Time-based recovery mechanics (such as spell slots) are terrible, impossible to balance between characters with different allocations, and just encourage the five minute workday. Abilities should be one of at will, fast recharge, or recovery based on a non-time-based effect, such as experience gain or money.
So they should function conventional actual ammunition, then? Buy new charges for your spells so you can recast them or have to relearn how to cast them? "Fast recharge" is still a time based recharge.
Time-based recovery mechanics (such as spell slots) are terrible, impossible to balance between characters with different allocations, and just encourage the five minute workday. Abilities should be one of at will, fast recharge, or recovery based on a non-time-based effect, such as experience gain or money.
So they should function conventional actual ammunition, then? Buy new charges for your spells so you can recast them or have to relearn how to cast them? "Fast recharge" is still a time based recharge.
Buying or gathering materials that your spells consume has a long precedent in TTRPGS; it's not an absurd suggestion that all high-tier spells should require materials.
"Fast recharge" typically means a certain number of times per combat encounter or scene, which diegetically would be time-based but is mechanically distinct from something that recovers, say, once per day. Fast recovery abilities are much easier to balance around than per-day or per-rest (short or long), because you know they'll always be available when the characters enter a new encounter or scene.
Honestly, I don't think this is all that radical. Plenty of successful systems already use a combination of at-will, 1/scene, and materials-gated (which is functionally the same as experience or money recharge) abilities. Unfortunately this type of ability balancing may feel too much like 4e for the designers to try any time soon.
Oh, it's not radical for RPGs (daily recharge is almost unique to D&D), but it's radical for D&D.
So they should function conventional actual ammunition, then? Buy new charges for your spells so you can recast them or have to relearn how to cast them? "Fast recharge" is still a time based recharge.
Almost all non-D&D RPGs are set so that your backbone combat abilities recover fast enough that they're going to be at full at the start of every scene unless there's something very unusual going on, and abilities that you're expected to conserve and only use rarely cannot be recovered purely by resting.
Honestly, I don't think this is all that radical. Plenty of successful systems already use a combination of at-will, 1/scene, and materials-gated (which is functionally the same as experience or money recharge) abilities. Unfortunately this type of ability balancing may feel too much like 4e for the designers to try any time soon.
Oh, it's not radical for RPGs (daily recharge is almost unique to D&D), but it's radical for D&D.
So they should function conventional actual ammunition, then? Buy new charges for your spells so you can recast them or have to relearn how to cast them? "Fast recharge" is still a time based recharge.
Almost all non-D&D RPGs are set so that your backbone combat abilities recover fast enough that they're going to be at full at the start of every scene unless there's something very unusual going on, and abilities that you're expected to conserve and only use rarely cannot be recovered purely by resting.
Purely by resting if you can spare 8 hours between combats and combats are small enough that you do not use up much of your arsenal. That is a planning/scale issue. At higher levels when you have more slots, fights should be more epic to compensate.
And daily recharge has been pretty common in many systems from the early days.
Purely by resting if you can spare 8 hours between combats and combats are small enough that you do not use up much of your arsenal. That is a planning/scale issue. At higher levels when you have more slots, fights should be more epic to compensate.
This has, to put it bluntly, never actually worked in any edition of D&D.
And daily recharge has been pretty common in many systems from the early days.
I cannot think of a non-D&D game system that makes daily recovery anywhere near as important as it is in D&D, or where time-gated resource expenditure was an important balancing factor.
Purely by resting if you can spare 8 hours between combats and combats are small enough that you do not use up much of your arsenal. That is a planning/scale issue. At higher levels when you have more slots, fights should be more epic to compensate.
And daily recharge has been pretty common in many systems from the early days.
Sure, in theory this is a problem that can be carefully managed at the DM level, just like many other problems with 5e. The problem with asking the DM to shoulder all the burdens of the system is that it makes the game dramatically more exhausting to run and feeds DM burnout. The more of these problems that can be addressed at the system level, the easier the game is to run, the more people will want to run it.
Just because something has been common in RPG history doesn't mean it's the best way to do something. Lots of other systems have cracked this problem in different ways, including D&D in a previous edition! 5e is actually retrogressive in this aspect, and that's not a good way to stand out from the crowd.
Roll to cast as seen in DCC and Shadowdark is a better way to resolve spell usage than spell slots. As someone who has been playing for decades and as a fan of Jack Vance I do have a soft spot for the Vancian system but it is hardly ideal. A wizard failing to cast a spell makes significantly more sense than one needing to wait unto tomorrow before he can do so again.
I would note that time-based recovery would be fine if they'd actually change the encounter guidelines from "6-8 encounters" to "1 encounter, which may be extended or multi-part". For example, consider Shadowrun (which actually uses scene-based recovery on an important resource, but irrelevant to my point).
In many ways it's a dungeon crawling game, replacing dungeons with corporate complexes, but a core difference is that you usually don't get a retry. If you poke at a complex in a noticeable way and don't succeed... the defenses will get modified, or the target will be moved, so whatever progress you made fighting through defenses is mostly irrelevant. This means a standard shadowrun is "fight or sneak your way to the objective, steal it, and escape with the loot". This could result in more than one fight, but that's almost entirely under the GM's control -- the fights are "whatever is in your way that you can't sneak past" and "whatever chases you that you can't avoid".
It's possible to design dungeons that way, and some adventures do seem built that way (a Dragon Heist campaign a friend ran was basically Shadowrun in Waterdeep, though he extensively modified the adventure so I'm not sure how much it reflects the adventure as written), but it's nowhere in the DMG that I know of.
Shadowrun also uses a point-buy system that allows players to pick and choose their stats and abilities: being a magic user in Shadowrun doesn't preclude you from strapping on the armor and being a highly-durable melee specialist, so long as you don't get so chromed that your Essence falls below the point of allowing you to use magic.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Purely by resting if you can spare 8 hours between combats and combats are small enough that you do not use up much of your arsenal. That is a planning/scale issue. At higher levels when you have more slots, fights should be more epic to compensate.
And daily recharge has been pretty common in many systems from the early days.
Sure, in theory this is a problem that can be carefully managed at the DM level, just like many other problems with 5e. The problem with asking the DM to shoulder all the burdens of the system is that it makes the game dramatically more exhausting to run and feeds DM burnout. The more of these problems that can be addressed at the system level, the easier the game is to run, the more people will want to run it.
Just because something has been common in RPG history doesn't mean it's the best way to do something. Lots of other systems have cracked this problem in different ways, including D&D in a previous edition! 5e is actually retrogressive in this aspect, and that's not a good way to stand out from the crowd.
If abilities are not time gated then PC's have everything available all the time. I do not see how infinite spell slots is a better system.
Time-based recovery mechanics (such as spell slots) are terrible, impossible to balance between characters with different allocations, and just encourage the five minute workday. Abilities should be one of at will, fast recharge, or recovery based on a non-time-based effect, such as experience gain or money.
So they should function conventional actual ammunition, then? Buy new charges for your spells so you can recast them or have to relearn how to cast them? "Fast recharge" is still a time based recharge.
Buying or gathering materials that your spells consume has a long precedent in TTRPGS; it's not an absurd suggestion that all high-tier spells should require materials.
"Fast recharge" typically means a certain number of times per combat encounter or scene, which diegetically would be time-based but is mechanically distinct from something that recovers, say, once per day. Fast recovery abilities are much easier to balance around than per-day or per-rest (short or long), because you know they'll always be available when the characters enter a new encounter or scene.
What are these other fantasy genre systems? There are no spell components in Rolemaster, Middle Earth Roleplaying, Gurps, Fantasy Hero, The Fantasy Trip, or Tunnels and Trolls. I don't recall any in Palladium Fantasy, Shadowrun (other than ammo for actual weapons) or Warhammer RP. Money/Resource gated is just a different kind of time gate since you put in the time to stock up and you are loaded again. But if the DM is not careful and gives too much money, then they have to artificially limit component availability or the caster suddenly has massively increased firepower to draw on.
And the complaint against per day is usually that it is too easy to recover slots, not that it is too difficult. That casters have too much firepower available, not too little.
I would note that time-based recovery would be fine if they'd actually change the encounter guidelines from "6-8 encounters" to "1 encounter, which may be extended or multi-part". For example, consider Shadowrun (which actually uses scene-based recovery on an important resource, but irrelevant to my point).
In many ways it's a dungeon crawling game, replacing dungeons with corporate complexes, but a core difference is that you usually don't get a retry. If you poke at a complex in a noticeable way and don't succeed... the defenses will get modified, or the target will be moved, so whatever progress you made fighting through defenses is mostly irrelevant. This means a standard shadowrun is "fight or sneak your way to the objective, steal it, and escape with the loot". This could result in more than one fight, but that's almost entirely under the GM's control -- the fights are "whatever is in your way that you can't sneak past" and "whatever chases you that you can't avoid".
It's possible to design dungeons that way, and some adventures do seem built that way (a Dragon Heist campaign a friend ran was basically Shadowrun in Waterdeep, though he extensively modified the adventure so I'm not sure how much it reflects the adventure as written), but it's nowhere in the DMG that I know of.
Encounter guidelines are guidelines. Do whatever works for your campaign. The campaign is always under the DM's control. It would be like insisting that CR's must be strictly adhered to in encounter design. There is no such rule.
What are these other fantasy genre systems? There are no spell components in Rolemaster, Middle Earth Roleplaying, Gurps, Fantasy Hero, The Fantasy Trip, or Tunnels and Trolls. I don't recall any in Palladium Fantasy, Shadowrun (other than ammo for actual weapons) or Warhammer RP.
And the complaint against per day is usually that it is too easy to recover slots, not that it is too difficult. That casters have too much firepower available, not too little.
The problem isn't that it's too easy to recover slots. The problem is that spells are balanced on having a very limited supply, so if that limit isn't enforced, they're overpowered. Most of the systems you describe either don't have spells anywhere near the level of D&D magic, or have extremely high level/experience gates on the larger spells.
What are these other fantasy genre systems? There are no spell components in Rolemaster, Middle Earth Roleplaying, Gurps, Fantasy Hero, The Fantasy Trip, or Tunnels and Trolls. I don't recall any in Palladium Fantasy, Shadowrun (other than ammo for actual weapons) or Warhammer RP.
And the complaint against per day is usually that it is too easy to recover slots, not that it is too difficult. That casters have too much firepower available, not too little.
The problem isn't that it's too easy to recover slots. The problem is that spells are balanced on having a very limited supply, so if that limit isn't enforced, they're overpowered. Most of the systems you describe either don't have spells anywhere near the level of D&D magic, or have extremely high level/experience gates on the larger spells.
Curious which of those systems you have actually played.... Shadowrun you can make a case for but then non casters have cyberware and there are post modern weapons, but the others?
Plus, you were also claiming that spell components are normal as a limit in most other systems. That claim makes a lot less sense as a benefit if your goal is to simply nerf all higher level magic while simply allowing it to be cast more often, but I still am curious the basis for the claim in the first place.
Curious which of those systems you have actually played.... Shadowrun you can make a case for but then non casters have cyberware and there are post modern weapons, but the others?
Plus, you were also claiming that spell components are normal as a limit in most other systems. That claim makes a lot less sense as a benefit if your goal is to simply nerf all higher level magic while simply allowing it to be cast more often, but I still am curious the basis for the claim in the first place.
I said spell components have a long history in TTRPGs; I didn't say every system or even most systems use them. But if you want an example of a somewhat popular RPG that gates its most powerful spells behind costly components, you could try... Dungeons & Dragons. Yeah, you notice how all resurrection-type spells have an associated material with a gold cost? Why do you think that is?
I'm not gonna die on the hill that consumable spell components are the be all and end all of game balance; that's not even a position I agree with. But D&D is already using spell components as a cost gate for many of its powerful spells, so it would be simple to continue to use that system while overhauling spell slots more broadly.
Curious which of those systems you have actually played.... Shadowrun you can make a case for but then non casters have cyberware and there are post modern weapons, but the others?
Plus, you were also claiming that spell components are normal as a limit in most other systems. That claim makes a lot less sense as a benefit if your goal is to simply nerf all higher level magic while simply allowing it to be cast more often, but I still am curious the basis for the claim in the first place.
I've played Rolemaster, GURPS, Fantasy Hero, TFT, Shadowrun, and Warhammer FRP. However, I wasn't the one to claim tracking materials was common. Also, my goal is not to nerf high level magic while allowing it to be cast more often, my goal is to make it used less often.
Curious which of those systems you have actually played.... Shadowrun you can make a case for but then non casters have cyberware and there are post modern weapons, but the others?
Plus, you were also claiming that spell components are normal as a limit in most other systems. That claim makes a lot less sense as a benefit if your goal is to simply nerf all higher level magic while simply allowing it to be cast more often, but I still am curious the basis for the claim in the first place.
I said spell components have a long history in TTRPGs; I didn't say every system or even most systems use them. But if you want an example of a somewhat popular RPG that gates its most powerful spells behind costly components, you could try... Dungeons & Dragons. Yeah, you notice how all resurrection-type spells have an associated material with a gold cost? Why do you think that is?
I'm not gonna die on the hill that consumable spell components are the be all and end all of game balance; that's not even a position I agree with. But D&D is already using spell components as a cost gate for many of its powerful spells, so it would be simple to continue to use that system while overhauling spell slots more broadly.
Yes earlier editions of D&D had greater material component requirements but not a lot of tables used them much outside of the resurrection type spells you mention but those still have such costs. I cannot remember any other systems that did.
Curious which of those systems you have actually played.... Shadowrun you can make a case for but then non casters have cyberware and there are post modern weapons, but the others?
Plus, you were also claiming that spell components are normal as a limit in most other systems. That claim makes a lot less sense as a benefit if your goal is to simply nerf all higher level magic while simply allowing it to be cast more often, but I still am curious the basis for the claim in the first place.
I've played Rolemaster, GURPS, Fantasy Hero, TFT, Shadowrun, and Warhammer FRP. However, I wasn't the one to claim tracking materials was common. Also, my goal is not to nerf high level magic while allowing it to be cast more often, my goal is to make it used less often.
In Rolemaster, how are they used less often? Other than by way of getting better with the lower level stuff, but in that era, lower level spell damage scaled with level in D&D too. Then it scaled but the scaling was capped and now it is the system they have now, in which you can overcast to get scaling.
Fantasy Hero is all points based designer spells ala Champions. There are no spell 'levels' per se. GURPS has a ton of mechanical problems likely best not gone into.
So you want high level magic to be somehow less useful? Or do you mean so useful that you only need to cast one such spell? Or... what is your design concept? (not trying to put words in your mouth but rather understand what you think would be better)
So you want high level magic to be somehow less useful? Or do you mean so useful that you only need to cast one such spell? Or... what is your design concept? (not trying to put words in your mouth but rather understand what you think would be better)
My simple design concept is: if the intent is that high level spells will be used every 6-8 encounters... the spell system should result in those spells only being used every 6-8 encounters. The spell recovery rules, as currently written, do not do that. The viable choices are to balance them for how they're actually used, or change the recovery rules so they're actually used that rarely.
Yes earlier editions of D&D had greater material component requirements but not a lot of tables used them much outside of the resurrection type spells you mention but those still have such costs. I cannot remember any other systems that did.
So... What's your point? D&D is currently using spell component costs to gate the use of certain high-level spells. Are you arguing that it shouldn't? Are you arguing that it should, but only in the context of the existing spell slot system? It's very difficult to draw a coherent thesis out of your posts here.
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Or because it turned into an inverse Ship of Theseus where it was D&D more in name than in practice.
So they should function conventional actual ammunition, then? Buy new charges for your spells so you can recast them or have to relearn how to cast them? "Fast recharge" is still a time based recharge.
Buying or gathering materials that your spells consume has a long precedent in TTRPGS; it's not an absurd suggestion that all high-tier spells should require materials.
"Fast recharge" typically means a certain number of times per combat encounter or scene, which diegetically would be time-based but is mechanically distinct from something that recovers, say, once per day. Fast recovery abilities are much easier to balance around than per-day or per-rest (short or long), because you know they'll always be available when the characters enter a new encounter or scene.
Oh, it's not radical for RPGs (daily recharge is almost unique to D&D), but it's radical for D&D.
Almost all non-D&D RPGs are set so that your backbone combat abilities recover fast enough that they're going to be at full at the start of every scene unless there's something very unusual going on, and abilities that you're expected to conserve and only use rarely cannot be recovered purely by resting.
Purely by resting if you can spare 8 hours between combats and combats are small enough that you do not use up much of your arsenal. That is a planning/scale issue. At higher levels when you have more slots, fights should be more epic to compensate.
And daily recharge has been pretty common in many systems from the early days.
This has, to put it bluntly, never actually worked in any edition of D&D.
I cannot think of a non-D&D game system that makes daily recovery anywhere near as important as it is in D&D, or where time-gated resource expenditure was an important balancing factor.
Sure, in theory this is a problem that can be carefully managed at the DM level, just like many other problems with 5e. The problem with asking the DM to shoulder all the burdens of the system is that it makes the game dramatically more exhausting to run and feeds DM burnout. The more of these problems that can be addressed at the system level, the easier the game is to run, the more people will want to run it.
Just because something has been common in RPG history doesn't mean it's the best way to do something. Lots of other systems have cracked this problem in different ways, including D&D in a previous edition! 5e is actually retrogressive in this aspect, and that's not a good way to stand out from the crowd.
Roll to cast as seen in DCC and Shadowdark is a better way to resolve spell usage than spell slots. As someone who has been playing for decades and as a fan of Jack Vance I do have a soft spot for the Vancian system but it is hardly ideal. A wizard failing to cast a spell makes significantly more sense than one needing to wait unto tomorrow before he can do so again.
I would note that time-based recovery would be fine if they'd actually change the encounter guidelines from "6-8 encounters" to "1 encounter, which may be extended or multi-part". For example, consider Shadowrun (which actually uses scene-based recovery on an important resource, but irrelevant to my point).
In many ways it's a dungeon crawling game, replacing dungeons with corporate complexes, but a core difference is that you usually don't get a retry. If you poke at a complex in a noticeable way and don't succeed... the defenses will get modified, or the target will be moved, so whatever progress you made fighting through defenses is mostly irrelevant. This means a standard shadowrun is "fight or sneak your way to the objective, steal it, and escape with the loot". This could result in more than one fight, but that's almost entirely under the GM's control -- the fights are "whatever is in your way that you can't sneak past" and "whatever chases you that you can't avoid".
It's possible to design dungeons that way, and some adventures do seem built that way (a Dragon Heist campaign a friend ran was basically Shadowrun in Waterdeep, though he extensively modified the adventure so I'm not sure how much it reflects the adventure as written), but it's nowhere in the DMG that I know of.
Shadowrun also uses a point-buy system that allows players to pick and choose their stats and abilities: being a magic user in Shadowrun doesn't preclude you from strapping on the armor and being a highly-durable melee specialist, so long as you don't get so chromed that your Essence falls below the point of allowing you to use magic.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
If abilities are not time gated then PC's have everything available all the time. I do not see how infinite spell slots is a better system.
What are these other fantasy genre systems? There are no spell components in Rolemaster, Middle Earth Roleplaying, Gurps, Fantasy Hero, The Fantasy Trip, or Tunnels and Trolls. I don't recall any in Palladium Fantasy, Shadowrun (other than ammo for actual weapons) or Warhammer RP. Money/Resource gated is just a different kind of time gate since you put in the time to stock up and you are loaded again. But if the DM is not careful and gives too much money, then they have to artificially limit component availability or the caster suddenly has massively increased firepower to draw on.
And the complaint against per day is usually that it is too easy to recover slots, not that it is too difficult. That casters have too much firepower available, not too little.
Encounter guidelines are guidelines. Do whatever works for your campaign. The campaign is always under the DM's control. It would be like insisting that CR's must be strictly adhered to in encounter design. There is no such rule.
The problem isn't that it's too easy to recover slots. The problem is that spells are balanced on having a very limited supply, so if that limit isn't enforced, they're overpowered. Most of the systems you describe either don't have spells anywhere near the level of D&D magic, or have extremely high level/experience gates on the larger spells.
Curious which of those systems you have actually played.... Shadowrun you can make a case for but then non casters have cyberware and there are post modern weapons, but the others?
Plus, you were also claiming that spell components are normal as a limit in most other systems. That claim makes a lot less sense as a benefit if your goal is to simply nerf all higher level magic while simply allowing it to be cast more often, but I still am curious the basis for the claim in the first place.
I said spell components have a long history in TTRPGs; I didn't say every system or even most systems use them. But if you want an example of a somewhat popular RPG that gates its most powerful spells behind costly components, you could try... Dungeons & Dragons. Yeah, you notice how all resurrection-type spells have an associated material with a gold cost? Why do you think that is?
I'm not gonna die on the hill that consumable spell components are the be all and end all of game balance; that's not even a position I agree with. But D&D is already using spell components as a cost gate for many of its powerful spells, so it would be simple to continue to use that system while overhauling spell slots more broadly.
I've played Rolemaster, GURPS, Fantasy Hero, TFT, Shadowrun, and Warhammer FRP. However, I wasn't the one to claim tracking materials was common. Also, my goal is not to nerf high level magic while allowing it to be cast more often, my goal is to make it used less often.
Yes earlier editions of D&D had greater material component requirements but not a lot of tables used them much outside of the resurrection type spells you mention but those still have such costs. I cannot remember any other systems that did.
In Rolemaster, how are they used less often? Other than by way of getting better with the lower level stuff, but in that era, lower level spell damage scaled with level in D&D too. Then it scaled but the scaling was capped and now it is the system they have now, in which you can overcast to get scaling.
Fantasy Hero is all points based designer spells ala Champions. There are no spell 'levels' per se. GURPS has a ton of mechanical problems likely best not gone into.
So you want high level magic to be somehow less useful? Or do you mean so useful that you only need to cast one such spell? Or... what is your design concept? (not trying to put words in your mouth but rather understand what you think would be better)
My simple design concept is: if the intent is that high level spells will be used every 6-8 encounters... the spell system should result in those spells only being used every 6-8 encounters. The spell recovery rules, as currently written, do not do that. The viable choices are to balance them for how they're actually used, or change the recovery rules so they're actually used that rarely.
So... What's your point? D&D is currently using spell component costs to gate the use of certain high-level spells. Are you arguing that it shouldn't? Are you arguing that it should, but only in the context of the existing spell slot system? It's very difficult to draw a coherent thesis out of your posts here.