The Campaign Builder's Guild

But when I do, I prefer to do it on the CBG ...

This is a repost from the wizards forum. Rather than just link there, I'd really like to see what my fellow Cebegians responses are. As many of you know, I love crunch, and I am always looking for ways to improve my favorite game (read: whichever edition of D&D is current). I've been working on some way of marrying 3E to 4E, to please my players and to have something crunchy to work on. While reading through many things, from the Pathfinder book to the design blogs on 5E, I came to a realization: I think I like daily powers spells again ...

Quote from: MeI began my D&D hobby in '98, when I first played the Baldur's Gate computer game. Baldur's Gate 2 came bundled with a 3E character builder program, which peaked my interest of the PnP game. My group and I began playing together in 2001. Thus, I have only really known daily spells. They were never really a problem for my group. I became a consumate homebrewer, and started to dive deep into the concepts of game balance. I was a vocal proponent of a class balance calculator and a weapon balance calculator. I recognized that spellcasters were more powerful than non-casters at higher levels, so my group was slowly adding in BAB +12+ feats to help them keep up at higher levels; we were okay that casters could do utility that the non-casters couldn't, as it sapped their combat.

I didn't even fathom the concept of novaing until Psionics was introduced to me. A psion could be liberal with their power points and blow all their points on their highest level effects, quickly draining through their power points. They could do this in one fight if they needed too. But I still loved power points so much that, when the XPH came out, I converted all of the PHB3.5 spells into a spell-point system (complete with augments). But, to limit novaing, we cut the total points down to 1/4th and gave those points back after a full minute was spent "tapping mana".

Fast forward to 4E. I loved encounter powers. They allowed me, as a DM, to craft challenging encounters while knowing just how much steam my players would have. Sure, they could mow through their dailies, but my group quickly started choosing dailies to cator to specific kinds of fights (solo dailies, minion heavy dailies ...). Most of my group really liked 4E; our only complaints in the beginning were holes in the math that we were only able to notice because the CR math was so tight.

Now 5E is coming out and Daily spell slots are back. At first, I was disapointed. I thought we would be going back to a day where novas were possible and balance would be thrown out the window. Then, the concept of daily balance was revealed. Rather than taloring each and every encounter to the group, the day would be designed with some XP level in mind. The group could fight it all at once (though this would prove more dangerous than fighting the same group split into 4 encounters), or they could have it spread out. This got me thinking; what if the possibility of novaing isn't a flaw, but a feature.

In all previous editions of D&D, players could throw out all the stops in a particularly challenging encounter; they could also hold back against trash. As I was thinking on how to "revise" 4E to be what I want it to be going forward, in case I didn't like 5E, I ran into this problem: what if you want a fight to be incredibly hard? I started to think of recharge methods for encounter powers, or internal encounter milestones for things like multiphase solo encounters ... but I eventually had to ask myself if I was going too far?

One of the things I hated about daily spells in 3E was that a 1st level caster quickly ran out of magic and had to fall back on a crossbow; my first game included a Sorcerer whose player detested not being able to magic all the time (I kept him knee deep in magic missile wands as a compromise). But with the advent of at-will cantrips (a concept that Pathfinder has used as well, even though they didn't buff the cantrips to any appreciable degree), I think that problem will be gone. And while a sorcerer, specialist wizard, or cleric effectively has enough spell slots to cast 1 spell of each spell level per encounter, making them encounter spells might take away part of the system.

This is an odd place for me to be, eating crow. While I still love 4E's monster design system, and I am currently looking at implementing it in 3E, I am now just a little bit more hopeful for 5E.

Thoughts?

Are you talking about this article?

If so, I don't understand why you're "eating crow" or why this would change your opinion about anything.

What is it even trying to say? How is anything in there is supposed to fix anything? It talks about how many encounters a group should handle before resting, but how is the DM supposed to enforce this? Railroading? If the party tries to nova and then go to sleep, what's going to happen? Where are the actual solutions?

I don't get how this supposedly helps fighters and rogues to shine, either. 4e introduced daily powers for martial characters, too, and 5e seems to be keeping them around in some capacity. In addition, the martial characters are probably taking more of a beating so they'll want to have a chance to rest up and get back some healing surges or whatever 5e is going to call them.

The entire last paragraph is basically backpedaling and saying "well, do things however you want." Which, you know, is basically how people do things anyway.

So what's the point, even?

The article wasn't entirely what is changing my opinion. Nor am I entirely on one side of the fence or the other now; I used to be fully on the encounter side of the fence, but now I accept that both have benefits. What mostly changed my opinion was working on my 3E/4E hybrid system and considering the merits and weaknesses of daily vs. encounter.

The part that changes my opinion is the method of determining the day's encounters. Even 4E, with it's encounter powers, had a daily limitation; healing surges eventually ran out. Ideally, if the system is "perfect", the right amount of encounters will drain the party's resources. Yes, they can still nova, but my realization is that you want the party to be able to nova if they need to. Adding in gamey elements that would allow characters to exceed their resources in a hard fight all seem weird; at least the ideas I have been tossing around.

The only way to have a game where the number of combat encounters was solely determined by the DM's story would be for there to be no daily resources at all: no spells, powers, healing surges, nothing. Health would have to recover after every fight. This is actually modern video game design, and a lot of people seem to hate it in PnP-RPGs.

This doesn't really help fighters and rogues shine, though, to get to your second point. I mean I guess fighters and rogues will shine when the day stretches the party's resources extra thin, but then the melee characters are going to start finding themselves strapped for HP.