Power recharge schedules?

[Archmage]

So I'm working on a game design project that is still in its extremely early stages, and there are a few little things I haven't figured out how to handle. I figured maybe the good folks of the Den might be willing to throw in their two cents and give me a few ideas.

Character abilities in this system are largely intended to work like stuff from Tome of Battle--strikes, boosts, counters, et cetera. My stumbling block at the moment is how ability recharges should work--after using power X, under what conditions do you get to use it again? So far, it seems to me that you have several options:

1) At-will. You can use this power whenever you want.
2) Timed recharge, short. You recharge the power again after some duration of time expected to be less than one "encounter," be it 3 rounds, 1d4+1 rounds, whatever. It can be random or fixed.
3) Timed recharge, long. You recharge the power after some duration of time expected to be much longer than one encounter or by doing something you can't feasibly do in combat, but it's a short enough time period that your workday isn't over--like every 10 minutes.
4) "Daily" recharge. Recharge every 6 hours or 8 hours or at sunrise or whatever silliness.
5) Conditional recharge. You recharge the power when something specific happens--like "you hit an enemy" or "you take damage" or "you drop a creature with an attack."
6) Totally arbitrary recharge. Like 4, only the time period is "when the DM says so."
7) Per game session recharge. The ability recharges when your group sits down at the gaming table after an extended away period--i.e., next week's game, not after returning from the bathroom or a snack break. This means people who play for shorter periods at a time end up getting to use the power more often, but for certain powers this might not actually be a problem.

There are also obvious variations like you can use the power three times before it needs recharging or whatever, or you do stuff like spell point systems--but you're still looking at the same general methods for deciding how and when you recover your mojo.

There's also the random "Winds of Fate" model, of course.

The problem with 2 is that it increases bookkeeping. IMHO, that's annoying. It's easy to forget that this round you recharged power X.

The problem with 4 is that it results in weird workdays.

The problem with 5 is figuring out how to word recharge conditions so that they aren't easily abusable. If you want a barbarian to recharge rage after he takes a certain number of wounds you have to acknowledge that this means sometimes players are going to beat up the barbarian between fights and then heal him if trading healing resources to allow another rage is a good deal.

The problems with 6 and 7 are obvious, though I actually think that for certain powers 7 works pretty well--stuff like Fate points that let you re-write some story event and decide your cell guard is your long-lost brother. For 7 to work, your players do have to know about how long the average gaming session will be so that they don't save up their power and then get annoyed when the game ends early with them having forgotten to use it.

I'm really leaning toward making most powers at-will with the rest being either method 2 (short-rest) or 5 (conditional), with the possibility that recharge durations will scale down as your level goes up--that fireball that you needed to rest 10 minutes to recharge at level 1 is at-will at level 5, for example.

The hard part with recharge scheme 5, like I said, is coming up with flavor-appropriate recharge conditions that don't encourage weird behavior that doesn't suit the gameplay style you're trying to achieve. How do you write concise mechanics that let barbarians build up rage by getting beat up or knights refresh ally-defending powers when their allies get wounded that aren't full of holes you can drive a truck through?

[hogarth]

The problem with 2 is that it increases bookkeeping. IMHO, that's annoying. It's easy to forget that this round you recharged power X.

I'm DMing a game that uses the Recharge Magic variant from Unearthed Arcana (which basically corresponds to #2 in your list). I haven't found it particularly heavy bookkeeping. Note that a level 7 wizard in that system only has 4 "powers" (level 1, 2, 3 and 4 spell slots); it's not the case that each spell is a separate "power".

[RobbyPants]

The thing I hate about 7 is how arbitrary and metagamy it is. A session an literally be 20 minutes or six months or game time. How do you make that make sense in the game world?

I agree that 2 does increase bookkeeping. If you limit the number of these per PC, it won't be such an issue.

3 is nice in that it's effectively once per encounter.

I also agree that 4 results in weird workdays.

[RobbyPants]

The problem with 2 is that it increases bookkeeping. IMHO, that's annoying. It's easy to forget that this round you recharged power X.

I'm DMing a game that uses the Recharge Magic variant from Unearthed Arcana (which basically corresponds to #2 in your list). I haven't found it particularly heavy bookkeeping. Note that a level 7 wizard in that system only has 4 "powers" (level 1, 2, 3 and 4 spell slots); it's not the case that each spell is a separate "power".

I'm actually running a druid in one of those right now too.

It's not terrible, but I am typically changing four different tallies per round. Of course, my DM is running some very weird encounters for me right now, so my combat experiences are anything but normal.

[Archmage]

The thing I hate about 7 is how arbitrary and metagamy it is. A session an literally be 20 minutes or six months or game time. How do you make that make sense in the game world?

Really, the solution is that you don't.

Powers like fireball and great cleave aren't 1/session recharge because that ends up making no sense at all. Instead, 1/session powers are things like "decide the guard to your cell is your long-lost brother" or "your next skill check automatically succeeds." They have the potential to affect the story a great deal, depending on the precise ability, but they aren't necessarily effects the characters generate. Indeed, they are meta-game abilities. Nobody in the game world sees you cast insert plot device.

[hogarth]

It's not terrible, but I am typically changing four different tallies per round.

Well, I would just write down a list of spell slots and write "round 5" or "round 7" next to the slot to show when it comes up again. YMMV.

[RandomCasualty2]

Dont' forget to add these...

Per level recharge: You get X amount of abilities per level, and whenever you level, those powers refresh.

Per Adventure recharge: At the end of an adventure you recharge.

Sanctum Recharge: You can only recharge while at town, in your tower or whatever.

Action Based Recharge: Waste an action in combat to get the ability back.

Overall, I feel like per level recharge is probably the best method. If your XP system is pretty predictable, PCs get a good feeling of how long they have before the next recharge and thus can ration abilities appropriately.

[Sunwitch]

The thing I hate about 7 is how arbitrary and metagamy it is. A session an literally be 20 minutes or six months or game time. How do you make that make sense in the game world?

Really, the solution is that you don't.

Powers like fireball and great cleave aren't 1/session recharge because that ends up making no sense at all. Instead, 1/session powers are things like "decide the guard to your cell is your long-lost brother" or "your next skill check automatically succeeds." They have the potential to affect the story a great deal, depending on the precise ability, but they aren't necessarily effects the characters generate. Indeed, they are meta-game abilities. Nobody in the game world sees you cast insert plot device.

That is pretty cool. I like the idea of actually allowing players to have an effect on the plot in a direct manner. Having such a thing straight-up built into the system hopefully would discourage DM autocracy as well.

[Archmage]

Overall, I feel like per level recharge is probably the best method. If your XP system is pretty predictable, PCs get a good feeling of how long they have before the next recharge and thus can ration abilities appropriately.

I have to disagree. Per level recharge combines "you recharge when the DM feels like it" with the meta-game feel of "you recharge at the start of each game session." Because a lot of the games I've played, you don't actually know how long it's going to be until you hit the next level--you assume you'll gain one every few game sessions or whatever, but what if your party "fails" a mission and the DM decides you get no XP as a result? You've expended resources and gotten no closer to recharging them.

There's also the inelegant fact that when a character has reached maximum level they use the ability X times and that's it for the rest of their life, which is just nonsensical, even if you make the argument that maximum level is not a reasonable play space (like is the case with D&D).

I know that if I had "per level" resources I'd be inclined to not spend them at all for several sessions and then nova the shit out of them when I was about to go ding. That's not the kind of play I want to encourage.

[A Man In Black]

Per level recharge seems like another metagame ability set, the same way that "serendipitous plot twist" would be per-session. A good per-level ability would be to gain a new permanent schtick, similar to M&M stunting but permanent.

[TavishArtair]

Keep in mind that almost all recharges that work off a time period or event the character experiences in-game, are in reality exchanging resources for another resource. Sometimes they are exchanging time for the power. Sometimes they are exchanging an opportunity cost for the power. But when it boils down to it, all power schedules for in-game resources will exchange some other resource the character has for that resource.

[IGTN]

Per level recharge seems like another metagame ability set, the same way that "serendipitous plot twist" would be per-session. A good per-level ability would be to gain a new permanent schtick, similar to M&M stunting but permanent.

Depends. If your advancement rate is reasonably constant (adventures/level), then per-level is basically an extended version of per-adventure resource management as per-day is of per-encounter resource management.

Per-adventure, as labelled, is a crappy system, but depending on how you structure your campaigns, per-month or even per-day become, effectively, per-adventure, as long as you're only going to have one adventure in the given time interval and aren't going to spread your adventures over multiple intervals.

You could even do a system where the wizard learns Burning Hands, and then can use that eight times ever. But next level he learns Breath of Flame, which is like Burning Hands but better, and the level after that he gets Greater Breath of Flame, and so doesn't actually care if he's out of uses of Burning Hands forever since it's not level-appropriate anymore. So that's basically per-level, except that you get new abilities instead of scaling.

That system wouldn't necessarily correspond to a world where the common tropes hold, but that doesn't mean that you can't make a good system out of it.