This is one of the reasons I’m really not happy with DND. I just don’t want to play a resource management game. I want to do cool stuff.
There are lots of games that aren’t built around resource management and attrition, but unfortunately DND is so popular it sucks all the air out of the room.
I do feel that slowly, edition by edition, D&D is moving closer to it’s recourse management being tied to it’s round based action economy which I actually enjoy.
As a player, it’s already pretty easy to play this way, before counting subclasses, the rogue has literally no abilities that are limited by anything but once per turn, and if you pick some fun narrative spells as warlock and rely on invocations and eldritch blast, you can be totally effective without any resource management. Both of these exclude hitpoints of course but that is a pretty reasonable resource for a combat focussed fantasy game.
You can play fighter or warlock. Dnd limits extreme power with spell slots and charges. Otherwise they’d have to nerf the upper power level. Can’t have people casting fire storm every few minutes. It’d ruin balance AND ensure you had to cast that every time to deal with increased threats.
Yes, but someone is probably going to play a long rest class and force the entire game to center around that cadence. And the long rest cadence kind of sucks for me.
There are other ways to do game balance.
Any suggestions
Fate is a general purpose RPG that doesn’t have any assumptions about a rest cadence. There are more specific games that use its rules (I think there’s a dresden files one that’s popular). Just the core rules work fine, but do require players to be more narratively minded and synchronized for it to really sing.
I don’t know gurps very well but I don’t think it’s built around rests at all.
I don’t think pbta games are generally built around a long rest cadence, either. They tend to have a lot of mixed success on ability use, rather than a hard limit.
The wod/cofd games aren’t centered around long rests, either. In vampire: the requiem, for example, the cool vampire powers are pretty much all at-will, require blood, or sometimes willpower. Blood is mostly narratively limited - you can get it whenever you can find someone to bite, generally. Willpower comes back over time but faster if you hit narrative beats. But generally if you have, say, Dominate, you can just do the vampire dominating gaze on people. The games typically aren’t played as dungeon crawlers though, and the limits tend to be more social or “should you?” rather than DND’s “can you?”.
One of the problems with the long rest cadence is the first fight is typically not a real threat. It’s only the last one where you’re strapped for resources that has real at hand tension. That kind of sucks, honestly. You see posts sometimes where people complain about filler fights that are just there to drain resources are kind of boring.
Making everything per-encounter is probably the easiest fix for a dnd-like game. Make some classes ramp-up, some ramp-down, and some steady.
How do you do long rests that makes it annoying? Usually it’s:
Party: We would like to take a long rest.
DM: Sounds good, you are now rested.
If you let players take too many long rests in DND 5e it fucks over short-rest and no-rest classes. Long rest people get more Fun Stuff than everyone else. Feels bad.
Edit: also it does weird things to the story pacing. Any time sensitivity gets weird if the players are going a five minute adventuring day
For my group I have them make sure to secure the area as their rest may get interrupted if they don’t
But I also roll on a relevant encounter table when they do and add a modifier based on the groups checks for it being secure (usually a survival check, so usually it’s the ranger doing the rolling for that)
Short rests are a lot easier though
Random encounters aren’t the most interesting thing to do at the table for most people. Design choices that funnel the play time into them then seems like a poor idea.
If you’re playing the game just for the combat itself then it’s probably fine. But if you’re playing for any sort of story then fighting a random pack of spiders probably pays off less than fighting plot relevant stuff.
Most abilities should be either “per round/turn” or “per encounter”.
Abilities that are too powerful for that should either not exist or require significant preparation (enough for the opposition to have a chance to discover and interrupt it).
Abilities that fall in the second category should automatically come with a less powerful variant in the first category.
Maybe as a middle ground some player abilities could use the “roll for recharge” mechanic from powerful monster abilities.
Then you have casters blowing max slot every fight and trivializing them.
Abilities that are too powerful for that should either not exist or require significant preparation
Then you’re going to have boring spells that do damage akin to cantrips. No one wants homogenization.
I absolutely do want mechanical homogenization. Interesting variants can be handled with flavor without forcing everyone to learn completely new rules for every ability. The existence of generic rule systems (e.g. Savage Worlds) proves I am not alone with that view.
Cool. And that exists in that game. But that’s not the core of dnd.
It was my impression that we are at this point discussing (rp)game design in general, not specifically D&D. If your context was D&D specifically, that explains a lot of the disagreement between us.
Yeah, I hate that DnD is such a resource management game too. (More so that is is the ONLY game my group will consider playing.)
I tend to horde any limited resource. TTRPG or video game.
Is this group of mooks big enough to justify using power/spell/item X? Is there a bigger group around the corner? Is this just a lieutenant or the BBEG? Oh, this guy is monologueing, he must be the BBEG. But does his fight have multiple phases? OR is he just a puppet and the real BBEG is waiting for us to blow all our abilities.
Doesn’t matter how narratively I’m engaged in the plot. I’ve got a tactically aware mind and these thoughts are always there.
Same.
In my last DND game, where the wizard was extremely fast and loose with his spell slots, the DM gave him a free long rest in the middle of the final boss fight. It kind of sort of made sense for story reasons but not really. I was honestly kind of pissed. Like on the one hand the wizard was having fun. On the other like what’s the point if we’re going to do that. I’ve been here doing the tactical “this is how we can solve this problem with the fewest resources spent” and no one else is, and he gets this? Ugh.
Even Baldur’s gate 3 betrayed me like this. There’s a lengthy sequence that I did with like no resources spent. It was slow and cautious but I knew there was a big boss at the end of it. And then they put a fucking full-rest fountain right before the boss fight. I could’ve been fireballing everything instead of playing smart!
When it was my turn to DM, before the scene I just complained about, that wizard was practically begging for a long rest. No sir. You get multiple hard encounters and a race against enemies. Maybe don’t blow Hold Person on the fleeing civilian when the rogue has expertise and is ready to grapple next time.
I’m much happier now that we’re playing a different system.
I prefer the Warhammer Fantasy approach: if you can use magic, it’s at will as many times as you want it, but it can fail and, more importantly, backfire spectacularly.
Also, that DnD5 made cantrips scale up in power with player level is something I enjoyed at first, but the more I think about it, the less I like it. Especially when you can make a whatever 19 / warlock 1 and throw 4x 1d10 attacks at very long range at will.
5e is still balanced because of the opportunity cost. If you grab that 1 level in warlock, you’ll never get the level 20 perks of your main class. If you pick up that 1 warlock level when you’re around level 5 it means you’re postponing your next main class power spike by a whole level. The rewards have to be somewhat worth taking because of what you’re losing.
And to be fair, none of the official campaigns even play at level 20. It may sound OP doing that much damage at will but you’re missing the context. Your enemies at level 20 are basically going to be literal gods. You’re going to be playing a homebrewed campaign. Your DM has many tools available to make your level 20 cantrip balanced, not least of which is just scaling up the enemy HP.
I thought that before I started playing, but since then I have leaned further towards the first two.
I really dislike “per day” resource management, it really limits the way in which stories are constructed!
Same here, I’m always debating with myself:
“Should I use this? Should I save it for later? I’ll save it.”
Then I never use it…
Use it the first time it’s needed. Always use it. As a DM I often expect people to use their stuff. Besides, having low resources makes for interesting decisions. And the DM will know if you’re all out of resources anyways.
Disagree. If the party just uses Fly to get over the cliff instead of coming up with an interesting solution, that’s kind of boring. It also makes it harder for non-casters to shine.
Second, I don’t really like when the world scales with the party. The DM changing the world because the wizard blew all his slots stupidly feels bad. Why even have the choice of spending resources over a long period if everything is just going to scale with us?
Also it kind of sucks when you do get to the big boss and the wizard is tapped out because he’s been real loose with his slots
That’s exactly what fly is for. Level 10 parties aren’t challenged by simple terrain.
Also it’s a game. Your can run yours preplanned or improvised as much as you and your players like.
Yeah. I feel like as things keep changing, I’m growing less fond of TTRPG’s that are pure battles of attrition. It’s nice to have things you can use at will. Or if there is a limited resource, having a way to regain some of that resource on the fly makes for more dynamic game states.
PC Warlock (A): I finish my turn, open the door and take a short rest."
Me (GM): So you what, slump against the wall and take a nap?
PC Warlock (A): “Effectively.”
Me (GM): “You can clearly see an armored bandit in the next room, along with three skeleton archers and another set at the far wall.”
PC Warlock (A): “Can they reach me on this turn?”
Me (GM): “No?”
PC Warlock (A): “Can they hit me with a ranged attack, this turn?”
Me (GM): “Also no”
PC Warlock (A): “Short rest.”
Short rests take an entire hour though.
I once made a sorcerer that used nothing but Prestidigitation along with a super high deception skill to be like the Chris Angel of Faerun because it’s a cantrip and I never run out of casts for it like I would with real spells.
“I cast prestidigitation as I shout ‘fireball’ and turn my wand into a sparkler.”
“The kobolds piss themselves and run away.”
