you a few ideas as far as how you might want to incorporate it into a core game.

IOG, you gained a static number of Resolve Points per level. Spellcasters have the most, warriors next and rogues the least. For example, wizards IOG gained 12 + Wis Bonus @ 1st level (actually 4 + Wis bonus @ 0th level, +8 at 1st), then 8 RP per each level thereafter.

Then it's just a matter of working out the numbers for spell damage (Charm Person inflicts 1d6 RP damage per 2 levels [max. 5d6] IOG.) and other abilities. If a creature inflicts RP damage in addition to regular damage, the RP damage is normally no more than 1/3 to 1/4 of it's HP damage. Energy draining undead and Far Realm horrors being the notable exceptions.

There were a couple of other game situations that affect Resolve that I didn't touch on in my last post. Achieving story-based goals (varies) / victories over greater than party CR encounters (Recover 1-3 RPs per CR greater than the party) can help recover Resolve - victory is sweet and it helps bolster the party confidence. Bardic music and other confidence building magic can temporarily bolster your resolve. The flipside of course - being routed or knocked unconscious will diminish your resolve. It can also take weeks to fully recover your resolve after being brought back from the dead.

Resolve has also been a good way to deal with skills like Intimidation (& resisting torture), Diplomacy and Perform effects. The latter two only inflict phantom RP damage, like non-lethal weapon damage, recovered instantly after the negotiations/performance is over.

Cheers!

 

[swrushing]

Sure there is the "wiff factor" and on the other side there is the potential for using it more often.

the big diff between these options in practice for me has been the role of "choice."

having the player choose when to use and not to use the ability, thats going to pu it on him. this means when he does good, he feels good, about his decision. When he chooses bad, same deal.

In my eyes one of the core elements of a campaign is putting the players in position to make meaningful choices. those are the things that keep them seeing their characters as the stars.

On the other hand, when he rolls good, or bad, its just rolls, its just luck. its a moment of excitement, of course, but just a moment.

So, all in all, i do prefer to hand my players more meaningful choices, rather than just more opportunities to roll.

as such, given the option between "roll for it" vs "choose it", i go for "choose it".

 

[A'koss]

Each side raises some good points... but in the end I think everyone understands that you'll have to compromise somewhere. Verisimilitude? Simplicity?

Personally, I'm always see-sawing between the two - usually making things more difficult than they need to be before playtesting inevitably forces me to pair things down. In this particular case if I had to choose between x/day and increasing difficulty, I would probably choose x/day (today anyway...). Increasing difficulty is more believable but is it worth the additional tracking of modifiers, especially at high levels where you have so much to keep track of already?

Originally posted by JimAde:
A'koss used "squamous" in a sentence. That's our word of the day. Give the player a prize.

Oooh, then just wait till I start breaking out some of Lovecraft's three dollar words like non-euclidean.

Cheers!

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Okay, late to the party, but I'll give my reason: Suspension of disbelief. I'll use rage to illustrate.

Krusk has Rage 2/day. One day, his party encounters something at, say 4pm and 6pm. Krusk rages each time. Day ends. Next morning, at 6am, they have another fight and Krusk again rages. Ditto at 8am. That's four rages in 14 hours. The party basically camps all day, and Krusk takes his first watch at 10pm, and a troll wanders into camp. Regdar says, "Krusk, rage!".

What does Krusk say? Any answer he gives is either going to be inconsistant or purely metagame.

A solution might be a "not more than x number in y period of time." So a 1st-level barbarian could have "rage once in 12 hours" or something. Could be a nightmare to keep track of, though.

Is that the Book of Rogueish Luck mearls speaks of? Trembling in anticipation...

 

[Mokona]

x/encounter

I do like x/day use abilities because it's simple. But the only reason that x/day abilities are simple is the Big X/Day Boy in the Room (spells and magic-users). Since the party already tracks x/day spells for at least two spellcasters (usually, a wizard and a cleric) it is easy for other x/day abilities to be tracked similarly.

The Purgatory roleplaying game, by Jon Wilkie, gave me the idea for an x uses per encounter system. An OGL game would need to be written from the ground up, akin to Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved, to integrate a suite of magic and other classes using an x/encounter system. This idea for the D20 System just came to me while reading this thread but I'd really be interested in such a game.

Ditch the Vancian magic system "per day". Image a sorcerer with x spells per encounter and after that he mixes it up with a bow or mace. Or image a paladin with x smites per enounter or a rogue with x sneak attacks per encounter. It's an intriguing idea that I hope someone picks up on in d20.

http://www.atomichyrax.com/purg/