Pathfinder/3.x D&D without strict time keeping

[souran]

I am playing in a pathfinder Strange Aeons game. The DM is familiar with the system but new to DMing. She also has a strong preference for the storytelling/role-playing part over strictly mechanical parts but honestly the table play is pretty typical. After explaining why consecutive dice rolls hose the PCs we have managed to get to a table rule of 1 action 1 roll even if it requires shoehorning in weird modifiers. We have typically 1-3 fights in a 4 hour session. The fights last typical pathfinder lengths of between 2-7 rounds and take 20 minutes to an hour to play out. Thus far, normal.

The DM has a story first preference, which is fine I like games like that but because of that the game is basically played without D&D timekeeping. Buffs are basically played at the table as anything lasting 1/minute a level or longer as "give up a spell slot and this is defacto permanent. (buffs with a duration in rounds are tracked because combat rounds are tracked). Per day abilities are being used as more or less "per encounter" or "per session" abilities with no real tracking between sessions. It's not like everybody is novaing hard every encounter but I tracked the spell usage and in one session a party with 4 3rd level spells per day used 9 3rd level spells in an evening (across 4 combat encounters and 3 or so noncombat encounters) with no rests.

The other players are not inexperienced, and because of that nobody is really making waves about the situation.

My thought is, has anybody else run a 3.x game where they tried to get away from strict time keeping and what did you do to the frequency of per day abilities? In 3.5 "Unearthed Arcana" there was a alternative rule set that made spell slots have a recharge time. What are your thoughts on that or do you know any other systems for swapping daily powers for something that can be tracked as per session or per event or otherwise tracked against progress instead of tracked with in game time.

[Kaelik]

I think "per day" is an acceptable timetable to keep, even if the assorted 20 minutes, 3 hours, ect stuff isn't.

I went through redesigns for classes, and part of what I was going for with a lot of it was to not worry as much about time keeping.

[Username17]

Keeping track of individual spell recharge times is the worst of all worlds.

In general, having buffs end at different times than spell slots refresh is terrible, and having spells end or spell slots come back in a staggered manner is also terrible. The fact that it might be importantly true that your owl's wisdom ends 12 seconds before the bull's strength is fucking awful. The margins where that's remotely important are horrible for the game.

The goal is to have spells end and spell slots return during time skips so that you don't have to do dynamic fiddly math during action scenes. The goal is also to arrange so that spells ending and spell slots returning never ends up with overlaps where you operate at double power. Individual spell timers, whether for durations or slot recovery, do the opposite of that and are therefore terrible.

You can just do as Shadowrun do and have summoned spirits vanish at Dawn and Dusk. You don't need or want to put spells on 7 minute timers or whatever the fuck.

-Username17

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

I agree with Frank. The big thing is that... IS YOUR GROUP HAVING FUN?!

If yes, then honestly, who gives a fuck? If everyone *feels* good, and *feels* like their character gets to contribute to the story... Don't make waves about how the game is "supposed to be played." Let the group come to their own conclusions about 'balance'.

Some narrative flexibility that errs on the side of what your group thinks is FUN is way more important than playing Rules Lawyer: The Judging.

[Orca]

Assuming that min/level means a combat scene plus a fight scene & 10 min/level+ means an adventuring day unless travel is involved, has worked for me in the past without changing the number of per-day abilities.

[RobbyPants]

In 3.5 "Unearthed Arcana" there was a alternative rule set that made spell slots have a recharge time.

I had a lot of fun the two campaigns that used this variant. That being said, it's a drastic increase in bookkeeping, even if the result is not worrying about daily limits. You become extremely aware of X-minute intervals (depending on your level), so this sounds like the opposite of what you'd like.

What are your thoughts on that or do you know any other systems for swapping daily powers for something that can be tracked as per session or per event or otherwise tracked against progress instead of tracked with in game time.

Apart from certain spells being abusable if you can cast them multiple times per day, it probably wouldn't matter much if everyone were a caster. Casters are already the best characters, and removing or lessening limits only makes them stronger.

You could probably just give them a smaller amount of spell slots available (although keep low-level slots the same), and just have them refresh shortly after a fight. This does mean that spells like Fly can be cast every time you run into some obstacle. I suppose you could set buff spells to keep the slot occupied so long as the spell is active, or something, or set limits on how many buffs you can have active at a time.

[K]

I always DMed on the side of “well if your character doesn’t have an accurate timepiece, I don’t have to accurately track anything other than combat turns”.

[OgreBattle]

How about a system where sustained spells require some level of concentration, then you use fatigue to see how long multiple spells can be sustained

So it’s like carrying around a bunch of heavy objects with your mind spirit. Encumbrance happens at certain breakpoints.

[souran]

Keeping track of individual spell recharge times is the worst of all worlds.

In general, having buffs end at different times than spell slots refresh is terrible, and having spells end or spell slots come back in a staggered manner is also terrible. The fact that it might be importantly true that your owl's wisdom ends 12 seconds before the bull's strength is fucking awful. The margins where that's remotely important are horrible for the game.

The goal is to have spells end and spell slots return during time skips so that you don't have to do dynamic fiddly math during action scenes. The goal is also to arrange so that spells ending and spell slots returning never ends up with overlaps where you operate at double power. Individual spell timers, whether for durations or slot recovery, do the opposite of that and are therefore terrible.

You can just do as Shadowrun do and have summoned spirits vanish at Dawn and Dusk. You don't need or want to put spells on 7 minute timers or whatever the fuck.

-Username17

I think its pretty clear I didn't explain this very well.

I am not complaining about the buff spells. This is far from the first game I have played where buff spells were played as "give up a spell slot and this is permanent" as long as the duration is anything longer than rounds. That's fine.

From a game perspective it also doesn't upset the challenge very much because it wouldn't change the nature of any particular encounter because the party could reasonably approach any encounter with that ability active. Further, since buffs of that sort are typically cast before entering combat it doesn't change who does what on round 1/2/etc.

This is not about tracking buff durations. This is about converting instantaneous or short duration abilities that normally have per day usage limits to something that is more conducive to the way the table plays to keep the games challenge closer to nominal. I talked about the number of prime level spells that were used. When I say that 9 third level spells were used those were a combination of haste/fireball/prayer/magic circle against evil.

Due to various commitments the game meets only about once a month and basically everybody resets as though they had rested at the end of a session regardless of if that happens or not.

I am looking for an alternate to spells per day that wouldn't play hell with to many of the games assumptions so that the games challenge level doesn't drop through the floor.

[deaddmwalking]

In the Heartbreaker our group uses, characters have a small pool of spell points that they can use to cast spells. In a single combat, this small pool is the biggest restriction on actions. It refreshes relatively quickly, so between combats most people have this small pool restored.

Aggressive tactics can prevent people from restoring this small pool of points so there is some benefit in enemies attacking in waves and trying to deplete spells.

[Username17]

As the Warlock class demonstrated, there are a lot of spells on the Wizard list that I genuinely don't give a shit if people cast them an unlimited number of times. And there are also a bunch of spells on the Wizard list that cause the game to collapse in on itself if cast more than about three times in a day.

Arcana Unearthed made an attempt to differentiate these spells, and well... it turns out to be harder than you'd think.

-Username17

[rasmuswagner]

Assuming that min/level means a combat scene plus a fight scene & 10 min/level+ means an adventuring day unless travel is involved, has worked for me in the past without changing the number of per-day abilities.

Rounds/level: This fight
Minutes/level: Next fight (an this one, if cast during combat)
10 minutes/level: Entire adventuring day.
*All of these end if you do something that takes a lot of time, like travelling or library research.
1 hour/level: All day.

[Orca]

Uh. Just realised I wrote a combat scene plus a fight scene when I meant a combat scene plus a roleplaying scene. Sorry about that.

[souran]

As the Warlock class demonstrated, there are a lot of spells on the Wizard list that I genuinely don't give a shit if people cast them an unlimited number of times. And there are also a bunch of spells on the Wizard list that cause the game to collapse in on itself if cast more than about three times in a day.

Arcana Unearthed made an attempt to differentiate these spells, and well... it turns out to be harder than you'd think.

-Username17

This is sort of the crux of the issue. Haste is a pretty good party buff spell. The wizard has 2 third level spells and is takes haste and fireball. If they use one of those two spells every encounter at levels 5-6 is that probably a don't care? What if the following round they cast glitterdust or ray of fire, and then in subsequent rounds magic missile till all opposition is dead? They have never exceeded their daily allowance in any one combat so you haven't changed what could have happened in any single encounter. However, if you do 4 fights to a day with that that is basically 2 or 3 times the amount of spells they should have had access too. This does however change the players tactics and changes the relative difficulty of the game in general. Thus why I was looking for something besides per day to lockout/reset spell usage.

[tussock]

There's a 3e theory problem called the 15-minute adventuring day. Where everything resets once per day, so you buff up, do one fight, then go rest for a day and do the same to the next room tomorrow. Spell durations and many other things cease to matter, like fights are not difficult. Unless things chase you home or something, which is fun in itself.

So while you're not playing by the full rules, souron, with the casters sandbagging a bit they're less powerful than they might be even playing exactly by the rules.

To some extent, it's 3e and you should be a full or mostly caster class, then you too can sandbag a bit, use less than your maximum allowed top two levels of spells in each fight, and still win at D&D. Or stop playing at 7th level where the other classes still work, or at least 12th before it gets completely stupid.

--

I did read recently the design team very nearly put a rule in 3.0 where every fourth encounter in a day gave most of the treasure, to strongly encourage people to actually do four encounters in a day instead of always resting, and that is what classes are balanced around. But it's not actually a rule anywhere in the edition.

I'm not saying you don't have a problem, I'm just suggesting it's part of the game anyway, casters can almost always rest and then dominate if you keep rests in the game.

[OgreBattle]

Isn't one encounter a day already a sensible way to do things in terms of in game feel and meta table time?

Like if you go exterminate some orc vermin, then rest for 10 minutes, then exterminate another batch, that pacing feels kind of weird compared to one encounter with pre-planning to take out the orcs.

[Foxwarrior]

Yes, one serious encounter per day is a good model. It helps with making the game be more about the framing of the encounters, which is where a role playing game surpasses a board or computer game.

That said, multiple encounters in a day can be used for the Die Hard model (although making it into one two hour game time encounter is doable as well), and Die Hard has pretty good pacing.

[OgreBattle]

In Die Hard both sides have imperfect knowledge, that makes sense. I also enjoy Jackie Chan's City Hunter greatly.

As for the power schedule problem where a fighter was designed for multiple encounters so that's why they need DM pity in a 1 a day scenario... a unified stamina system is what I'd go for.

[Username17]

The expected "work day" has a massive effect on what kinds of abilities are good or bad, and what kinds of resource management systems are crippling or inconsequential. And changing that work day has the entirely expected effect of making abilities and resource management systems radically change whether they are good or bad.

A good example would be the game Gloomhaven. It has an innovative card shuffling mechanic for measuring character ability limitations and there are things you can do to move cards in and out of your hand and gradually you run out of cards and then the game is over for you. But outside of the setpiece monster fights the game does, none of that works. If you were guarding a caravan from intermittent harassment by prowling predators or something, the cards wouldn't work. The tradeoffs between attacks and movement just can't handle any prolonged distance or prolonged time periods. Properly "outside" encounters don't even make sense in that contest. Gloomhaven is good for what it is, but it doesn't represent "the horizon" in any meaningful way.

-Username17

[hogarth]

In 3.5 "Unearthed Arcana" there was a alternative rule set that made spell slots have a recharge time.

I had a lot of fun the two campaigns that used this variant. That being said, it's a drastic increase in bookkeeping, even if the result is not worrying about daily limits. You become extremely aware of X-minute intervals (depending on your level), so this sounds like the opposite of what you'd like.

In my experience with the Recharge Magic variant, it wasn't a big deal because most of the recharge times boiled down to "once every few rounds" (e.g. recharge time in rounds), "once per encounter" (e.g. recharge time in minutes), or "once per day" (e.g. recharge time in hours) and we basically treated them as such. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that sounds similar to 4E.

[FatR]

My own hearbreaker did away with strict timekeeping because tracking rounds/level was a waster of (real) time, and everything else ended whenever GM felt like so anyway. The remaining durations are concentration, 1 round, 1 scene (until the encounter ends and you get to catch a breath) and 1 day. But my game is no longer recognizably 3.X. For example, buff stacking is limited by slot availability (the same slot also are required for magic items and powerful templates if you have one) and not by the fact that all the buffs authors considered good are supposed to expire quickly.

[Omegonthesane]

The most passionate argument I remember having about rules in the WodXalted campaign was that the Exalted rules never spelled out how long "1 scene" should stretch when you're performing logistical feats using spells, particularly "how many motes a day should I be down if I want to have my scene-long buffs running 24/7, even if the number crunching outputs 'ha ha no' I should be able to crunch those numbers".