Jervis
2022-05-12, 08:02 PM
This came out longer than expected so skip to the bottom for a TLDR.
Hello all. First I want to say that I thought about putting this is homebrew design but it’s mostly full of finished and useable work, if you want to skip the preamble then feel free to hop down to paragraph 2. This is more a discussion about design space in 5e for classes with abilities on nonstandard recovery/cooldown. If the mods feel this is better served in homebrew design then i’m sorry for the inconvenience.
This post is somewhat inspired by a old Monk fix by ThinkDM, which it changed Ki from a SR recovery to a smaller pool of resources that partially recovers each round. The result was a class that could do a few different things each round, but if they dipped further into resources they could have a few rounds each combat where they could do more, or forgo some abilities one round to use some more powerful options later. This also needed or changed some of the obvious options (stunning strike) to keep with the greater list of resources. The result was a surprisingly dynamic class that wasn’t particularly overtuned in relation to other classes, baring one reaction with the Kensai subclass and monk weapon synergy that let it outdamage a fighter 5 levels higher. But that wasn’t so much a result of the Ki rebalance and more changes made to monk weapons.
The game as it exists has some examples of this recovery in it already. UA has psionics die, which were mostly just disliked because of their random scaling and recovery instead of their power. The Phantom rogue subclass lets it reflectively recover uses of one of their features by killing things, which the subclass does well anyway so it’s effectively infinite once you get the recovery feature. Likewise a lot of subclasses, creation bard as an example, have started letting us burn a separate resource to use SR or LR recovery abilities. It occurred to me while I was making a homebrew related to battle master that recovered superiority dice under certain circumstances that a lot of classes(monk) or subclasses(4 elements monk) that suck do so because their resources just don’t keep up with play.
Likewise Monk and to a much lesser degree Warlock suffer greatly in groups that don’t stick to the often ignored Adventuring Day, either because everyone else plays classes that rely more on long rests and don’t care to stop for one or because the DM runs 5 minute adventuring days or doesn’t allow short rests because they don’t think about the implications. I’ve encountered all of the above and if we’re being honest we all have if we play in groups with people we don’t know personally. Fact is the difference in resource design between primarily short and primarily long rest classes means the latter is much more likely to suffer in a nonstandard adventuring day. Yes the rules work well but the harder something is to break the better.
So that brings me to the question I’ve been dancing around for this post. Does existing 5e class design lend itself well to having a resource on a nonstandard cooldown? An example might be abilities recovering after X number of rounds, either a set number of a number of rounds determined by dice rolls, much like how some monster abilities are on cooldown. A lot of monsters have abilities that would be too good or obnoxious if eased every round but aren’t worth limited them to 1/2 an encounter. Having them recover after a random or short amount of time makes combat more dynamic on the DMs side and gives players something to think about. Yes players play by different rules than monsters, but would this specific design work poorly in player hands?
The obvious downside to this are out of combat abilities being infinite use, which means that you would still need to keep them locked too rests or make them less impactful for the levels you get them at. However the warlock example I’ve previously given has some precedent for this, having abilities that make utility spells at will. Previous editions of the game had martial initiators, which aren’t the paragon of balance but where general better for the game than casters, which 5e has classes have a decent amount in common with. I understand a lot of the choices regarding rests were made for the sake of simplicity, but I don’t see why a different recovery method is break that design principle. Obviously classes that use different recovery methods would need abilities balanced with this in mind, giving wizards free spell slot recovery and changing nothing else would be a disaster, but making new classes around this sort of recovery could lead to some interesting gameplay. I’d like to heard some thoughts on the possible balance concerns and ideas surrounding this, either abilities recovering after a set number of rounds or just having uses recover when a certain condition is met.
TL;DR: Would 5e break too much with the existence of classes whos primary mechanics had a resource economy the focused more on individual encounters than rests? This of course assumes you don’t classes with too much synergy warlock style that let wizards cast shield at will at level 3 or something.
Hello all. First I want to say that I thought about putting this is homebrew design but it’s mostly full of finished and useable work, if you want to skip the preamble then feel free to hop down to paragraph 2. This is more a discussion about design space in 5e for classes with abilities on nonstandard recovery/cooldown. If the mods feel this is better served in homebrew design then i’m sorry for the inconvenience.
This post is somewhat inspired by a old Monk fix by ThinkDM, which it changed Ki from a SR recovery to a smaller pool of resources that partially recovers each round. The result was a class that could do a few different things each round, but if they dipped further into resources they could have a few rounds each combat where they could do more, or forgo some abilities one round to use some more powerful options later. This also needed or changed some of the obvious options (stunning strike) to keep with the greater list of resources. The result was a surprisingly dynamic class that wasn’t particularly overtuned in relation to other classes, baring one reaction with the Kensai subclass and monk weapon synergy that let it outdamage a fighter 5 levels higher. But that wasn’t so much a result of the Ki rebalance and more changes made to monk weapons.
The game as it exists has some examples of this recovery in it already. UA has psionics die, which were mostly just disliked because of their random scaling and recovery instead of their power. The Phantom rogue subclass lets it reflectively recover uses of one of their features by killing things, which the subclass does well anyway so it’s effectively infinite once you get the recovery feature. Likewise a lot of subclasses, creation bard as an example, have started letting us burn a separate resource to use SR or LR recovery abilities. It occurred to me while I was making a homebrew related to battle master that recovered superiority dice under certain circumstances that a lot of classes(monk) or subclasses(4 elements monk) that suck do so because their resources just don’t keep up with play.
Likewise Monk and to a much lesser degree Warlock suffer greatly in groups that don’t stick to the often ignored Adventuring Day, either because everyone else plays classes that rely more on long rests and don’t care to stop for one or because the DM runs 5 minute adventuring days or doesn’t allow short rests because they don’t think about the implications. I’ve encountered all of the above and if we’re being honest we all have if we play in groups with people we don’t know personally. Fact is the difference in resource design between primarily short and primarily long rest classes means the latter is much more likely to suffer in a nonstandard adventuring day. Yes the rules work well but the harder something is to break the better.
So that brings me to the question I’ve been dancing around for this post. Does existing 5e class design lend itself well to having a resource on a nonstandard cooldown? An example might be abilities recovering after X number of rounds, either a set number of a number of rounds determined by dice rolls, much like how some monster abilities are on cooldown. A lot of monsters have abilities that would be too good or obnoxious if eased every round but aren’t worth limited them to 1/2 an encounter. Having them recover after a random or short amount of time makes combat more dynamic on the DMs side and gives players something to think about. Yes players play by different rules than monsters, but would this specific design work poorly in player hands?
The obvious downside to this are out of combat abilities being infinite use, which means that you would still need to keep them locked too rests or make them less impactful for the levels you get them at. However the warlock example I’ve previously given has some precedent for this, having abilities that make utility spells at will. Previous editions of the game had martial initiators, which aren’t the paragon of balance but where general better for the game than casters, which 5e has classes have a decent amount in common with. I understand a lot of the choices regarding rests were made for the sake of simplicity, but I don’t see why a different recovery method is break that design principle. Obviously classes that use different recovery methods would need abilities balanced with this in mind, giving wizards free spell slot recovery and changing nothing else would be a disaster, but making new classes around this sort of recovery could lead to some interesting gameplay. I’d like to heard some thoughts on the possible balance concerns and ideas surrounding this, either abilities recovering after a set number of rounds or just having uses recover when a certain condition is met.
TL;DR: Would 5e break too much with the existence of classes whos primary mechanics had a resource economy the focused more on individual encounters than rests? This of course assumes you don’t classes with too much synergy warlock style that let wizards cast shield at will at level 3 or something.