Action Economy vs. Renewable Resources

[JonSetanta]

We have two different kinds of resources for classes. There is some crossover, but it mostly comes down to whether an ability uses a certain amount of time to use, or a number of resources that refresh after sleep or restocking at the nearest town.

Tome Fighter is an excellent example of Action Economy put to good use. They get additional actions on every round that no other class gets.

Spell slots, on the flip side, are the limited resource. Maybe even Warblade/Swordsage/Crusader from ToB too, but on a more limited scope and faster refresh schedule.

[Foxwarrior]

Pretty much every class is over towards the Action Economy side of that dichotomy. Even the wizard, who may well choose not to cast any spells on some turns in order to be more efficient, will start wishing for more standard actions when the going gets rough more than they wish for more spell slots.

[deaddmwalking]

You effectively have around 12 rounds of meaningful actions in an adventuring day. But it's usually split over 2-3 separate encounters.

An ability that you can use 1/day encourages you to avoid additional encounters to get it back. An ability that has an action cost can avoid that - instead choosing one action has an opportunity cost - performing an action means you can't choose other also good actions.

Note that an action can have other benefits/drawbacks. Charge gives you a -2 to defense and costs a full action.

As an example, recalling a previously cast spell could also cost a full action and require that you must cast it again before your next turn. Recalling and casting two spells or casting 4 spells that don't require recalling is a potentially meaningful choice. But even that might not be enough cost - sacrificing spell slots or some other resource might also be necessary.

Ultimately it doesn't have to be either/or. Giving people 'more' actions tends to be unbalancing, but giving them actions that involve some type of trade-off isn't inherently broken.

When possible, I lean toward action-based costs.

[OgreBattle]

My preference for D&D.PF Heartbreakers is...

- Action Economy's used by everyone to some degree, swift / minor actions are neat
---Using up actions as reactions ("It's not my turn yet but I react with a full defense, thus I am locked to turtling for this turn") is a soft way to do what d20 games usually have as "stunning blow" and so on.

- Renewable Resources should also be baked into the core rules to some degree. PF sorta sorta did that but made their encounter use points slightly different for every class.
--- Ex: This Heartbreaker has a core stamina / fatigue system.
---- Stamina Points refresh with a short rest, you spend em on cool muscle and magic stuff and lose them from noncombat stuff like weather, digging to reroute a river etc.
---- Limit Points refresh with a Long Rest, same deal as Stamina points. To keep it simple they can be extra action economy stuff or strongest spells.

Casting a spell should be like throwing a ball in Bloodbowl / Dreadball, a lot of the team gameplay is based around having your blitzers blitz the thrower and your blockers keep the thrower able to throw to the speedy runner that's at the objective.

and maybe there's some check or save to roll once you're at your last SP or LP to hold on to the last point and use it again, so people who love gambling as roleplay will tell the story of how they kept on pushing beyond limits in that one encounter.

[JonSetanta]

Another underused renewable resource: Spend HP to use class abilities.

I've seen some JRPGs do this, usually some kind of Berserker or whatever role, but there's also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streets_of_Rage_2

While it's a side-scroller fighting game, it does have an interesting mechanic... your special attacks cost a set portion of your health bar.

So it's a matter of calculating risk/reward every time you push the character beyond normal damage output.

[deaddmwalking]

While it is obvious that hit points are a resource, using them to power other abilities usually is not a good idea. In D&D and games like it, remaining 'in combat' is important. When you are 'dropped', you lose the ability to participate until you are healed (often after combat has resolved). Letting people get closer to 'dropped' for extra offensive power really complicates the evaluation of an ability.

Fundamentally, giving classes different number of hit points is already in this vein - you have already 'spent' those hit points for class abilities that you bring to the fight, rather than spending them IN the fight.

As anyone who has ever played black in Magic: The Gathering knows, having 1 life while everyone else has none is still winning.

[Foxwarrior]

Spending hit points and spending spell slots work similarly as secondary resources in that way, making it so that you're generally more effective at the start of combat but may have to sit out the ending part.

[JonSetanta]

Should Attacks of Opportunity per round increase with BAB?
Limiting to 1 per round, forever, is downright stupid given that warrior classes are meant to tangle with intruders trying to get past them, and the alternative... Combat Reflexes, is both feat tax and tied to the DEX bonus only.

[OgreBattle]

I don't think hitpoints should be used for an action resource until there's a very clear design philosophy of what hit points are vs fatigue vs luck vs wounds vs elephants vs lvl10 wizards vs having a bleeding wound and so on

[JonSetanta]

Spending hit points and spending spell slots work similarly as secondary resources in that way, making it so that you're generally more effective at the start of combat but may have to sit out the ending part.

About that...

I was reading the Iron Heart Surge boost ability, and remembering something Koumei mentioned maybe yeeeears ago about the equivalency between a debuff/status effect and the amount of HP it would require to remove.

https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Dragon_Sh ... .5e_Class)

This might be the answer.

For every 5 points of your healing ability you expend, you can cure 1 point of ability damage or remove the dazed, fatigued, or sickened condition from one individual.

For every 10 points of your healing ability you expend, you can remove the exhausted, nauseated, poisoned, or stunned condition from one individual.

For every 20 points of your healing ability you expend, you can remove a negative level or the blinded, deafened, or diseased condition from one individual.

Spend HP during your turn, remove the debuff. Self-only.
The player has the choice to remain operational rather than, say, Stunlocked or Paralyzed for an entire battle, but at the expense of edging closer to unconsciousness.
It obviously benefits high-CON tanks and monsters that likewise have atrociously huge amounts of HP, but glass cannons would have to make tough choices between riding out the effects or spending their dinky little HP pools (and maybe healing with spells/potions/items as soon as they recover, implying Action Economy usage as well if in the middle of combat).

If this is too much, it could be a feat or class ability, but my intent was proposing it as a universal option without any requirement.

I don't think hitpoints should be used for an action resource until there's a very clear design philosophy of what hit points are vs fatigue vs luck vs wounds vs elephants vs lvl10 wizards vs having a bleeding wound and so on

For me, over the last 30 years, HP has always been "structural integrity". I do like the 4e concept of Bloodied at half HP, meaning that in cinematic terms that's when you see the protagonist panting, blood flowing from cuts and stabs, maybe a bruise on the forehead.

[deaddmwalking]

Should Attacks of Opportunity per round increase with BAB?
Limiting to 1 per round, forever, is downright stupid given that warrior classes are meant to tangle with intruders trying to get past them, and the alternative... Combat Reflexes, is both feat tax and tied to the DEX bonus only.

You answered your own question, but yes, # of AoO should increase with level.

[deaddmwalking]

Hit points as a resource usually doesn't work well when healing is also a readily available resource. If you take 20 points of damage to heal yourself of deafness, but then cast a 4d8+4 healing spell, you're not actually taking any hit point damage at all. You're really just looking at an action cost - and maybe one that can be paid by someone else??!!

Everyone likes the idea of 'free money'. If you can spend a resource and then recover that resource FOR FREE, of course that's what you're going to do.

For example, let's say we use Spell Points instead of spell slots. And let's say we let a Wizard take 1d8 damage to get 1d4 spell points... And this wizard knows a spell that heals 1d8 hit points for 1 spell point...

I just did some random rolling and over 6 rounds I spent 29 hit points to get 14 spell points, and spent 6 spell points to get 29 hit points. Net result - +8 spell points for 0 damage.

As a designer, you want to think about 'infinite power loops'. To avoid them with hit point healing, you have to start making all kinds of exceptions or tracking special types of damage. When you're creating your 5th epicycle to make the solution work, you probably want to think about just removing the exploit altogether.

[Foxwarrior]

Should Attacks of Opportunity per round increase with BAB?
Limiting to 1 per round, forever, is downright stupid given that warrior classes are meant to tangle with intruders trying to get past them, and the alternative... Combat Reflexes, is both feat tax and tied to the DEX bonus only.

If you're still interested in reducing the number of attacks per round, I wouldn't recommend increasing the number of attacks per round. An opportunity mechanic where the fighter just does automatic chip damage to enemies who provoke (perhaps with some calculations involved so a level 1 fighter regiment can't chip away at heavily armored enemies) would simplify things, and usually the suspenseful hype of rolling for an attack is a bit excessive for a bonus attack you do for free as part of someone else's turn.

[JonSetanta]

Hit points as a resource usually doesn't work well when healing is also a readily available resource. If you take 20 points of damage to heal yourself of deafness, but then cast a 4d8+4 healing spell, you're not actually taking any hit point damage at all. You're really just looking at an action cost - and maybe one that can be paid by someone else??!!

Everyone likes the idea of 'free money'. If you can spend a resource and then recover that resource FOR FREE, of course that's what you're going to do.

For example, let's say we use Spell Points instead of spell slots. And let's say we let a Wizard take 1d8 damage to get 1d4 spell points... And this wizard knows a spell that heals 1d8 hit points for 1 spell point...

I just did some random rolling and over 6 rounds I spent 29 hit points to get 14 spell points, and spent 6 spell points to get 29 hit points. Net result - +8 spell points for 0 damage.

As a designer, you want to think about 'infinite power loops'. To avoid them with hit point healing, you have to start making all kinds of exceptions or tracking special types of damage. When you're creating your 5th epicycle to make the solution work, you probably want to think about just removing the exploit altogether.

As a Magic player, I know all about squeezing infinite loops out of as little energy and resources required, so yeah... a character/party should not be able to get healing spells out of HP.
Imo Spell Points aren't the problem, since players have been using Cure Wands for decades.

[deaddmwalking]

The point is that using hit points as a resource tends to be a problem. Outside of combat the cost is meaningless (but that is true for many action-costed abilities, too); inside combat the cost is almost meaningless if the damage dealt is less than the available healing to offset it.

Since the game is designed with healing in mind, it's really complicated to allow hit point damage as a resource track knowing that it interacts in a wonky way with healing that already exists. If you balance it with the expectation of healing being available, the track is really bad if healing is less than expected or non-existent. If healing is more prevalent than expected, there is very little cost. Since players will be highly motivated to make their character extremely effective, I'm confident that they'll find a way to get extra healing - and if you block them you're in an arms race.

[JonSetanta]

I seem to recall a Tome statement, to paraphrase, HP is not the resource to mind, spell slots and consumables are.

[deaddmwalking]

There are some assumptions baked in to that statement - but with standard D&D, 1 hit point is as good as 100 until you take 1 more point of damage. Even then, restoring you to the fight is trivial if you're not dead.

But if damage is significant enough to matter, you're still risking taking a character out of the game for using their cool abilities. People dropping then playing Super Smash Bros. is not the optimum outcome.

[Foxwarrior]

1 hit point is as good as 100 until you take 1 more point of damage.

You could say the same thing about spell slots (especially for a spontaneous caster). Critical effectiveness failure

[Omegonthesane]

1 hit point is as good as 100 until you take 1 more point of damage.

You could say the same thing about spell slots (especially for a spontaneous caster). Critical effectiveness failure

That depends on the premise that your at-will actions do not meaningfully contribute. Wizards plinking with a crossbow might not be very "like a wizard" but from what I hear it was legitimately a good use of a turn at lower levels.

Whereas at 1 HP you can do anything and at 0 HP you can do nothing, not even plink with a crossbow.

...I suspect I've taken a joke argument too seriously, but even in that light it seems worth explicitly deconstructing.

[Kaelik]

1 hit point is as good as 100 until you take 1 more point of damage.

You could say the same thing about spell slots (especially for a spontaneous caster). Critical effectiveness failure

That depends on the premise that your at-will actions do not meaningfully contribute. Wizards plinking with a crossbow might not be very "like a wizard" but from what I hear it was legitimately a good use of a turn at lower levels.

Whereas at 1 HP you can do anything and at 0 HP you can do nothing, not even plink with a crossbow.

...I suspect I've taken a joke argument too seriously, but even in that light it seems worth explicitly deconstructing.

Technically subject to the specific edition, you can plink with a crossbow exactly once at 0 HP.

[Foxwarrior]

Whereas at 1 HP you can do anything and at 0 HP you can do nothing, not even plink with a crossbow.

Aha, but even at -1 HP you can consume an enemy's entire turn by being an enticing coup de grace target

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Whereas at 1 HP you can do anything and at 0 HP you can do nothing, not even plink with a crossbow.

Aha, but even at -1 HP you can consume an enemy's entire turn by being an enticing coup de grace target

I like to softball difficult encounters by having enemies waste turns by trying to drag unconscious people away, to enslave or eat them or whatever. Usually that's enough to get people to shit bricks without realizing you're taking it easy on them.

[JonSetanta]

If you're still interested in reducing the number of attacks per round, I wouldn't recommend increasing the number of attacks per round. An opportunity mechanic where the fighter just does automatic chip damage to enemies who provoke (perhaps with some calculations involved so a level 1 fighter regiment can't chip away at heavily armored enemies) would simplify things, and usually the suspenseful hype of rolling for an attack is a bit excessive for a bonus attack you do for free as part of someone else's turn.

Sorry, I didn't see this post earlier.

About "chip damage"... you mean like an auto-hit for every AoO?
Maybe something like "reduce the autodamage by an amount equal to the Armor Bonus/Natural Armor Bonus"?