Mixing & Matching Resource Systems

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Talking about rage bars and poise and shit in OgreBattle's thread got me thinking about resource systems, always a fun topic. If there's already a thread about this topic, point me towards it. Otherwise...

In systems that allow for multiclassing, how many of them have drastically different ways of handling their resources? How many of them allow you to do so WITHOUT making your character completely worthless? Are there any that let you combine completely disparate classes for true ultimate power?

Let's be more specific and make up two classes: The Barbarian utilizes a rage bar that allows them to accumulate points from 0-X when hitting/being hit and spends those points to augment their attacks. The Necromancer utilizes an essence bar that lets them spend and/or bind X points from their pool to empower minions or abilities and only regains points through rituals that take long enough to be impossible to use in combat. Can you multiclass into some kind of Lich Warlord who summons skeletons and reaps souls, but also gets pissed off and stabs fools while still using the same resource bar? Would each class have to track these resources separately? Is it possible to have a system where every class utilizes a single pool of points, but is capable of gaining & spending those points in a unique way, but ALSO lets you mix and match classes without exploding (in the bad way)? Can John Fightman advance in his boring At-Will abilities only class and slap a Winds of Fate system on top of that with a different class?
What's the stupidest, least functional combination of resource systems you can think of?

[angelfromanotherpin]

The Lich Warlord is obviously problematic if Rage and Essence are fungible. He starts the fight with a full bar that he can drop into the highest value Rage effects immediately, and then use the Rage refill to sustain an output of Essence effects that ordinary Necro's can't. I'm not sure how you design around that without making the abilities 4e-style samey. Tracking the resources separately sidesteps that, although you still have to deal with the usual multiclassing issues.

The least functional combination of resource systems would probably be one where the systems actively interfered with each other. Like if the above Barbarian/Necromancer lost Essence when they were hit, and also lost Rage when they spent a turn not attacking (because they were casting instead). Bonus points if the interference comes with an extra fuck-you, like 'having any Rage in your pool prevents concentrating on spells,' or 'losing Essence to attacks causes necrotic backlash.'

[Foxwarrior]

Yeah if the resource systems are fungible, then you kinda have to make it so that every level of the class helps you gain resources, make it so a Necromancer is twice as good at the Essence Gain mechanic as a Barbarian/Necromancer and the Barbarian is twice as good at the Rage Gain mechanic as a Barbarian/Necromancer, or you end up just saying that multiclassed characters are that many times better at resource accumulation as singleclassed characters, which would be silly.

If you want to be able to multiclass between classes with different resource systems, but share a single resource pool, then my preferred option would be to have your resource system be set by your first class. So if you're a Barbarian/Necromancer, you build up rage to animate a new skeleton every three minutes, while a Necromancer/Barbarian would alpha strike with their full daily pool right at the start of combat... as you can see, if you want multiple resource systems to work together, you need all of them to work on the same time scale or things go crazy. Something like an Encounter/Daily split (At-Will is pretty close to a recharge mid-encounter type of power, you can just differentiate the at-will guy by using marginally weaker powers) for all classes could work if you wanted some daily resources in there.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

If you want to be able to multiclass between classes with different resource systems, but share a single resource pool, then my preferred option would be to have your resource system be set by your first class. So if you're a Barbarian/Necromancer, you build up rage to animate a new skeleton every three minutes, while a Necromancer/Barbarian would alpha strike with their full daily pool right at the start of combat... as you can see, if you want multiple resource systems to work together, you need all of them to work on the same time scale or things go crazy. Something like an Encounter/Daily split (At-Will is pretty close to a recharge mid-encounter type of power, you can just differentiate the at-will guy by using marginally weaker powers) for all classes could work if you wanted some daily resources in there.

That's an interesting idea. It's got me thinking of a Barbarian/Assassin who hacks dudes apart to build up enough rage for some Death Cleaves that start making Fort vs Death saves super early, or an Assassin/Barbarian who spends a couple of turns hanging back and debuffing enemies through his keen eye, then teleports behinds a guy, grabs him, and beats another man to death with him. It sounds like you would need to be careful and avoid making certain combinations blatantly superior to others, though. Even in this situation I think I'd prefer the hypothetical Barbarian/Assassin since I'd be able to stay in the action longer.

[Whatever Jr.]

You want this thread: viewtopic.php?t=53893

[MGuy]

A friend of mine who played a lot of guild wars back in the day likes to tell stories of the "good old days" where they did the thing where you could cross class and use the resource system of your first class to fuel your cross class skills. The way he makes it sound the pro gamer move was to then find which combination allowed you to do the craziest stuff. Different combinations were definitely not equal given his description. There are probably always going to be imbalances, minor or major, between options in a game. Even more so when you let players get more choices. I think going this route might exacerbate the issue because it both obscures what the best practices are (not that people won't find out. This is the internet after all) and I think creates more potential failure points.

Maybe to mitigate something like this while allowing for mix matching it would probably be better to tie certain kinds of abilities to their own resource. So all pets use "essence" and all physical maneuvers use "tension". There are still probably be certain builds that come out on top but by doing it this way I imagine you encourage people to do one kind of thing while dipping across classes for different flavors of stuff. So a barb/Necro would probably use more "dark grasp" abilities while a beast master/Necro adds skeletons and ghouls to their entourage.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

You want this thread: viewtopic.php?t=53893

Sweet, I went looking for old resource threads but I missed that one. I knew it must've come up at some point, let's see how this conversation goes nearly a decade later. I'll read up on that thread tomorrow.

Maybe to mitigate something like this while allowing for mix matching it would probably be better to tie certain kinds of abilities to their own resource. So all pets use "essence" and all physical maneuvers use "tension". There are still probably be certain builds that come out on top but by doing it this way I imagine you encourage people to do one kind of thing while dipping across classes for different flavors of stuff. So a barb/Necro would probably use more "dark grasp" abilities while a beast master/Necro adds skeletons and ghouls to their entourage.

Very interesting... would that mean that every class has multiple resources it can utilize? Does a Barbarian use Essence to summon ancestral spirits and Tension for Power Attack? Do they generate Essence and Tension equally in this scenario, or would the Barbarian class focus on generating Tension? If they generate both equally, do they expend them using a Rage Bar?

[MGuy]

Hard to answer on the specifics. This is not a thing I'm doing (no cross classing in my hb). Off the top of my head you could probably have berserkers using tension for rage arts like ground stomp or threatening leer. Sacrifice HP to augment their own attributes. Another per day resource to offer debuff type howls and roars. Then you have a necromancer who uses tension to power vampiric dark grasp abilities. Essence for minions. And maybe a suite if per day healing and buffing abilities for their minions.

There will definitely be abilities that are clearly more worth nabbing than others but that's going to happen whenever you allow for this kind of thing. For instance Berserker could nab pets from the Necro sure but if there's any investment they made in being better at maneuvers the grasp abilities would probably be preferred. Whatever the case, if the abilities are standardized or otherwise appropriate for the power level the Berserker wouldn't be worse off either way.

By doing this you don't have to worry about a given class's resource generation messing with balance. It's easier to standardize abilities across the board if you don't have to worry about wonky things going on when they are subjected to different considerations between classes.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

In a forced multiclassing system, you can account for a lot of the variables that arise when you compare single-classed versus multi-classed characters. If the barbarian must take another class and progress in it at a similar rate to Berserker, then you can write up the classes so abilities of equivalent strength come online in the same tier and you know people are going to mix and match abilities. The Necromancer's Dark Grasp always uses Essence and grapples dudes but if you combine that with a Sniper's Farshot feature, you can choke dudes from 30 feet away or something to lock them down and both abilities scale as your character grows in power until you max out both classes. Depending on if Necromancer was the character's primary class or not, they'd regain and expend Essence differently from a Sniper or Berserker.

[MGuy]

Well the idea is that the same resource is used to power the same kind of abilities along with classes having access to multiple if not all resources potentially. So dark grasp, far shot, and rage arts would all use tension because they are all special attacks. Whether or not you do a forced cross class thing or that tiered class thing people were talking about a while ago (where there are a different set of classes for low tier vs mid or higher tier characters) doesn't matter for what I'm proposing. It would work with either. It is also important that the necromancer, berserker, and sniper do not regain essence differently. What they choose to spend it on will naturally vary because their abilities will be different but as soon as the resource gain starts being varied you expose yourself to a certain kind of resource gain flubbing up your balance. One form of resource gain just might be better in some significant way than others and there's no real reason to open up that possibility.

[JonSetanta]

I personally divide the resources into two categories:

Mental
Physical

You can rename them what you want, but Mental means you enter battle with x points and spend them down until you have to go take a nap, while Physical means you build points with taking/dealing damage or using combat techs or even wasting a turn standing there screaming, but essentially they provide class ability fuel in opposite directions.

[JonSetanta]

Sacrifice HP to augment their own attributes.

As much as I want to +1 this concept, every time I mention it as a Warrior standard for a renewable resource, multiple members remind me that healing is so easy to acquire in D&D that it's essentially the same as at-will ability.

You'd have to do something drastic to make it an actual cost mid combat like reduce maximum HP until an hour rest is taken.

[deaddmwalking]

As Frank pointed out in the linked thread, tracking multiple different tokens is a pain in the ass. But allowing a berserker to build assassin 'deathstrike tokens' by beating an opponent with the corpse of their comrade turns out to synergize really well - much better than an assassin that has to 'build up' with multiple actions.

Fungibility between tokens doesn't HAVE to be a problem, but it certainly is if the refresh mechanism is different. If that's the case, people will want to take a level of a class that gives them 'easy refresh' but take a class or classes that gets more mileage out of those tokens.

If tokens refresh in the same manner for all classes, but there are rules about how/when tokens come back, you can avoid many of these issues. For example, if controlling an undead minion costs a token and you don't get it back UNTIL YOU RELINQUISH CONTROL, it doesn't matter how many short rests you take, the necromancer is still entering combat with few tokens while the berserker is entering combat at full.

Even within a class, multiple resource schemes exist and that's not necessarily a bad thing. A rogue can have some circumstantial abilities (like sneak attack) that require setup, but have other abilities that require spending a token. In 3.5 a cleric has both spells per day and turn attempts per day - while I don't think that's a paragon of design it shows that players will accept multiple resource pools for a single character. A berserker can have 'spend a token for extra damage', but they can also have 'spend a full action for healing surge'. As long as the player understands how to trigger the ability they want (action cost, token cost, etc) and they're not tracking multiple resource pools, you're fine.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

It is also important that the necromancer, berserker, and sniper do not regain essence differently. What they choose to spend it on will naturally vary because their abilities will be different but as soon as the resource gain starts being varied you expose yourself to a certain kind of resource gain flubbing up your balance. One form of resource gain just might be better in some significant way than others and there's no real reason to open up that possibility.

That's really the reason why I started this thread in the first place. Spending points from a pool differently is easy. Altering the mechanics of the pool altogether is way harder.

As Frank pointed out in the linked thread, tracking multiple different tokens is a pain in the ass. But allowing a berserker to build assassin 'deathstrike tokens' by beating an opponent with the corpse of their comrade turns out to synergize really well - much better than an assassin that has to 'build up' with multiple actions.

Oh yeah, multiple resource pools is something I'd like to avoid when possible in my own game. At most, people might be able to accept 2 different pools, like you described with the Cleric. One of my favorite ways to rag on Pathfinder vs 3.5 is how you go from a mildly sensible 'rage X times per day for X rounds' to the batshit 'you can rage for XX rounds per day, however you want'. Yeah, I really care about squeezing every fucking round I can out of most encounters instead of just slamming the RAGE button and killing dudes. That is why I am playing a barbarian. For resource tracking.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Totally random tangent. I went on the Pathfinder wiki to make sure my righteous indignation was accurately sourced, and I saw this:

How many of these feats do you think are hot dogshit? Six bucks for ONE CLASS'S worth of feats? Oh, Pathfinder.

[erik]

Totally random tangent. I went on the Pathfinder wiki to make sure my righteous indignation was accurately sourced, and I saw this:

How many of these feats do you think are hot dogshit? Six bucks for ONE CLASS'S worth of feats? Oh, Pathfinder.

I'd wager a 99 cent price point would have been more lucrative.

[JonSetanta]

I'll download and skim it if Paizo pays me.

[JonSetanta]

I am struggling to come up with synonyms for "Rage", "Trance", and 5.5e's impending "Exertion".

Stamina is the best I can do, since in dozens of video games I've tried or read about (including MMOs) there are the noncaster resource abilities, then spells... The latter of which have a cooldown or mana drain or both.

Since HP as a drain resource to fuel non-spell abilities is easily negated by having Fast Healing during combat, or the variety of Cure/Heal/Lay on Hands assortment makes such a thing essentially "at-will" with only an Action Economy expense if there's no support healer, or if you're a Tome Barbarian you just drop out of rage mode, heal up, and wallop your target.

Stamina "bars" sometimes have in-game refuels such as food, certain special potions, or special actions, and sometimes even just backing up and waiting for it to fill again before the warrior charges in.
This is bad design.

As I've ruminated in another thread, the "Cantrip" attacks should add +1 to a small maximum pool of combat technique points, some expected at-will utility or otherwise non-stunlock actions would cost +0, then a small number each odd level would be the Ultimates that drain -1 or -2.
An encounter might go:
Start at 0 on first turn.
1. Charge (+0) and do a single attack
2.Swing for 1-2 Basic attacks (+1 per hit)
3. Maybe debuff or Ultimate (-1)
4. Repeat 2 and 3 until enemy is dead.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

An encounter might go:
Start at 0 on first turn.
1. Charge (+0) and do a single attack
2.Swing for 1-2 Basic attacks (+1 per hit)
3. Maybe debuff or Ultimate (-1)
4. Repeat 2 and 3 until enemy is dead.

Riveting.

[deaddmwalking]

The holy grail is dynamism. You don't want players to have an attack routine that they follow. If they can tell the GM their actions for the next six rounds and walk away - that's not great.

[JonSetanta]

If there's a variety of debuffs and combat tactics that can't be applied more than once per instance (a Stunned foe can't be "Super Stunned", a Prone foe can't be Tripped into the substrata) an attacker would very well mix up their strike types to adapt.

I was hoping you'd read into that a bit farther deaddm.

[OgreBattle]

The "Rules" "Time of play" has the biggest effect. Everyone here knows "The fighter can go all day" but most games of D&D I've played have just one encounter between sleep / long rest. Mutant League Football is different from eurobabby football on real life stamina systems.

So my preference is a core stamina system, then 'class' refreshes it in different ways. D&D4e made theirs too divorced from the 'physics of the setting' but AW/E/D is similar

So you've got....

[Focus Points]: They refresh with a short rest of 1 hour. Your stamina to do stuff, also used by alchemists and shamans to assign to certain powers so they have less stamina to do dashing around hitting stuff. So it's not too deterministic, when you're at zero focus point you can still attempt focus actions but can suffer fatigue effects from a roll. So those "and I rolled a bunch of successes" stories still happen for both PC and Monster teams.

[Limit Points]: They refresh with a long rest, 8 hours of rest that can include that pre electric wake up in the middle and fiddle for an hour.
Perhaps Limit Point Actions are more reactive, defensive oriented, to encourage saving them as a safety net to survive tough encounters. De-emphasize Alpha strikes, it can be Second Wind stuff that also gives you a power boost for the nexts action or round so you want to already be bloodied to get all of it.

Class, Archetypes and whatnot then have different ways of regaining focus points mid combat like...
- Fury: Hit stuff and get hit to build up fury
- Panache: Dodge a hit, so encourage to get into danger
- Soul Eater: Kill a living thing
- Ki Breath: Do mudra, inhale, kiai
- Chakra Charge: Flip through spellbook and yell, hair flying in the air as character writing flies out
- Return: Spirit melds back into Shaman's soul and restores Focus invested in it

Maybe it restores Focus to full, or only 1 focus
etc.

[JonSetanta]

I've been avoiding the word "Focus" since there's both Psionic Focus and Combat Focus (Tome Fighter) but I always value creative direction rather than pessimistic dithering, and as such you, Koumei, and Prak are probably some of the last few quality posters that suggest and propose rather than tear things to shreds.

Oh, and I'm guessing Ki breath is both a Demon Slayer and JoJo reference...

[Krusk]

If there's a variety of debuffs and combat tactics that can't be applied more than once per instance (a Stunned foe can't be "Super Stunned", a Prone foe can't be Tripped into the substrata) an attacker would very well mix up their strike types to adapt.

I was hoping you'd read into that a bit farther deaddm.

You've discovered D&D 4e, that's why no one is excited.

[JonSetanta]

And then Tome scaling feat provides Dazelock if you spam the same attack every round.

Seriously, I'm trying to find solutions but it's like dealing with Parliament or Congress.

I'll just resume writing jank and do whatever and y'all can comment on the new thread later.