Classes/resource mechanics

[Judging__Eagle]

Seriously; you don't need to keep any part of d20's table top mechanics. Warp Cult has a basic tabletop combat game that can be used at a small scale, and can be used with many other Shadowrun based game projects like After Sundown or Dead Man's Hand.

It's not meant to be perfect, merely serviceable and put together with the with a commonly repeated mechanical theme of abstraction over realism; in order to achieve specific narrative outputs. Which, ironically, feels more "realistic" in gameplay.

[Kaelik]

Seriously; you don't need to keep any part of d20's table top mechanics. Warp Cult has a basic tabletop combat game that can be used at a small scale, and can be used with many other Shadowrun based game projects like After Sundown or Dead Man's Hand.

It's not meant to be perfect, merely serviceable and put together with the with a commonly repeated mechanical theme of abstraction over realism; in order to achieve specific narrative outputs. Which, ironically, feels more "realistic" in gameplay.

You know what JE, I know the perfect way to accomplish your goals. The next time you try to make a post on TGD, instead, sell your computer, then move out into the middle of the woods and live there for 50 years without electricity.

This will accomplish your goal of posting on TGD better than your current system of typing words on a keyboard for reasons that are just so obvious I won't even mention them in my post.

[RobbyPants]

Seriously; you don't need to keep any part of d20's table top mechanics. Warp Cult has a basic tabletop combat game that can be used at a small scale, and can be used with many other Shadowrun based game projects like After Sundown or Dead Man's Hand.

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).

[PhoneLobster]

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

Look, long story short. You fall down on two major points.

1) You aren't actually clearly outlining if you ARE aiming for the whole "gigantic ever growing list of classes all with utterly unique resourcing mechanics" plan or not.

2) You don't actually clearly state WHY you think that resourcing mechanics specifically need to be diverse... by whatever amount of diversity you are aiming for if we ever find out...

You just do things like say "classes need to be distinct!" then dismiss class abilities as not very distinctive (really now). And pretend that resourcing mechanics are (without explanation) MORE distinctive than class abilities.

But bottom line, distinction between classes, and more importantly the distinction that actual players actually want, is basically ALL in the actual abilities themselves, not in abstract resourcing schemes operating in their background.

I mean lets face it. Players DO want to play a kick ass elementalist. But they are signing up because they want kick ass elemental explosion powers, NOT because they want to roll four extra dice a turn to ransom their higher level options to chance while nobody else at the table does that.

As always there will be some minority of wankers who think it's a good idea and pull a bunch of bullshit nuh uhs, but we all know it's true, people are in it for the fireballs and the lightning, NOT for a dynamic new randomized resourcing abstraction.

Now that's not to say you can't have your dynamic exciting new resourcing mechanic. That it couldn't in some contexts be a positive for your game design. But if the context ends up being "there will be 17 through to infinity of these fucking things no one ever actually asked for" then you've got some SERIOUS fucking clusterfuck issues in your rules complexity and you didn't do it for the things people WANT like the lightning and the fireballs, you did it for the things they never asked for, like the abstracted unique eccentric resourcing mechanics.

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

Every damn time.

[rasmuswagner]

You should split resource pools from the abilities that they power. That way, you can have illusionists that get more powerful as they take damage, berserkers that prepare Power Smash every day, and bards that gain inspiring songs by sneaking up on enemies. It's gonna be great.

[DSMatticus]

I have no idea why you're still indulging PL. Do you really feel like he's trying to have a good faith discussion about the merits of your idea, or just bitching at you until you stop liking what he doesn't like? The whole exercise is wildly counter-productive. It's not even useful in the "bouncing ideas off a brick wall" way that idiots sometimes are, because he couldn't be assed to find something more substantive to bitch about than "I draw the line at N different resource mechanics because reasons, so fuck you your idea is terrible."

[PhoneLobster]

That's right DSM, just never ever think about where the line of too many unique resource mechanics is. I mean, I'm sure no such line exists, I'm sure that you can just keep adding unique resourcing mechanics forever and somehow not end up with a total clusterfuck as long as you don't think about it, and if you never consider that line might exist and try to figure it out in advance it could NEVER come back to bite you on your dumb fuck ass later on.

I mean that's how you get shit done right. Ignore anyone who disagrees with you. Especially when they warn you about the feasibility of cramming infinite or arbitrarily large numbers of open ended "unique" foundational mechanics into a rules system for no apparent reason. Because ignoring that sort of "unproductive" shit is the rational way forward into... well... so far nowhere, not even for that matter a stable alternative branch of discussion, but this time for sure right?

[DSMatticus]

Actually, I think it's fairly obvious that once you get rid of open multiclassing there is no significant limit to the number of resource mechanics. Without open multiclassing, all classes are independent from one another and you don't need to know jack shit about the elementalist in order to build or play your rogue. Nothing in the elementalist entry is going to help you bling out your rogue because none of that shit is your's.

Now, there is a theoretical limit to the amount of content you can shovel into a game before people stop being able to keep track of everything at once. But no one can name every monster in the 3.5 MM's, and most people probably can't even name all the 3.5 classes (and certainly can't recreate their class features and spell lists from memory) - 3.5 already exceeds the amount of complexity you can juggle in your brain by fucking miles and continues to function largely unhurt. Attaching a different resource mechanic to each base class is just not an appreciable increase in complexity when you are talking about classes with 20 levels worth of features and 9 levels worth of spells. People are already referencing that shit during character creation in order to get the job done - but reading an extra paragraph or two (at worst) about how they use their powers is going to break them?

And now I have completely exhausted your potential value to this thread. These are the only salient points your stupid bullshit could have ever lead to, and I've exhausted them. Hurrah! Conversation over!

[Kaelik]

I personally like how PL pretends his quest for no items, one resource management system, Final Destination, is really just a good faith attempt to find out how many resource management systems a game can support, and not part of his demand for open multiclassing or WARRRRRRR!!!

Vintage PL really. If only he could start calling people who disagree with him rapists we would be at peek PL.

[deaddmwalking]

He's right, to a point. A resource mechanic in search of a class isn't the way to approach design. At least, it shouldn't be. In general, 'unique resource mechanics' haven't worked terribly well in 3.x, feeling like an add-on system that is clunky and doesn't interact well with the rest, not only because of the multi-classing possibility.

If you're considering a unique mechanic, you should be clear about what benefit it provides to the class. If you could have all of your classes on the same resource mechanic and they all feel DISTINCT, then you probably don't need them to use different mechanics. Now, I believe that trying to get everyone on the same resource mechanic won't allow your classes to feel distinct, but you should be sure of that, first.

[virgil]

In general, 'unique resource mechanics' haven't worked terribly well in 3.x, feeling like an add-on system that is clunky and doesn't interact well with the rest, not only because of the multi-classing possibility.

It depends on what you mean by 'unique resource mechanic'. Sorcerers and wizards use different resource mechanics, which is even more different from the barbarian, which itself is different from the rogue. The clunky add-on mechanics that come to mind are stuff like shadow magic and incarnum - and those are bad because their rules are the size of books and poorly written AND not very good.

[momothefiddler]

I think there's a spectrum there. Role-playing games are definitely still games, and as much as I love to wax pretentious about collaborative storytelling and so on, if all I wanted was an improv framework, I wouldn't be playing D&D. The game aspects of D&D are admittedly most apparent in combat - when I decide what to craft or what to ride or what to say, there's a lot of role-playing involved and it's about what my character would do and what makes a cool story and so on. But when I take a five-foot step to the northeast so that I'm in a flanking position and can Sneak Attack? That's not fun because the mechanic is invisible or fluidly allows me to tell the narrative I want. That's fun because the mechanic is fun. Again, if I didn't want that, I shouldn't be playing D&D.

And while it's certainly possible to execute new mechanics in a way that feels clumsy, unintegrated, and otherwise gimmicky, I don't think we need to shut down designs just because they start on "hey it'd be cool if different classes functioned in different ways". Plus it's a commercially sound approach, given the evidence that 4e gave us.

[RobbyPants]

2) You don't actually clearly state WHY you think that resourcing mechanics specifically need to be diverse... by whatever amount of diversity you are aiming for if we ever find out...

You just do things like say "classes need to be distinct!" then dismiss class abilities as not very distinctive (really now). And pretend that resourcing mechanics are (without explanation) MORE distinctive than class abilities.

Not need, PL. Want. Your objection to this thread is duely noted. I will no longer read nor respond to your posts in it.

[RobbyPants]

Actually, I think it's fairly obvious that once you get rid of open multiclassing there is no significant limit to the number of resource mechanics. Without open multiclassing, all classes are independent from one another and you don't need to know jack shit about the elementalist in order to build or play your rogue. Nothing in the elementalist entry is going to help you bling out your rogue because none of that shit is your's.

Agreed. It's freeing not having to worry if class X will interact unexpectedly if multiclassed with class Y. I'm not too worried about party synergy because I'm trying to set up each class to be fairly autonomous, individually. The Onitomancer is probably going to be best at divination, but everyone will be able to gain information beyond simple skill checks. The rogue can set himself up for Sneak Attack, so it doesn't matter if there is or isn't a wizard to cast Grease.

Now, there is a theoretical limit to the amount of content you can shovel into a game before people stop being able to keep track of everything at once. But no one can name every monster in the 3.5 MM's, and most people probably can't even name all the 3.5 classes (and certainly can't recreate their class features and spell lists from memory) - 3.5 already exceeds the amount of complexity you can juggle in your brain by fucking miles and continues to function largely unhurt.

I'm hoping to use ACFs to help with some extra content while keeping the class list at about 16 classes. The Assassin gains precision from studying and will have some at-will shadow powers to give mobility, stealth, and crowd control. I can easily see a hunter/ranger ACF that swaps the shadow powers with similar nature powers.

[Username17]

A resource mechanic in search of a class is absolutely the way to design a class. It's not even a question. DnD has had literally hundreds of playable classes at various times. Finding a class name or theme you'd like to incorporate into stories is the work of seconds. Making a resource management system is the work of hours - or days if you want it to be remotely balanced.

The main work is making the rules work. So obviously that goes first. Once you have a number of working resource systems you can start figuringing out how deep into the thesaurus you have to go for words that mean the same thing as Wizard.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

I don't think that it is bad to have a resource mechanic in mind, but I still think you need to have what the class DOES in mind before you figure out how they do it.

[Username17]

I don't think that it is bad to have a resource mechanic in mind, but I still think you need to have what the class DOES in mind before you figure out how they do it.

I completely disagree. The Fire Mage, for example, is a class that was designed completely from the how end. It's about tied with the Monk for most popular things I've ever written.

There is simply no shortage of class concepts. In any new edition there will be dozens of concepts people will be begging you for, and the limiting factor is decent implementation. The thing to do is to find ways to make working mechanics, and then go back to the fucking enormous number of demanded classes on the slush pile and think about which one is the best fit for whatever you ended up making.

Right now, no one is going to look at you funny if the next class you make is: Archer, Assassin, Bard, Berserker, Binder, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Illusionist, Invoker, Jester, Knight, Monk, Necromancer, Ninja, Paladin, Psion, Ranger, Ravager, Rogue, Samurai, Seekr, Shaman, Soldier, Swahbuckler, Sorcerer, Totemist, Warlock, Witch, or Wizard. That's more than two dozen classes off the top of my head that are all strong single word concepts (unlike the War Blade, Rune Priest, or Fire Mage) that aren't necessarily tied to specific settings (like the Jedi, Defiler, or Shugenja), or too associated with specific terrains (like the Pirate, Nomad, or Sapper), or weirdly discriminatory (like the Barbarian, Amazon, or Dervish), or thematically controversial (like Artificer, Courtier, or Pilot). Coming up with class concepts is simply not a problem we have. It's not a problem we've had for more than thirty years.

We one hundred percent have more class concepts that we want to implement than we have working implementations. Naval gazing about what class concepts you want to support from a flavor standpoint is basically a complete waste of time. You aren't going to cover any new ground that can't be crossed by an intern with a thesaurus in five minutes.

Mechanics first. Flavor afterwards. Anything else is fucking anout.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

I don't think that it is bad to have a resource mechanic in mind, but I still think you need to have what the class DOES in mind before you figure out how they do it.

How many classes have you written, and what are your favorite classes?

[PhoneLobster]

2) You don't actually clearly state WHY you think that resourcing mechanics specifically need to be diverse... by whatever amount of diversity you are aiming for if we ever find out...

Not need, PL. Want.

Ah, now see, I know what you mean to say. You mean to say "I want it so shut up that's justification enough" which is stupid because actually no, that isn't justification enough as "I want it" could justify ANY stupid design decision you make and if that's your standard you are going fucking nowhere good fast.

But more importantly you er, need, to work on your English talkings again. Because rather than being a snappy succinct reply what you've ACTUALLY done was suggest a sentence should read "resourcing mechanics specifically WANT to be diverse". Which actually sounds even more stupid than your actual position of "i just want it that way so shut up".

But hey fine, whatever, ignore me, read the affirmations of your tribal group as they give you some half assed post facto justifications for your already held "I just want it" plan. That's totally the path to good game design.

[DSMatticus]

He's right, to a point. A resource mechanic in search of a class isn't the way to approach design.

Why in the sweet fuck would you say something entirely different and then offer it like it's a defense of PL? PL is bitching about how lots of different resource mechanics will crowd the design space and turn it into an unwieldy mess. And that is a stupid fucking complaint in the context of D&D, because "classplosion" is the model on which D&D has (almost) always been based and people are not expected to be able to create characters from memory in the first place. There is obviously a limit to the number of classes you can have in a game (depending on how you organize and present those classes to new players) before people look at your game and just scratch their heads in confusion, but it's also pretty obvious that each class having a paragraph or two of rules text governing how that class uses its abilities is not going to significantly reduce that number - you are already expected to read so much more than that in order to create a character.

Fuck, do you have any idea how much text you're expected to read to make a level 1 wizard? Your single noteworthy class feature is a pointer to a fuck-off huge list of spell names which are in turn pointers to verbose and often unnecessarily over-complicated spell descriptions. You have to know what those spells do to make a decision. That is a lot of fucking text. But having to read about how that the beguiler and the enchanter can both cast spells once but the enchanter gets a passive benefit from each spell until its used up is going to fry people's brains? No, no it's not. The thing that will fry their brains is when they actually get to that spell list and have to start making choices.

Your complaint is, as far as I can tell, orthogonal to everything that has thus far been mentioned. And it's also kind of dumb, because frankly there's enough flexibility in flavor that you can take a pile of resource mechanics and a pile of classes and in the end you'll almost certainly be able to draw a set of lines between those that makes you happy. There's not really any exclusivity or trade-off here. Also, I am not entirely a fan of the notion that mechanics are inherently not interesting and should only be developed to the bare minimum necessary to represent the chosen flavor. Simplicity and usability are very important design goals for a mechanical framework, but when you're talking about what is ultimately a game shit like depth and breadth are also kind of important because people should genuinely enjoy interacting with your rule system. We could resolve combats with a single roll from each participant, but we don't. It's both a roleplaying game and a roleplaying game. And for reasons already outlined, having lots of resource mechanics (and no multiclassing, which has honestly never fucking worked well anyway) doesn't significantly impact simplicity or usability - that's shit people are referencing during character creation anyway.

But mostly, this just illustrates why you can't feed PL. Absolutely fuck all of this has been substantive. We've gone from "PL hates you and everything you stand for," to "PL vastly overstates the negative consequences of things he doesn't like," to a philosophical sophomoric argument about how much mechanical differentiation between classes is too much - except it's in the context of mechanics which will ultimately be a couple paragraphs at the start of a class which will end up choosing from dozens if not hundreds of abilities - many of which will have descriptions even longer than that! And also PL is still talking, which just makes things that much worse. This shit is all kinds of fucked.

[MGuy]

2) You don't actually clearly state WHY you think that resourcing mechanics specifically need to be diverse... by whatever amount of diversity you are aiming for if we ever find out...

Not need, PL. Want.

Ah, now see, I know what you mean to say. You mean to say "I want it so shut up that's justification enough" which is stupid because actually no, that isn't justification enough as "I want it" could justify ANY stupid design decision you make and if that's your standard you are going fucking nowhere good fast.

But more importantly you er, need, to work on your English talkings again. Because rather than being a snappy succinct reply what you've ACTUALLY done was suggest a sentence should read "resourcing mechanics specifically WANT to be diverse". Which actually sounds even more stupid than your actual position of "i just want it that way so shut up".

But hey fine, whatever, ignore me, read the affirmations of your tribal group as they give you some half assed post facto justifications for your already held "I just want it" plan. That's totally the path to good game design.

I'm definitely in need of an English lesson because I couldn't follow along. When I read PL's first post I read it as him saying that he doesn't see how Robby is going to make a functional game that (sans multiclassing) will work with the different Resource systems since every time they are brought up no one seems to churn out a finished product with them. I did not read it as him promoting multiclassing or Mouse Trap. Now there may be some subtext that I missed because I also didn't read that original statement as PL seeking out (as he claims now) 'why' Robby has decided to shoot for this instead. I guess there's an unspoken assumption that whatever Robby is 'ultimately' shooting for is not done with this idea.

There have been threads that have gone over the pros and cons of using Classes vs not and I am assuming that Robby is just going with that but doesn't want to outline his reasons for wanting a Class system with different resource mechanics. Or maybe he just didn't interpret PL's rant as anything but an attack on multi resource class design in general and since claiming that nothing PL says in threads is ever worth anything is pretty popular that's just gonna be that. Whatever.

For what it's worth, I think the approach is fine if you like classes for their benefits. I'd go further and say that being forced to design abilities with the classes resource mechanic in mind has been a boon for me in my personal project (whenever I can be bothered to work on it). I feel that it helps give me focus when designing the class abilities, since I tailor each and every one to service or benefit from the resource mechanic itself. The issues I am having is trying to imagine how different classes balance out when put in a group and figuring out what I should with what 'would' be non class abilities (like racial abilities, 'feats', skills, etc).

[PhoneLobster]

Now there may be some subtext that I missed because I also didn't read that original statement as PL seeking out (as he claims now) 'why' Robby has decided to shoot for this instead.

If the response to "this would appear very obviously to be a bad idea" is "nuh uh" or "I'm doing it anyway" then "why?" is the natural place you end up what with being open to an actual rational argument on the matter, which is in the end not "I just want it" or "If we have a rigid class system we are no longer bound by finite limits to complexity! MORTAL!".

I guess there's an unspoken assumption that whatever Robby is 'ultimately' shooting for is not done with this idea.

Since all we have is "inspired by" a thread and a (somewhat contradictory) edition we basically still don't know for certain what he is aiming for. Robby has been really rather reluctant to outline his actual plan (for some reason). I mean it's pretty clear what he is aiming for, but unless he comes out and says the words you can't really pin him down for absolute certain as personally committing to the "17+ resource mechanics and that's just the beginning" plan of the "inspirational" source.

[JonSetanta]

I just want to say that using Essentia to create undead seems like a bad move.

Carry on.

[GnomeWorks]

I just want to say that using Essentia to create undead seems like a bad move.

The idea is that if you want to keep your minions around, you have to invest some kind of resource into them to maintain them, which gives you less resources to invest in shooting dudes with magic.

The important part of that is, I think, the maintenance bit. It's not enough that you invest resources into the creation, it's that the minions have an upkeep cost that you have to keep those points paying towards or else the minions go away.

It's a sensible approach to handling minions. I don't know if it's the best, but it certainly seems sound.

[Username17]

What's really odd to me is that when Magic of Incarnum actually made a Necrocarnum necromamcer with incarnum shit, they didn't go that route. You have all these points and slots and you think that they would use these to limit your zombie army in an intuitive way. And instead they just don't do that. Because that book was a clusterfuck. But the fact that the Necrocarnate was extremely inelegant and I can't remember how it worked is not an argument against a much simpler and more intuitive Necromancer who had points to allocate to minions or spells like a Warmachine caster.

-Username17