Examples of builder/spender abilities in TTRPGs?

[PhoenixPhyre]

A builder/spender system is a fairly common (IMX) pattern in video games. Combo systems are (very restricted) builder/spenders, any kind of "make one gauge go up by doing small things so you can do big thing that dumps the gauge" (including fighting games "super meters") are all builder/spenders.

They're nice conceptually because they naturally regulate the alpha-strike/nova process and make the "rotation" flow--do <thematic things> to power up, then hit them with a big hit, rinse and repeat.

But what I haven't seen are many examples of this in a TTRPG pattern. Anyone got examples?


1. TTRPG fights are over way faster (in terms of "number of actions taken") than MMO/video game ones. A MMO boss fight may take 10 minutes, with a "turn length" (global cool down) of only a few seconds. So you may perform ~100 or more actions during a given fight. But most (D&D) fights are over in 4-5 rounds, with 10 being a really long fight. So you get an order of magnitude less actions. Which means spending 3-4 of those building up feels bad. And if the thing dies the round before you're charged up....that feels real bad.

2. There's less "rotation" mentality in a TTRPG than in an MMO. But that doesn't apply to fighting games, which are fairly reactive.

3. Probably others?

[Actana]

Fragged Empire's (an RPG with heavy tactical mini combat emphasis) is a 3d6 game, and each 6 rolled in an action is a Strong Hit, allowing you to spend them on various abilities. In its setting book Fragged Aeternum, a Bloodborne-esque setting, there is a mechanic called Momentum (which I believe was also put into Fragged Empire 2e). Strong Hits can be used to build Momentum, which can later be activated to invoke other abilities as well. In combat, every character has 2 actions (each of which has several parts in them, like move + attack), meaning chances are you roll at least 6d6 a turn, with some weapons granting even more dice to roll. This nicely circumvents the problem of not necessarily being able to gather enough of the resource to expend it in time, so even short fights can benefit from Momentum (which you eventually also get to start encounters with, if I recall correctly).


On the other spectrum, there are also PbtA games with the Hold-mechanic, where you roll a thing and can "Hold X", X being a number. Hold can then later be spent on specific uses based on what ability granted them. Far less tactical combat combo generation, but still a resource builder and spender mechanically.

[gbaji]

I can't think of any specific examples of this as a built in game mechanic. TTRPGs, as you stated, tend towards short combats. In terms of rounds, anyway, but not in terms of time. That's part of the issue. The same boss fight that takes 10 minutes in a video game and is "super long", might only take a hanful of rounds at a table, but take a couple of hours to resolve.

There is a little bit of this in most games (but again, not as a built in mechanic), in that it's not uncommon for various spells and abilities to be cast/activated through the course of a fight which make the side using them more powerful in some way. But this is not a builder/sender type effect (build up, then use a big abiility, then restart the build). It's just a general ramp up of effectiveness as the combat progresses. And I think that most TTRPG players (and GMs frankly) prefer this, since it also allows for prepped-for battles to start out buffed up, while requiring such things to happen during the combat in other situations. Most video games (and especially fight focused ones) are constrained in that you "start the fight" and then go. And also the controls being used don't lend themselves well to means for "increasing effectiveness" other than various forms of buildups and/or cool off mechanisms. TTRPGs have to allow for "what do you do before you start the fight", and players kinda expect there to be differences based on choices made ahead of time. Also, TTRPGs have a great ability to allow folks with arbitrarily large sets of things written on their sheets to use those as they wish, in ways that are nearly impossible to do in a video game format.


So I guess that to me, it's something you *could* implement in a TTRPG, but I'm not sure why you'd want to. When not constrained to the programming needs of a console controller (and what people are willing/able to do with them in the middle of a high speed action sequence), TTRPGs already provide "better" (subjective of course) ways of managing resources and powers/abilities/whatever in a battle situation. The video game build up system is a poor imitation of that designed to limit the use of more powerful abilities during a fight, but without the same sort of "open tracking" that TT games allow for. So yeah. Could do it. Not sure there's a ton of benefit to doing it though.

[Psyren]

The closest I can think of in a D&D context are Rend-style abilities, i.e. debilitating special attacks that can only trigger if the monster successfully lands X lesser attacks, but can't be used otherwise. An example of that would be a Bebilith's Rend Armor or a Dire Tiger's Rake, both from 3.5. A 3.5 Mind Flayer's Extract could also be viewed as a sort of builder-spender, as it needs to build up to it by attaching tentacles each round.

[warty goblin]

There's also the matter of bookkeeping, generally you don't want to have players remember to increment some number every single attack or round, potentially by variable amounts depending on what they do. Sure you can have them use a stack of pennies or whatever to track their current total, but they still have to remember to take them and hand them back when they use them, then starting incrementing again. If the game uses some sort of player meta-currency, now you need a second kind of token to track that. If you can multiclass, you can potentially end up with multiple incrementing things, each of which need to be individually tracked. It's not undoable obviously, but it isn't exactly a low friction design. You get much the same effect by attaching riders to followup attacks, i.e. a thing you can't do right away and have to set up, but the overhead is reduced from a running arithmetic problem to what did I literally just do, which most people will remember easily enough. Since, as noted, there's generally not that many rounds in TTRGP combat, I don't think going full on builder/spender gets you that much more interesting design space for a significant rules and bookkeeping cost.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I can't think of any specific examples of this as a built in game mechanic. TTRPGs, as you stated, tend towards short combats. In terms of rounds, anyway, but not in terms of time. That's part of the issue. The same boss fight that takes 10 minutes in a video game and is "super long", might only take a hanful of rounds at a table, but take a couple of hours to resolve.

There is a little bit of this in most games (but again, not as a built in mechanic), in that it's not uncommon for various spells and abilities to be cast/activated through the course of a fight which make the side using them more powerful in some way. But this is not a builder/sender type effect (build up, then use a big abiility, then restart the build). It's just a general ramp up of effectiveness as the combat progresses. And I think that most TTRPG players (and GMs frankly) prefer this, since it also allows for prepped-for battles to start out buffed up, while requiring such things to happen during the combat in other situations. Most video games (and especially fight focused ones) are constrained in that you "start the fight" and then go. And also the controls being used don't lend themselves well to means for "increasing effectiveness" other than various forms of buildups and/or cool off mechanisms. TTRPGs have to allow for "what do you do before you start the fight", and players kinda expect there to be differences based on choices made ahead of time. Also, TTRPGs have a great ability to allow folks with arbitrarily large sets of things written on their sheets to use those as they wish, in ways that are nearly impossible to do in a video game format.


So I guess that to me, it's something you *could* implement in a TTRPG, but I'm not sure why you'd want to. When not constrained to the programming needs of a console controller (and what people are willing/able to do with them in the middle of a high speed action sequence), TTRPGs already provide "better" (subjective of course) ways of managing resources and powers/abilities/whatever in a battle situation. The video game build up system is a poor imitation of that designed to limit the use of more powerful abilities during a fight, but without the same sort of "open tracking" that TT games allow for. So yeah. Could do it. Not sure there's a ton of benefit to doing it though.

Personally, I find the "prebuff" routine way more annoying and stupid than the "start fight and go". It's basically "let's stand around for several minutes putting up the stack of things we need". In a 5e context, that's also not an issue at all--you either have long-duration stuff (assumed to be constant) like mage armor or you have short-duration/concentration stuff. So you're not stacking things.

One of the reasons to implement this pattern is that it gives a way to avoid the "dump everything into an alpha strike" pathological case without being super sensitive to number of fights per day like just pure resource-tracking things. If you can't drop a turn-1 nuke...you actually have to engage with the combat[1] and everyone actually gets to do their cool thing instead of just the guy who goes first. But most of the other methods of avoiding this have significant other consequences or just don't solve the problem. No, restricting resource pools doesn't solve the problem...it just makes the 5MWD mandatory. Having explicit "phase transitions" (you haven't seen my final form! or Now I withdraw while minions come out) feels way more video-gamey.

It's also an interesting different form of ability pattern, where it feels like your small stuff is actually contributing more than just filler. Imagine if you started with X "mana" and gained mana by casting cantrips, with some ability to carry mana over between fights. So you can start your small spells (where "small" would be level-dependent), but to cast your big "encounter enders" you'd need to do other things. Or a barbarian who gets more powerful the more damage they take/do. Or where every hit you land builds up a counter you can "burn" to do MASSIVE DAMAGE. Etc.

I think to make it work right in a TTRPG, you'd need
- relatively small "charge stacks". No more than about 1-2 turns max to get up to your "normal" state from empty.
- some way of carrying over "charge" between combats within a day..but probably not a "full" stack.
- some way to prevent the bag of rats problem[2]
- some kind of parity--if there are other classes that can just front-load everything into round 1, having more back-loaded classes just won't work well. Unless you can guarantee that combats won't end in the first round or so. Which makes the frontloaded people feel bad...

I think that last one's the hardest.

TBQH, I'm mostly playing around with this as I'm looking at building a D&D 5e clone. And looking for patterns used elsewhere I can steal. If it doesn't work...it doesn't work.

[1] I know that there are people who consider any combat that you actually have to engage with to be a failure of planning. AKA the "Combat as War" brigade. They're out of scope here.

[2] which could be as simple as "you only accumulate charge when facing something that is actively trying to injure you" or "you gain charge only when doing <thing> that's not under your control/is risky". But that has other issues.

[stoutstien]

Both my WIP barbarian and Monk are going this route.

The shorter combat/ step values are a consideration but I think it was you who stumbled across the same thing I did where if you look at the lower end of Fibonacci and cube patterns to address such limits.

My barbarian is going to build and dump and the monk is actually trying to stay in the middle of two different pools.

[solidork]

The main mechanic of the No Dice No Masters system (Avery Alder, Dream Askew and its descendants) is that players have a list of "weak" actions that they can take which will gain a token that they spend to take a "strong" action. Weak actions often complicate a situation or make you vulnerable in some way, while strong actions let you act in a bold and decisive manner. Each playbook has their own list of actions, to guide someone playing that kind of character into a certain narrative space.

A weak move for a paladin might be "Swear to protect someone", while a strong move might be something like "Bring low the wicked".

[Thane of Fife]

Some examples:

In the Conan 2d20 game, you build up Momentum by doing stuff successfully, and then you spend it to better your odds on other stuff (and, I think, activate certain abilities). It's a team resource, and a pretty important part of the game. The other 2d20 games may have similar mechanics, but I haven't played any of those.

In Fight!: The Fighting Game RPG, there are obviously rules for building up your super meter, as well as for combos.

Marvel "FASERIP" lets you build up Karma by doing good deeds and defeating villains, then spend it to use your powers in unusual ways, get better odds on rolls, or so on. It suffers somewhat because Karma also doubles as experience. (There are actually lots of games where you build up metacurrency that could potentially meet your definition).

I have not actually played it, but I think combat in Cortex Heroic involves setting up conditions in order to build up big dice pools.

[stoutstien]

I did a quick perusal of my library and I think maybe the Star Trek TTRPGs momentum/threat is a good example of this even if it can be used for noncombat as well.

Seems there's quite a few examples of this being used but only in game that have more of a narrative focus.

[gbaji]

Personally, I find the "prebuff" routine way more annoying and stupid than the "start fight and go". It's basically "let's stand around for several minutes putting up the stack of things we need". In a 5e context, that's also not an issue at all--you either have long-duration stuff (assumed to be constant) like mage armor or you have short-duration/concentration stuff. So you're not stacking things.

Yeah. While not perfect, especially with magic/abilty heavy game systems, the "pre-buff then fight" model at least somewhat mirrors what you actually do when fighting. You're likely spending far more time actually putting on your gear and checking it, and getting ready, and advancing up to the fight, than you will actually spend fighting. The idea being that preparation for a fight is rewarded versus just charging through every single door you encounter and not worrying about it. From a "game exists outside combat" point of view, some of us like actually having our players think about things, plan ahead, and yeah, even have to do resource management.

And there's also a need/value to make combats run significantly differently if the PCs are the ones iniating the combat versus being initiated against. You lose that dynamic entirely if all abilities that affect combat are "always on", or "short term activated while in combat". Making the difference between winning and losing depend on whether they ambushed you, or you snuck up on them, makes the game about good playing and strategy. If the combat is purely about "what's on my sheet" versus "how tough the enemies are", every time, no matter how often I've fought today, or how the fight was initiated, then it's just a numbers game. I find that less interesting. My personal preference, of course.


One of the reasons to implement this pattern is that it gives a way to avoid the "dump everything into an alpha strike" pathological case without being super sensitive to number of fights per day like just pure resource-tracking things. If you can't drop a turn-1 nuke...you actually have to engage with the combat[1] and everyone actually gets to do their cool thing instead of just the guy who goes first. But most of the other methods of avoiding this have significant other consequences or just don't solve the problem. No, restricting resource pools doesn't solve the problem...it just makes the 5MWD mandatory. Having explicit "phase transitions" (you haven't seen my final form! or Now I withdraw while minions come out) feels way more video-gamey.

On the flip side though, if everyone is just dumping their most powerful alpha strike on round one, in every combat, and allowing only the first guy to even act, then either the difficulty of the opponents is woefully low relative to the party *or* the GM is failing utterly at crafting the environment. You avoid 5MWD by not making it a guarantee that they can rest after every fight. The PCs should have no clue how many fights they're going to have today, nor how tough the opponents in each fight are going to be. Combine that with limited resources (uses per day, spell slots, whatever), and players rapidly become extremely hesitant to use their "big abilities", in any fight in which they can win without them. And if they don't, and you (the GM) feel like they're just blasting mook level opponents with big powers to one shot them on round one over and over, then you let them do that through a bunch of fights, then you hit them with like 2 or 3 really tough fights.

Make them struggle to deal with tougher opponents with nothing but their base abilities and rapidly dwindling HPs a few times, and they learn "hey. Maybe we shouldn't just blast mooks with our big gun abilities every time". I like to remind my players that "recommended encounters per day doesn't exist in my game". At all. You will be hit with exactly the number and level and difficulty of encounters that the situation calls for. You're wandering around the wilderness? You'll probably go for days without runnning into anything threatening. You're making your way through the "valley of evil" on your way to the "temple of super evil", you're going to run into tons of bad guys of various levels. How many and how often is purely based on how well you've managed to avoiding being detected.

Dunno. I've just never seen this to be a real problem. Again though, it requires that the GM approach the game world as a living breathing environment, and not a list of level appropriate encounters for the PCs to blow though.

I prefer a more "thinking person's" game though. Really bad decision making will result in the party being overwhelmed by more than they can handle.


I think to make it work right in a TTRPG, you'd need
- relatively small "charge stacks". No more than about 1-2 turns max to get up to your "normal" state from empty.
- some way of carrying over "charge" between combats within a day..but probably not a "full" stack.
- some way to prevent the bag of rats problem[2]
- some kind of parity--if there are other classes that can just front-load everything into round 1, having more back-loaded classes just won't work well. Unless you can guarantee that combats won't end in the first round or so. Which makes the frontloaded people feel bad...

And having said the stuff above, then sure, if that's what you are going for, tools like this would work well. I'd honestly redesign the entire abilities/spells/whatever system so that there are no front loaded abilities at all. Make every big gun a buid up. So everyone is starting out on round one, using their base abilities, taking their shots, and building up to other, more powerful abilities. Note that this can apply to all abilities, including healing and mitigation effects.

You can also add some extra dynamic stuff in by having different base actions add to different counters (or perhaps have others as a requirement). You can have different tiers of builds up. So you use a small/fast attack X times, and you get a medium attack that does more damage, status stuff, whatever. Once you've used that Y times, you open up your big attack maybe. Dunno. The problem is that at a table, rounds of combat take a long time, almost no matter what you do. Stuff that takes seconds in a console fight game, take several minutes to decide arbitrate at a table. So not sure how doable this is. Most fights wont last long enough to get to the "big guns", and those that do will be serious slog fests. I suppose you could make up for this by adjusting big bad final battles to include several waves of mook level baddies first, to allow for this sort of thing to work. Hmmm... It's workable. But yeah. Those will be some epic all day long combats.

I'd also be hesitant to allow carry over from one fight to the next. But then again, the build up time issue mentioned above. Your idea of carrying over just some (or some capped amount) might work. My concern is you'll see players deliberately picking fights against easy things just to build up their abilities a bit, and then heading over to fight something tougher. I think that kinda "breaks" things thematically. If the assumption if that you are somehow psyching yourself up, or setting your opponent for a big hit (though if that's the case, then building status counters on the opponent might make more sense than building up your own, but whatever), then any sort of carry over seems... odd.

I guess I can see it in some cases, and I can envison some at least decently balanced ways of doing this. Again, it's not my preference for combat styles. But I get how some might want something like this.

[solidork]

Ironsworn/Starforged has a momentum meter that gradually builds up (assuming things are going well) and can be used to turn failures into successes, resetting down to a base value. Many character options give you additional momentum for successfully doing certain things, and there are some options that trigger when you spend momentum. There are also a few abilities that let you spend your momentum as a resource to activate abilities.

[OracleofWuffing]

Granted, it's kind of a matryoshka black sheep example, but D&D 4e's original assassin class (okay, I guess sort of the Executioner could, too, but that's further down the stacking dolls) stacked up "shrouds" on targets with the idea to cash them in for extra damage later on.

[meschlum]

Weapons of the Gods (1e) definitely has this - you have five 'colors' of 'mana', and gain 1/turn up to your maximum in each if you don't use it. More powerful moves cost more mana, so you're building up to a powerful attack by performing weak attacks from different 'colors'.

On top of this, you have the River, where you can store some of your dice rolls rather than use them in order to use them later (up to a limit, and it clears when you're no longer in a stressful situation). So again, you're building up power for your ultimate move and performing weak attacks until the perfect moment...

[The Glyphstone]

If I remember right, the current 3rd edition of Exalted uses something like this - hits build up to where you can deliver a really damaging blow.

[KorvinStarmast]

A builder/spender system is a fairly common (IMX) pattern in video games. I usually refer to these as power ups (The entire Rage mechanic in Diablo III for the barbarian is about the best example I can think of that might apply to a D&D like game - and it is Barbarian specific).

There's also the matter of bookkeeping, generally you don't want to have players remember to increment some number every single attack or round, Yes. IMO, it's too fiddly for most table top games, although some playes and some groups really get into the bookkeeping bit.

I did a quick perusal of my library and I think maybe the Star Trek TTRPGs momentum/threat is a good example of this even if it can be used for noncombat as well. We are doing final Char Gen for that game tonight, I'll keep an eye out for that mechanic and report back.

[stoutstien]

We are doing final Char Gen for that game tonight, I'll keep an eye out for that mechanic and report back.

Neat little system but definitely not d&d. GM should be prepared for episodic format with little in terms of true failure. Most of it is spent figuring out what needs to be done and if it's possible and once you get to that point it's really a matter of failing forward at worse.

[Quertus]

Perhaps I've misunderstood what a "builder/spender" mechanic is supposed to designate, but... isn't Fate's(?) "Create an Advantage" mechanic a kind of "make one gauge go up by doing small things so you can do big thing that dumps the gauge", albeit with control over how much of the gauge you dump? If so, then the homebrew Paradox's 2e "mana" mechanic (which is, I suppose, fundamentally the same as "create an advantage", except it is universal, able to be spent on any roll, rather than one associated with that particular advantage) would also qualify.


Marvel "FASERIP" lets you build up Karma by doing good deeds and defeating villains, then spend it to use your powers in unusual ways, get better odds on rolls, or so on. It suffers somewhat because Karma also doubles as experience. (There are actually lots of games where you build up metacurrency that could potentially meet your definition).

Huh. I'd never really thought of it quite that way, but I suppose Marvel Karma can have a "build up to succeed" tempo, which is rather similar to a "build up and go big" type of pacing I think we're discussing in this thread.

Oooh, which reminds me: any system with an "invention" mechanic - Marvel faserip being just one such system - could work like that, as they give characters a form of "build up and go big" via creating things.

[Anymage]

Just spitballing an idea here. But if every successful hit on an enemy left essentially a certain color of mana on them, and that mana could then be spent to power up an ability, would that count as a team level builder/spender? Especially if there were ways to spend multiple mana points/colors for a bigger effect.

It'd admittedly be extra work to build/playtest as well as to track. But in the context of a TTRPG over a MMORPG, team level building/consuming is probably better than focusing on the individual level.

[False God]

I don't understand the "it's too fiddly" argument people are bringing up.

You have Builder attacks which generate X points on a successful hit.
You have Spender attacks with cost Y points to activate.

How is any of this "fiddly"?

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't understand the "it's too fiddly" argument people are bringing up.

You have Builder attacks which generate X points on a successful hit.
You have Spender attacks with cost Y points to activate.

How is any of this "fiddly"?

I could definitely see some variations/implementations being fiddly. For example if every "spender" had a different pool, built by different "builders". Or if the increments were something weird like "build 5, spend 13".

On the other hand, a simple "taking damage or hitting something builds 1 point, big attack 1 takes 3, big super attack takes 5, max 5" system would be much less fiddly than a lot of other things, including, well, D&D spellcasting. Which is one of the more fiddly subsystems out there (in the D&D world, at least). Or heck, compare to incarnum from 3e. Now that was a fiddly system--lots of moving fungible points around with non-obvious rules, with the expectation of changing things nearly every round.

I actually have implemented a builder/spender in a 5e D&D homebrew class--

It's a half/full-caster hybrid--it only gets 5th level spells but 9th level slots (and gets them at the speed a full caster does). When it casts a spell (later including cantrips), it builds up motes. Those motes can be used to upcast spells instead of spending higher slots OR can be used to do a bunch of other features. Including spending them to bypass resistance, create "shield bubbles", manipulate their spells, etc. It's...not perfect as designed. But it's functional. And since it's a single counter that just goes up based on things you were already doing or down when you trigger it...it's fairly easy to track.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I would agree, Fate is a good example of this. You earn Fate Points early on by taking compels, and you use Create Advantage actions to get free invokes, and then you can dump all of that into a climactic nova strike to win a crucial fight in one massive hit.

The example that really made this shine was Rituals in the Dresden Files RPG. Once you started stacking effects, you wound up with a colossal difficulty value, but you could combine free invokes and Fate Point stashes to succeed at the ritual in one big scene of payoffs.

Marvel Heroic and other Cortex games have a similar dynamic with Plot Points.

You could maybe also make a point for Long Term Projects/clocks in general from Blades in the Dark, but that feels a little adjacent and not fully this topic.

Finally, Mythender actually uses this: you roll attacks to generate Thunder dice, then you roll attacks with Thunder dice to convert them into Lightning tokens, then when you get enough Lightning tokens, you cash them in to deal actual damage to the boss enemy. It flows in a fun way, in my experience, really feels like you're building up and cashing out.

[warty goblin]

I don't understand the "it's too fiddly" argument people are bringing up.

You have Builder attacks which generate X points on a successful hit.
You have Spender attacks with cost Y points to activate.

How is any of this "fiddly"?

It's more stuff to track and remember to track. People are going to forget to add their points, or forget how much resource their cool ability costs, and all this leads to frustration. The player gets frustrated because they keep not being able to do things, or forgetting how their character works and feeling dumb, the other players get frustrated because turns take even longer, the GM gets frustrated because they have to remind people how their character works all the time, its just a lot of added friction.

None of this is unique to builder/spender mechanics obviously, it's true of pretty much any system you add that comes with more bookkeeping. Most people don't actually enjoy bookkeeping in their games; they enjoy doing cool stuff, and bookkeeping is the price you pay for that. RPGs already have a lot of bookkeeping, adding more systems and more steps and more things to track and more ways for the rules to yeet your fun away doesn't actually make them more fun for a lot of people.

[False God]

I could definitely see some variations/implementations being fiddly. For example if every "spender" had a different pool, built by different "builders". Or if the increments were something weird like "build 5, spend 13".

On the other hand, a simple "taking damage or hitting something builds 1 point, big attack 1 takes 3, big super attack takes 5, max 5" system would be much less fiddly than a lot of other things, including, well, D&D spellcasting. Which is one of the more fiddly subsystems out there (in the D&D world, at least). Or heck, compare to incarnum from 3e. Now that was a fiddly system--lots of moving fungible points around with non-obvious rules, with the expectation of changing things nearly every round.

I actually have implemented a builder/spender in a 5e D&D homebrew class--

It's a half/full-caster hybrid--it only gets 5th level spells but 9th level slots (and gets them at the speed a full caster does). When it casts a spell (later including cantrips), it builds up motes. Those motes can be used to upcast spells instead of spending higher slots OR can be used to do a bunch of other features. Including spending them to bypass resistance, create "shield bubbles", manipulate their spells, etc. It's...not perfect as designed. But it's functional. And since it's a single counter that just goes up based on things you were already doing or down when you trigger it...it's fairly easy to track.

I'm a big fan of simplicity, and I feel like folks are probably overthinking your concept. Maybe it's just because I play a lot of J/KMMOs where this is a pretty common feature that I find pretty intuitive.

I think your design is pretty much how I conceptualize the concept. I've considered implementing something like this into FFG Star Wars/L5R, as a more intuitive way to spend Advantage Points (now there's a couple systems with fiddly uses for points!). I think larger expenditures of more points saved up over time would probably be a better use of the system rather than their current "use it or lose it" approach.


It's more stuff to track and remember to track. People are going to forget to add their points, or forget how much resource their cool ability costs, and all this leads to frustration. The player gets frustrated because they keep not being able to do things, or forgetting how their character works and feeling dumb, the other players get frustrated because turns take even longer, the GM gets frustrated because they have to remind people how their character works all the time, its just a lot of added friction.

None of this is unique to builder/spender mechanics obviously, it's true of pretty much any system you add that comes with more bookkeeping. Most people don't actually enjoy bookkeeping in their games; they enjoy doing cool stuff, and bookkeeping is the price you pay for that. RPGs already have a lot of bookkeeping, adding more systems and more steps and more things to track and more ways for the rules to yeet your fun away doesn't actually make them more fun for a lot of people.

Yeah but there's a happy medium to be found in here somewhere, because I feel like the counter point to "people want to do cool stuff, but don't want to have to think about it" ends up with a reductive argument of "well, then folks should just declare what they want to do, DM decides DC, then roll a d20 and succeed or fail." Or what I've referred to around here as "TV D&D".

I don't fundamentally feel like a Builder/Spender system is all that much more complicated than most incarnations of spellcasting. Frankly I think it would be simpler than Vancian, since you're not worrying about "how many slots of X do I have, which spells can I memorize" you're just using a basic effect (like a cantrip) to generate Spell Points and then cast your spells as you have the power to do so.

[Telok]

I don't understand the "it's too fiddly" argument people are bringing up.

You have Builder attacks which generate X points on a successful hit.
You have Spender attacks with cost Y points to activate.

How is any of this "fiddly"?

I agree. This is just spell points/mana/ki/maneuver dice/rage uses that count up instead of down. You want to reverse the nova effect then you reverse the resource flow.

If the chain "fireball-magic missile-mana bolt" costs 4-2-1 then to reverse it instead of starting the fight with 7 points you start with 1 and gain 3 at the end of each round. That'll flip you to spending 1-2-4. All you need is more powerful abilities costing more of whagever resource you're using. Probably gaining points based on something other than just "end of round".

I'm sure if you looked there's a game where it's already been done.

[warty goblin]

Yeah but there's a happy medium to be found in here somewhere, because I feel like the counter point to "people want to do cool stuff, but don't want to have to think about it" ends up with a reductive argument of "well, then folks should just declare what they want to do, DM decides DC, then roll a d20 and succeed or fail." Or what I've referred to around here as "TV D&D".


The thing is I don't think the sort of person I'm talking about objects to rules, or would be happy with freeform/near freeform games. Rules are nice, they tell you what is possible.

What I think cheeses people off about rules is two things: overhead/bookkeeping, and rules getting in the way. The first is obvious, a lot of people do not in fact like Excel spreadsheets, and game night should not look like one. See also my point about friction above, all rules complexity is a source of friction and hence potential frustration. Because character specific builder/spender systems cannot be precalculated the way spells/day can, and have to be tracked by each player, I suspect they are more prone to bad rules friction than other resource models.

The second is I think a bit more subtle. Rules are limits, and people generally are fine with that. What I think gets people's goats is when rules say you can't do something for weird, rulesish reasons. Like if the rules say you can only move 30 feet, that's fine. If, to pick on Pathfinder 2 because it's fun, you have to spend 1AP to jump a thing and another AP to move 10 feet after that, which means you can't thwack that orc 15 feet away, people get annoyed because the abstract rules construct is getting in the way in a nonsensical fashion.

I rather think builder/spender mechanics are very prone to this. It's one thing if the mechanic is hit somebody twice, the third hit does more damage - clear and sensible, you are setting up a dude and then exploiting the setup. But hit various dudes four times over multiple turns so I can mega-punch some other guy I haven't even hit yet? What is that? Oops, I missed, now I don't have enough Charge Points (wtf is a Charge Point anyway, and why does punching dudes one way build them up but a different way soend them down?) to do my cool move next turn? That's PF2 movement all over again, there's no clear in fiction reason why I can't do my cool thing, it's just the abstract rules engine tripping over its own too clever by half resource model and getting in the way.

This is meaningfully distinct from a limit where you can only do your cool thing X times per day or rest or whatever. IRL I can run 8 miles on a good day. I cannot run 8 miles then immediately run another 8 miles because I'm tired out. Most people, having used their bodies and minds, get the basic concept of fatigue.

[False God]

I rather think builder/spender mechanics are very prone to this. It's one thing if the mechanic is hit somebody twice, the third hit does more damage - clear and sensible, you are setting up a dude and then exploiting the setup. But hit various dudes four times over multiple turns so I can mega-punch some other guy I haven't even hit yet? What is that? Oops, I missed, now I don't have enough Charge Points (wtf is a Charge Point anyway, and why does punching dudes one way build them up but a different way soend them down?) to do my cool move next turn? That's PF2 movement all over again, there's no clear in fiction reason why I can't do my cool thing, it's just the abstract rules engine tripping over its own too clever by half resource model and getting in the way.

This is meaningfully distinct from a limit where you can only do your cool thing X times per day or rest or whatever. IRL I can run 8 miles on a good day. I cannot run 8 miles then immediately run another 8 miles because I'm tired out. Most people, having used their bodies and minds, get the basic concept of fatigue.

I don't think they're as meaningfully distinct as you present. As Telok demonstrates the only functional difference is that Builder/Spender systems count up and Fatigue systems count down. (in this context a Fatigue system is any system where you start with a high fixed number and run it down as you fight)

The upside I see to the Builder/Spender system is that you have the potential for essentially infinite combat. If the fight drags on, unlike 4E where you nova and run out of cool abilities, your continued use of basic abilities enables you to use your special effects again.

The downside to your "simple X>X>Y" system is it produces the exact sort of dull, constrained combat that PF2 created. Your effects are small and you have to do them every turn. Even with a plethora of options, there's no variety because the reality is you need to do the same specific effect every turn. Builder/Spender systems do the reverse, providing you with one or two basic Builders and then several levels of interesting Spenders, with different costs determining how often you can use them and how powerful they are. PF2's "spenders" are all trite and boring, because they're all essentially the same cost "one attack".

I don't give two flying licks if it's "believable" or not. That's a matter for the gameworld to establish, not an objective measure based off our reality. These are the sorts of excuses that prevent martials from having cool things. "oh it's unrealistic!" "it's not believable!" hooey. You got dragons and magic spells. Warriors building up their energy for an extra-powerful strike is as "believable" as the system makes it out to be.

[KorvinStarmast]

I agree. This is just spell points/mana/ki/maneuver dice/rage uses that count up instead of down. To put it into D&D 5e isms, it's like Temp Hit Points in the case of Temp HP that are accrued by using a class skill or a feature that provides them 'when X happens'.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't give two flying licks if it's "believable" or not. That's a matter for the gameworld to establish, not an objective measure based off our reality. These are the sorts of excuses that prevent martials from having cool things. "oh it's unrealistic!" "it's not believable!" hooey. You got dragons and magic spells. Warriors building up their energy for an extra-powerful strike is as "believable" as the system makes it out to be.

And frankly, any discussion of "believability" that swallows the camel called D&D spellcasting but strains at this gnat (especially since it's not even been developed enough[1]) feels fairly hollow to me. D&D spellcasting in all its incarnations has been an utter mess from a worldbuilding perspective. It's always been a kludgy mess of things that don't make any sense.

[1] There are implementations that would fail the "makes any kind of sense" test for me. There are others that would not. And both could have basically identical mechanics when boiled down to the essentials. Framing matters, and here the framing hasn't been decided.

For example, the one B/S mechanism I've implemented so far has the framing of "when you cast spells, you siphon off some of the stray power that then you can use to do other things later." A barbarian's Rage building as they take damage and then spending this primal energy in one burst of smashy-smash also makes a fair amount of sense. But if the thematics was more like the anime abilities where each hit "primes" the enemy for sudden death (one of the folks from the Bleach anime has a bee-themed weapon that does this), being able to transfer
it to someone else or "save it for later" doesn't make sense.

[False God]

And frankly, any discussion of "believability" that swallows the camel called D&D spellcasting but strains at this gnat (especially since it's not even been developed enough[1]) feels fairly hollow to me. D&D spellcasting in all its incarnations has been an utter mess from a worldbuilding perspective. It's always been a kludgy mess of things that don't make any sense.

[1] There are implementations that would fail the "makes any kind of sense" test for me. There are others that would not. And both could have basically identical mechanics when boiled down to the essentials. Framing matters, and here the framing hasn't been decided.

For example, the one B/S mechanism I've implemented so far has the framing of "when you cast spells, you siphon off some of the stray power that then you can use to do other things later." A barbarian's Rage building as they take damage and then spending this primal energy in one burst of smashy-smash also makes a fair amount of sense. But if the thematics was more like the anime abilities where each hit "primes" the enemy for sudden death (one of the folks from the Bleach anime has a bee-themed weapon that does this), being able to transfer
it to someone else or "save it for later" doesn't make sense.

And I think there's good room for both kinds of Builder attacks, where you build up some kind of debuff on the enemy and then release it in one big go or one where you build up some kind of power-up on yourself. Monks, especially of the "Five Finger Death Punch" variety would work well with building up a debuff on others, while Barbarians would work well with the reverse. Fighters could work well with a stacking debuff that "unbalances" the opponent, allowing the fighter to trigger "opening" based attacks. Rogues could build up a self-buff whereby their attacks become more precise based on learning where to better land a hit. (in Star Trek Online, intel ships have this ability)

But also yeah, most of it comes down to framing to make the ability feel appropriate to the theme of the class and the sort of game you're attempting to present.

[KorvinStarmast]

Fighters could work well with a stacking debuff that "unbalances" the opponent, allowing the fighter to trigger "opening" based attacks. While the boxing analogy "lots of jabs to set up the cross/hook" may fit here, combat is more abstract than that in a lot of games for a good reason: pace of play.

But also yeah, most of it comes down to framing to make the ability feel appropriate to the theme of the class and the sort of game you're attempting to present. Depends on how fiddly you want to get. When the computer is keeping track of it for you it's a lot less mental load to manage for a lot of players.

[False God]

While the boxing analogy "lots of jabs to set up the cross/hook" may fit here, combat is more abstract than that in a lot of games for a good reason: pace of play.
Depends on how fiddly you want to get. When the computer is keeping track of it for you it's a lot less mental load to manage for a lot of players.

I addressed the "fiddly" argument already. Please select another.

[Grod_The_Giant]

If I remember right, the current 3rd edition of Exalted uses something like this - hits build up to where you can deliver a really damaging blow.
Exalted 3e is one of--if not the--best examples of this sort of thing.

In a nutshell, all attacks are classified as either Withering or Decisive. Withering attacks are calculated about as you'd expect, based on skills and equipment, but they don't deal actual hit point damage. Instead, they steal Initiative. Decisive attacks do inflict physical harm, but their damage bonus is equal to your current initiative--the actual weapon you're using to make the attack doesn't enter into the calculation at all. Afterwards, you reset to "base" Initiative. The idea is that combatants will exchange multiple withering attacks until one of them has built up a substantial advantage, then strike a killing blow.

In practice, it works... both better and worse than you might think.

[gbaji]

I rather think builder/spender mechanics are very prone to this. It's one thing if the mechanic is hit somebody twice, the third hit does more damage - clear and sensible, you are setting up a dude and then exploiting the setup. But hit various dudes four times over multiple turns so I can mega-punch some other guy I haven't even hit yet? What is that? Oops, I missed, now I don't have enough Charge Points (wtf is a Charge Point anyway, and why does punching dudes one way build them up but a different way soend them down?) to do my cool move next turn? That's PF2 movement all over again, there's no clear in fiction reason why I can't do my cool thing, it's just the abstract rules engine tripping over its own too clever by half resource model and getting in the way.

Hence why I mentioned earlier that at least some of this (especially the combat stuff) can more realistically be represented as some kind of status counter on the opponent rather than a buildup on the attacker. Of course, status counters on enemies is even more fiddly (and puts a boatload of extra work on the GM to track). And it makes these effects meaningless when fighting waves of mooks (but maybe it should?).

At the end of the day, when considering a game mechanic, you should be asking "what problem am I trying to solve?". There are some things that builder/spender stuff works well in (fate/luck/plot/adventure/whatever points for example). I personally feel that it's not really solving much of anything when applied to combat ability use, unless the "problem" is itself circular (ie: "I want builder/spender, so I'll implement one to solve the problem of not having a builder/spender mechanic"). I put this in the category of "yes, you can do this", and "yes, this can be fun to use". But yeah, any sense of realism has to really go out the window since you're not actually mapping this to anything at all other than to itself.


This is meaningfully distinct from a limit where you can only do your cool thing X times per day or rest or whatever. IRL I can run 8 miles on a good day. I cannot run 8 miles then immediately run another 8 miles because I'm tired out. Most people, having used their bodies and minds, get the basic concept of fatigue.

Yup. Which is why "count down" or "start with X and spend points to do stuff" mechanics make sense to most people. As you stated, it matches what we normaly experience and expect in terms of exerting ourselves when doing things.


I don't think they're as meaningfully distinct as you present. As Telok demonstrates the only functional difference is that Builder/Spender systems count up and Fatigue systems count down. (in this context a Fatigue system is any system where you start with a high fixed number and run it down as you fight)

Except that, usually, people get more tired and less capable of doing "big things" the longer they fight, or the more activity they engage in during the course of a day (between rests). You're never as sharp at an intellectual task 18 hours into a long day as you were in hour 1 (well, assuming we have fully waked up, of course). A boxer is never able to hit as hard in round 12 of a fight as he could in round 1 or 2 (there's a reason why most boxing matches either end in a TKO in the first few rounds or turn into long slug fests, with the loser more or less dropping as much from exhaustion as being hit very hard).

The concept of being able to hit harder or do more things the longer you fight is exactly the opposite of what is normally expected and experienced. So yeah, there is a disconnect, and no, it's not equivalent.


The upside I see to the Builder/Spender system is that you have the potential for essentially infinite combat. If the fight drags on, unlike 4E where you nova and run out of cool abilities, your continued use of basic abilities enables you to use your special effects again.

Uh... I don't actually see this as an upside though. Going back to my "circular objective" point earlier, if your objective is "I want a builder/spender system so that fights go on forever and fighters become more powerful the longer they fight", then this absolutely fills that need. But that objective is a questionable one in the first place. And it absolutely flies in the face of the assumed norm of "the longer you continue to do something without rest, the worse you will become at it". I've fenced in tournaments (many times). Trust me. The longer a fight goes on (and they're only 5 minute bouts max), the less capable of doing any fancy moves you are. And the more fights you are in during the course of the day, the less capable you are starting each fight as well (and even more so as each fight progresses). So yeah. Mechanisms that "wind down" as you use/do more stuff are far far far more accurate representations of how things actually work.

But yeah. From a game play perspective, I can see why this might be attractive. It can solve some mechanical game flow problems. IMO, there are other/better ways of solving them, but that's just my play/GM preference.


The downside to your "simple X>X>Y" system is it produces the exact sort of dull, constrained combat that PF2 created. Your effects are small and you have to do them every turn. Even with a plethora of options, there's no variety because the reality is you need to do the same specific effect every turn. Builder/Spender systems do the reverse, providing you with one or two basic Builders and then several levels of interesting Spenders, with different costs determining how often you can use them and how powerful they are. PF2's "spenders" are all trite and boring, because they're all essentially the same cost "one attack".

I can agree with that. This does create a means to make combat more interesting and vary things up. I suppose it kind of depends on the game system being used though. In a "to-hit, then remove HPs" system (which is most out there), if the "basic attacks" are doing damage, then progress is still being made, so what's the problem? The same effect can be generated by having different attacks/moves/abilities that are x/day type things, which allows the player to selectively use them based on the need or situation. Sometimes, you want to make the decision that 'we're mowing through these wimpy guys using basic attacks, so hold our more powerful stuff for something nasty later".

I guess part of why I have an issue with this is that I've observed that young/new players have a real tendency towards impatience. They want every action to succeed and have a significant impact. They don't like it if they hit something and it doesn't die/fall. The whine if/when they feel like they aren't making "fast work" of the opponents. This mechanic seems like it's designed to cater to that, by making their less powerful/effective attacks "build up" to something, so it satisfies their need to "make progress" every single round. I've also observed that this type of player will also tend to use powerful/rare abilities at the first opportunity just to "feel powerful" or something, even if that was not a terribly good time to use it.

I tend to take the approach of weening players off of this habit over the courrse of play rather than catering to it. But that's just me. Different strokes, I guess.


I don't give two flying licks if it's "believable" or not. That's a matter for the gameworld to establish, not an objective measure based off our reality. These are the sorts of excuses that prevent martials from having cool things. "oh it's unrealistic!" "it's not believable!" hooey. You got dragons and magic spells. Warriors building up their energy for an extra-powerful strike is as "believable" as the system makes it out to be.

I'm not sure that's a fair comparison though. Melee types can absolutely have X/day attacks/abilities just like spell casters do. The difference is that melee's can also do their base attacks and be effective even when not using their X/day stuff, while spellcasters often can't do much of anything. And yes, I'm aware of the issue of "casters are out of spells, so we rest" issue, which means that casters always get to use ther spells in every fight, which makes them effectively feel more powerful/effective all the time.

Again though, the solution as a GM is to not allow that. The game day doesn't end when the spellcasters run out of spells, but when I decide the day is done. If the spellcasters are over casting, such that they are dishing out most of the damage/effects during the encounters and making the melee feel less useful, they will run out "too soon", and then be relegated to "attack NPC with my staff" level stuff for all remaining encounters that day. IME, when I run a game lke D&D with this sort of caster/melee dynamic, it doesn't take long for my players to realize that "blast early; blast hard; blast often" is a terrible tactical mistake. And what I've found is that the casters in my games will learn (via hard lessons) to hold back in the early fights in a day, and not use spells (or use very few of them), specifically on the chance that this may be "a long day". This means that the melee characters absolutely shine. And yeah, sometimes, it's not "a long day", so the couple of encounters that day were dealt with mostly by the melee doing their thing, maybe a spell or two from the casters, and some heals by the healers. Casters rest with 80% of their spells still remaining, but they didn't know that starting out. Of course, to make this work, you have to also have "long days" where the casters get a payoff for holding back with their spells, by having them available later in the day, when they are really needed.

That's how you prevent this. If the GM is slavishly applying some sort of "X encounters per day of Y difficulty" formula, the players will pick up on this, and your table will fall into those habits. And yeah, in those situations, melee characters get the shaft. The solution is simple: Don't do that.


While the boxing analogy "lots of jabs to set up the cross/hook" may fit here, combat is more abstract than that in a lot of games for a good reason: pace of play.
Depends on how fiddly you want to get. When the computer is keeping track of it for you it's a lot less mental load to manage for a lot of players.

Yeah. Again, that's something that could be managed via status counters on opponents. But... I don't want to manage that as a GM. Seriously. That's the one area where I can see the build/spend mechanic being more viable. It's still better than stacking status counters on NPCS. Gah. That's just a headache. If we're trying to do something like this in a game, and those are my choices? Yeah. I'll go with a buildup mechanism first.

[False God]

Except that, usually, people get more tired and less capable of doing "big things" the longer they fight, or the more activity they engage in during the course of a day (between rests). You're never as sharp at an intellectual task 18 hours into a long day as you were in hour 1 (well, assuming we have fully waked up, of course). A boxer is never able to hit as hard in round 12 of a fight as he could in round 1 or 2 (there's a reason why most boxing matches either end in a TKO in the first few rounds or turn into long slug fests, with the loser more or less dropping as much from exhaustion as being hit very hard).
Again, I have little concern for how "real people" function. This is a potential fantasy game with fantasy elements.


The concept of being able to hit harder or do more things the longer you fight is exactly the opposite of what is normally expected and experienced. So yeah, there is a disconnect, and no, it's not equivalent.
I repeat, I don't care. The fantasy world is not defined by reality. I don't know what is normally expected and experienced when fighting dragons and eldritch horrors. I certainly can't determine that on the basis of me driving to work every day or picking weeds.


Uh... I don't actually see this as an upside though. Going back to my "circular objective" point earlier, if your objective is "I want a builder/spender system so that fights go on forever and fighters become more powerful the longer they fight", then this absolutely fills that need. But that objective is a questionable one in the first place. And it absolutely flies in the face of the assumed norm of "the longer you continue to do something without rest, the worse you will become at it". I've fenced in tournaments (many times). Trust me. The longer a fight goes on (and they're only 5 minute bouts max), the less capable of doing any fancy moves you are. And the more fights you are in during the course of the day, the less capable you are starting each fight as well (and even more so as each fight progresses). So yeah. Mechanisms that "wind down" as you use/do more stuff are far far far more accurate representations of how things actually work.

But yeah. From a game play perspective, I can see why this might be attractive. It can solve some mechanical game flow problems. IMO, there are other/better ways of solving them, but that's just my play/GM preference.
Alright.


I can agree with that. This does create a means to make combat more interesting and vary things up. I suppose it kind of depends on the game system being used though. In a "to-hit, then remove HPs" system (which is most out there), if the "basic attacks" are doing damage, then progress is still being made, so what's the problem?
It's boring.


The same effect can be generated by having different attacks/moves/abilities that are x/day type things, which allows the player to selectively use them based on the need or situation. Sometimes, you want to make the decision that 'we're mowing through these wimpy guys using basic attacks, so hold our more powerful stuff for something nasty later".
Relying on meta decisions to resolve problems with nova isn't helpful. Upon contact with the enemy, you don't know that they're "wimpy guys" until you've hit a few of them. Because you don't know this, there's every incentive to go big.

And there's fundamentally no reason you can't do exactly what you wrote with a Builder/Spender system. You can keep using your small attacks until something worth really hitting shows up. Except now you're guided by in-world information, rather than meta assumptions.


I guess part of why I have an issue with this is that I've observed that young/new players have a real tendency towards impatience. They want every action to succeed and have a significant impact. They don't like it if they hit something and it doesn't die/fall. The whine if/when they feel like they aren't making "fast work" of the opponents. This mechanic seems like it's designed to cater to that, by making their less powerful/effective attacks "build up" to something, so it satisfies their need to "make progress" every single round. I've also observed that this type of player will also tend to use powerful/rare abilities at the first opportunity just to "feel powerful" or something, even if that was not a terribly good time to use it.
I don't understand how you can complain about novaing, and then complain about a system designed to mitigate novaing, and then complain about people wanting their little attacks to add up to something. From my perspective, you're literally complaining at it from every angle.
Them: "I want to hit them hard right away!"
You: geeze what noobs
Them: "I want my little attacks to add up to something big!"
You: Sheesh how entitled
Them: "I want enemies go down when I hit them!"
You: *sigh* children
That's what your post reads like. The only apparently acceptable solution to you is as you suggested before is "Why can't you just be happy your little attacks are slowly chipping away at it?"


I tend to take the approach of weening players off of this habit over the courrse of play rather than catering to it. But that's just me. Different strokes, I guess.
But...you're not weening players off anything. You're breaking their spirit. You're demanding they accept mediocrity. They're asking for cool and exciting and flashy and you're telling them "sit down and hit it with a stick again and be happy".
And yeah sure, different strokes.


I'm not sure that's a fair comparison though. Melee types can absolutely have X/day attacks/abilities just like spell casters do. The difference is that melee's can also do their base attacks and be effective even when not using their X/day stuff, while spellcasters often can't do much of anything. And yes, I'm aware of the issue of "casters are out of spells, so we rest" issue, which means that casters always get to use ther spells in every fight, which makes them effectively feel more powerful/effective all the time.
Currently as of 5E at least, casters can continue to cast cantrips all the live long day. So they never "run out".


Again though, the solution as a GM is to not allow that. The game day doesn't end when the spellcasters run out of spells, but when I decide the day is done. If the spellcasters are over casting, such that they are dishing out most of the damage/effects during the encounters and making the melee feel less useful, they will run out "too soon", and then be relegated to "attack NPC with my staff" level stuff for all remaining encounters that day. IME, when I run a game lke D&D with this sort of caster/melee dynamic, it doesn't take long for my players to realize that "blast early; blast hard; blast often" is a terrible tactical mistake. And what I've found is that the casters in my games will learn (via hard lessons) to hold back in the early fights in a day, and not use spells (or use very few of them), specifically on the chance that this may be "a long day". This means that the melee characters absolutely shine. And yeah, sometimes, it's not "a long day", so the couple of encounters that day were dealt with mostly by the melee doing their thing, maybe a spell or two from the casters, and some heals by the healers. Casters rest with 80% of their spells still remaining, but they didn't know that starting out. Of course, to make this work, you have to also have "long days" where the casters get a payoff for holding back with their spells, by having them available later in the day, when they are really needed.

That's how you prevent this. If the GM is slavishly applying some sort of "X encounters per day of Y difficulty" formula, the players will pick up on this, and your table will fall into those habits. And yeah, in those situations, melee characters get the shaft. The solution is simple: Don't do that.
Okay, but how encounters are handled is sort of beyond the scope of my concerns here. It's something to be analyzed after the groundwork for the system is set up. A Builder/Spender system may lead to quite a different approach to encounter handling than a Fatigue system.

And it's not that both systems can't exist in synch with each other. You could easily implement a Fatigue system on top of this by simply saying that your Spenders cost Y points and Z Fatigue.

[Quertus]

I rather think builder/spender mechanics are very prone to this. It's one thing if the mechanic is hit somebody twice, the third hit does more damage - clear and sensible, you are setting up a dude and then exploiting the setup. But hit various dudes four times over multiple turns so I can mega-punch some other guy I haven't even hit yet? What is that? Oops, I missed, now I don't have enough Charge Points (wtf is a Charge Point anyway, and why does punching dudes one way build them up but a different way soend them down?) to do my cool move next turn? That's PF2 movement all over again, there's no clear in fiction reason why I can't do my cool thing, it's just the abstract rules engine tripping over its own too clever by half resource model and getting in the way.

The B/S "mana" system in the homebrew 2e Paradox allowed you to build up mana doing one thing, and then use it on something else entirely unrelated, as I showcased in the Magical McGyver (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?655038-Magical-MacGyver-side-by-side-comparison-game) thread. Because my character was "optimized" to have their "build mana" actions look innocuous (instead of, say, standing there with a growing, glowing aura around themselves), I think it rather threw some people what was really going on with that character.

Unfortunately, (in effect) the "build mana" action was modal - you couldn't take the "build mana" action as part of a minor attack or some such; you could, however, literally stand there posing in a growing, glowing aura to power a big attack at some point in the future, if that was your thing. Or to solve that really hard math problem the Rocket Scientist was stuck on. Or to aid literally any other roll in the system. Yes, including spellcasting.


The downside to your "simple X>X>Y" system is it produces the exact sort of dull, constrained combat that PF2 created. Your effects are small and you have to do them every turn. Even with a plethora of options, there's no variety because the reality is you need to do the same specific effect every turn. Builder/Spender systems do the reverse, providing you with one or two basic Builders and then several levels of interesting Spenders, with different costs determining how often you can use them and how powerful they are. PF2's "spenders" are all trite and boring, because they're all essentially the same cost "one attack".

Um... can you explain what a B/S system that doesn't look as boring and samey as the x-x-y system looks like?

Like, when the D&D Pixie stabs goblins one combat, then Fireballs a larger, more tightly packed group of goblins the next, then throws Twinned Maximized Disintegrate at the miniboss, then stabs bats the next encounter, then throws a Wall of Force and works to free prisoners during the next miniboss fight, I'm feeling some variation. But if, instead, they had to use "Builder" moves to open every single one of those fights, I'm just not seeing the variation.

What, exactly, are you picturing here?


I don't give two flying licks if it's "believable" or not. That's a matter for the gameworld to establish, not an objective measure based off our reality. These are the sorts of excuses that prevent martials from having cool things. "oh it's unrealistic!" "it's not believable!" hooey. You got dragons and magic spells. Warriors building up their energy for an extra-powerful strike is as "believable" as the system makes it out to be.

Eh, look at it from the character's PoV. If, IRL, you watched me suddenly jump to the moon and back, you'd probably have some serious questions (or a stroke or something), and not be able to believe how I did that. And certainly have a hard time (I'd imagine) believing you could do it yourself (unless, of course, you're in the habit of jumping to the moon IRL, in which case reality is not quite as I believe it to be), so it's hard for your player to successfully roleplay you encountering that, or thinking in terms of the "jump to the moon" action.

Same thing here. Something being "believable" in game is key to being able to roleplay the character (outside having a response that fits better in a Call of Cthulhu game, of course).

Something being believable doesn't matter per se in a board game, or a war game, but it does in a roleplaying game.


And frankly, any discussion of "believability" that swallows the camel called D&D spellcasting but strains at this gnat (especially since it's not even been developed enough[1]) feels fairly hollow to me. D&D spellcasting in all its incarnations has been an utter mess from a worldbuilding perspective. It's always been a kludgy mess of things that don't make any sense.

[1] There are implementations that would fail the "makes any kind of sense" test for me. There are others that would not. And both could have basically identical mechanics when boiled down to the essentials. Framing matters, and here the framing hasn't been decided.

For example, the one B/S mechanism I've implemented so far has the framing of "when you cast spells, you siphon off some of the stray power that then you can use to do other things later." A barbarian's Rage building as they take damage and then spending this primal energy in one burst of smashy-smash also makes a fair amount of sense. But if the thematics was more like the anime abilities where each hit "primes" the enemy for sudden death (one of the folks from the Bleach anime has a bee-themed weapon that does this), being able to transfer
it to someone else or "save it for later" doesn't make sense.

Good point about how much difference the implementation makes. I guess I'd say that a poor implementations of B/S feel less "believable" to me (much less believable, actually) than D&D spellcasting. AFAICT, it's much easier to build underlying mechanics to explain D&D casting than it is to explain your "bees stinging person X sets person Y up to die" as something the denizens of the universe consider to make sense.


Exalted 3e is one of--if not the--best examples of this sort of thing.

In a nutshell, all attacks are classified as either Withering or Decisive. Withering attacks are calculated about as you'd expect, based on skills and equipment, but they don't deal actual hit point damage. Instead, they steal Initiative. Decisive attacks do inflict physical harm, but their damage bonus is equal to your current initiative--the actual weapon you're using to make the attack doesn't enter into the calculation at all. Afterwards, you reset to "base" Initiative. The idea is that combatants will exchange multiple withering attacks until one of them has built up a substantial advantage, then strike a killing blow.

In practice, it works... both better and worse than you might think.

If your opponent's attacks are stealing your Initiative, why not go straight for the damaging attack, while you're still at full Initiative - especially if doing so also refills your Initiative?


And it's not that both systems can't exist in synch with each other. You could easily implement a Fatigue system on top of this by simply saying that your Spenders cost Y points and Z Fatigue.

That's an interesting point. You certainly could. Anyone know of any existing systems that work that way? I'm drawing a blank on examples.

[NichG]

I had a system where the premise was that all around the environment were leyline like confluences that flux-users could attune to and afterwards tap to create effects. There was practically speaking a range limit, so if you were on the move and a fight happened, you'd want to spend some (move-equivalent) actions attuning. At the same time, if you're not standing literally over one, someone else can steal the attunement. So there was some degree of buildup in that you might e.g. spend the first round attuning and using a 5 point ability, second round moving to another one and using another 5 point, third round attune and use a 10 point, etc.

Mostly the players tried to optimize away that sequence though by getting ranged attunement tricks or lowering the flux they needed because I think there weren't interesting things to make you want to attune, vs feeling like 'to do the real thing I have to attune'.

Maybe if the leylines had been passive buffs instead...

[Grod_The_Giant]

If your opponent's attacks are stealing your Initiative, why not go straight for the damaging attack, while you're still at full Initiative - especially if doing so also refills your Initiative?
There are definitely builds that revolve around pumping up your Join Battle roll and kicking off with a first-turn alpha strike, but as a general rule there are two problems with the strategy as you present it:

First, it's possible for an under-baked Decisive attack to wifi completely. If your enemy has Hardness X, and you don't have (X+1) initiative, your attack will just bounce off. And while really high Hardness is rare, it's not that hard to get enough to blunt most turn-one attacks.

But more importantly, the "base Initiative" you reset to after a Decisive attack is LOW. You'll be acting at the bottom of the round, and a single hit--and not even a strong hit, at that--can drop you into negative Initiative, which gives an extra bonus to your attacker and shuts off all kinds of powerful options. Including Hardness.

[False God]

Um... can you explain what a B/S system that doesn't look as boring and samey as the x-x-y system looks like?

Like, when the D&D Pixie stabs goblins one combat, then Fireballs a larger, more tightly packed group of goblins the next, then throws Twinned Maximized Disintegrate at the miniboss, then stabs bats the next encounter, then throws a Wall of Force and works to free prisoners during the next miniboss fight, I'm feeling some variation. But if, instead, they had to use "Builder" moves to open every single one of those fights, I'm just not seeing the variation.

What, exactly, are you picturing here?
That a character would have a smaller selection of basic attacks that would generate points "basic attacks with simple riders". And then a wider selection of special attacks that require different amounts of points to activate with more serious secondary effects, becoming more powerful the more you have to save up for them.
Lets say a Barbarian has a simple Builder "Pushing Attack", it deals normal damage and pushes 1 square and builds one "Rage".
*Note, riders aren't necessary, but I like them.
When the Barbarian has 3 Rage, they can make a "Knockdown Strike" which deals double damage and forces a check on the target to stay standing, and if failed, they fall prone. For 5 Rage they could instead have "Sundering Strike" which does triple damage and reduces the target's AC bonus by -3 permanently. For 10 Rage they could have "Crush", which if successful on an enemy of equal or smaller size forces a con save or the target dies. On a larger size it does a bunch of damage and cripples a leg or something.
**I'm just spitballing numbers here, don't expect this to be fair or balanced. This is just how this sort of thing functions in other games.

Each class would have its own unique suite of attacks.


Eh, look at it from the character's PoV. If, IRL, you watched me suddenly jump to the moon and back, you'd probably have some serious questions (or a stroke or something), and not be able to believe how I did that. And certainly have a hard time (I'd imagine) believing you could do it yourself (unless, of course, you're in the habit of jumping to the moon IRL, in which case reality is not quite as I believe it to be), so it's hard for your player to successfully roleplay you encountering that, or thinking in terms of the "jump to the moon" action.
If a player can't imagine the impossible because they've never seen it IRL, that's their failing.


Same thing here. Something being "believable" in game is key to being able to roleplay the character (outside having a response that fits better in a Call of Cthulhu game, of course).

Something being believable doesn't matter per se in a board game, or a war game, but it does in a roleplaying game.
If you can't believe something could happen in fantasy make believe land because it can't happen IRL, I suggest you stop playing any game with magic or monsters. Something only needs to be "believable" in-universe.

[icefractal]

That a character would have a smaller selection of basic attacks that would generate points "basic attacks with simple riders". And then a wider selection of special attacks that require different amounts of points to activate with more serious secondary effects, becoming more powerful the more you have to save up for them.
Lets say a Barbarian has a simple Builder "Pushing Attack", it deals normal damage and pushes 1 square and builds one "Rage".
*Note, riders aren't necessary, but I like them.
When the Barbarian has 3 Rage, they can make a "Knockdown Strike" which deals double damage and forces a check on the target to stay standing, and if failed, they fall prone. For 5 Rage they could instead have "Sundering Strike" which does triple damage and reduces the target's AC bonus by -3 permanently. For 10 Rage they could have "Crush", which if successful on an enemy of equal or smaller size forces a con save or the target dies. On a larger size it does a bunch of damage and cripples a leg or something. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not seeing any advantage variety-wise with this over, say, a per-encounter resource system.

So instead of usually starting with Crush (but sometimes another would be better), you always start with Pushing Attack - ok, that's strictly worse. And on round two ... it's always Push again, again strictly worse. On round three, the build/spend system finally shines, with a choice whether to keep building up energy or to do a Knockdown Strike. Except that in a per-encounter system where you had one of each of these (and unlimited Push), you'd still have a choice whether to use one or not. It seems like the build/spend system doesn't become better (in terms of variety) until the point where you otherwise would have exhausted all your limited powers. And since it's worse prior to that point, it's only better overall if the fight lasts more than twice as many turns as the amount of per-encounter abilities you have. Which means that at least half the time, you're using the same one basic attack ... which sounds bad to me. Yes, that's the "3E non-ToB martial" experience, but that experience is why I don't generally play those classes.

Also, IMO 10+ round combats are slooow for most groups. I don't care how streamlined you make the mechanics, there are still choices to make and dice to roll, and without drill-sergeant-like pace keeping (which I don't want to do as a GM and wouldn't put up with as a player), that's going to take a certain amount of time. Video games can have 50+ round combats because a computer is handling all the mechanics and making choices for all the NPCs (virtually) instantly. In PnP, there's an inherent trade-off and (personally) I don't want a couple fights taking up the entire session.

As a pacing mechanic (to create the effect often seen in fiction where people start out with relatively weaker attacks and build up to the "good stuff" over the course of the fight), it works. But IMO that doesn't necessarily result in a more interesting fight from the view of the participants, and I don't really care what spectators who aren't playing would think about it.

[gbaji]

Again, I have little concern for how "real people" function. This is a potential fantasy game with fantasy elements.

I repeat, I don't care. The fantasy world is not defined by reality. I don't know what is normally expected and experienced when fighting dragons and eldritch horrors. I certainly can't determine that on the basis of me driving to work every day or picking weeds.

There's a difference between "defined by reality" and "makes logical sense". The fact that magic spells and dragons exist in the game world does not mean we just chuck out everything else that exists as well. Magic and dragons are "added" to an already existing world, that presumably operates on the same rules that our own does. Water flows down hill. People get tired when they exert themselves. Taller people have an advantage in tetherball. Stuff like that.

I'd argue that when you create a game world/setting/rules that include things like magic and dragons, the need for consistent and logical rules that "make sense" and "feel right" to the players is even more important. The fact that I'm fighting a dragon or eldritch horror should make no difference on how tired I get over time than if I'm fighting something that exists in the "real world". I'm frankly always baffled by people who insist otherwise. Um... You still have arms in this game world right? And your body has blood? You have a heart that pumps that blood? You have muscles? Why wouldn't those operate the same in this world as they do in ours?

Now if your entire game setting is that we're "not" playing living beings similar to us, but are merely manifestations of some kind of energy force that just happens to be shaped like living breathing beings, but otherwise operates on completely different rules, then I can see chucking out things like "you get tired the more you do stuff", and even accept "You get stronger and more capable of inflicting damage the more you do stuff". But that's a radical departure from the assumed setting of most RPGS out there. We can assume "cartoon physics" if we want, but then the game system shouldn't have things like falling damage, or crushing damage, or drowning rules, or any of that either, right? I mean, if we assume that muscle/mental fatigue isn't a thing that exists, why assume breathing is required? Heck. Why even assume we take damage at all when hit by heavy or sharp objects? If we're just chucking out "the rules", that is?

There's reasonable suspension of disbelief, and there's ridiculous suspension of disbelief. I prefer the former to the latter.


It's boring.

Hitting an opponent in battle and damaging them is boring? What criteria represents "not boring" then? See my point aboiut "anything less than my opponent falling down isn't good enough" earlier. I also try to make combats interesting as something other than a HP counting excercise, so there's that as well.


Relying on meta decisions to resolve problems with nova isn't helpful. Upon contact with the enemy, you don't know that they're "wimpy guys" until you've hit a few of them. Because you don't know this, there's every incentive to go big.

That's not a meta decision. That's an in game observation and reaction.

It's interesting to me because that's the exact opposite reaction I would have to that situation. If I'm approaching an enemy and I don't know how powerful they are, I will start out with a basic attack. See if it works, or how well it works. Get a sense of how fast we're defeating them, versus them hurting us. Make an assessment. If they're "winning" by that calculation, we open up with stronger per-day type attacks/spells/whatever. But if we discover that they're wimpy things that we can trivially take out without breaking a sweat, why on earth use up valuable per-day abilities?

You don't use the more powerful stuff unless it's actually needed to win the encounter. But your approach seems to be "start out big and see what happens". Which means you are automatically using up valuable resources prior to learning if they are actually needed in the first place. Which is exactly what leads to the "problem" that this entire thread is trying to solve with B/S mechanics.

To which I say there's a very easy solution. Hit the players with a very large number of wimpy encounters. Let them foolishly use up all their "best attacks", then hit themm with a single "level appropriate" encounter. Then see if they realize where their mistake was. Rinse and repeat until the lesson on intelligent playing is learned.


And there's fundamentally no reason you can't do exactly what you wrote with a Builder/Spender system. You can keep using your small attacks until something worth really hitting shows up. Except now you're guided by in-world information, rather than meta assumptions.

Except that B/S system is basically designed to work around poor player decisions. The player wants to always hit with their most powerful attack against every single opponent, every single time. The GM realizes that this creates a problem in that high power abilities are "used up" wastefully/quickly (and it makes some classes with more powerful "big" abilities just plain more powerful), and can either allow this by just giving players easy/frequest rests (the 15MWD problem), or "punish them" (or as I call it "hit them with the reality of their poor choices") by not letting them rest and forcing them to deal with encounters for which they no longer have the resources to manage.

The B/S method avoids either, but basically just enforces "you must use small attacks first" on everyone. It doesn't allow the player to learn "when" to use a small attack versus a big one, but just dumbs the whole thing down by saying "do the best attack every time, and if the encounter is tough enough, your big powers will appear and you can then manage it". It takes the entire concept of resource management out of the equation. I mean, maybe that's "fun", for the young crowd, but most of us older players would prefer something a bit more challenging where success or failure is determined by choices made and not just die rolls. If every single combat consists of "hit it with the biggest thing I've got" and the game rules themselves adjusts "biggest thing I've got" for them, that's not really the players making choices.


I don't understand how you can complain about novaing, and then complain about a system designed to mitigate novaing, and then complain about people wanting their little attacks to add up to something. From my perspective, you're literally complaining at it from every angle.
Them: "I want to hit them hard right away!"
You: geeze what noobs
Them: "I want my little attacks to add up to something big!"
You: Sheesh how entitled
Them: "I want enemies go down when I hit them!"
You: *sigh* children
That's what your post reads like. The only apparently acceptable solution to you is as you suggested before is "Why can't you just be happy your little attacks are slowly chipping away at it?"

That's an... interesting interpretation of what I said. I'm saying that the players have full choices in terms of what abilities they use and when they use them. However, the game I'm running isn't going to hand then "easy mode" if they make poor choices. The entire point of having things like more powerful X/day abilities/spells is to allow the players to make choices as to when to use them. Those choices are meaningless if they have no consequences or rewards. So if you remove the consequences or rewards for using them poorly/well, then they may as well not have choices. Which, ironically is what the system you are describing does. It takes away the choice to use the big attack right off the bat if you're certain that "these guys are super tough, so we need to go strong right off the bat". It does this, seemingly (or at least based on the chain of logic you've used) to prevent the player from making mistakes with their abilities by using them wastefully early on.

I'm not treating the players like children. I'm treating them like adults. And yes, part of treating people like adults is allowing natural consequences for choices, and letting them decide what to do about it.


But...you're not weening players off anything. You're breaking their spirit. You're demanding they accept mediocrity. They're asking for cool and exciting and flashy and you're telling them "sit down and hit it with a stick again and be happy".

In my experience, players get tired of "cool and exciting and flashy" pretty quick. Then they want "fun, engaging, and immersive". They want to "figure things out". They want to feel that their choices lead to their rewards, and feel a real sense of accomplishment when they succeed, rather than "I mashed my attack button, then when the big flashy button turned on, I mashed that one".

Don't get me wrong, if I'm running like a one shot pick up game or something (well, or one shots in general in some game systems), I'll go with the flashy stuff. Why not? But there's very little longevity in that. It's like a diet of icecream and cookies. At my more regular gaming tables? That's just not going to happen. And the players who play at those tables greatly appreciate this. It's why they've been playing my various games (and sometimes running them themselves) for several decades now. If you're just some random kid at a table in the back of the game store on a Saturday afternoon, I don't care. I'll toss random weird fun stuff out there, and we'll play. I do try to introduce those players to the concept of "good play", but I'm not going to push it on them. Like you said, it's about having fun in the moment. But the players that stick around? They usually want something more. They want steak and potatoes. And that's what I serve at my regular gaming tables.



Okay, but how encounters are handled is sort of beyond the scope of my concerns here. It's something to be analyzed after the groundwork for the system is set up. A Builder/Spender system may lead to quite a different approach to encounter handling than a Fatigue system.

Sure. But the system is going to strongly influence the style and frequency of encounters in a game. So I do think it's worth pointing out. Also, I was directly responding to a post talking about the 15MWD problem, which is very specific to how a GM may handle encounters in a game. To repeat what I talked about earlier, if you are managing encounters properly in a game, you'll find you have no reason to construct a B/S system in the first place. Again, unless you're doing it just because "it's cool" (which is a perfectly fair reason).

Remember, the entire point of the system is to force players to have to wait until longer in the combat to use their bigger and more powerful abilities. There's no reason to do this if your players are already waiting to use them until they are actually needed. And yes, as I pointed out in my previous post, this is a direct "problem" that results from GMs being (IMO) far too lenient with their rest/recovery rules. Which in turn brings up the 15MWD problem. Again, the "solution" (to both problems) is to just not do that in the first place. Allow the PCs to suffer direct consequences for needlessly wasting powerful attacks/abilities/spells on easy encounters, not because you're being malicious, but because "realistically" there's no magical reason why the world should contrive to stop having things attack you because your ran out of per day abilities.

And on the flip side, you reward them by having their good resource management pay off when they are able to handle that really tough encounter at the end of a series of easier ones. I've literally had players verbally state "Wow! I'm realy glad you (referring to another player) didn't waste that ability back <at some previous encounter>, cause that really saved our bacon, and this encounter would have sucked if it wasn't available". You think the other player didn't feel a huge sense of pride and accomplishment when getting that kind of praise from another player? What's the equivalent praise in a B/S system with no restricted X/day resource rules? Um... "Wow. I'm glad we rolled well"? I'm struggling to even find an equivalent.

For me, those are the moments that players play for and that GMs hope for when running games.

[icefractal]

That's an... interesting interpretation of what I said. I'm saying that the players have full choices in terms of what abilities they use and when they use them. However, the game I'm running isn't going to hand then "easy mode" if they make poor choices. The entire point of having things like more powerful X/day abilities/spells is to allow the players to make choices as to when to use them. Those choices are meaningless if they have no consequences or rewards. So if you remove the consequences or rewards for using them poorly/well, then they may as well not have choices.

...

Allow the PCs to suffer direct consequences for needlessly wasting powerful attacks/abilities/spells on easy encounters, not because you're being malicious, but because "realistically" there's no magical reason why the world should contrive to stop having things attack you because your ran out of per day abilities.Not to pick on your post in particular, because I've seen this said a lot, but I have beef with the combination of per-day resource attrition + "realistic" + "consequences must be meaningful". And that beef is, to paraphase:

There's no magical reason why the world should contrive to have a certain amount of encounters a day. Going purely by in-world logic, sometimes it makes sense that there's no reason not to clear the ancient ruins one room per day, or sneak your way past 90% of the encounters. And sometimes it makes sense that things will keep attacking you far beyond what careful shepherding of per-day abilities would help with.

Similarly, real time pressure is fine. And by "real" I mean that there's an objective amount of in-game time before [event] occurs and all in-game time counts for that. Meaning that travelling faster/slower, getting better/worse info, etc, matters just as much (or more) than how many encounters a day you're willing to take on. But I hate "fake" time pressure - the kind where as long as you show enough "hustle" then you'll be on time, but if you do anything that "isn't taking it seriously" like resting after only two encounters, then you'll be too late. "No timeline, no logistics, you'll always get there just in time for the fight" is also fine as long as the GM is honest about it.

Now personally I'm totally ok with a game where things are run realistically and that results in situations sometimes being a cake walk, sometimes a tough fight, and other times undefeatable. Because the "challenge" element is (for me) secondary to the "exploring a world" element. But I know that not everyone is down for that, which is fine. But don't claim the "realism" mantle if you're putting other priorities above it.

[Quertus]

There are definitely builds that revolve around pumping up your Join Battle roll and kicking off with a first-turn alpha strike, but as a general rule there are two problems with the strategy as you present it:

First, it's possible for an under-baked Decisive attack to wifi completely. If your enemy has Hardness X, and you don't have (X+1) initiative, your attack will just bounce off. And while really high Hardness is rare, it's not that hard to get enough to blunt most turn-one attacks.

But more importantly, the "base Initiative" you reset to after a Decisive attack is LOW. You'll be acting at the bottom of the round, and a single hit--and not even a strong hit, at that--can drop you into negative Initiative, which gives an extra bonus to your attacker and shuts off all kinds of powerful options. Including Hardness.

Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks.

Sounds like "action economy" is even stronger here than in D&D.


That a character would have a smaller selection of basic attacks that would generate points "basic attacks with simple riders". And then a wider selection of special attacks that require different amounts of points to activate with more serious secondary effects, becoming more powerful the more you have to save up for them.
Lets say a Barbarian has a simple Builder "Pushing Attack", it deals normal damage and pushes 1 square and builds one "Rage".
*Note, riders aren't necessary, but I like them.
When the Barbarian has 3 Rage, they can make a "Knockdown Strike" which deals double damage and forces a check on the target to stay standing, and if failed, they fall prone. For 5 Rage they could instead have "Sundering Strike" which does triple damage and reduces the target's AC bonus by -3 permanently. For 10 Rage they could have "Crush", which if successful on an enemy of equal or smaller size forces a con save or the target dies. On a larger size it does a bunch of damage and cripples a leg or something.
**I'm just spitballing numbers here, don't expect this to be fair or balanced. This is just how this sort of thing functions in other games.

Each class would have its own unique suite of attacks.


If a player can't imagine the impossible because they've never seen it IRL, that's their failing.


If you can't believe something could happen in fantasy make believe land because it can't happen IRL, I suggest you stop playing any game with magic or monsters. Something only needs to be "believable" in-universe.

First things first - I think that last sentence, "Something only needs to be "believable" in-universe," is key here. I think we're actually all on the same page on that one. I think that's what everyone has meant when they say "believable". At the very least, it's that... Internal Consistency (perhaps with a side of "accessibility"?) that I've been trying to discuss.

And your love of rider effects I think helps explain why you don't view being forced into "builder" moves to be as boring and samey as I picture it. In the "Magical McGyver" thread, I had Cutter taking the same Build up Mana Builder move (dribbling bouncy balls) repeatedly, but it didn't feel samey and boring to me, because he had different "rider effects" (reciting poetry, rhyming words, whatever) for me to customize to the scenario. Yes, it was all extremely silly, but that's part of the nature of the character; someone else in the same system could have posed with a growing, glowing aura until they built up enough mana to bake the perfect souffle, or studied ancient tomes of magic until they had the mana to change the weather in a 100 mile radius. Or, well, they could have, if the move worked the way you'd expect (there wasn't actually an explicit "build up mana" action per se; you had to back your way into it). Point is, I found my silly riders more fun than just standing / sitting there glowing / reading, and so that's how I'm understanding what you wrote. Which is a long way of asking, am I close? Am I still missing anything?


It's interesting to me because that's the exact opposite reaction I would have to that situation. If I'm approaching an enemy and I don't know how powerful they are, I will start out with a basic attack. See if it works, or how well it works. Get a sense of how fast we're defeating them, versus them hurting us. Make an assessment. If they're "winning" by that calculation, we open up with stronger per-day type attacks/spells/whatever. But if we discover that they're wimpy things that we can trivially take out without breaking a sweat, why on earth use up valuable per-day abilities?

You don't use the more powerful stuff unless it's actually needed to win the encounter. But your approach seems to be "start out big and see what happens". Which means you are automatically using up valuable resources prior to learning if they are actually needed in the first place. Which is exactly what leads to the "problem" that this entire thread is trying to solve with B/S mechanics.

To which I say there's a very easy solution. Hit the players with a very large number of wimpy encounters. Let them foolishly use up all their "best attacks", then hit themm with a single "level appropriate" encounter. Then see if they realize where their mistake was. Rinse and repeat until the lesson on intelligent playing is learned.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, researched a custom spell, Quertus's Spell Star, specifically for the purpose of maximizing the amount of relevant information he could glean in a single action against an unknown opponent. Not that he's exactly the epitome of tactical brilliance, but, after seeing the spell in action, numerous (PC) adventurers traded for the spell, so they thought that was a half-way decent idea, too.

Personally, I'm more of the "send expendable fodder (like skeletons) at the unknown opponent" school of thought - unsurprisingly, as Animate Dead is my favorite spell (or is that just "favorite D&D spell"? Hmmm...). Or the "does it have to be an enemy?" Diplomancy school of thought, Control Magic being my original favorite MtG Spell. Or even the Sense Motive / Bo9S Weapon <something> skill / houserule/homebrew "attack bonus check" // Knowledge check / anatomy check / dissection skill // tricorder / Know Weakness / multi-spectrum scan // recon / Speak with Dead / Gather Information school of thought of, you know, observing and analyzing the opponent, asking their enemies about them, etc., so that even the unknown isn't actually completely unknown.

[Grod_The_Giant]

And on the flip side, you reward them by having their good resource management pay off when they are able to handle that really tough encounter at the end of a series of easier ones. I've literally had players verbally state "Wow! I'm realy glad you (referring to another player) didn't waste that ability back <at some previous encounter>, cause that really saved our bacon, and this encounter would have sucked if it wasn't available". You think the other player didn't feel a huge sense of pride and accomplishment when getting that kind of praise from another player? What's the equivalent praise in a B/S system with no restricted X/day resource rules? Um... "Wow. I'm glad we rolled well"? I'm struggling to even find an equivalent.
"Wow, I'm really glad you thought to use your Fog Cloud spell to keep those archers from seeing us, that encounter really would have sucked if they'd been able to aim. If you'd just thrown a fireball they'd still have lived long enough to fill us with arrows."

You don't need D&D-style resource management to have good tactical gameplay--all you need are choices, so that action X and action Y have meaningfully different impacts on the way events unfold.

[False God]

There's reasonable suspension of disbelief, and there's ridiculous suspension of disbelief. I prefer the former to the latter.
Your preferences are noted, but I don't think there's any more room for discussion on the subject. You enjoy one approach, I enjoy another.


Hitting an opponent in battle and damaging them is boring? What criteria represents "not boring" then? See my point aboiut "anything less than my opponent falling down isn't good enough" earlier. I also try to make combats interesting as something other than a HP counting excercise, so there's that as well.
Without commenting on how you run your game, doing the same thing the same way with the same effect over and over is usually the definition of boring, or insanity. Although the former might lead to the latter.


That's not a meta decision. That's an in game observation and reaction.

It's interesting to me because that's the exact opposite reaction I would have to that situation. If I'm approaching an enemy and I don't know how powerful they are, I will start out with a basic attack. See if it works, or how well it works. Get a sense of how fast we're defeating them, versus them hurting us. Make an assessment. If they're "winning" by that calculation, we open up with stronger per-day type attacks/spells/whatever. But if we discover that they're wimpy things that we can trivially take out without breaking a sweat, why on earth use up valuable per-day abilities?

You don't use the more powerful stuff unless it's actually needed to win the encounter. But your approach seems to be "start out big and see what happens". Which means you are automatically using up valuable resources prior to learning if they are actually needed in the first place. Which is exactly what leads to the "problem" that this entire thread is trying to solve with B/S mechanics.

To which I say there's a very easy solution. Hit the players with a very large number of wimpy encounters. Let them foolishly use up all their "best attacks", then hit themm with a single "level appropriate" encounter. Then see if they realize where their mistake was. Rinse and repeat until the lesson on intelligent playing is learned.
Decades of D&D and innumerable threads across the internet indicate that novaing is quite the problem, which would suggest your position of "take a more cautious approach with resources" is in the minority. I don't know what else to tell you.

I'm not interested in beating players over the head with "lessons". I'm interested in presenting a game where they can enjoy themselves and have fun. Tactics and caution are not the only route to that enjoyment. And fundamentally, i'm not looking at a "fix" or integrating with some edition of D&D. Phoenix might be. But I think this would be fine enough as a whole game on it's own, which means there's no reason to teach players to learn to play carefully. The game reinforces "start small, end big" by its design.


Except that B/S system is basically designed to work around poor player decisions. The player wants to always hit with their most powerful attack against every single opponent, every single time. The GM realizes that this creates a problem in that high power abilities are "used up" wastefully/quickly (and it makes some classes with more powerful "big" abilities just plain more powerful), and can either allow this by just giving players easy/frequest rests (the 15MWD problem), or "punish them" (or as I call it "hit them with the reality of their poor choices") by not letting them rest and forcing them to deal with encounters for which they no longer have the resources to manage.

The B/S method avoids either, but basically just enforces "you must use small attacks first" on everyone. It doesn't allow the player to learn "when" to use a small attack versus a big one, but just dumbs the whole thing down by saying "do the best attack every time, and if the encounter is tough enough, your big powers will appear and you can then manage it". It takes the entire concept of resource management out of the equation. I mean, maybe that's "fun", for the young crowd, but most of us older players would prefer something a bit more challenging where success or failure is determined by choices made and not just die rolls. If every single combat consists of "hit it with the biggest thing I've got" and the game rules themselves adjusts "biggest thing I've got" for them, that's not really the players making choices.
I don't understand your objection to two kinds of games existing. One that, as you enjoy, teaches players to conserve, and another as I'm suggesting, that doesn't provide them the option to be wasteful to begin with.


That's an... interesting interpretation of what I said. I'm saying that the players have full choices in terms of what abilities they use and when they use them. However, the game I'm running isn't going to hand then "easy mode" if they make poor choices. The entire point of having things like more powerful X/day abilities/spells is to allow the players to make choices as to when to use them. Those choices are meaningless if they have no consequences or rewards. So if you remove the consequences or rewards for using them poorly/well, then they may as well not have choices. Which, ironically is what the system you are describing does. It takes away the choice to use the big attack right off the bat if you're certain that "these guys are super tough, so we need to go strong right off the bat". It does this, seemingly (or at least based on the chain of logic you've used) to prevent the player from making mistakes with their abilities by using them wastefully early on.

I'm not treating the players like children. I'm treating them like adults. And yes, part of treating people like adults is allowing natural consequences for choices, and letting them decide what to do about it.
I have no idea what being treated like children means other than it seems to indicate that those who enjoy flashy, exciting or otherwise incredible actions are "children". Frankly I'm not interested in continuing the discussion with that being your apparent stance.


In my experience, players get tired of "cool and exciting and flashy" pretty quick. Then they want "fun, engaging, and immersive". They want to "figure things out". They want to feel that their choices lead to their rewards, and feel a real sense of accomplishment when they succeed, rather than "I mashed my attack button, then when the big flashy button turned on, I mashed that one".
I suspect you simply create an environment that does not reward their desire to flash, berates their love of cool, and generally crushes their spirit of fun until they are happy with repetitive mundanity.

I have a 9-5. Why on earth would I want to play through repetitive mundanity in my off-hours?


Don't get me wrong, if I'm running like a one shot pick up game or something (well, or one shots in general in some game systems), I'll go with the flashy stuff. Why not? But there's very little longevity in that. It's like a diet of icecream and cookies. At my more regular gaming tables? That's just not going to happen. And the players who play at those tables greatly appreciate this. It's why they've been playing my various games (and sometimes running them themselves) for several decades now. If you're just some random kid at a table in the back of the game store on a Saturday afternoon, I don't care. I'll toss random weird fun stuff out there, and we'll play. I do try to introduce those players to the concept of "good play", but I'm not going to push it on them. Like you said, it's about having fun in the moment. But the players that stick around? They usually want something more. They want steak and potatoes. And that's what I serve at my regular gaming tables.
Okay, good for you.


Remember, the entire point of the system is to force players to have to wait until longer in the combat to use their bigger and more powerful abilities. There's no reason to do this if your players are already waiting to use them until they are actually needed. And yes, as I pointed out in my previous post, this is a direct "problem" that results from GMs being (IMO) far too lenient with their rest/recovery rules. Which in turn brings up the 15MWD problem. Again, the "solution" (to both problems) is to just not do that in the first place. Allow the PCs to suffer direct consequences for needlessly wasting powerful attacks/abilities/spells on easy encounters, not because you're being malicious, but because "realistically" there's no magical reason why the world should contrive to stop having things attack you because your ran out of per day abilities.
Beyond managing the players, there's also the presentation of a different world-system where players are restricted not by their good behaviour, but by the world itself. That a difficult problem cannot be resolved by a Fireball in your pocket because you've yet to acquire the resources for that Fireball. Where conflict resolution has an innate time barrier and you must risk waiting for a more powerful ability to finish the job, or a less powerful ability that will keep your fat out of the fryer for right now. It's not just nova mitigation, it's presenting an entirely different approach to play.

[Anymage]

There's a difference between "defined by reality" and "makes logical sense". The fact that magic spells and dragons exist in the game world does not mean we just chuck out everything else that exists as well. Magic and dragons are "added" to an already existing world, that presumably operates on the same rules that our own does. Water flows down hill. People get tired when they exert themselves. Taller people have an advantage in tetherball. Stuff like that.

Magical types having to build up their power before unleashing their big spells is a classic trope. If you wanted to stick closer to the trope you'd have the casters doing nothing besides gathering power as their build action, but I doubt many players would enjoy that and it would mostly encourage a meta of having casters trying to build up power while hiding in order to ambush with overwhelming force.

Physical types would get tired from extended combat, true. A good many of their opponents can get tired, and that can be extended to all animate creatures with a little thought. (Constructs and undead, the two most classic "can keep going all day" archetypes, can have exertions on their animating energy act similar to combat fatigue in humans. Even if their ability to keep doing less strenuous work is effectively unlimited.) More importantly, any attack against an animate creature can benefit from wanting to make sure you're in a better position or have worn out your opponent. This is the boxer focusing on defense so that their opponent wears themselves out, allowing the boxer a stamina advantage in later rounds.

You could try to model the above with an involved system of stamina, positioning, and momentum. That sounds like it'd be a lot of bookkeeping, and would require a lot of oversight to avoid exploits. (Grod mentioned Exalted 3e, where their initiative score is a reflection of momentum and positioning. The rulebook has to repeatedly mention that the GM needs to keep an eye out for bag of rats style problems.) Or you could just say that builders represent gaining these advantages and spenders are where you capitalize on them.

[KorvinStarmast]

Decades of D&D and innumerable threads across the internet indicate that novaing is quite the problem
No, it isn't a problem. Asserting an opinion as a fact does not make it one.
(For the D&D system, what strikes me as a possible problem is the 5-minute-work-day syndrome, which is indicative to me of a DM side problem).
The Nova events are a technique, an option.
Not everyone does this.

The players need IMO to have the risk/reward option as a choice, and to live with the consequences of that choice.
Whether one is using the resource count down method in conventional D&D, or the B/S method, it is still a resource management challenge for the player.
Choices have consequences.
On the experiential side, I have taught the players in our Wednesday night group that they get to live with the consequences of unloading their big guns early. It took a while, but I am seeing the results of that training pay off.

[Telok]

Choices have consequences.
On the experiential side, I have taught the players in our Wednesday night group that they get to live with the consequences of unloading their big guns early. It took a while, but I am seeing the results of that training pay off.

Yes, that works well in games where you have multiple combats between recharge points. In games that have fewer combats it's not a solution. Likewise one can claim solving the issue by making the opposition so powerful or the pcs so weak that nova tactics are required game play or by redefining the game's combat style so novas are intended and not an issue. Changing pc power structures to ramp up instead of run down is simply another solution, one that happens at game design time rather than adventure or encounter design times.

[KorvinStarmast]

Yes, that works well in games where you have multiple combats between recharge points. In games that have fewer combats it's not a solution. Likewise one can claim solving the issue by making the opposition so powerful or the pcs so weak that nova tactics are required game play or by redefining the game's combat style so novas are intended and not an issue. Changing pc power structures to ramp up instead of run down is simply another solution, one that happens at game design time rather than adventure or encounter design times. For sure, but there are also pacing issues. Some sessions have almost all social or discovery/exploration encounters. Some mostly combat. Some sessions are on easy mode. It depends a lot.
The other point is that the occasional Nova is, or can be, a "wow" moment for the players.
One example is when a paladin gets a crit on a demon and unloads the highest spell slot to pile on the radiant damage). You can't do that every round, but the occasional burst like that has a semi cinematic effect for the table.
The same goes for a well-placed bow shot that goes critby a rogue that gets a high sneak attack damage instance.
You can't count on it every round, but whe it comes most players on the party get a "hell yeah!" moment out of it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

For sure, but there are also pacing issues. Some sessions have almost all social or discovery/exploration encounters. Some mostly combat. Some sessions are on easy mode. It depends a lot.
The other point is that the occasional Nova is, or can be, a "wow" moment for the players.
One example is when a paladin gets a crit on a demon and unloads the highest spell slot to pile on the radiant damage). You can't do that every round, but the occasional burst like that has a semi cinematic effect for the table.
The same goes for a well-placed bow shot that goes critby a rogue that gets a high sneak attack damage instance.
You can't count on it every round, but whe it comes most players on the party get a "hell yeah!" moment out of it.

One thing that some MMOs have for builder/spender classes is a cooldown-based (in this case it'd be X/rest) "emergency gauge builder" button. Basically does nothing, but gives you like 50% of your gauge. That lets you have some control over your burst (and can recover from disasters better), but also means you can't do it on the regular. The FFXIV Mechanic (gunner) builds Heat (their gauge) normally by shooting, but can get enough gauge to go into their "super" rotation (a bunch of quick, buffed shots) once every 2 minutes by hitting one of their CDs.

Others have it built into the core rotation--FFXIV's Warrior gets two charges of their Infuriate ability, each one gives enough Rage[1] to do one big swing, while the normal path takes a bit more than a full "regular combo" (~4 GCDs, 10 s) to build up enough Rage.

Edit: you can also get a lot of that effect simply by letting people (at higher levels) start with some gauge built up (ie don't reset to 0, reset to "enough for one big hit". But then ensure that "one big hit" isn't enough to end the combat all by itself.

As for the 5mwd issue...yes, adventuring day design can do some to counteract it. But
a) that's a huge extra load on the DM, because they're constantly having to fight what the system says is best.
b) actually fixing the issue requires basically railroading the players constantly and warps narratives. You need constant doom clocks and increasingly implausible reasons why no, they can't rest right now.
c) The "on tap" ability to nova for some classes means that the round-by-round fight favors them tremendously. Basically, you have to run either blockers or minions that keep the party away from the big boss and force them to use resources there or the boss will just evaporate. And then if the nova classes don't nova, everyone will struggle against an encounter designed for them to nova.

Basically, the presence of on-demand nova as a big central thing means that the whole game gets warped. Can it be countered? Somewhat. But only at a substantial cost, including players intentionally not acting in character and explicitly meta-gaming "oh, well, the DM won't let us rest, so we should conserve resources." The characters don't know what's coming; all that "resource conservation" stuff/adventuring day conventions are explicitly meta/player-level.

Edit to the edit: I think there's a place for multiple different designs, as long as none are overwhelming. I'd say that most classes could benefit from some combination of
* rest-based resources (classic attrition)
* cyclic resources (of which builder/spenders are one example, as are the ToB recharge mechanics[2])
* always-on features (ie at-wills)

[1] It's basically "barbarian, the class", and is a tank class that wields greataxes.
[2] which could be conceptualized as a very strange sort of builder/spender, now that I think of it. You start with full "gauge" (ie a set of maneuvers readied), spend them, then <do thing> to get them back that isn't resting.

[KorvinStarmast]

[1] It's basically "barbarian, the class", and is a tank class that wields greataxes.
[2] which could be conceptualized as a very strange sort of builder/spender, now that I think of it. You start with full "gauge" (ie a set of maneuvers readied), spend them, then <do thing> to get them back that isn't resting.
You almost had Battle Master maneuvers until you added the italics. :smallwink:

[PhoenixPhyre]

You almost had Battle Master maneuvers until you added the italics. :smallwink:

Without the italics, everything that isn't at will would count. Which would rather stretch the bounds of a builder/spender.

--------

A bit more seriously, ToB recharge included such things as making regular attacks. Of course, it also included such things as do nothing for a round (ok, take a special action instead of doing anything real) .

[CarpeGuitarrem]

On the topic of examples, I think Don't Rest Your Head sees characters building up dice they can use to power up, but I don't remember for sure.

Apocalypse Keys has an interesting similar dynamic, where you earn Darkness tokens and then cash them out during scenes to boost your rolls.

Tenra Bansho Zero has an interesting system that also incorporates a "fan mail" mechanic: when a player likes a character's actions or dramatic play, that player can hand out "aiki" (any player can do this). Aiki isn't very useful on its own (although it can be very inefficiently converted into bonus dice), but you're able to take actions that convert it into "kiai", which you then can use to power up your rolls with a lot of bonus dice. The catch is that when you spend kiai, it turns into "karma": spiritual weight that pushes you emotionally. When you hit 108 karma, your character becomes an Asura, effectively going to the Dark Side because their passion overpowers and consumes them. So in this case, there's something to temper the Spend half of the cycle, and to give it dramatic heft.

[Bohandas]

I think I've seen a few things that act sort of like limit breaks, if those count as this type of ability, in that they trigger after taking a certain amount of damage (or in the cases I'm thinking of, if I've remembered them correctly, falling under a certain HP threshold, which is roughly equivalent)

[Quertus]

Basically, the presence of on-demand nova as a big central thing means that the whole game gets warped. Can it be countered? Somewhat. But only at a substantial cost, including players intentionally not acting in character and explicitly meta-gaming "oh, well, the DM won't let us rest, so we should conserve resources." The characters don't know what's coming; all that "resource conservation" stuff/adventuring day conventions are explicitly meta/player-level.

Confused by this bit, especially the bolded part.

So, Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named, knows that his resources are finite. He's run out of spells several times in his adventuring career, an experience which encouraged him to pay attention to what he was taught in school, and to actually conserve his mana. So now he (quite foolishly, IMO) conserves his mana very effectively, letting mundanes attempt to solve scenarios (such as the epic challenge of the locked door) first before even considering a magical solution to a problem. All of that is in character, not at the meta/player level. So my experience (Quertus being an extreme example) is with conservation of resources as an in-character decision. What are you envisioning / why do you view it as a meta/player consideration, that causes/requires characters to not act in character? :smallconfused:

[gbaji]

Not to pick on your post in particular, because I've seen this said a lot, but I have beef with the combination of per-day resource attrition + "realistic" + "consequences must be meaningful". And that beef is, to paraphase:

There's no magical reason why the world should contrive to have a certain amount of encounters a day. Going purely by in-world logic, sometimes it makes sense that there's no reason not to clear the ancient ruins one room per day, or sneak your way past 90% of the encounters. And sometimes it makes sense that things will keep attacking you far beyond what careful shepherding of per-day abilities would help with.

Similarly, real time pressure is fine. And by "real" I mean that there's an objective amount of in-game time before [event] occurs and all in-game time counts for that. Meaning that travelling faster/slower, getting better/worse info, etc, matters just as much (or more) than how many encounters a day you're willing to take on. But I hate "fake" time pressure - the kind where as long as you show enough "hustle" then you'll be on time, but if you do anything that "isn't taking it seriously" like resting after only two encounters, then you'll be too late. "No timeline, no logistics, you'll always get there just in time for the fight" is also fine as long as the GM is honest about it.

Now personally I'm totally ok with a game where things are run realistically and that results in situations sometimes being a cake walk, sometimes a tough fight, and other times undefeatable. Because the "challenge" element is (for me) secondary to the "exploring a world" element. But I know that not everyone is down for that, which is fine. But don't claim the "realism" mantle if you're putting other priorities above it.

Yeah. I think I tend towards the latter bit myself. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes the PCs will run into no encounters today. Sometimes (most of the time), there will be an easy encounter and nothing else. And yeah, sometimes there will be an absolute boatload of encounters in a single day. The point being that the players don't know this at the time. That's literally how I manage this. And IMO, it's just not that difficult to do.

I see an absolute ton of forums and posts and articles out on the interweb about tools to deal with this, including things like timers, and calculated threat escalations, and other silly things. To me, most of those have problems in that they become "meta" solutions. To me, it's really simple. What is there is what is there. And sometimes, "what is there" is very minor and easy. And sometimes it's "super difficult and will require careful use of our resources/abilities to manage". As long as the players don't know which scenario they are in during encounter1, they can't feel "safe" just blasting stuff at full steam.

And sure. Sometimes, it might just work that they can clear that ancient ruins one room at a time with rests in between. And sometimes, maybe they can sneak past 90% of the content. And to be perfectly honest? If I've written up this tomb, and written up what's in it, and they figure out ways to actually do those things, then more power to them. But I also play most things "realistically" in response as well. Dungeon complexes (ancient tomb or not) are never just a disconnected series of rooms for the PCs to clear/loot. Like. Ever. Any environment my players explore is a living breathing one (even if filled with undead) in which everything reacts to other things going on around it/them. I never place arbitrary timers on anything, but there absolutely are "reasonable NPC responces" to PC actions. And yeah, usually that means that if they open up the previously sealed ancient tombs front door, they're probably not going to be able to clear it out one room at a time. Again, sometimes? Maybe? Other times? Not.

The point is that as long as the players don't know this, and don't come to expect a very specific style of play and frequency/dificulty of encounters, then they will never feel like "blast as hard as we can from start to finish" is a good strategy.


Decades of D&D and innumerable threads across the internet indicate that novaing is quite the problem, which would suggest your position of "take a more cautious approach with resources" is in the minority. I don't know what else to tell you.

Yes. It's quite the problem in poorly run games. As I said earlier. The solution is actually quite easy. It's just funny because I've also read many of these same things over the same period of time. But every single time I've ever engaged and asked "Ok. How were you running this game that this is a problem", I've encountered a GM who is strictly following some encounter/day calculation, or GMs who allow ridiculous rest conditions, or some other thing that I find to be non-sensical from a "how to run a game" point of view.

And yes, a good portion of that is GMs being afraid of "being too hard" on the players. And I get this. But if you actually adopt that mentality, then the players will absolutely run roughshod over your game. And while you might allow this for the same of "fun", in the long run, it's not a good approach (I don't mean "you" personaly here of course).


I'm not interested in beating players over the head with "lessons". I'm interested in presenting a game where they can enjoy themselves and have fun.

And IME, presenting a game that operates in a consistent manner does that better than most other methods. I'm not "teaching lesson" for the sake of lording it over the players or something, but to provide feedback to them as to what works and what doesn't. If I tell you "don't touch the stove burner, because it's hot and will burn you", and you ignore me and touch the stove burner, I'm not going to use godlike powers to prevent you from getting burned. But many GMs will do the equivalent because they "don't want to punish the players". I happen to think that's a mistake.


I don't understand your objection to two kinds of games existing. One that, as you enjoy, teaches players to conserve, and another as I'm suggesting, that doesn't provide them the option to be wasteful to begin with.

Because of the "doesn't provide them the option" part? I thought I was pretty clear previously that I believe in providing my players the freedom to do anything they want and the game world responding to those choices in very logical and direct ways. Good choices result in good outcomes. Bad choices result in bad outcomes. Seems pretty straightfoward to me. And as long as the GM is being consistent and fair with this, it works really really well.


I have no idea what being treated like children means other than it seems to indicate that those who enjoy flashy, exciting or otherwise incredible actions are "children". Frankly I'm not interested in continuing the discussion with that being your apparent stance.

I was responding to *your* characterisation of my GMing style as treating people like children. It's not "my stance" at all. My actual statements were far more nuanced than just dismissing various play styles as "noobs", and "entitled" and "children" (those were your words, not mine).

Claiming offense for me refuting terms that you introduced seems a bit over the top. I'm going to just assume that you lost track of the exchange somewhere along the way though. Benefit of the doubt and all that jazz.



I suspect you simply create an environment that does not reward their desire to flash, berates their love of cool, and generally crushes their spirit of fun until they are happy with repetitive mundanity.

Nah. I just don't believe that flash and cool and fun can only exist if we throw concepts like "consistency" and "rationality" from the game. I'm not arguing at all for removing "big powers" from the game. I'm simply saying "let's let the players decide when to use them", and presenting a means to do this while also avoiding the 15MWD problem that some games seem to have so much problem with.

Now, if we rephrase that as "reward their desire to win without actually doing anything to make that happen", then yeah, you're closer to what I'm actually talking about. I don't think that providing "empty victory" to the players is actually fun (for anyone). Not for any length of time, anyway. As I stated earlier, that's like eating nothing but icecream and cookies. Sure. It tastes good at first, but it has no substance. I've found that most players get bored of the "I win no matter what I do" style of game. And yes, I've found that players will tend to push the boundaries of what "no matter what I do" actually is in those situations.

Believe it or not, players are actually looking for the boundaries in the game rules. They want them to exist, and they want to know where they are. Take from that nugget whatever you want. But for me, that means that if I'm direct and up front with the players, they will appreciate it, and go on enjoying the game. If I'm "flexible" and enable them to do what they want (or claim to want), they will keep pushing and things will become more and more ridiculous over time. And yes, I happen to think that a lot of the "nova problems' and "15MWD" problems are the result of GMs trying to be flexible and "give the players what they want". But they are not realizing that those aren't the things that the players really want at all.

Lots of players, if you ask them "wouldn't you like it if every time you took a turn in monopoly you got a free 1000 dollars?" would say "heck yeah!". But if you actualy did that? They'd find they don't enjoy playing the game anymore. That's the point I'm trying to make here. What players think/say they want and what they will actualy enjoy are often two very different things.


Beyond managing the players, there's also the presentation of a different world-system where players are restricted not by their good behaviour, but by the world itself. That a difficult problem cannot be resolved by a Fireball in your pocket because you've yet to acquire the resources for that Fireball. Where conflict resolution has an innate time barrier and you must risk waiting for a more powerful ability to finish the job, or a less powerful ability that will keep your fat out of the fryer for right now. It's not just nova mitigation, it's presenting an entirely different approach to play.

Yeah. I see what you're saying from a purely game mechanical point of view. I just personally see it as a bit too much "mechanics for the sake of mechanics". But sure.


Yes, that works well in games where you have multiple combats between recharge points. In games that have fewer combats it's not a solution. Likewise one can claim solving the issue by making the opposition so powerful or the pcs so weak that nova tactics are required game play or by redefining the game's combat style so novas are intended and not an issue. Changing pc power structures to ramp up instead of run down is simply another solution, one that happens at game design time rather than adventure or encounter design times.

Or. As I've stated a couple times now. Simply varying encounter rates/numbers, so that the player don't know which is which? If you literally have no clue if this encounter is going to be the ony one today, or just the first of 20 such encounters today (and both are possible), you're going to avoid using any abilities that you don't absoultely have to use.

Your premise is absolutely correct though. If the players know that "in this game, we never have more than <small number> encounters per day", then they will not hesitate to use their more powerful abilities in every encounter. Answer is simple. Don't do that. The GM has absolute control to make it so that the PCs can't rest whenever they want. The GM creates the game. I've often been baffled at GMs who insist that they are unable to "prevent my players from just resting after every encounter". Um... You have all the power to construct the environment so that's not possible, why aren't you doing so?

And, as I've posted previously, when we examine the reasons why, it often falls back to a GM trying to "be nice", or "don't want to punish the players", or "my players will get mad at me". Trust me. Your players will be far more upset over the long run if you *don't* put your foot down on things like this. It's one of the hardest things to do as a GM, because it does seem counter intuitive at first glance. But, as I pointed out above, there sometimes is a huge difference between what players may say they want in a game, and what the players will actually enjoy.


As for the 5mwd issue...yes, adventuring day design can do some to counteract it. But
a) that's a huge extra load on the DM, because they're constantly having to fight what the system says is best.
b) actually fixing the issue requires basically railroading the players constantly and warps narratives. You need constant doom clocks and increasingly implausible reasons why no, they can't rest right now.
c) The "on tap" ability to nova for some classes means that the round-by-round fight favors them tremendously. Basically, you have to run either blockers or minions that keep the party away from the big boss and force them to use resources there or the boss will just evaporate. And then if the nova classes don't nova, everyone will struggle against an encounter designed for them to nova.

Basically, the presence of on-demand nova as a big central thing means that the whole game gets warped. Can it be countered? Somewhat. But only at a substantial cost, including players intentionally not acting in character and explicitly meta-gaming "oh, well, the DM won't let us rest, so we should conserve resources." The characters don't know what's coming; all that "resource conservation" stuff/adventuring day conventions are explicitly meta/player-level.

Eh. I think there are other/better ways around those things though.

I will say that I agree that "when you rest" should never be a meta thing ("DM wont let us"). It should always be a in-game condition ("We're inside the enemies stronghold, assautling it, and if we restreat we lose the element of suprise and opportunity to succeed, and if we rest we'll get over run").

I've run a ton of encounters which were a rapid series of combats, representing the PCs basicaly "pushing through" a series of enemies on the way to an objective (guantlet scenario). And sure, nothing at all is preventing them from retreating and resting, but then they lose the momentum they have. Coming back and trying again would require them starting from scratch. The main bad guy will almost certainly have more powerful defenses, his guards more alert, use some extra stuff he had in storage, bring in more defenders, summon some nasty things, etc. These do not at all requires arbitrary or meta restrictions, but are the logical conseuqnces of failing to defeat the entire bad guys forces.

I've also run scenarios where the PCs are sneaking their way through a large area filled with bad guys, where there can be rests and recoveries, but they're always on guard. Their camp could be discovered any time by patrols, so there's no guarantee anyone will get a full rest this night. When "getting a full rest" is a dice roll every day, even if the number of encounters per day is low, it can create tension and serious conservation of limited resources (this, obviously works with "recover with rest" mechanics rather than "X/day" mechanics.

And yeah, the same sort of thing works in "exploring a huge underground complex" type adventures as well. Sometimes, they will find a spot where they can rest safely without being disturbed. Sometimes not. And, as I posted in one of previous threads, I usually present this sort of thing in "chunks that have to be managed in one go". So they can't just explore/clear part of a section and then retreat (well, not without consequences). Tons of ways of doing this IMO.

It's just strange because I've never had a hard time managing this without having to resort to any of the sort of meta rules or arbitrary restrictions so many people talk about. The environment itself determines the restrictions.

[GeoffWatson]

Iron Heroes (d20) has builder/spender abilities.
Unfortunately the main designer quit before it was finished and they published an unbalanced, untested mess.
Some classes have to spend several turns building up to do anything interesting, while others start each battle fully charged.

[Theodoxus]

I don't fundamentally feel like a Builder/Spender system is all that much more complicated than most incarnations of spellcasting. Frankly I think it would be simpler than Vancian, since you're not worrying about "how many slots of X do I have, which spells can I memorize" you're just using a basic effect (like a cantrip) to generate Spell Points and then cast your spells as you have the power to do so.

I agree. Provided most classes either have one or the other, and a select few are more advanced, offering both (ideally for players who enjoy tracking resources).


I agree. This is just spell points/mana/ki/maneuver dice/rage uses that count up instead of down. You want to reverse the nova effect then you reverse the resource flow.

If the chain "fireball-magic missile-mana bolt" costs 4-2-1 then to reverse it instead of starting the fight with 7 points you start with 1 and gain 3 at the end of each round. That'll flip you to spending 1-2-4. All you need is more powerful abilities costing more of whatever resource you're using. Probably gaining points based on something other than just "end of round".

I'm sure if you looked there's a game where it's already been done.

I'm definitely going to incorporate the idea. I think it really works well for non-magical abilities that are gated behind a long rest recharge (Rage being the classic example).


And it's not that both systems can't exist in synch with each other. You could easily implement a Fatigue system on top of this by simply saying that your Spenders cost Y points and Z Fatigue.

Or even "You can use this 'Spender' PB times / long rest" or "Con Mod times per long rest". Yes, it requires smaller actions to build up the resource, but the expenditure of the resource itself is fatiguing, so THAT has the limiter on it.


Some classes have to spend several turns building up to do anything interesting, while others start each battle fully charged. I grok the concern, but I don't really see an issue. Provided those who start fully charged don't have an easy way to rebuild their pool.

To use Diablo 4 as an example (since I've been playing it, and each class has their own resource pool that each work differently), Rogues start with a max pool, so they can nova at the start of a fight, typically putting a lot of hurt on a boss, or mowing down minions quickly. Their pool also auto-restores at a fairly good clip, allowing Rogues to nova quite often. However, their individual attacks are pretty small, typically requiring two or three complete refilling of their resource pool to make an obvious dent in a bosses HP total.

Barbarians are the opposite. Rage starts at zero, requires a number of small attacks to build up, and then they burn Rage for very impressive attacks.

Rogues and Barbarians are on opposite ends of the spectrum, but end up doing relatively close to equal damage on characters that have similar attributes. Barbarians Rage will slowly subside if no builders are used, generally resulting in each fight having to start with zero Rage.

Compare that to the Druid, who also starts with no resources (Spirit, in this case), but as they build up their pool, it remains stable until used. Druids in D4 are the epitome of 'bag of rats' playstyle, as you can use basic attacks on containers, vases, other destructible scenery to build up your pool before a fight. To compensate, their spenders are generally less impressive than the Barbarians, but also more often cost more. Easy come, easy go.

The last two 'arcane' classes, Sorcerers and Necromancers, also start with a full resource pool, but they regenerate far slower naturally than the Rogue's. Typically, you'll nova, and then resort to basic attacks for a while until your pool is restored, allowing you to nova again. While everyone seems to point to Barbarian Rage as the prototypical B/S example, I really look at Necromancers, that have multiple ways (depending on skill/build choices) of restoring their Essence pool, and would suggest using their options as the blueprint to go about it. A couple basic attacks, and then a couple of alternate options that also fill up the pool without resorting to in-combat needs. Kinda of like the ToB methods mentioned up thread.

Speaking of 'bag of rats', I've never found it an issue (outside the one time an AL DM used it to counter sleep - that was super annoying), but curtailing it using B/S is simple if the resource pool depletes. Either naturally over time, or artificially "when you roll initiative, your resource pool starts at zero, regardless of what you had at the end of the previous encounter". Both could work in the same universe, for different classes, for different reasons.

[False God]

Or even "You can use this 'Spender' PB times / long rest" or "Con Mod times per long rest". Yes, it requires smaller actions to build up the resource, but the expenditure of the resource itself is fatiguing, so THAT has the limiter on it.

Yes, rather than spending "Fatigue Points" you could say "X times per Y mod".

One of my notable objections to current class design(in a number of games) is that there is very little differentiation between any given character mechanically, they can all do the same things, for about the same damage, about as many times. There aren't even necessarily good or bad options, there just aren't any options to pick from at any given level.

I think, at least for melee classes, you can create good opportunity cost while keeping the overall number of Spenders down by balancing between "how hard"(str), "how accurate"(dex?) and "how often"(con), with a "choose two" kind of approach.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks.

Sounds like "action economy" is even stronger here than in D&D.
Oh yeah, it's bad. Combine it with player characters who canonically out-power most beings in the setting and a generally slow and crunch-heavy engine, and... well, put it like this, a three-player game of Ex3 was so rough that I wound up writing a 300 page total conversion rather than run it again.

[Dienekes]

So, might not exactly be what you're looking for here. But I've actually built my own for my homebrew system.

Essentially by version of a Paladin gets Oath Points for doing things that actually follow their Oath. They start each day with a number, and have a maximum amount they can hold which is a bit higher. They can accumulate these points both in and out of combat. The tenets of their Oath come with a list of activities that provide Oath Points and some reasonable guidelines of when a DM can reward them outside of combat. While in combat, all Paladin variations are given an ability that accrues Oath Points when they use it.

The obvious example being the Guardian Paladin getting an ability to take a hit meant for someone else for themselves. If they do, they get the Oath Point.

Then most of their magical abilities all cost some Oath Points.

For my personal testing I quite like it, as it provides more incentive for a Paladin to behave in accordance to their beliefs, which is supposedly the foundation of the Paladin concept. And it mitigates the problem of short encounters as the accumulation of points occurs both in and out of combat.

If you're interested in more professional versions. Iron Heroes is the one that comes to mind most readily. It had some fun ideas, though I agree with GeoffWatson's comment on balance issues. But it does provide a nice basis for following the concept of "Reward people for playing the way the class is designed to play." The Armiger is meant to be the big heavy armored defender? It gets points when it gets hit. The Harrier is meant to dash around the battlefield? It gets points based on how much it moves.

Not all the most balanced, but definitely interesting.

[Quertus]

So, might not exactly be what you're looking for here. But I've actually built my own for my homebrew system.

Essentially by version of a Paladin gets Oath Points for doing things that actually follow their Oath.

Huh. That reminds me, 3e D&D has some mechanics like this. Some sort of “faith” mechanics? I remember a Cleric took a feat in one of my games that gave them… d6’s to add to rolls when they did things in accordance with their faith, or something like that. It seemed like a really cool idea, and I regret I was a more passive GM on that feat, waiting for the player to ask if certain actions qualified, rather than actively rewarding them.

[Anymage]

Essentially by version of a Paladin gets Oath Points for doing things that actually follow their Oath. They start each day with a number, and have a maximum amount they can hold which is a bit higher. They can accumulate these points both in and out of combat. The tenets of their Oath come with a list of activities that provide Oath Points and some reasonable guidelines of when a DM can reward them outside of combat. While in combat, all Paladin variations are given an ability that accrues Oath Points when they use it.
...
For my personal testing I quite like it, as it provides more incentive for a Paladin to behave in accordance to their beliefs, which is supposedly the foundation of the Paladin concept. And it mitigates the problem of short encounters as the accumulation of points occurs both in and out of combat.

Powering up through something like fate points does a good job of encouraging players to embrace their character's quirks and passions instead of treating them as something to downplay or ignore, but they have a few flaws. Key to this topic is that there's little reason not to alpha strike on the first round of combat, unless you're picking a low stakes fight for the express purpose of filling your tank. Both risk degenerate behaviors.


Huh. That reminds me, 3e D&D has some mechanics like this. Some sort of “faith” mechanics? I remember a Cleric took a feat in one of my games that gave them… d6’s to add to rolls when they did things in accordance with their faith, or something like that. It seemed like a really cool idea, and I regret I was a more passive GM on that feat, waiting for the player to ask if certain actions qualified, rather than actively rewarding them.

This covers one of the other main things you'll have to be watchful for in a fate point like system. The more you require more mental load on the GM, the more that the GM is likely to ignore things in favor of everything else that requires his attention in the moment. You absolutely will want a sanity check in order to avoid things that are cheesy, nonsensical, excessively metagamey, or cross the line into annoying the rest of the group. But ideally such a system would encourage the player to bring up both when their character would gain as well as when their character would be able to spend such points, with the GM allowing or denying as circumstance (including metagame circumstance like the player spotlight hogging) dictate.

[gatorized]

I tend to take the approach of weening players off of this habit over the courrse of play rather than catering to it. But that's just me. Different strokes, I guess.


I know right? I hate when my players have fun or do cool stuff. Games are about being miserable and telling the GM how great their railroad is, and the players aren't my friends and equals, but rather insolent servants to be corrected.



Again though, the solution as a GM is to not allow that. The game day doesn't end when the spellcasters run out of spells, but when I decide the day is done. If the spellcasters are over casting, such that they are dishing out most of the damage/effects during the encounters and making the melee feel less useful, they will run out "too soon", and then be relegated to "attack NPC with my staff" level stuff for all remaining encounters that day. IME, when I run a game lke D&D with this sort of caster/melee dynamic, it doesn't take long for my players to realize that "blast early; blast hard; blast often" is a terrible tactical mistake. And what I've found is that the casters in my games will learn (via hard lessons) to hold back in the early fights in a day, and not use spells (or use very few of them), specifically on the chance that this may be "a long day". This means that the melee characters absolutely shine. And yeah, sometimes, it's not "a long day", so the couple of encounters that day were dealt with mostly by the melee doing their thing, maybe a spell or two from the casters, and some heals by the healers. Casters rest with 80% of their spells still remaining, but they didn't know that starting out. Of course, to make this work, you have to also have "long days" where the casters get a payoff for holding back with their spells, by having them available later in the day, when they are really needed.


1 - Rope trick.
2 - If the party adventures without spells in ****ty systems like d&d, they die. Martials are just as bound by spell slots and magical resources as casters, it's just that the dependence isn't as obvious.

[KorvinStarmast]

What's that have to do with Builder and Spender resources?

[gbaji]

I know right? I hate when my players have fun or do cool stuff. Games are about being miserable and telling the GM how great their railroad is, and the players aren't my friends and equals, but rather insolent servants to be corrected.

As Korvin pointed out, this has nothing to do with B/S considerations. I was responding strictly to problems with Alpha Strike (leading to potential mismatch of effectiveness between classes/builds), and xMWD issues (which can exaggerate the alpha strike problems), by proprosing alternative means to deal with those issues without requiring a B/S mechanism. For cases where those might not be the ideal solution.

That's not at all to say that B/S mechanics can't work (and work well). But it's a thematic choice. If your objective is to duplicate the more film/tv narrative technique where characters may draw upon some reserves in a fight they are losing to pull out greater strength and win, this mechanism works well. And depending on the game, this can (should really) absolutely be baked into the combat system (it's just "normal" that as you fight, you gain build up benefits and everyone's powers/abilities work this way). But, as I pointed out previously, this is going to affect the feel and theme of the game (and, obviously, the flow of any combat encounters in the game).

All I was doing was observing that some games may not thematically "fit" the B/S approach, and to provide alternatives for those problems. If you're doing it for thematic reasons, then it both "fits" *and* can solve those previously mentioned problems (double win). But if it's not a thematic fit for your game, you need other solutiions. That's all I was talking about. Dismissing those alternatives with sarcastic comments about how that makes the game less fun, or a railroad, isn't terribly helpful. Believe it or not, there are a lot of players who do want as realistic a simulation of "real life + fantasy/sci-fi stuff" as possible, but also run into the same problems that the OP was discussing. So yeah. Other choices are relevant.

I just find that it's useful when discussing "what" a mechanic does to also discuss "when/why" to use it in the first place.




1 - Rope trick.
2 - If the party adventures without spells in ****ty systems like d&d, they die. Martials are just as bound by spell slots and magical resources as casters, it's just that the dependence isn't as obvious.

Well. Those are very game specific issues. Some of us play in games where there isn't easy access to extra dimensional magic to create a safe resting spot whereever you are. And these things may or may not be present regardless of whether we're using a B/W mechanic or not. So, assuming you're addressing the xMWD issue (folks restring wherever/whenever they want), even then there are solutions to this.

Rope Trick specifically. Um... It's a 2nd level spell, so not so uncommon or rare that the bad guys (maybe searching for the PCs who just whacked a few of their friends) would not be aware of it. It's also an extra dimensional space, so if your party has any other extra dimensional items (like bags of holding), they can't safely use it. It also specifically states that spells like divination don't work inside, so I'd argue that your clerics can't get their spells back while in there (no connection to their deity to pray, right?). And anyone with any intelligence at all, having tracked the PCs to the room they used the spell in (and finding the tracks disappearing), might assume they teleported, or something, or might think "maybe they used rope trick spell". Gee. Let's just light a big ol bonfire right under the spot we last saw their footsteps. Or just set up a huge ambush right there. Or, heck, if any of them have access to detect magic, they figure this out more easily (and can set up their ambush and then drop a dispell to drop the entire party unceremoneously into their prepared trap).

IME, by the time you are high enough level to cast this spell for long enough to allow for a full rest, the opponents you are facing and whom you might wish to use it to hide from will often have the ability to thwart it pretty easily. Sure. Great for escaping from packs of wild animals, or half hearted searches. But in any sort of "we're working our way through the bbeg's stronghold" scnenario? Youv'e just created your own death trap.

I'm not sure at all what the second line is about. If you're without spells/abilities/whatever, it kinda doesn't matter what kind of system you are using. You're going to be at a disadvantage. If we at all take the "problem statement" seriously (that allowing PCs to always have their most powerful stuff all the time creates balance issues), then any solution (whether it's a B/S method of forcing them to "build up" to their powerful abilities during an encounter, or some sort of restrctions on rest/recovery to force them to manage their abilities better) is necessary. It's an assumed condition that we're exploring.

Cases where the players do always alpha strike on round one every time, and everyone is perfectly happy with this, are outside the scope of the entire discussion IMO.

[icefractal]

These are relatively minor points, but I have to strongly disagree with two things:

It also specifically states that spells like divination don't work inside, so I'd argue that your clerics can't get their spells back while in there (no connection to their deity to pray, right?).Cutting off the connection to a deity is a big ****ing deal in D&D, not something that a 2nd level spell should be able to do. Are deities blocked by Nondetection too? I don't think so.


And anyone with any intelligence at all, having tracked the PCs to the room they used the spell in (and finding the tracks disappearing), might assume they teleported, or something, or might think "maybe they used rope trick spell". Gee. Let's just light a big ol bonfire right under the spot we last saw their footsteps. Or just set up a huge ambush right there.Lots of things produce "the tracks go to this spot and disappear" - the person tracked remembered they should be covering their trail and started doing so, they started flying, they teleported, they became incorporeal, they changed shape to a bug, they turned invisible and are standing right there, they got disintegrated, etc, etc. For most (all?) of the other cases, lighting a bonfire is useless and diverting a bunch of the guards to set up an ambush at that spot is actively counterproductive.

If the foes legit have Spellcraft and Detect Magic, then fine, they got it. Otherwise, I'm gonna be asking if they do this for every case where they lose a set of tracks, and if that's been reflected in decreased guard morale (from standing ready for ambushes that 95% of the time lead to nothing) and massive firewood consumption. :smalltongue:

[KorvinStarmast]

Otherwise, I'm gonna be asking if they do this for every case where they lose a set of tracks, and if that's been reflected in decreased guard morale (from standing ready for ambushes that 95% of the time lead to nothing) and massive firewood consumption. :smalltongue: Not to mention how that will tick off the local druidic circle ... :smallbiggrin:

[gbaji]

Also agree that this is a minor side point. So...


These are relatively minor points, but I have to strongly disagree with two things:
Cutting off the connection to a deity is a big ****ing deal in D&D, not something that a 2nd level spell should be able to do. Are deities blocked by Nondetection too? I don't think so.

So is "creation of extra dimensional pocket spaces". Yet, here were are with a 2nd level spell capable of doing so. I tend to try to find balance when I run into game elements that appear to be unbalanced. The game hands me a relatively low level spell, that creates a temporary extradimensional space, allowing for those inside to hide completely from detection (with just the entrance to the space being "invisible" and thus detectable by things that can see/detect invisible things). They are also rendered completely immune to all damage, spells, etc from anything outside (and with the ability to pull the rope up and make it impossible to get inside). They also are not present on the ethereal or astral planes, so can't be found or interacted with by beings who can normally shift their way through obstables.

It's an insanely overpowered spell if you stop and think about it. To get any one of those effects often requires casting of much more powerful level spells. So yeah, I assume that it works via "short cuts" that make using it less advantageous. So yes, the little pocket dimension it creates also has limitations. The precise nature of which is up to the GM (there's a lot left unsaid about how that should work in a game world). The "can you get spells back from your god" realy depends on how you've set up the cosmology of your game world. If gods are assumed to be omni-dimensional, then yeah, you can get spells back. I tend to prefer to restrict deities to the planes they have power in/on, and where they have worship. So the prime material, and just the outer planes that they have some influence over (elemental planes may fit in there as well depending on the deity). I find that this makes things fit a bit neater, and make dimensional adventures more interesting, as well as also explaining why lots of cross deity conflict occurs on the PM, but why it's so hard for deities of the "wrong alignment" to do much at all in terms of the outer planes.

But yeah, that's honestly a side issue anyway. I suspect the larger one would be the whole "no bags of holding" bit. Again by the time someone is high enough level to cast this for long enough to provide a full rest to recover spells, at least some members of the party probably have some extra dimensional storage anyway. Making this not quite the perfect solution one might wish it to be.


Lots of things produce "the tracks go to this spot and disappear" - the person tracked remembered they should be covering their trail and started doing so, they started flying, they teleported, they became incorporeal, they changed shape to a bug, they turned invisible and are standing right there, they got disintegrated, etc, etc. For most (all?) of the other cases, lighting a bonfire is useless and diverting a bunch of the guards to set up an ambush at that spot is actively counterproductive.

Sure. And that falls under the "half hearted search" scenarios. Remember. I was speaking specificaly about an "assault on the BBEG's stronghold" situation, when someone said "use rope trick". So this is a case where the PCs have charged into lets say an underground (or indoors at least) complex of rooms and corridors, with various defenses, and different coordinated responses to attack. They go through the first handful of rooms, blasting full bore and run out of spells/abilities. So they stop in a convenient room and use rope trick to hide out for 8 hours while they recover spells.

It's pretty obvious where they stopped, because they've killed everything in a more or less straight line to the last room. The defenders dispatched by the BBEG search around, and find no sign of the enemy. Now, maybe they did teleport away. In which case, you double the guards in this outer area in case they decide to teleport back in (or put up some kind of wards to block such), But in any case, they up the defenses assuming a follow up attack. Now. Let's say that 8 hours later, the party pops out, and then resume killing defenders, still moving inward towards the BBEGs central place of power, right? It's going to be pretty darn obvious which room they came from. And if they then continue to burn spells and try this trick a second time, the BBEG's guards are going to actively search for invisible things in every single room cleared by the party that day. And they will find the rope trick. And they will then proceed to set up the mother of all ambushes (and drop a dispell as well, cause we're assuming level appropriate for an 8th level party at minimum here).

And even this assumes the enemies don't just have people with see invisible capabilties the very first time they do a search/sweep through the area the PCs were in.

That was my point. This may work, once, when in a situation where no one has a reason to expect it. But it's a death trap if you try it again. And the situation where it's least likely to actually work is exactly the case I was arguing that folks would have a problem trying to use "burn and rest" tactics in the first place.



If the foes legit have Spellcraft and Detect Magic, then fine, they got it. Otherwise, I'm gonna be asking if they do this for every case where they lose a set of tracks, and if that's been reflected in decreased guard morale (from standing ready for ambushes that 95% of the time lead to nothing) and massive firewood consumption. :smalltongue:

There's a BBEG in the middle of some stronghold that the PCs have to assault and his peopple *don't* have any sort of detect/see magic/invisible capability? How on earth did this evil mastermind become an evil mastermind if that's the case? I assume my bad guys are quite competant, if for no other reason than if they weren't, they'd have been bumped off long ago by someone else who was.

Again. Pack of wild animals or a random assortments of disorganized foes? Should work just fine. Any sort of organized defensive situation? Not going to work. Like. At all. Bad guys get to engage their brains too. And have to have the capabilities required to actually be bad guys at that level in the first place.

[Theodoxus]

I think you're conflating Rope Trick and Leomund's Tiny Hut... RT is strictly 1 hour duration. I guess you could burn 8 spell slots to keep it going (albeit it would run out, and need to be recast... if that counts for a long rest for the non-RT casting party members, that's a DM call).

[gbaji]

I think you're conflating Rope Trick and Leomund's Tiny Hut... RT is strictly 1 hour duration. I guess you could burn 8 spell slots to keep it going (albeit it would run out, and need to be recast... if that counts for a long rest for the non-RT casting party members, that's a DM call).

It's one hour per level (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/ropeTrick.htm).

[PhoenixPhyre]

It's one hour per level (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/ropeTrick.htm).

Ah the Playground Confusion at work. 5e's version is 1 hour flat. 3e's is 1hr/level.

[gbaji]

Ah the Playground Confusion at work. 5e's version is 1 hour flat. 3e's is 1hr/level.

Yeah. I assumed 3e, since otherwise, it could not be used for the purpose that was claimed in the first place (recover spells in an otherwise dangerous location, in the middle of a dungeon/assault/whatever, after burning them doing full alphas in every combat).

Ok. That's the BS reason. The real reason is that I've only played 5e a handful of times, and never actually looked through all the rulebooks, so I had no clue the duration was different. But... Um... I'm sticking with my first answer, cause it makes me look all learned and scholarly and whatnot. :smallsmile:

[icefractal]

So is "creation of extra dimensional pocket spaces". Yet, here were are with a 2nd level spell capable of doing so.Eh, "non-dimensional spaces", like Rope Trick and Bags of Holding, don't seem to be that big a deal. You don't need to be high level to make a Bag of Holding, and there are a number of spells that create short-duration ones (the entire Create Pit line in PF1, for example) a low-ish levels.

Full on demiplanes are a bigger deal, but still something that (strong) mortal magic can create. I'd personally class Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion as a temporary demiplane rather than a non-dimensional space, because it acts more like one, but that's not something with a RAW basis. Genesis is unambiguously one, however.


So yes, the little pocket dimension it creates also has limitations.It's not just a "limitation", it's a very powerful ability. High priest of Tiamat ruining your day? Toss 'em into a Rope Trick (or similar type of space), no more divine magic for them. Seems out of line.

However -

I tend to prefer to restrict deities to the planes they have power in/on, and where they have worship. So the prime material, and just the outer planes that they have some influence over (elemental planes may fit in there as well depending on the deity). Yeah, that changes things considerably, and in that case Rope Trick being divine-proof makes sense. But that's a pretty major setting detail that's different than most published settings, so you can see why I didn't assume it to be the case.

[Theodoxus]

Yeah. I assumed 3e, since otherwise, it could not be used for the purpose that was claimed in the first place (recover spells in an otherwise dangerous location, in the middle of a dungeon/assault/whatever, after burning them doing full alphas in every combat).

Ok. That's the BS reason. The real reason is that I've only played 5e a handful of times, and never actually looked through all the rulebooks, so I had no clue the duration was different. But... Um... I'm sticking with my first answer, cause it makes me look all learned and scholarly and whatnot. :smallsmile:

Fair. I haven't played 3E since... IDK... I'm horrible with temporality. Let's see, 4E came out in what, 2008? And I was playing PF before that (though I guess that's probably sufficiently 3E for most purposes)... but yeah, it's probably close to 20 years since I cracked open an official 3E book...

Suffice to say, on topic, that 3.PF -> 5E doesn't have much that would fall under the B/S paradigm.

[KorvinStarmast]

Suffice to say, on topic, that 3.PF -> 5E doesn't have much that would fall under the B/S paradigm.
Speaking of BS paradigms, a recent Gizmodo article (https://gizmodo.com/hasbro-xplored-dungeons-dragons-ai-mechanics-1850690515) shows Hasbro going all in on AI for D&Done. But that's a different topic.

[gbaji]

It's not just a "limitation", it's a very powerful ability. High priest of Tiamat ruining your day? Toss 'em into a Rope Trick (or similar type of space), no more divine magic for them. Seems out of line.

How exactly are you throwing a (presumed enemy) high priest into a rope trick? It's a horizontal entrance that is "above you", by definition. You'd have to tie the priest up, and then climb up and lft said high priest into the area. And then... guard them? How is this different than just killing the high priest in the first place? The spell description already make this space hidden from divination magic anyway, so it's just as good a place to hide a prisoner as it is to hide your own party, so I'm not really seeing the relative power issue.

And presuambly, "bound and gagged" (which you'd need to do to keep said HP from escaping, since there's like no door or lock present) prevents clerics from praying and recovering spells anyway, so... That's a pretty absurdly rare counter point, compared to the extremely common limitation "can't get spells back cause your god can't hear you" puts on a party trying to abuse the spell. Remember, I didn't say you could not cast divine magic, only that you could not recover them while inside the area. It's not an AMF inside there.



However -
Yeah, that changes things considerably, and in that case Rope Trick being divine-proof makes sense. But that's a pretty major setting detail that's different than most published settings, so you can see why I didn't assume it to be the case.

Well. I've found that D&D tosses some very odd/powerful spells in there (like rope trick) and almost requires a bit of world building adjustment to make "work". And the core books rarely provide (consistent at least) guidance on this. Questions like "Ok. The spell says it blocks divinations, but what kind?". I mean, augury and the actual divination spell are both "divinations", right? Yet, they presumably involve a cleric praying to their deity and asking questions, right? Does Rope Trick block that? Or can I figure out that my enemies are hiding in "roomX" using these spells?

The answer to that question, leads directly to the one of "are deities aware of things that exist inside small extradimensional spaces that aren't part of the normal planar landscape"? And yeah, that's a game world/setting decision. But one that any GM running a game in a setting for any length of time will probaly (or should probably) come up with an answer for. Otherwise, there's a boatloat of mines out there, and if you don't come up with an answer, you're going to have players unhappy with the rulings which may result when those situations do (inevitablly) come up in play.

It's not an arbitrary change. It's a clarification of something that already exists as a grey area in the core rules. There's no "this is the way it works, so doing it differently is you customizing your game". This is a "the rules really don't speak directly to this question at all, so any ruling is valid, and you really maybe should actually come up with one at some point".

Eh. D&D is arguably pretty horrible in terms of consistent world building, and to be fair, this is like one of the most minor issues maybe. There have been hosts of dicussions about how trivially the magic system in the game basically "breaks" any sort of rational economics. So yeah, this is just one more for the pile of "stuff that doesn't make sense and will probably never make sense in a D&D game". But, unlike economics (which we can just handwave away and ignore, becasue most games don't focus on such things), this can actually have a direct effect on game play that the players *do* actually care about.

I mean. At some point, a player group may want to hide a kidnapped person (or ally on the run) inside a rope trick spell, right? Knowing ahead of time how to handle this might just be useful. Deciding what pros and cons apply is probably a good idea.

[icefractal]

Questions like "Ok. The spell says it blocks divinations, but what kind?". I mean, augury and the actual divination spell are both "divinations", right? Yet, they presumably involve a cleric praying to their deity and asking questions, right? Does Rope Trick block that? Or can I figure out that my enemies are hiding in "roomX" using these spells?That one doesn't seem very ambiguous, IMO:

beyond the reach of spells (including divinations), unless those spells work across planesI'm not even sure this is a special property of the spell, it can be read as just a clarification that the inside of the Rope Trick is not considered part of the same plane, and that divinations don't cross over into it any more than other non-divination spells do.

So, if a divination would work when it involves people who are on other planes (which both Augury and Commune would) then it works.

[Vahnavoi]

Augury, Divination and Commune are all veiled Twenty Questions minigames. They don't actually require the characters (such as those inside the Rope Trick) to be on the same plane for the caster to use them to figure out where the characters were, or where they will be.

Also, divination magic =/= divine magic. The former is a spell school or type, the latter is a method or type of power source. Rope Trick has no special interaction with divine magic. Or at least it didn't use to. I can't be bothered to cross reference 3rd and 5th WotC edition System Reference Documents to sort that out.

[KorvinStarmast]

How exactly are you throwing a (presumed enemy) high priest into a rope trick?
Shove upwards, perhaps. You can shove someone 10', so why not 10' up? :smallbiggrin: It's a horizontal entrance that is "above you",
OK, the entrance being 5' or less above you probably allows a big strong party member to lift/grapple/shove up into it.
Or, grapple and climb. The rope is "up to 60' up" so you could have a rope that is 8 or 10 feet tall, grapple and then carry the enemy up... should have enough movement left?
I mean. At some point, a player group may want to hide a kidnapped person (or ally on the run) inside a rope trick spell, right? Knowing ahead of time how to handle this might just be useful. Deciding what pros and cons apply is probably a good idea. Good point. And that means talking to each other (DM and players) and players trusting the DM not to be doing the DMvsPlayer thing.


Augury, Divination and Commune are all veiled Twenty Questions minigames. They don't actually require the characters (such as those inside the Rope Trick) to be on the same plane for the caster to use them to figure out where the characters were, or where they will be. Which can be useful information.
Rope Trick has no special interaction with divine magic. Or at least it didn't use to. I can't be bothered to cross reference 3rd and 5th WotC edition System Reference Documents to sort that out. Correct, for 5e.

[False God]

Personally I think this demonstrates a greater flaw in the details of the game than anything else, and one that I think is interesting to explore, but not well suited to D&D.

"Where is the power coming from?"

If your deity simply gives you the spell knowledge while you prepare spells, but the power to cast them is within you, then getting thrown into a Rope Trick (or other such situation) won't have any real affect. If you stay there for a long rest, you will recharge your power, but you won't get new spell knowledge (though IMO, you would retain the ones you were given)
If the deity gives you the knowledge and the power, but both those things remain inside of you (think of it like charging a battery) then being thrown into a rope trick won't have any real effect. If you stay there for a long rest, you won't recharge your power, and you won't get new spells (but you'd still keep the ones you were given).
If your spells or your power are simply a form of access granted, and you retain no knowledge within your mind, nor any power within your body, then getting thrown into a rope trick is a major problem.

I think these make for engaging and interesting limitations to casters, and employ them in my own custom works, but I don't think they serve as anything other than an unexpected gotcha from the DM interpreting things slightly differently.

Personally the idea that sorcerous casters have innate magic, but prepared or divine casters don't makes for an interesting juxtaposition, but you'd also have to IMO, eliminate a number of other related spellcasting rules and probably use two different spellcasting systems.

[Phhase]

The Prodigy class from 5e Spheres does something pretty close to what you're talking about with its system of Links and Finishers. You perform Link actions without dropping the combo and then cash out with a Finisher. Always wanted to play one.

[gbaji]

That one doesn't seem very ambiguous, IMO:
I'm not even sure this is a special property of the spell, it can be read as just a clarification that the inside of the Rope Trick is not considered part of the same plane, and that divinations don't cross over into it any more than other non-divination spells do.

So, if a divination would work when it involves people who are on other planes (which both Augury and Commune would) then it works.

Absolutely. I'm not arguing that this must be ruled one way or the other, but that it should be ruled consistently one way or the other. Not stating a preference here at all.

I was countering an argument that NPC action (like direct searches for a PC party that has attacked their territory/outer defenses/whatever) could be avoided by using the Rope Trick spell. Again, I was specifically talking about a GM creating circumstances in which the PCs would need to actually manage their resources through an entire series of encounters and not just "blast early, blast often, blast hard", every time, then just rest when they run out.

So. If your god can know where you are to grant you spells while you are in a Rope Trick spell, then any cleric with an augury or divination spell should be able to find you while in the same Rope Trick spell, right (well, more divination, but not so much augury). That was my point. I don't care particularly *how* a given game setting decides to resolve this, only that the resolution should probably be consistent. If an enemy priest is using divination and asking something like "where can I find the <PCs> who attacked us this morning?", then an answer pointing pretty directly to the location where the party is hiding with their Rope Trick spell should be handed to said preist (followed by said NPCs doing nasty things to the party holed up inside).

And if your actually ruling that Rope Trick "blocks divination spells, so they can't find you that way" (or players try to insist it should work this way), then yeah, I'd push in the other direction and say "if their god can't find you inside the extra dimensional space of the spell, then neither can your god(s) to grant you spells".

And yes, this also doesn't even scratch the surface of "folks searching around using see invis, or detect magic, and finding the rope trick entrance (which is detectable even if people/things inside are not)". I think we've kinda gone down a strange rabbit hole of one very minor point regarding the infeasibility of using rope trick to circumvent active NPC response/defense to a PC party's actions, much less enabling said PC group to nova in every encounter until out of spells, and just assume they can rest and recover them without being bothered/attacked.

In any game I'm runnning? That's just not going to work. As I stated earlier, most of the time, during a typical day, the PCs will never come remotely close to using all of their resources available to them (I just don't do "recommended encounters/day calculations" like, at all). But players in my games learn to not go hard alpha nova in every fight anyway, because they generally don't know when they will have a large number of encounters in a day, and may need those spells for later on. And on those "long days", it's going to be extremely rare that a (frankly cheesy) spell like Rope Trick is going to help them much. Those situations almost always involve intelligent NPCs who become aware of the PCs and are actively searching for them in some way, necessitating some level of "must push through this" before the PCs can actually rest. And those are exactly the sorts of NPCS who are going to be highly likely to find such a hiding place as Rope Trick. And pretty much in direct propotion to the difficulty of actually finding good hiding spots that said enemy isn't likely to find in the first place.


Shove upwards, perhaps. You can shove someone 10', so why not 10' up? :smallbiggrin: It's a horizontal entrance that is "above you",
OK, the entrance being 5' or less above you probably allows a big strong party member to lift/grapple/shove up into it.
Or, grapple and climb. The rope is "up to 60' up" so you could have a rope that is 8 or 10 feet tall, grapple and then carry the enemy up... should have enough movement left?

Didn't just mean mechanically, but as in "You've already captured and bound/gagged the priest". So if you can "thrown them into a Rope Trick", you can do pretty much anything else to/with them as well.


And yeah, the same thing applies. The High Priest's second in command casts a divianation to know where his kidnapped/disappeared boss is. Does his god tell him "He's inside a Rope Trick at <otherwise known location>"? Again. If the party's cleric's gods can find and communicate and mentally interact with them to give them spells back, then certainly the enemy priests god also knows where his priest is, and can communicate that information to another cleric who asks the question, right?

Again, I'm not married to either choice in terms of "are gods aware of things going on inside a Rope Trick that contains one of their priests?". But.... it might be a good idea to come up with a consistent ruling. And I absolutely see the answer to both questions being based on the same meta-magic "rules" your setting uses.



Good point. And that means talking to each other (DM and players) and players trusting the DM not to be doing the DMvsPlayer thing.

Yup. And to be honest, a lot of the time, this stuff just doesn't come up, so you don't have to think about it. But, when it does, you proabably should. Or at least, have a discussion about the pros/cons with your players to see how they think it should be run.

Trust me. You run any game system/setting for any decent length of time, and you will face cases where a players will say "Hey. Back in <previous situation> you ruled that <some thing> worked <specific way> because of <reasons>, but now you're ruling that <some other thing> works <some other way> for <some other reasons>, but those don't seem like they follow the same rules at all". And yeah, to be perfectly fair, most of the time, you're just not even going to realize it (certainly not when making that first ruling, and probably not when making the second). But, while maybe it would be ideal (if unrealistic) to stop and think about the full ramifications of a ruling the very first time it comes up, you really ought to stop and think (and have a discussion) the second time something comes up that seems to be based on ruling on a similar aspect of the game setting "rules".

You are absolutely correct that this needs to be in a way that the players can trust is not just about DMvsPlayer stuff. I think that part of this is that I'm a "world builder/designer" by heart. I like to determine how the world I'm running works, often in ways that the players really don't care about or even need to know. But I know. So when/if stuff like this does come up, I've (usually) already thought of the answer. And because of this, I'm not maybe biased in said answer based on the specifics of the situation right at hand. If a specific magical interaction works a specific way, then that's how it works. Sometimes, that'll benefit the players. Sometimes, it'll benefit the NPCs. But most of the time, I've at least already thought about that to some degree, so I'm not just "winging it" when something a bit strange comes along.

[KorvinStarmast]

We messed with Momentum in Star Trek RPG tonight.

It's a resource that can build to be spent if you "over succeed." (Roll more successes than necessary to achieve the task or do something in combat).
That lets you bank some momentum points (capped at 6) which is used use to add dice to a later task or combat attempt.

We went all in and tried to build and spend as much as we could. Leaned into it. Worked pretty well.

SOMEONE HAS TO KEEP TRACK OF IT!
I can't emphasize that enough.

Don't dump it on the GM, who is busy taking care of keeping play going.

I kept track of it because I tend to pay attention the whole time, but I noticed how quickly others lost track of it.

It is a TEAM resource.

That means that in a D&D game it is NOT a PC resource, but someone on the TEAM has to keep track of it and the group decides on when to spend it.

In some groups, this will work.
In others, it will not.

[Dienekes]

We messed with Momentum in Star Trek RPG tonight.

It's a resource that can build to be spent if you "over succeed." (Roll more successes than necessary to achieve the task or do something in combat).
That lets you bank some momentum points (capped at 6) which is used use to add dice to a later task or combat attempt.

We went all in and tried to build and spend as much as we could. Leaned into it. Worked pretty well.

SOMEONE HAS TO KEEP TRACK OF IT!
I can't emphasize that enough.

Don't dump it on the GM, who is busy taking care of keeping play going.

I kept track of it because I tend to pay attention the whole time, but I noticed how quickly others lost track of it.

It is a TEAM resource.

That means that in a D&D game it is NOT a PC resource, but someone on the TEAM has to keep track of it and the group decides on when to spend it.

In some groups, this will work.
In others, it will not.

While I haven't played with this specific system or resource, I will say that communal resources in my experience work better when you have something physical and visible in the center of the table for the players to put in and out of. I used poker chips last time, worked pretty well. Everyone can easily just see it when they glance up at the table.

[KorvinStarmast]

...communal resources in my experience work better when you have something physical and visible in the center of the table for the players to put in and out of. I used poker chips last time, worked pretty well. Everyone can easily just see it when they glance up at the table. Amen to that. Our group plays on line, I'll work with the DM to see what tool or utility might be able to sub for the chips / marbles idea. As the session went on, I simply typed into the chat what the momentum count was, either after a spend or after an earn.
It worked, but I'd like to do something like you suggest.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Hmm...along the lines of Momentum--

What if you did group inspiration? Instead of "each person can have one or zero, use them to gain advantage", you have "the group can have a number of inspiration points equal to the number of players. Any party member can use one to allow a different party member to reroll one attack, saving throw, or ability check. Refills at the beginning of a session." Or maybe starts at 0 but increases when certain things happen (maybe RP? Maybe more specific events?) and you can hold a couple over from session to session?

[KorvinStarmast]

Hmm...along the lines of Momentum--

What if you did group inspiration? Instead of "each person can have one or zero, use them to gain advantage", you have "the group can have a number of inspiration points equal to the number of players. Any party member can use one to allow a different party member to reroll one attack, saving throw, or ability check. Refills at the beginning of a session." Or maybe starts at 0 but increases when certain things happen (maybe RP? Maybe more specific events?) and you can hold a couple over from session to session? Yeah that works.

I play at one table where we have decided that during combat a PC can offer another PC use if their inspiration.
Works out Ok.
I award inspiration with some frequency, however of late there's been a dearth of reasons to do so.