Classes/resource mechanics

[RobbyPants]

I don't feel like dredging up links to old posts, but Frank made a post about different classes each with a different resource mechanic, and DSM elaborated on it with his take. I've been kicking ideas around for my own mods to 3E, and I had some questions.

Figure I'm aiming to keep the overall look and feel of the game similar to 3E, but with classes that are more balanced. I am not considering multiclassing or PrCs at this point.


Necromancer/Essentia: I liked this idea and figured I'd use it. It seems the big thing to track is how many power you know, how many points you have to allocate, and how many you're allowed to put into one power. A lot of these I was going to have mimic spells and some are hand-written. As for things like save-or-dies, should there be some other limitation? I've kicked around:

• Limited use per day of a power (Cha mod/day, perhaps).
• If the person makes their save, you can't use the power on them for 24 hours.
• The ability drains one point of essentia from the list for one day.
• Cooldown on the power.

The obvious problem is they all involve extra bookkeeping on top of the normal mechanic. Do I just say "fuck it" and let them cast Destruction every round if they want to invest enough in that power?


Elementalists/channeling: The idea is there's an ebb and flow to what powers are strongest on any given round. I also like this idea, but what's the best way to approach it? If you're rolling dice each round, what amount of variance in power level makes the most sense? You could roll 1d4 for each element and add/subtract numbers based on the highest level of spell you could cast. That might be a good amount of variance. Getting a 1 and only having spells three levels lower than your max level is probably going to be noticeable. At low levels, anything under a zero would be treated as a zero. Should the die be bigger, forcing more variance?

[Kaelik]

I don't feel like dredging up links to old posts, but Frank made a post about different classes each with a different resource mechanic, and DSM elaborated on it with his take. I've been kicking ideas around for my own mods to 3E, and I had some questions.

Figure I'm aiming to keep the overall look and feel of the game similar to 3E, but with classes that are more balanced. I am not considering multiclassing or PrCs at this point.


Necromancer/Essentia: I liked this idea and figured I'd use it. It seems the big thing to track is how many power you know, how many points you have to allocate, and how many you're allowed to put into one power. A lot of these I was going to have mimic spells and some are hand-written. As for things like save-or-dies, should there be some other limitation? I've kicked around:

• Limited use per day of a power (Cha mod/day, perhaps).
• If the person makes their save, you can't use the power on them for 24 hours.
• The ability drains one point of essentia from the list for one day.
• Cooldown on the power.

The obvious problem is they all involve extra bookkeeping on top of the normal mechanic. Do I just say "fuck it" and let them cast Destruction every round if they want to invest enough in that power?


Elementalists/channeling: The idea is there's an ebb and flow to what powers are strongest on any given round. I also like this idea, but what's the best way to approach it? If you're rolling dice each round, what amount of variance in power level makes the most sense? You could roll 1d4 for each element and add/subtract numbers based on the highest level of spell you could cast. That might be a good amount of variance. Getting a 1 and only having spells three levels lower than your max level is probably going to be noticeable. At low levels, anything under a zero would be treated as a zero. Should the die be bigger, forcing more variance?

......................................................................................................................................................................................................................



Congratulations your troll was successful? I totally believed your were serious for a good minute and a half.

[RobbyPants]

I'd ask you to elaborate, but why bother?

[zeruslord]

The Essentia Necromancer just shouldn't get anything powerful enough that you need to limit it on a per-day basis. He should be roughly equally effective every round, with the allocation of his essentia pool adjusting how powerful different pieces of his kit are. You can give his personal abilities limitations like "you must have at least N points of essentia invested in yourself this round to use this ability" or make them scale off of current personal essentia investment, but he shouldn't be trading power now for power later.

Rolling 1d4 for each of four or five elements is a lot of procedure to go through at the table. If it's done at the beginning of your turn, it's really horrible - you don't get to think ahead at all, or if you do, it's with way too many conditionals. If it's at the end of your turn, that's a bunch of bookkeeping. If you really want random variations in power availability, there's a couple ways to do it. One is to work like the Crusader from Bo9S - have a smallish deck of cards and a small hand of them, with limited ability to discard without using. One is to make a set of power lists and determine access to them randomly each turn - the issue here is that either the player gets to determine the lists or the character is on rails, and how your lists are arranged can be a major balance factor. If you're really desperate to keep a die per element, you could maybe have it affect caster level instead of spell level.

[Username17]

It would be pretty reasonable for there to be a limit to how many times you can make a skeleton per day. Loops where you hide out of tange and send a skeleton in to chip aeay at a powerful monster and repeat are for the realm of video game exploits. No place in a cooperative storytelling game where other people have to watch you do it.

But other than that, the point of the Essentia Necromancer is for actions to be overall equal to an at will hero. So if you take everything from defense and put it into attack you should be squishier than the knight and do more damage, but there's no reason that shouldn't be a thing you do turn after turn.

[DSMatticus]

For the elementalist, I went with a 1dX+Y, result being the highest level spell you can cast from that element. That works out to pretty much exactly what you're thinking when you scale it correctly.

As for the necromancer, if you're worried about people spamming save or lose spells, well, that's D&D. Casters often don't even have anything worth doing in combat besides spamming save or lose spells, so fixing that problem is well beyond the scope of writing new character classes. Keep in mind that this idea included two at-will unspecialized casters; wizard and sorcerer. This is the spherelock approach to magic; yes, you get powerful abilities you can use at will. It's not like you were going to walk into battle with nothing but magic missile left anyway.

My necromancer was only partially done when the project went cold (though I did recently crack it back open and start on a rewrite), but in my write-up undead conjuring powers took at least an hour to cast and if you ever took the essence out of them your undead either collapsed or went rogue. So you'd drop essence on being able to cast the rite, then you could just use the rite whenever and it'd take a chunk of time that made spamming it not really a thing, and if you wanted to keep the skeleton army or whatever that you'd created with the rite you had to keep the essence in it.

The hardest part for me were the sorcerer and the wizard. I think they are what finally broke my patience. For one, their realm of magic is "all of it," and now both are also some flavor of at-will caster with. I tried to balance that out with the vancian-style casters (like the beguiler and the enchanter) by moving things around on the spell lists so that the more limited casters got powerful spells a bit earlier, but it's not always easy. Second, there are a bunch of spells with out-of-combat applications that really have no business being spammed, and yet clearly should be cast by people like wizards. I spent a lot of time trying to come up with solutions to that I liked (increasing the cast time to make it more ritual-ish, limiting it to one active effect, etc etc), but never really found something I liked and it kept being a headache and a half throughout.

[OgreBattle]

I'd keep the essentia necromancer's limitations to be based around essentia and not add in additional spells with x/day allotment.

What you could do with essentia though is have some abilities be "spend X essentia to ___", and now you need a short/long rest to get that essentia back. So maybe you can make your skeleton explode, or throw a particularly powerful bolt of black agony, or make your monster grow for X rounds. But the limitation is based around the distribution and recharging of essentia.

As for the elementalist, an alternative to dice would be drawing cards. So your red/blue elementalist has a small pile of MTG lands with islands and mountains, draws X of them a turn and can use any powers he has the correct mana for.

look and feel of the game similar to 3E, but with classes that are more balanced.

What other class/mechanics you plan on fielding?

[PhoneLobster]

I don't feel like dredging up links to old posts, but Frank made a post about different classes each with a different resource mechanic, and DSM elaborated on it with his take.

Aw? Really? Because it would be nice if you did so I could point out how the ingenious plan to make well nigh infinite multi-class incompatible but ALSO simultaneously game compatible action resourcing mechanics has strangely made absolutely no fucking progress since it's basic content free outline.

[RobbyPants]

If you really want random variations in power availability, there's a couple ways to do it. One is to work like the Crusader from Bo9S - have a smallish deck of cards and a small hand of them, with limited ability to discard without using. One is to make a set of power lists and determine access to them randomly each turn - the issue here is that either the player gets to determine the lists or the character is on rails, and how your lists are arranged can be a major balance factor.

I plan on using the first mechanic for my crusader and the second for my druid.

If you're really desperate to keep a die per element, you could maybe have it affect caster level instead of spell level.

That's an option, although some spells don't care about CL very much. I'd have to look at the lists.

---

But other than that, the point of the Essentia Necromancer is for actions to be overall equal to an at will hero. So if you take everything from defense and put it into attack you should be squishier than the knight and do more damage, but there's no reason that shouldn't be a thing you do turn after turn.

That makes sense. I was trying to unlock various spell (or spell-like) abilities at various investment levels for various powers. I guess the idea is to make sure that any of them should be usable at-will, period.

---

For the elementalist, I went with a 1dX+Y, result being the highest level spell you can cast from that element. That works out to pretty much exactly what you're thinking when you scale it correctly.

My hesitation with the dX part is if you jump from a d4 to d6 (or whatever), you increase the variance, and end up with a situation where while having access to higher level power, you end up with a lower chance to get your top level power. Although, if you go from needing a natural 6 to get 5th level spells (or whatever) to a natural 7 for 5th level and a natural 8 for 6th level, you could view it as "a 25% chance to get 5th level or better". I might be overthinking the scaling thing.

but in my write-up undead conjuring powers took at least an hour to cast and if you ever took the essence out of them your undead either collapsed or went rogue. So you'd drop essence on being able to cast the rite, then you could just use the rite whenever and it'd take a chunk of time that made spamming it not really a thing, and if you wanted to keep the skeleton army or whatever that you'd created with the rite you had to keep the essence in it.

My current write up is you invest points in the ability, and the number of points indicates the number of HD you can have animated at a given time. Any time your investment drops to the point where you have more HD animated than you should, the excess HD fall inanimate. I'd considered the "going rogue" thing, but that seems more exploitable. You could stash hundreds of undead in a confined area as a trap or send a bunch in ahead to attack and reallocate to attack/defense and let them run amok. I preferred to just have them fall down. About the biggest exploit I see there is "corpse transportation for later reanimation".

---

As for the elementalist, an alternative to dice would be drawing cards. So your red/blue elementalist has a small pile of MTG lands with islands and mountains, draws X of them a turn and can use any powers he has the correct mana for.

That's an interesting take, and different enough from the Crusader that it has merit.

look and feel of the game similar to 3E, but with classes that are more balanced.

What other class/mechanics you plan on fielding?

It's pretty close to DSM's list, with a few changes. Off the top of my head, my at-will class is the Shifter (a shape changing class). I have a point-based class that has a recharge mechanic that is sort of like a White Mage. I think I have my Psion being the backlash class instead of the point class.

---

I don't feel like dredging up links to old posts, but Frank made a post about different classes each with a different resource mechanic, and DSM elaborated on it with his take.

Aw? Really? Because it would be nice if you did so I could point out how the ingenious plan to make well nigh infinite multi-class incompatible but ALSO simultaneously game compatible action resourcing mechanics has strangely made absolutely no fucking progress since it's basic content free outline.

Figure I'm aiming to keep the overall look and feel of the game similar to 3E, but with classes that are more balanced. I am not considering multiclassing or PrCs at this point.

You'd make less of an ass of yourself if you read the post you sarcastically responded to.

[Kaelik]

No Robby, he's saying that your entire system can never exist because multiple resources management systems that are incompatible in multiclassing but produce comparable characters is hard, but making all the same resource management system is better because then you can have everyone freeley multiclass.

This is important, because PL has decided that open multiclassing is the hill he must die on, so if you make a post how you aren't going to have that, he now has to call your game the shittiest shit that ever shit.

[PhoneLobster]

You'd make less of an ass of yourself if you read the post you sarcastically responded to.

Or you know. We could read the thread you refused to link to for that context.

[Judging__Eagle]

Okay; the only way this can ever work is everyone uses the same basic "form" of resources.

Magic the Gathering has different play dynamics for each colour; and Might & Magic has mostly aesthetic differences between factions; but both rely on a backbone of Mana; or Gold/Special Resources.

How the "Hit Dice" is spent should signify the player character's growth in their caste's picaresque expectations.

[Kaelik]

Robby Pants: I'm trying to design a multiple resource management system that doesn't multiclass.

Okay; the only way this can ever work is everyone uses the same basic "form" of resources.

JE: That can only ever work if you make everyone use the same resource management system so they can multiclass.

JE still JE confirmed.

[RobbyPants]

You'd make less of an ass of yourself if you read the post you sarcastically responded to.

Or you know. We could read the thread you refused to link to for that context.

Hey, dumbass: post that in that thread. This thread is different than those, and already addressed your concern. I'm sorry my game isn't Mouse Trap.

[Kaelik]

Hey, dumbass: post that in that thread. This thread is different than those, and already addressed your concern. I'm sorry my game isn't Mouse Trap.

To be honest, you aren't, and neither is anyone else.

[PhoneLobster]

Hey, dumbass: post that in that thread. This thread is different than those, and already addressed your concern..

No, you haven't addressed my concern because you haven't actually at any point stated HOW your plan is different from the "Hey we should like have AT LEAST 17 unique resourcing mechanics for no fucking reason, that should totally work rite?"

All you've actually done is refer to that thread as a reference for your entirely unspecified plan, without being able or willing to find it or link it, then say a few things which strongly imply you are hitting at least 5 or so unique resourcing mechanics already.

For no reason.

And that should totally just work fine rite?

If your plan is "lots of unique resourcing mechanics for lots of classes", then you need to justify WHY you are doing that and HOW it is not going to be a total clusterfuck. If not you maybe need to actually outline what the hell your plan IS. And that burden lies on YOU and YOUR thread, not the old thread, and not even my own game system.

YOUR thread, YOUR plan, YOUR system needs to tell us WHAT it is doing WHY it is doing it and HOW the fuck it will work (this time for sure).

[RobbyPants]

Shifted goal posts are shifted!

Your complaint was about multiclassing. I had already said (before you posted) that I'm not having multiclassing. Sure, my concession that open multiclassing doesn't work in a system like this was implied... But I really felt that was pretty obvious. Now you're complaining that I'm just doing this for no reason and that makes it bad (for some unstated reason). Apparently, if I don't list some thesis for wanting to do something differently, I can't do it or something.

If you feel this idea is shit until I meet the nebulous burden of proof you've laid on me... I honestly don't care. I don't feel like wasting my time to convince you this idea is good. Those conversations were had. Go read something else.

[PhoneLobster]

Your complaint was about multiclassing.

No. My complaint mentioned multiclassing, but it was very clearly about just having large numbers of unique resourcing mechanics. The multiclassing just got a mention because of past context and the fact that adding "so unique it cannot multiclass" simply pushes a set of countless unique resourcing mechanics into territory where it is even less likely to be compatible/functional/balanced for broader game play purposes.

I had already said (before you posted) that I'm not having multiclassing.

If you think that then you need to learn how to English more better.

What you SAID was you were not considering multiclassing and even further qualified that statement with at this point. That is not actually REMOTELY the same thing as saying I am not having multiclassing. Indeed your reference to keeping the overall... feeling (really?)... of a system WITH multiclassing combined with not considering the topic actually implies the direct opposite of what you seem to think it does.

If you feel this idea is shit until I meet the nebulous burden of proof you've laid on me... I honestly don't care. I don't feel like wasting my time to convince you this idea is good. Those conversations were had. Go read something else.

A nebulous burden indeed. I note however that you petulantly stumble at... ANYTHING AT ALL.

If the conversation "has been had" you wouldn't have such difficulty producing... anything...

[angelfromanotherpin]

I feel like almost all responses to PL that aren't ʎɥsols links are wasted effort.

[Judging__Eagle]

Robby Pants: I'm trying to design a multiple resource management system that doesn't multiclass.

Okay; the only way this can ever work is everyone uses the same basic "form" of resources.

JE: That can only ever work if you make everyone use the same resource management system so they can multiclass.

JE still JE confirmed.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I never said nothing about multiclassing.

I mean, if one really wanted some sort of cross classing, maybe you might do some TNE/M:tG style mixing where you give up higher tier powers of your main type, you pick up some minor synergies.

Possibly every rough "tier" of D&D's power (say every 5 levels? capped at 3; b/c 4 is purely narrative territory).

So, you can only amount to being a Black Knight if you don't spent all of your tiers in Black; but you picked up an army of bugbears and an other of Maugs because you picked up a Heroic tier on Red, and your Legendary tier on Colourless. You don't have unkillable armies; but you value your tactical flexibility.

But; I'm not really impressed with that sort of game engine. I'm more inclined to taking After Sundown's overall mechanics to build a fantasy heatbreaker built out of solid mechanics from existing TGD projects.

[RobbyPants]

If you think that then you need to learn how to English more better.

What you SAID was you were not considering multiclassing and even further qualified that statement with at this point.

That's fair. I shouldn't have said "at this point" when I was planning on not incorporating it. Sorry about the confusion.

A nebulous burden indeed. I note however that you petulantly stumble at... ANYTHING AT ALL.

If the conversation "has been had" you wouldn't have such difficulty producing... anything...

What I was referencing was the discussions on multiclassing or even the merit of the system. I remember reading them a while ago, concluding that open multiclassing wouldn't work, but still being intrigued by the idea. Why you would expect me to have produced vast tomes of material when I'm still in the brainstorming phase is beyond me.

[RobbyPants]

Robby Pants: I'm trying to design a multiple resource management system that doesn't multiclass.

Okay; the only way this can ever work is everyone uses the same basic "form" of resources.

JE: That can only ever work if you make everyone use the same resource management system so they can multiclass.

JE still JE confirmed.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I never said nothing about multiclassing.

I knew what you initially said wasn't about multiclassing, but I don't even know what "the same basic form of resources" even means. Everyone's going to be taking swift, move, and standard actions each round. What actions are available will be picked from a basic list (described in the PHB) or will be provided by their individual resource mechanic. How those class options are populated will be wildly different (Do you have enough points? Did you prep the spell? Are you willing to risk the backlash? Did you invest enough essentia? Is your sword still enchanted? Did you draw the card? Is your target prone? Are you willing to pay the price? etc).

I mean, if one really wanted some sort of cross classing, maybe you might do some TNE/M:tG style mixing where you give up higher tier powers of your main type, you pick up some minor synergies.

Possibly every rough "tier" of D&D's power (say every 5 levels? capped at 3; b/c 4 is purely narrative territory).

So, you can only amount to being a Black Knight if you don't spent all of your tiers in Black; but you picked up an army of bugbears and an other of Maugs because you picked up a Heroic tier on Red, and your Legendary tier on Colourless. You don't have unkillable armies; but you value your tactical flexibility.

But; I'm not really impressed with that sort of game engine. I'm more inclined to taking After Sundown's overall mechanics to build a fantasy heatbreaker built out of solid mechanics from existing TGD projects.

I've toyed with tiered abilities in various projects of mine, although it's a completely separate issue.

[PhoneLobster]

Why you would expect me to have produced vast tomes of material when I'm still in the brainstorming phase is beyond me.

Did I ask for vast tomes?

Brainstorming is not an excuse for refusing to ask and answer questions about your basic design choices.

In fact generally brainstorming is the exact opposite.

[RobbyPants]

There are many ways to distinguish between classes. If there's no distinction, there's no reason to have different classes. I'm choosing to make the distinction be:

• To some extent, the powers you get. There will be some overlap (more than one class can heal, more than one can deal AoE fire damage, etc).
• The way your powers are/become available (the resource mechanic).

Beyond that, I was not planning on doing any serious rewriting of existing spells, feats, or monsters. I wanted to see the results I could get in 3.5 if I gave out a feat per PC class level, while removing most prereqs and by starting with a fresh list of classes (while removing multiclassing and PrCs).

That's about it, so far. I've been kicking a bunch of ideas around for a from-scratch rewrite, and I just don't have the energy. This is where I decided to focus my efforts.

[AndreiChekov]

I think that for this to work well, wizards and sorcerers sort of need to go, and be replaced with things like necromancers or anything more specific that "allmagic.tm"

But it seems like you are already doing that.

If you want to increase the die rolled for elementalists, I suggest dice pools, or shrinking the die size as you level up to increase chances of getting top powers.

So, you start with a d12 and only get top powers on a twelve. and eventually you end on a d4 getting top powers on a 4.