Are classes with per-day abilities bad design or can they work?

[Elves]

Vancian casters are built on an idea of managing your resources throughout the day, but in practice that's a bad foundation because it's only situationally necessary. It doesn't even work in the specific environment it was designed for, the dungeon gauntlet, where it just encourages the famous 15-minute adventuring day. To get a Vancian system pretend to be functional in 3.5 required instituting a "4 encounters per day" standard, which is very limiting considering how variable the pace of fantasy stories is.

Vancian casting also makes class balance and PVP balance impossible because a class that can go nova will always be able to overpower one that can't.

On the flip side, it punishes players who excessively conserve their resources in a situation where players often have no way to judge what a reasonable level of conservation is, except, again, through that weird metagaming of "4 encounters per day".

The unit of the game is the encounter, durations between 1-10 rounds and at most 1 hour are the most significant, and a base class should never have per-day as its central mechanic. Per-day should be reserved for the frosting and sprinkles.


The traditional way to patch the issue of the variable length day is to give either a base ability allotment per encounter, or weak at-wills. But that only softens the problem, it doesn't solve it. In the first case it also threatens to recreate the problem by mandating encounter length. It's slightly better but it's just not as good as a class based on at-wills, recovery mechanisms like TOB, or short- and medium-term cooldowns. And it doesn't address the other problems. Those are harder to patch. Nova inequality can be countered through some form of diminishing returns, but that gets weird and overcomplicated.

There's a place for per-day abilities, but IMO it is not at the center of any class's mechanics. What do you think? Can Vancian be salvaged? Is there a way to make per-day classes work?

[darkdragoon]

It's not really a drawback for spells as they often get to dictate the terms. Even the more limited casters can get plenty of mileage out of pearls of power and the like.

The other ones, it's very hit and miss, and many suffer from diminishing returns. And that's before you get into the "similar but not the same" like with Smite.

[ThanatosZero]

Unearthed Arcana Chapter 5: Magic offers plenty of variants, but one which sticks out to me the most is the Recharging Magic variant as explained on page 157/158.

Here a custom table, because copy/pasting source material directly from the book goes against the rules.
https://i.imgur.com/pweOjf2.png

In a nutshell, once you cast a spell, your spellslot becomes temporally unavailable and you need to wait as many rounds as shown in the table, for it to become useable again.
A 18th Level sorcerer with access to 9th level spells could cast 1st level and 0th level spells indefinitely, without a need to wait for them to recharge, but they still wouldn't be able to cast more than 1 spell per round normally.

[Ignimortis]

There's a place for per-day abilities, but IMO it is not at the center of any class's mechanics. What do you think? Can Vancian be salvaged? Is there a way to make per-day classes work?

I'd wager that I dislike per day mechanics more than most D&D players. "Expected adventuring day" has no place in building a narrative, and filler fights designed solely to drain resources instead of challenging the players are boring. If D&D didn't ever evolve from a dungeon crawler with very limited environments and expectations, Vancian could still work. In today's D&D, where a lot of people 1) use D&D because it's the best-known system and very popular; 2) run sandboxy or even fully open-world campaigns, and even plot-driven campaigns are often far more open than "just dungeons all the time"; having nova resources is bad, because it forces the GM to fix the designers' intent by adjusting the game they want to run instead of the system allowing it to be run by default.

3.5 Warlock, ToB and ToM got things almost right as far as I'm concerned. Recovery mechanics of martial adepts and short "cooldowns" of Binders as well as reasonable at-wills of Warlock work well in D&D combat. Much better than Vancian casting and boring at-will attacks with no riders or special effects.

And here's a thought: copying video games isn't inherently wrong. It's wrong when it's done wrong. Here's a simple way that I wouldn't really bat an eye at as a TTRPG mechanic: give Fighter something like Warblade maneuvers (maybe with less levels, no point in 9 levels when 4 or 5 do the trick) and a Stamina bar equal to CON score, with each maneuver costing some Stamina (like, a level 1 maneuver costs 2 Stamina, and a level 4 maneuver costs 6). Every round they recover Stamina equal to their CON bonus. If they forgo using a maneuver that round, they recover twice as much. Easy to track and remember without any "slots" or "maneuvers readied".

Barbarians don't have Stamina, they build up Rage by attacking and taking damage, which can be then spent. Rogues don't get Stamina, they get Tricks which start off full but don't recover during the encounter - but as soon as the encounter is over, Tricks recover fully. Etc, etc.

There are tons of recovery mechanics one can invent to keep classes from feeling samey, especially if their powers are also different, so a Fighter gets a perfect parry and Omnislash, a Barbarian lights up on spiritual fire and summons animal spirits or literally hulks out and can use people as improvised weapons, and Rogues get smoke powder and parkour and short-range teleports so on.

[King of Nowhere]

Unearthed Arcana Chapter 5: Magic offers plenty of variants, but one which sticks out to me the most is the Recharging Magic variant as explained on page 157/158.




And here's a thought: copying video games isn't inherently wrong. It's wrong when it's done wrong. Here's a simple way that I wouldn't really bat an eye at as a TTRPG mechanic: give Fighter something like Warblade maneuvers (maybe with less levels, no point in 9 levels when 4 or 5 do the trick) and a Stamina bar equal to CON score, with each maneuver costing some Stamina (like, a level 1 maneuver costs 2 Stamina, and a level 4 maneuver costs 6). Every round they recover Stamina equal to their CON bonus. If they forgo using a maneuver that round, they recover twice as much. Easy to track and remember without any "slots" or "maneuvers readied".


neither of those would be very meaningful, because combat is very short tipically. one or two rounds, and all is done.
those mechanics would make sense with longer combat.

plus, the main limitation of vancian magic is not much that you run out of spells, but that you have to pick them in advance.

[Ignimortis]

neither of those would be very meaningful, because combat is very short tipically. one or two rounds, and all is done.
those mechanics would make sense with longer combat.

plus, the main limitation of vancian magic is not much that you run out of spells, but that you have to pick them in advance.

In 3.5 by itself, yes. But the mechanics I present would likely necessitate to build a game around them from scratch, like a new edition, because the current editions actually work around X/day mechanics to a lesser (3.5) or greater (4e, 5e) degree.

[ShurikVch]

plus, the main limitation of vancian magic is not much that you run out of spells, but that you have to pick them in advance.
How about the spontaneous casting ("Spells known" like Sorcerer, "whole list" like Beguiler, or even weird hybrid like Spirit Shaman)?

[King of Nowhere]

How about the spontaneous casting ("Spells known" like Sorcerer, "whole list" like Beguiler, or even weird hybrid like Spirit Shaman)?

for those, a recharge mechanic makes sense.

[Fizban]

A mighty 2 1/2 hour wall of text, but with a succinct tl;dr instead-

Can Vancian be salvaged? Is there a way to make per-day classes work?
Doesn't need to be slavaged. Game groups need to recognize whether their desired playstyle/level (adventure) design/etc is actually a fit for resource conservation mechanics, or if they should really all be playing with unlimited use abilities instead.

[magicalmagicman]

Lets see

I use planar binding and DMM:Persistent Spell to make my per day abilities last a full day, or more.
I use simulacrum to make monsters that last indefinitely. I intentionally hold myself back so other players can shine.
I use bought animals, animal companions, zombies, elemental stewards, duration:concentration summon powers, etc. to have a powerful minion all day.

Seems like it works to me. And I'm pretty sure I can take out a mailman even with only a single day's castings.

Your entire premise is wrong.

[Kayblis]

Daily use abilities are not bad design. You're not supposed to be facing hordes and hordes of equal level encounters even as a hero, and even if you happen to sometimes, you should be able to prepare in advance. They might not fit your particular game style, but vancian casting and daily abilities make so you can't just go 100% on every challenge while giving you the option to punch above your grade if need be. If anything, it's a matter of some classes not recieving enough relevant, useful daily abilities. That would level the playing field a bit more.

ToB went a different way, and it's a great addition to 3.5 specifically because it's different. You now have the option to play this particular style, and other people can keep doing their thing.

If you prefer a completely different kind of game, in which everyone has unique stamina meters with unique powers and cooldowns and such, I recommend you look for another system. No joke. D&D isn't the only thing in the market, and it's better to play a system that fits your needs than try to force a system into meeting them. If your solution is reworking everything, no need to keep yourself attached to the corpse of a system you don't enjoy.

[Ignimortis]

If you prefer a completely different kind of game, in which everyone has unique stamina meters with unique powers and cooldowns and such, I recommend you look for another system. No joke. D&D isn't the only thing in the market, and it's better to play a system that fits your needs than try to force a system into meeting them. If your solution is reworking everything, no need to keep yourself attached to the corpse of a system you don't enjoy.

It's a vicious circle. All the GMs I know except for one mostly run D&D and, with luck, one more system (which they might prefer, but still). At this point, I would have to run my own campaigns just to "play" games I like, because D&D is so ubiquitous. And frankly, I don't even know of a game that would fit what I described - so I'd have to make one myself (I have a few projects in the works, but none have gotten too far).

[Elves]

Unearthed Arcana Chapter 5: Magic offers plenty of variants, but one which sticks out to me the most is the Recharging Magic variant as explained on page 157/158.
Thanks, I’d never seen that variant. Importing it into 3.5 as-is would be a disaster and the swingy recharge times are problematic, but yeah, spell recharge timers are certainly one way you could go. It does mean more to keep track of so one challenge would be minimizing the necessary bookkeeping.


I'd wager that I dislike per day mechanics more than most D&D players. [...]
Great post, I totally agree.


Lets see

I use planar binding and DMM:Persistent Spell to make my per day abilities last a full day, or more.
I use simulacrum to make monsters that last indefinitely. I intentionally hold myself back so other players can shine.
I use bought animals, animal companions, zombies, elemental stewards, duration:concentration summon powers, etc. to have a powerful minion all day.

Seems like it works to me. And I'm pretty sure I can take out a mailman even with only a single day's castings.

Your entire premise is wrong.
I’m talking about the premise of the system, not specific ways 3.5e wizards can be powerful, of which there are a lot.

[Aotrs Commander]

There's a place for per-day abilities, but IMO it is not at the center of any class's mechanics. What do you think? Can Vancian be salvaged? Is there a way to make per-day classes work?

This is basically the "rest" problem. The party stops to rest for the night when all the per-rest characters have expended their resources.

You cannot solve that problem.

There are two schools of thought which basically boil down to: "I want to have to manage my resources like I was an AD&D spellcaster" and "I don't want to have to manage my resources like an AD&D spellcaster." You cannot satisfy both camps, because what they want is diametrically opposite.

The best you will ever manage is some sort of compromise.

One of the better attempts, I thought, was Pillars of Eternity 1, where it basically made hit points refresh per encounter, but from a significantly larger per-day pool and limtied resting to a disposable itme you could only carry so much of and all classes and items had per-rest abilities, which meant you couldn't quite rest as much as you liked (not without the redium of tramping back to an inn every time. But that got moans as well, so that idea was dropped for PoE 2.

Kingmaker made camping supplies extremely heavy and disposable and in addition was on a (generous) timer, so you were encouraged to husband out your resources (and in at least one place, you couldn't get out to rest).

You can have no per-rest encounters and make it all functionally or actually per-encounter (which is what recharges will do), but then all encounters will fundementally play out the same way, because all the classes will nova because there's no reason not to and/or the players will tend to default to the same set of powers spammed every fight except where those are explictily countered. (Fights can also start to feel samey.) (Note: unlimited healing in particualr can be very bad for game balance;I had party with a Shadow Sun Ninja and a Dread Necromancer in the party, which meant that both the living and the undead got unlimited out of combat healing thanks to the former.)

You can throw your hands in the air, say "frack it" and embrace the 15-minute adventuring day, and buff the encounters such that you only expect the PCs to do one to four fights before they need to rest because they're all out of resources.

You can give EVERYONE at will and per-rest powers (see 4E), but that runs the danger of homogonising the classes (also see 4E).

You can find a system which does not have discrete per-rest abilities (though I don't think there are many with magic in them that I can think of that do that off the top of my ghead D6 Star Wars, maybe?)

You can spend a lot of time functionally writing your own system, but to do the job properly, it is not one that you can slap a patch on and expect to work, it is the sort of thing that takes months or years to do properly. (Speaking as an inveterate rules-smith; it took my 13 years to get my starship rules done and published, and several months of SOLID work to compile the 3.5/PF hybrid 3.Aotrs "edition" (at a 1000 pages, I think we're past it being "mod/house rules" and more akin to "unoffical edition/total conversion mod")).

There is, though, no quick and easy solution.




At this point, I would have to run my own campaigns just to "play" games I like, because D&D is so ubiquitous. And frankly, I don't even know of a game that would fit what I described - so I'd have to make one myself (I have a few projects in the works, but none have gotten too far).

If you're not prepared to DM, you ABSOLUTELY can't fix the problem.

[Ignimortis]

If you're not prepared to DM, you ABSOLUTELY can't fix the problem.

Oh, I'm very much prepared (I've DM'd 3.5 without major success (as in, players liked it but none actually wanted to carry on in 3.5 instead of 5e or something after the campaign was done) and I've been working on a Shadowrun 5e rewrite for a year now). The issue is mostly not getting to actually play things that you yourself design as massive changes. You can persuade a DM to adopt a small houserule, but a whole new subsystem or a system rewrite? That's gonna take a lot of work, and the only way is to GM that thing yourself then hope someone likes it enough to pick it up instead of the default system or even instead of systems they're currently using.

[Elves]

it's better to play a system that fits your needs than try to force a system into meeting them. If your solution is reworking everything, no need to keep yourself attached to the corpse of a system you don't enjoy.

The problem isn't that Vancian doesn't work for me, it's that it's at odds with the D&D game itself. If D&D wants to be a general fantasy storytelling game, which 5e has made big postures toward -- it can't be that so long as it mandates a specific number of combat encounters per day in order for its systems to work. That's a huge limiter on the storytelling. Meanwhile, if D&D wants to be a dungeon crawling game, then the game is put at war with itself by having systems that encourage the PCs to go in, blow their load, and leave. You can put in ad hoc reasons why they can't do that, but you shouldn't force every adventure to patch an underlying systemic problem.

(And again, even when you do have the "right" number of encounters, per-day is so swingy that it's still a flawed balance mechanism.)


This is basically the "rest" problem. The party stops to rest for the night when all the per-rest characters have expended their resources.
There are two schools of thought which basically boil down to: "I want to have to manage my resources like I was an AD&D spellcaster" and "I don't want to have to manage my resources like an AD&D spellcaster." You cannot satisfy both camps, because what they want is diametrically opposite.
What I'm saying is that even in AD&D, Vancian didn't work in harmony with the game.

[Biggus]

Unearthed Arcana Chapter 5: Magic offers plenty of variants, but one which sticks out to me the most is the Recharging Magic variant as explained on page 157/158.

Here a custom table, because copy/pasting source material directly from the book goes against the rules.
https://i.imgur.com/pweOjf2.png

In a nutshell, once you cast a spell, your spellslot becomes temporally unavailable and you need to wait as many rounds as shown in the table, for it to become useable again.
A 18th Level sorcerer with access to 9th level spells could cast 1st level and 0th level spells indefinitely, without a need to wait for them to recharge, but they still wouldn't be able to cast more than 1 spell per round normally.

For future reference, a lot of the UA content is part of the SRD. That table you wrote out is here for example: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/rechargeMagic.htm

[Psyren]

Here a custom table, because copy/pasting source material directly from the book goes against the rules.


For future reference, a lot of the UA content is part of the SRD. That table you wrote out is here for example: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/rechargeMagic.htm

Indeed - there's a sitewide exemption in the forum rules for reposting OGL/OGC material, which that section of Unearthed Arcana falls under.


As far as the thread topic - I think there's a benefit to having both "per encounter" and "per day" abilities (or "short rest" and "long rest" as 5e would define it). It is definitely not bad design, because "I have to sleep before I can do X again" is very intuitive to a lot of people who are new to TTRPGs, and it's a lot easier for a GM to keep track of than something like a mana pool. Recharge Magic in particular sounds like a lot of fun on paper but actually tracking it in a game without some kind of computerized aid can quickly become a nightmare - GMs have enough bookkeeping just with tracking buffs and debuffs without having to also track round-by-round cooldowns too. I love the idea but tabletop gaming itself is not at a point where it can be easily facilitated for a majority of playgroups.

[Aotrs Commander]

The problem isn't that Vancian doesn't work for me, it's that it's at odds with the D&D game itself. If D&D wants to be a general fantasy storytelling game, which 5e has made big postures toward -- it can't be that so long as it mandates a specific number of combat encounters per day in order for its systems to work. That's a huge cramp on storytelling and plot progression. Meanwhile, if D&D wants to be a dungeon crawling game, then the game is put at war with itself by having systems that encourage the PCs to go in, blow their load, and leave. You can put in ad hoc reasons why they can't do that, but you shouldn't force every adventure to patch an underlying systemic problem.

Okay, first off you're conflating two things here. Vancian isn't per-day abilities, Vancian is SPECIFICALLY D&D's prepared casting (not spontaneous spellcasting). Vancian is per-rest, but pre-rest is not Vancian.

Rolemaster uses Power Points for spells (which have levels) and has daily items, but it isn't Vancian. (You will have the exact same issue based in one specific set of abilities as a per-day resource, though.)



3.5's idea of using 4 encounters as a rough guideline for new DMs (as a starting point for something) was well-meaning but ultimately flawed, because it's treated too often as proscriptive, not descriptive. (See also alignment...) You can laregly ignore those recommendations entirely, I find, and just like basically every other system out there, balance encounters by eye. But that's a problem specific to 3.0 and onwards, not with pre-rest abilities.




What I'm saying is that even in AD&D, Vancian didn't work in harmony with the game.

Not the point I was making. The point I was making is that (some) people WANT to have to manage their per day resources (whatever form those resources take) and explictly not have all their resources available at every encounter.

(Hell, I know players who get miffed that it is functionally impossible to run out of ammunition in scifi games because the majority of all scifi games insist on modelling every bullet (or nearly every bullet).)



I think fundementally here the thing is that you appaear to be in the former camp of the two I mentioned and D&D specifically is geared more towards the second. Per day is NOT bad design - the execution of how D&D's various forms don't very evenly parcel it out to all classes is an ENTIRELY seperate issue.

[Quertus]

You asked "bad design". The answer is a resounding "no".

You claim that you cannot get balance right with "per day". So what? Bows require ammo; by this way of thinking, you cannot get balance "right" between a bow and a sword. Learn to balance a sword and a bow, then worry about balancing more complex "limited use" abilities.

You claim, "but what about PvP? Nova always beats at-will." OK, now we've actually got a balance question. All we need is, say, "stealth", which has a rock-scissors-paper balance with "per day Nova" and "at will stamina", and we have achieved balance.

Personally, I don't care about balance. And I don't care for PvP. But, if you're going to care about such things, at least have the conversation… fully.

Different "recharge" methods lead to more diverse gameplay. For me, that's a feature, and inherently good design. Trying to create "balanced" encounters (another thing I don't care about) when the PCs aren't some trivially identical, replaceable parts? If you actually care about that? Then you need to build the system from the ground up, where the "encounter day" is formulaic, and defined *by the party*. Add in X per day damage? Add a percentage of X to the day's encounters. Add in X "per encounter" damage? Add a percentage of X HP per encumber. Etc etc etc.

[Psyren]

Vancian casting also makes class balance and PVP balance impossible because a class that can go nova will always be able to overpower one that can't.

Missed this in my initial reply - but this game is not designed for "PvP balance" If that's a concern of yours there are other games out there.


This is the kind of subsystem where having an official app would be handy. There are so many cases where TTRPG rules have to be simplified for ease of use, which is sometimes good but sometimes limiting. Having a program for running parts of the game could help merge the complexity of videogame mechanics with the freeform nature of a TTRPG.

Absolutely but we're at the very early adoption stages of things like scripted buff/cooldown management and AI gming. It will be quite a while yet before that kind of thing cracks mainstream play, but I'm always interested in these kinds of developments.

[Elves]

I love the idea but tabletop gaming itself is not at a point where it can be easily facilitated for a majority of playgroups.

This is the kind of subsystem where having an official app would be handy. There are so many cases where TTRPG rules have to be simplified for ease of use, which is sometimes good but sometimes limiting. Having a program for running parts of the game could help merge the complexity of videogame mechanics with the freeform nature of a TTRPG. I'm sure there are already games that have done this.



Missed this in my initial reply - but this game is not designed for "PvP balance" If that's a concern of yours there are other games out there.
Maybe not in 4e and 5e, but in 3e you often go up against creatures with PC class levels.

[Morty]

I don't think they're a very good idea, as a general rule, and are best avoided. However, where it gets really bad is mixing classes that rely entirely on per-day abilities with classes that rely entirely on at-will ones and expecting it to work. If some classes have per-encounter abilities or a similar pacing mechanism while others have per-day abilities, it's somewhat better and might work. Especially if the per-day abilities are reserved for dramatic displays of power and not the be-all end-all of someone's output.

If only some classes get them and rely one them, they're not a very good pacing or balancing method, because their impact varies so wildly with the game's tempo. And they effectively force the whole party to abide by some members' pace, because their per-day abilities are too strong to go without. So the only way to make them work is to spread them more evenly and/or reduce reliance on them.

[Psyren]

Maybe not in 4e and 5e, but in 3e you often go up against creatures with PC class levels.

That's still not PvP though; there's a lot of factors that go into designing an encounter with an enemy that has class levels beyond their potential to "go nova."

[Aotrs Commander]

Maybe not in 4e and 5e, but in 3e you often go up against creatures with PC class levels.

That's not PvP, that's party verses enemy. "PvP" basically is mostly taking a character on their own, verses another character on their own. The sort of thing that geneally (in my three decades of experience) almost never comes in in real play. (Maybe your group is big into fighting eah other, I don't know. But maybe if they ARE, D&D is probably not a good system for them, then, because that's not the paradigm it's designed around.)

I'll go out right out and say it. In a game that is not SPECIFICALLY designed around one vrs one combat (e.g fighting games), but multiple unit conflict, balance SHOULD NOT be considered in on the individual unit basis in isolation and that is as true for wargames as for computer games. A point-defence ship SHOULD NOT be balanced against a regular destroyer or a torpedo ship or a carrier insolation; balance should be fleet-wise. Each element should be balanced on making its appropriate contribution in it appropriate way. (Hell, there would be a better arguement for making the classes have some sort of rock/paper/scissors interaction (mage beats fighter, fighter beats rogue, rogue beats mage) than for balacing around one verses one duels in my opinion.) And RPG is a TEAM game still, and the balance should be aimed more at the balance of the team and makign sure they all have cool things to do than standarding each individual member so that they would have 50/50 odds of beating the next guy along in a fight.

Making sure that contribution is equally VALID is the basic crux of caster/noncaster disparity, and that's basically what we're talking about when you starr to talk about novaing vrs not novaing; it's starting to sound like it's not per-day that bothers you, it's that age-old disparity that's been talked to death.

(Now, I have a 1000-page edition of house rules that says I didn't think 3.5/PF1 did quite a good enough job in getting that quite right to my satisfaction, and I will absolutely be the last person to say that D&D 3.5 or even PF1 (thought that's better) unmodified doesn't have potentially serious issues in that regard... But those are not problems with PER DAY abilities as a game design concept, they're to do with the implementation of the disparity.)

[King of Nowhere]

The problem isn't that Vancian doesn't work for me, it's that it's at odds with the D&D game itself. If D&D wants to be a general fantasy storytelling game, which 5e has made big postures toward -- it can't be that so long as it mandates a specific number of combat encounters per day in order for its systems to work.

that's a common misconcenption, one that people keep repeating while knowing other things that make it blatantly false. it's a kind of doublethink ingrained in much of the D&D community.

let's all repeat together: it's not true that the system needs 5 encounters per day to work.

it's very easy to refute the point: the system, as written and presented, does not work, no matter the amount of encounters. period. a high optimization wizard will wreak havoc with all mechanics of CR and resource management. heck, even a well optimized fighter will do that. my monk could take on level-appropriate encounters all day, he'd only get hit on a natural 20 and he gets a free trip whenever he's attacked and missed - and we're talking about a monk, and not even particularly optimized. the 5-encounters-resource-management-with-CR just. plain. does. not. work.
to which you could reply, "send more monsters", or "send stronger monsters", or "make different encounters". YES! that's the second point.
the system does not work as presented, but it can be made to work with some adjustments. it's like a sensitive instrument that can do amazing things if tuned properly, but will only pick up noise otherwise. and if you can make it work by tuning it to the party, then you can also tune your encounters for more or less combat per day.
heck, i don't think i've ever seen a regular dungeon slog past the mid levels, and those rarely. the thing is, it's stupid to keep on looking for fights with your resources depleted when you can teleport to your safe place to sleep. and you can force the players to push through multiple encounters by putting them on a deadline, but how often can you make a deadline before killing everyone's suspension of disbelief and sense of immersion?
furthermore, at low levels it is conceivable (if a bit of a stretch) to find two groups of bandits in the same day, plus a wandering owlbear and a pack of wolves. stumbling on 5 great wyrm dragons in 5 separate encounters, on the other hand, is ridiculous. unless they are working together, in which case why would they not fight you all together? this is, ultimately, the reason nobody i know tries to enforce the 5 encounters. the big bad may have squads of disposable mooks, but he's unlikely to have squads of disposable 10th level people that he can throw at the party to spend a few spell slots.

of course, if you ditch the 5 encounters, casters are even more powerful because they can go nova. then again, casters already can break the game in a multitude of ways. the only thing that keeps the game going is gentlemen agreement and/or enforced houserules and bans. and if you can do that and make the game work, you can make it work regardless of per-day abilities.

tldr: the system is not broken because of vancian casting. the system is broken because of crazy high optimization ceiling. if you can fix the game to take that into account, you can also fix the game to account for different numbers of encounters.

[Dimers]

the current editions actually work around X/day mechanics to a lesser (3.5) or greater (4e, 5e) degree.

If you mean "work around" as "are centered on", I'm inclined to disagree about 4e's position. Daily abilities are less important than encounter abilities and are in some cases removed entirely. If you mean "work around" as "elide, bypass, skip", then I'm surprised you place 5e in that category.

@OP: Here's one possible takeaway from 4e's daily power design. Most class daily powers have a smaller effect that lasts multiple turns rather than being a single humongous one-and-done, and quite a few are made to be mutually exclusive. E.g. a barbarian can only have one rage power active at a time, a warden can only have one guardian form, a ranger or fighter can only have one stance ... If you compare the initial hit of a daily against the whole effect of an encounter power, they're almost indistinguishable, and it's only the multi-round side effect that makes the daily better. Overall, the mechanics incentivize players to spend one daily per encounter rather than going nova with all their dailies, even when the characters don't expect more fights soon. So maybe the answer is to change the nature of per-day abilities rather than remove them.

[mindstalk]

how often can you make a deadline before killing everyone's suspension of disbelief and sense of immersion?

Always, if the PCs exist in an adversarial environment, rather than poking at some passive and unreactive tomb. It's being able to always control your day that's unrealistic. If people are working against your goals, taking time off means falling behind your opposition.

[Elves]

@OP: Here's one possible takeaway from 4e's daily power design. Most class daily powers have a smaller effect that lasts multiple turns rather than being a single humongous one-and-done, and quite a few are made to be mutually exclusive.

Good point, though on the other hand, the fact that they unfold over several rounds means they require premeditation to use well, which feeds into one of the valid criticisms of 4e which is the formulaic way powers tended to be used (in this case, basically, "I'm saving this for the boss fight", as opposed to "I'll use this when I really need it" for an acute impact daily). I don't think there's anything wrong with an acute-impact "panic button" daily that is added as a cherry on top of a class's core functioning.


Always, if the PCs exist in an adversarial environment, rather than poking at some passive and unreactive tomb. It's being able to always control your day that's unrealistic. If people are working against your goals, taking time off means falling behind your opposition.

You should create an "adversarial environment" because it's fun, realistic, etc, not because you have to do so in order to make the game system work. See above:

You can put in ad hoc reasons why they can't do that, but you shouldn't force every adventure to patch an underlying systemic problem.

The system should be able to accommodate many different kinds of adventures, rather than the adventures having to be structured in a specific way to accommodate the system.

It's dysfunctional if every adventure has to make up its own reasons why the game system doesn't fall apart. That frames it so that the game system functioning is an exception.

[magicalmagicman]

I’m talking about the premise of the system, not specific ways 3.5e wizards can be powerful, of which there are a lot.

I was talking about Vancian casting system being ridiculously powerful in exchange for per day thing.

Personally I rather have the ability to create powerful permanent effects at a slower pace than weak effects at-will. That's why I like the Vancian system and I don't think it's bad design at all.

[Quertus]

The system should be able to accommodate many different kinds of adventures, rather than the adventures having to be structured in a specific way to accommodate the system.

It's dysfunctional if every adventure has to make up its own reasons why the game system doesn't fall apart. That frames it so that the game system functioning is an exception.

Saying, "I want to be able to pick X letters at random, but always have them spell the same word" is unreasonable.

Pretend, for the sake of argument, that we could find 5 mechs, or 5 magic cards, or 5 perfumes, that most experts could agree were roughly equal. Even in this scenario, you can't just mix and match them at random, and expect to get the same results, *especially* given the inherent "strong/weak against certain things" nature of the first two, and the insanity of the last one.

Mathematically, if each class has some unique formula for its effectiveness (Fighter primarily involves AC, HP, attack bonus, and damage of itself & foe; Rogue includes that, but is much more complex; Wizards and Archers strongly factor in # of encounters, etc), expecting that you can get those formulae to resolve to the same value for any given mix of encounter data? It's just silly.

3e doesn't "fall apart" for different numbers and types of encounters; it just does not - and cannot - have nigh-perfect class balance for arbitrary encounter data.

And that's a good thing.

It means that what character you chose to bring actually affects the difficulty, and, potentially, even the outcome of the adventure.

Character selection mattering is the first battlefield for Player Agency. And, in 3e, it's one that I consider a win.

[Elves]

In that response, I'm not talking about class balance, I'm replying to mindstalk about the problems with the Vancian system on its own terms as a resource management scheme. It only works in particular conditions (a certain number of successive encounters in the same day, and no ability to do a 15-minute adventuring day). In the second case this puts the onus on each individual adventure to create a patch for an issue with the system itself. It would be better to have a system that didn't have a hole.

[Fizban]

If you create a system where the adventure design doesn't matter, then the adventure design doesn't matter. All adventures are now the same.

It's actually a pretty significant problem I have with a lot of the more narrative systems I've seen, that no matter what the rules or plot are it all boils down what you can convince the DM to let you do with your highest roll and its easily calculated percentage- but even then they still keep some sort of resource around, so that the players can decide when to spend it. Resource expenditure and recovery is the most fundamental game mechanic there is, its what separates Tic Tac Toe and Chutes and Ladders and Candyland from, ya know, actual games with choices.

When the resources recover relative to the narrative is massively important- and if you want a world that has any amount of realism, it's going to need to work based on time. The standard measure of reset time for humans is "after you get a night's sleep," period. A game with resources that recover per fight without regard for in-game time is massively inherently unrealistic and has a completely different tone, which goes completely against that of DnD. Sure, you could say that you're playing in a standard DnD setting and just happening to use these simplified rules for combat, but it's a sham and you know exactly how the setting does not reflect the mechanics. Even the most magical and bombastic stories in media still have some sort of suggestion that a given hero cannot fight forever. With an everything recovers per encounter system, the only way to wear someone down is if the fight never ends.


DnD is not just a plug and play system. Being a DM doesn't just mean you're a computer that rolls dice for the monsters, or a player that builds monsters that the other players fight. It means you are literally a game designer, because every adventure you write, every dungeon you map and fill out, is a game. Good video games require good level designers, and so does DnD (and yes, the DMG does actually discuss this a bit).

There are video games with very little resource management and computer managed dungeon mapping- but they're not roleplaying games. They're roguelikes and diablo-clones. And the level design job just shifts to programming movable blocks and randomizers that can shuffle them in a way that changes every game while still producing usable levels, and even then they still have to rely on the fact that a bad level will be over fast and you'll be on to the next. But DnD is not fast, which means good level design is critical.

You could theoretically design a tabletop RPG with foundational gameplay that's as engrossing as a roguelike or looter, but there is an unbeatable threshold for how fast the players can process it at the table.

This is the kind of subsystem where having an official app would be handy. There are so many cases where TTRPG rules have to be simplified for ease of use, which is sometimes good but sometimes limiting. Having a program for running parts of the game could help merge the complexity of videogame mechanics with the freeform nature of a TTRPG. I'm sure there are already games that have done this.
Indeed, there are tabletop games with apps, some to the point that what you're actually playing is a videogame but with physical pieces the group is placing rather than a monitor*. Which is a cool aesthetic. But a heavily app-powered roguelike/looter engine is not going to be compatible with a DM writing plots and dungeons.

*For example, Gloomhaven. Playable without an app via decks and spinners, but would be much easier with, has simple mechanics that focus on tactical gameplay, and everything refreshes every fight even! But that's because the narrative is "you go out and raid dungeons" and can go back to town at any time, not serious roleplaying. The X-Com boardgame actually requires the app to generate all its events.

[Elves]

If you create a system where the adventure design doesn't matter, then the adventure design doesn't matter. All adventures are now the same.
If you have a system where you don't have to structure your adventure to compensate for system deficiencies, you're free to make the adventures you want.


It's actually a pretty significant problem I have with a lot of the more narrative systems I've seen, that no matter what the rules or plot are it all boils down what you can convince the DM to let you do.
We're not talking about removing rules. At-will abilities, cooldown abilities and recovery mechanisms are used by many classes.

In truly narrative-based games, the GM-player distinction, which is very rigid in D&D, is often softer or not present. It's about doing an imaginative exercise, not strategy. Sure, the middle space between rule based and freeform can get confused. I'd rather play something either explicitly rule based or fully freeform.

That's a tangent though. Vancian isn't some thin line between structure and anarchy.


A game with resources that recover per fight without regard for in-game time is massively inherently unrealistic
Unrealistic how? I would say rolling a die to represent swinging a sword is "massively inherently unrealistic", as are hit points, etc. The game is a system that's often completely unrelated to what it's modeling. Yes, people get conditioned to associate some of these mechanisms with their object, and get mad when that expectation is violated. Eg, some people learned to associate the graphical format used to represent spells in the PHB with magic, so when a similar format got used in Tome of Battle, they said it was "like spells". In reality, it's just a notecard format for presenting the info about an on-use ability, and is no more spell-like than anything else. But that's expectation, stuff people have gotten used to, not something inherently more real.

Obviously the game has to work as a plausible model. There are some things we expect to mirror reality, like sleep healing and refreshing us, etc. But the idea that "your spells refresh when you sleep" is not something people derived from the real world. It's something they derived from D&D. On a tangent, if you want to mandate rest mechanically, penalties for missing sleep could replace all sleep-based cooldowns.


and has a completely different tone
Really? What's the difference?


which goes completely against that of DnD.
Like I've said, IMO Vancian magic is actually at odds with the D&D game even as a dungeon crawl. By mandating a certain number of fights per day, it's also at odds with the general fantasy storytelling system D&D is more and more trying to pitch itself as.


But a heavily app-powered roguelike/looter engine is not going to be compatible with a DM writing plots and dungeons.
We were talking about an app that does calculations for mechanics like recharge times that are impractical to track and communicate with only pen and paper.

[Ignimortis]

Always, if the PCs exist in an adversarial environment, rather than poking at some passive and unreactive tomb. It's being able to always control your day that's unrealistic. If people are working against your goals, taking time off means falling behind your opposition.

As someone who's DM'd a 3.5 1-15 campaign, finding arbitrary reasons to put in more fights that can drain resources gets harder as the players progress. Bandits stalking the wilderness in enough numbers that you can probably fight a pack or two while getting anywhere? Possible, I guess. But when they're level 8, bandits are a non-issue, and there aren't enough high-powered monsters in the world to throw at them. Even if there are people working against adventurers (after all, antagonists exist), they aren't necessarily people with the pull and power to throw waves of expendable minions at the heroes. They can just as well be small parties that are personally powerful in pursuit of some goal. Therefore, most days that had a fight in them had only one or two deadly encounters instead of one easy, two medium, one hard and one possibly deadly.


If you create a system where the adventure design doesn't matter, then the adventure design doesn't matter. All adventures are now the same.

I don't see how a rigid structure that has to be followed for the game to be balanced somehow enforces a greater diversity of plots and adventures than a system that would probably support more different schedules due to not having to differentiate between five semi-hard fights and one or two very hard ones.

[mindstalk]

"Resource expenditure and recovery is the most fundamental game mechanic there is, its what separates Tic Tac Toe and Chutes and Ladders and Candyland from, ya know, actual games with choices."

Pedantic note: tic-tac-toe certainly has choices. It's a simple game that can be solved by a kid, but it has tactics/strategy. Very nearly the same rules but on a bigger board and with a longer row gives you Gomoku, a technically solved but still meaty game. Go and chess are "actual games with choices", but not naturally thought of as "resource expenditure and recovery".

"There are video games with very little resource management and computer managed dungeon mapping- but they're not roleplaying games. They're roguelikes and diablo-clones."

Pedantic note: roguelikes have quite a bit of resource management. At least nethack does, I say as an 8-times Ascender.

[Quertus]

In that response, I'm not talking about class balance, I'm replying to mindstalk about the problems with the Vancian system on its own terms as a resource management scheme. It only works in particular conditions (a certain number of successive encounters in the same day, and no ability to do a 15-minute adventuring day). In the second case this puts the onus on each individual adventure to create a patch for an issue with the system itself. It would be better to have a system that didn't have a hole.


If you have a system where you don't have to structure your adventure to compensate for system deficiencies, you're free to make the adventures you want.

Like I've said, IMO Vancian magic is actually at odds with the D&D game even as a dungeon crawl. By mandating a certain number of fights per day, it's also at odds with the general fantasy storytelling system D&D is more and more trying to pitch itself as.

"Vancian magic" does not mandate a certain number of fights per day, nor does it only "work" under particular conditions. It is the desire for a particular balance between classes that mandates a certain number of fights per day, and falls apart when you fail to meet certain conditions.

Myself, I throw away this notion of enforced balance, and embrace both the Nova work day, *and* the grueling 100-encounter slog.

Balance, in the aggregate, if you will.

[NigelWalmsley]

Resource expenditure doesn't have to be daily to be different. A Warlock and a Swordsage have different ways of managing their resources, and different adventures (well, encounters, but an adventure is comprised of encounters) will provide advantages to one or the other. But they can both use their abilities an (essentially) unlimited number of times per day. So I think it's fairly trivial to make adventure design meaningful without daily resource limits, and that anyone who says you can't is making another of the mistakes people who don't understand what things already exist in 3e make. In fact, I would argue that's actually a substantially better paradigm, because it creates more interesting decisions.

That said, you do want daily limits for some things, because changing the usage restriction on an ability has very different effects depending on what that ability actually is. If you give someone a combat ability like Fireball or Mountain Hammer or Eldritch Blast without a daily limit, all that really does is change the number of encounters per day they can do. But if you let someone cast Wall of Stone every other round, that has massive consequences for the setting. So what you what overall is a system where classes have resource management within an encounter, but strategic abilities have per day limits (hopefully with some kind of elegant handling for things that overlap).


If you create a system where the adventure design doesn't matter, then the adventure design doesn't matter. All adventures are now the same.

That is, of course, trivially true. But it's not really relevant to what's being discussed here. The vast majority of adventures are not differentiated by "how many encounters are you expected to fight in a day". In fact, most adventures don't have an external clock, and therefore removing daily ability limits would have no effect on them. There's no meaningful difference between "we come back tomorrow with our abilities refreshed" and "we keep going today with our abilities refreshed" if your adventure is "explore this dungeon". Also, even insofar as "how many encounters can you have in a day" is an important part of what makes adventures different from each other, there are lots of other things that do so as well. Intrigue adventures are different from exploration adventures are different from war adventures. Different opposition requires different tactics and strategies. The classic D&D adventure is "go into a dungeon and fight a dragon", and yet there's enough variety there to have sustained millions of campaigns.

[Quertus]

--good stuff--

Other than likely winning "best post in thread", you've made me confront my D&D biases, as I'm struggling to imagine a world where Wall of Ice and Wall of Force are "at will", but Wall of Stone is "X/day", "because balance". Kudos!

[Elves]

Stuff like wall of stone can be integrated into an at-will/cooldown system by (either directly, or indirectly through duration) only allowing a certain number of those effects active at one time. You make a new one, your old one disappears.

[NigelWalmsley]

Other than likely winning "best post in thread", you've made me confront my D&D biases, as I'm struggling to imagine a world where Wall of Ice and Wall of Force are "at will", but Wall of Stone is "X/day", "because balance". Kudos!

Thank you!


Stuff like wall of stone can be integrated into an at-will/cooldown system by (either directly, or indirectly through duration) only allowing a certain number of those effects active at one time. You make a new one, your old one disappears.

That's one solution. I'm not sold on that, because I think it has weird implications for the setting (the ontology of every stone wall in the world suddenly becomes a meaningful concern), and because I do think "Wizard builds a city with magic" is the sort of thing that should be possible, just not to the degree where "Rome in a day" is a thing a 9th level character can actually do. My preferred solution would probably be to widen the scope of Permanency, making it a more integrated part of the magic system, which I think helps make a lot of cool but not well supported things work better. That kind of limitation on sustained effects is a good mechanic though -- it's a solid basis for a potential fix to things like Persistent Spell and Planar Binding.

[Elves]

I think that's a difference of in-combat abilities vs wider story abilities, so I would be inclined to balance it by difference in casting time (a "build" spell that took many hours to cast).

4e split this off into rituals because of how rigidly its power system works, but I don't think you need two categories -- in 4e's case it was because spending a power on an out-of-combat utility would set you behind in its very rigidly defined combat minigame. If you're not in that paradigm, increased casting time and possibly GP/XP cost is enough.

[mindstalk]

Vancian doesn't have to be daily. I think there was a common AD&D houserule where casting a spell took 10 minutes per spell level, and the same for "memorizing"/preparing a spell. So it could actually take a high level wizard days to fully stock up -- if you have 4 slots of every spell level from 1 to 9, it would take 30 hours to prepare them all from scratch. OTOH if you have a spare 10 minutes you could just cast a 1st level spell right there.