Another resource management scheme.

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 3:36 pm

There is a lot of talk about using WoF to change things up and cause people to think about what powers to use. In this thread I want to talk about/present an alternative way to do this.

Tie passives to active powers. Make it so that the more powers you have on standby the more passive bonuses you have. I'm not talking about the dnd feats where you get some kind of at will minor ability if you haven't used fireball or something. I'm talking straight up bonuses, like +2 damage to fireballs if you haven't used meteor (random numbers used in this example).

If your playing 4e for example you could give dailies passive bonuses that go away when the daily is used. This could range from a damage bonus or effect to at wills to a bonus to defense.

There are a lot of ways to implement this. You could make pools that diminish when the higher level powers are used, you could tie passives specifically to powers, hell you could even make specific passives and let players use the passives to power their abilities.

I think the result of this is that players will think about when to use their powers and try to reserve their biggest ability for the killing blow. This would lead to combat emulating the slayers or sailor moon effect where they wait to the end to use their mega ability. If you blow the power too early you lose the bonus. If you blow it too late you might be dead.

The primary idea here is to give some kind of cost that you actually care about to using your big powers.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 4:11 pm

That's cool but threatens with too much fiddlyness. You go from tracking one power a turn to tracking every power in order to know what you have passively running.

violence in the media · Tue Jun 15, 2010 4:39 pm

mean_liar wrote:That's cool but threatens with too much fiddlyness. You go from tracking one power a turn to tracking every power in order to know what you have passively running.

Well, with the power cards implementation, you could simply use the old convention of "tapping" them.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 4:40 pm

So your plan is to tie Charges (which incentivize people to use their big powers early) to Drain Penalties (which incentivize people to use their big powers late) in order to try to obscure whether the net incentive is to use big powers early or late?

-Username17

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 4:50 pm

Where did he say anything about charges? This looks like a pure drain penalty system flipped to change the mental accounting to addition. It's potentially more complicated that drain, but I think it could be made to work.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 4:55 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Where did he say anything about charges?

Thymos wrote:you could give dailies passive bonuses that go away when the daily is used.

The "dailies" nomenclature implies that the power not only stops providing its "hasn't been used yet" passive bonus when used, but indeed can't be used again until the next day. Hence the term "daily."

-Username17

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 5:04 pm

I stand corrected.

Still, this system (if balanced right) looks like you'd have to gauge when to use your charges on a combat-by-combat basis, possible even on a roiund-by-round basis. Depending, of course, on the number of daily encounters (more than one and especially an unknown quantity encourages you to never use your dailies, or to nova and then do everything in your power to avoid further encounters).

If the daily powers were on a different recharge schedule (e.g. per 'encounter', or equivalently if there was only one encounter per day) it would probably work better.

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 8:07 pm

You got it right Frank, the charges and penalties are to obscure when to use the powers. Hopefully it causes the powers to be used later rather than earlier.

I only used the word dailies because I think that's what 4e uses and I was using it as an example; personally I'd rather have encounter powers (ones with a short recharge period).

How complicated this system gets can depend entirely on how many passives and abilities you need to keep track. I hardly think 3 abilities and 3 passives would be a pain, but 10 of each would be a nightmare.

Also, the passives could be things other than straight numeric bonuses; they could increase move speed, push opponents away when using a blast attack and various other things as long as not having is a cost of using the ability.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 11:36 pm

Thymos wrote:You got it right Frank, the charges and penalties are to obscure when to use the powers. Hopefully it causes the powers to be used later rather than earlier.

So, what do you do when someone does the math and states "It is always best to use my dailies in situations X, Y and Z and to save them in all other cases."?

Having it tied to move speed or to a knockback bonus, or whatever just means that you use it unless you need it for some sort of cheese.

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Wed Jun 16, 2010 1:19 am

Aren't a bunch of D&D 4e builds about maximising the power of your at-wills, and not usually having to use your supposedly more powerful encounter/daily powers?

This seems like it could result in choosing daily powers for their passive bonuses and just spamming at-wills all the time in the same way. IMO this is boring.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Jun 16, 2010 2:21 pm

Well, balancing would address that - the bigger question to me is what sort of KABOOM powers (I'm not using the encounter/daily nomenclature on purpose) you'd have:

1. Universally awesome powers with low passivity bonuses

2. Situation-dependent-yet-awesome powers with high passive bonuses

Then there'd be decisions on how to allocate them, in that:

1. Do characters buy powers with points off a list?

2. Are characters assigned some of Type #1 and some of Type #2?

3. Are some character classes assigned lists, some of more Type #1 and some of more Type #2?

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Jun 16, 2010 3:31 pm

Orca wrote:Aren't a bunch of D&D 4e builds about maximising the power of your at-wills, and not usually having to use your supposedly more powerful encounter/daily powers?

Yes, but that's not necessarily because your at-will powers are better than your encounter/daily powers (although that's possible). It's because your encounter/daily powers only last a couple rounds out of a six or seven round grindfest; thus you end up spamming an at-will power 70%+ of the time.

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Wed Jun 16, 2010 4:04 pm

Grek wrote:
Thymos wrote:You got it right Frank, the charges and penalties are to obscure when to use the powers. Hopefully it causes the powers to be used later rather than earlier.
So, what do you do when someone does the math and states "It is always best to use my dailies in situations X, Y and Z and to save them in all other cases."?

Having it tied to move speed or to a knockback bonus, or whatever just means that you use it unless you need it for some sort of cheese.

I was just trying to present some options. I'm not trying to sell a specific system, but the idea of attaching a real cost to using powers early as a mechanic to give depth to combat. The knockback/move speed idea was just that, an idea. The system is roughly to make using powers reduce a characters passive bonuses.

Also, you can't just do the math because opponents are different and there are different powers as well. The consideration might change on a round by round basis. There is also the fact that there may be multiple choices that are all equally viable (for example you could blow your super power with the plan that your party member acting next turn would blow his super as well to take out an opponent even though there are other opponents left, or you could whittle them down some more and take out all the opponents in one swoop so you have your passives longer).

Heck, if you have a sword of flaming that has some fire damage attached you could even give the sword a fireball power that removes the fire damage until it recharges. This concept could be implemented many different ways.

Does anyone have an idea for a good name for the concept so it can be easier to discuss?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jun 16, 2010 8:26 pm

Thymos wrote:Does anyone have an idea for a good name for the concept so it can be easier to discuss?

What you are talking about is exactly Drain mechanics, so I suggest calling it "Drain."

Basically the fact that you want to name the penalty as removing a bonus is completely irrelevant. The point is that you have a relative penalty after using each super move. Whether the front end is telling you that you are stopping the addition of +1 or taking on a -1 doesn't matter - on the back end your relative bonus against the enemy is still 1 less either way.

In Drain mechanics, the ideal play is to count up the number of super moves you can use such that the accumulating penalties renders the last super move no worse than a non-super move would have been with no drain. And if the total number of moves you will use over the course of the encounter is going to be more than that number, the difference should be made up in non-draining non-super moves at the beginning.

All adding actual charges to that equation does is that if the charges are equal to or less than the number of super moves you can use before another super move would be reduced by drain to less than a non-super move with no drain, then you'll try to use all your charges up with the last rounds of the battle. And if you give out more charges than that, you'll be endeavoring to time things to not use all your charges up, using the number we calculated earlier.

In short: if you use Drain, you're going to encourage people to use some number of non super moves and then finish with the super moves. And having pre-drain bonuses that go away instead of post-drain penalties doesn't change that equation at all.

-Username17

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Jun 16, 2010 8:36 pm

Typically though Drain is focused on accruing penalties, not the loss of specific and unique passive abilities. Drain as accrued penalties is almost universally generic (ie, -X to all actions), not specific (ie, using the Shadow Blast means you have lost your Concealment bonus to defense but still retain your offense).

Your reductionism here is not helpful: the idea was proposed to promote situational bonuses. You might as well say that the idea uses "attacks" and therefore is just like every other combat system. It's added nuance is worth discussing.

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 2:36 am

To build on some the decisions that would have to be made:

There could also be some variation with how to tie the powers to abilities.

1. Powers could specifically be linked to certain passives. While the player might be able to choose the power, the power and passive are a package deal.

2. powers and passives are not tied together and when the player chooses the ability they have to choose both the power and passive part; creating a relatively unique ability that is a combination of the power and the passive.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Thu Jun 17, 2010 11:37 pm

It's added nuance is worth discussing.

Agreed - I think that tying specific bonuses to specific powers does make the strategy more complicated/interesting, because those bonuses may be more or less vital in a given combat.

For instance, if your buddy is going to throw down a Hell Swamp and pretty much lock the monsters in place, then your Shadow Step that allows you to avoid AoOs is less necessary, and you may as well blow it for a Shadow Decapitation. Against a bunch of spearmen, you'd want to hold onto it.

And that example brings up another thing - by having powers with lasting effects, you actually have a before and after effect, with the actual use of the power basically switching between them. Potentially, the instantaneous effect of the power could be fairly minor or non-existant, so the main question is when to switch from the passive bonus to the active one.

As for names, I suggest "Backloaded Powers", because the average ideal strategy (aside from situation specifics) is to start using your powers at a point where you will run out just as the last foe falls.

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 3:32 am

Ok, a few things this seems to need.

First there needs to be between 1 and 4 powers. Anymore than that and the passive bonuses would be too fiddly to keep up with. (5 might work).

Second the passive bonuses have to be unique. There can't be a universal drain penalty, that would be boring.

Third is that there seems to be some options as to how the other parts can work and how the powers need to be set up. Hell all the passives and powers don't even need to be created equal (in that everyone could have lesser, medium and major power/passives).

Another thing to note is that this system is intentionally trying to make the question of when to use your powers a difficult one with not always one right answer.

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 4:22 am

I just had a brainstorm. Get rid of the bonuses, turn them into drain penalties. Print the powers on the front of cards, and put penalties on the back or on a 180-flipped bar on the bottom of the card. So you have your hand of powers, and when you use a power, you flip it and put it in your penalty stack.

If you want to get really fancy, you can have bonuses on the "penalty" bar, for powers which are use-during-a-fight buffs or less-powerful powers which have a beneficial "drain".