5e's resource-management system is silly, unfun gameplay that forces DMs and players to act as adversaries instead of allies. It's time to abolish and replace it.
First, Will points seem to be another version of Stamina points and the like that we saw in some of the 3/3.5 and Pathfinder 1E optional rules and which was a core part of D20 Star Wars and Starfinder. Lots of other systems have had a version of it too. I think it's a good idea, though I do think that the massive amount of healing available in baseline 5E kinda made it a moot point. Under your proposed system it seems like PCs would be going into almost every encounter at max capacity, which does seem to be what a lot of groups gravitate toward. But if that's the goal, why not just say PCs start every encounter topped off?
Second, I don't see how this prevents casters from going nova at all, in fact I would argue it encourages it. Even if some spells are Long Rest and some of Short Rest, you are still dramatically increasing the casting capacity of any caster. Why wouldn't they go nova on every encounter if they know they can just rest for 5 minutes and get the majority of their spells back?
Third, this increases combat length rather dramatically as you're increasing everything's hit points without increasing the capacity for damage dealing. Doing some of the cool things we want to do in combat is even harder now because enemies have a big pool of Will points that have to be hacked through first before you even do real damage. Downing a low HP monster in one hit becomes much rarer like this. And ultimate the party is going to spend more resources on each encounter to resolve it. It seems like this would encourage players to be more frivolous with their resources and less likely to retreat from combat or try to find another way to resolve an encounter because they can go so much longer and know they can get the majority of their resources back after every encounter.
Finally, tieing HP healing to HD I think is inherently limiting, as the max healing any character can receive in a day is basically equal to their HP (assuming all rolls are average). This ultimately caps how many encounters a group can have in a day far more than the RAW rest system does I think. Fighter types for instance tend to take far more damage than anyone else and to need the most healing. It's not unusual in the typical adventuring day for a front liner to have taken many times more damage than their max HP over the course of the day thanks to healing. Now, you've limited how many encounters a melee type can have and made them a resource sink; RAW they have a pool of healing to draw upon from their allies' spells in addition to their HD that could be used in a short rest, under your proposed system now both of those resources are limited by the other and use each other, meaning that fighter types have LESS of the primary resource they need for adventuring over the course of a day than they do raw. One possible way to address this is to switch Will Points and Hit Points; make Will Points the much larger total and Hit Points much smaller. That would make HP damage less frequent but also far more dire, and would make HD much less limiting to how many encounters melee types could have.
I hope you don't take my critiques in the wrong spirit, I find this fascinating and enjoy exploring this topic and your insights into it:)
Thanks for reading and for leaving your thoughts! Let me go through these; I really appreciate the commentary. :)
Will Points: The reason why PCs don't start every encounter topped off is because the goal is for encounters to slowly wear them down over the course of the day, unless the PCs play intelligently enough to avoid this (e.g., using defensive spells, staging tactical retreats, or fleeing from combat before their WP can be entirely depleted). I enjoy tactical, strategic gameplay, which I feel this style of play promotes in contrast to RAW.
Going Nova: The problem with going nova isn't that casters cast spells; it's that casters cast duplicates of their highest-level spells. "Going nova" means three fireballs—not one fireball, a mirror image, and a shield. This rework removes their capability to spend three fireballs in one place, which means going nova is no longer an option.
Combat Length: You'd think so, but the reason why combat length stays the same is that RAW 5e DMs usually rely on Hard and Deadly encounters to give their players a meaningful challenge. However, once you remove the ability for players to go nova, Hard and Deadly encounters (I've found) become actually hard and deadly, respectively. As a result, you can start using Medium or Hard encounters to give players the same challenge that a Hard or Deadly encounter used to. Instead of eight goblins, the PCs are facing five or six. That means fewer hit points, and will points mostly make up the difference. As a result, a Hard encounter that used to take two or three rounds is now taking around four or five rounds without overstaying its welcome.
Tying Healing to HD: Obviously it'll take some playtesting. But I strongly suspect that—both since WP regenerate fully on a short rest, martials are getting more out of magical healing than they used to, and low-level magical healing is only limited by the number of hit dice (of which PCs have twice as many compared to RAW)—it'll be largely a wash.
Ultimately, it'll come down to playtesting, and I'm excited to see where it goes!
So rest system doesn't inherently reduce the ability of a caster to nova, it's the nerfing of the spell slot system that you propose later in the article that does. That makes the earlier assertion when just talking about recovering spell slots on a short rest not really make sense in context until you get to the end of the article.
On that note, I think the spell slots revamp nerfs casters too much. I don't see a big difference between a character casting fireball every round and casting their highest level damaging spell each round; they'll have a lower average damage output, and enemies will have more hits they can take due to will points, which again seems to incentivize the casters to just dump all their spell slots into the highest damage dealing spell they have available that encounter because this system penalizes them for trying to use variety with their spells and to use non-combat oriented spells. They essentially have to spend more resources to be less effective, and they lose the option for versatility in combat because now everytime they don't cast their highest level damaging spell it is setting them back in the resource attrition race even more. If you're choice is hold person or sound burst, this revamp heavily incentivises the damage dealing AOE spells over almost any other choice because your spell slots in a combat encounter are so limited now that you don't get another shot if someone makes their save or you use a non-damaging spell. Better to cast a spell that does some damage on a successful save stil than to risk one that can fail entirely on one roll.
I think the extra time spent in combat is more significant than you give it credit for. By your own admission, it can 50% longer or more. That makes everyone's actions feel less impactful, and that is a very significant increase in the amount of time that has to be spent in each combat encounter. That means that overall you will be seeing less combat encounters in a session, and combat will dominate the time compared to the other pillars of play. I feel like this leans into some of the same issues that existed with 4E's combat, where an average encounter of medium difficulty could sometimes take 15 rounds. Ultimately our players want their actions and decisions in an encounter to feel meaningful, and DMs want the encounter and enemies to feel meaningful in some way to the players (even if that meaning is that these are a bunch of minions you can plow through with ease), and when encounters take longer and when enemies take more hits and resources to overcome then everyone's actions feel less meaningful and impactful.
Something I brought up when talking about this on the Inspiration Point discord was why not just ditch all the extra math and give parties a recovery pool (Healing Surges or whatever) to draw from based on number of PCs plus their proficiency modifier? Let casters recover spell slots up to their proficiency mod or something, and let all classes spend HD to recharge some of their long rest abilities? You could also make popping back up from 0 with healing during combat cost a HD from the healed character, limiting those kind of jack in the box shenanigans.
Good point about the interplay between the rest system and spell-slot changes; I'll edit the article to clarify that.
You're right about save-or-suck spells being more risky, but that was always a risk in RAW 5e. Moreover, in RAW 5e, fizzling on a save-or-suck spell means that you have to dip into next encounter's resources; under my changes, you just switch to a lower-level spell slot and play slightly more tactically. (Remember, you still have that WP shield.) Non-damage spells are actually more impactful, not less, because they protect you from losing HP if your WP gets too low, which is important to ensure long-term survivability.
I think you're still missing my point regarding combat length. Because casters can't go nova, encounters are more difficult. As such, instead of using a Hard encounter, the DM can use a Medium encounter to provide the same experience. For example, a 2nd-level Medium encounter of five wolves (50 HP + 30 WP) in my system has almost exactly the same number of total health as a Hard encounter of seven wolves (77 HP) in the RAW system.
To test this, I ran simulations on two versions of the same Medium encounter (three wolves) against the same party of three 2nd-level PCs under identical conditions. Assuming both parties make the same attacks and cast the same spells, the first party uses 33% of their daily resources, ending the encounter after two rounds, while the second party uses none of their daily resources and ends the encounter after three rounds. In both cases, the PCs lose 0 HP, though the second party loses 12 WP.)
Does the second encounter take slightly longer? Sure, but it's not an enormous amount longer. Plus, the first encounter's party used more of their daily resources, which makes it reasonable for their encounter to end more quickly. (They "nova'd" out.) Plus, as I mentioned above, a Medium encounter under my system is more difficult than a Medium encounter in RAW (which is basically a speed bump); as such, it makes sense that it would take longer. (It'd be more appropriate to compare it to a RAW Hard encounter, which would very likely take at least three rounds.)
I'm not really a fan of a recovery pool, because I prefer having each PC regain their resources in a vacuum compared to the others. It also wouldn't solve the problem of the standard adventuring day or the martial/caster disparity.
Given the number of times I discuss how much I'm borrowing from 4e, I don't think I'm hiding anything!
I prefer to think of it as a fusion of 4e and 5e, mixing 5e's accessibility, feature design, and natural language with 4e's encounter-based gameplay loop. I think the resulting product is comfortably 70% 5e and 30% 4e, all things considered.
Very interesting. Only if I have to change the main basics of the system it is better to change to another system already. I like DnD but I don't have the strength to fix it all the time anymore.
Very interesting and thought provoking ideas.
Is this just a theory or did you have a chance to playtest it? I am curious to hear actual feedback from players and DMs that tried this.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed. And I haven't had a chance to playtest it, no - I've mostly been focusing my attention on CR2.0 over the past two years.
Few initial thoughts.
First, Will points seem to be another version of Stamina points and the like that we saw in some of the 3/3.5 and Pathfinder 1E optional rules and which was a core part of D20 Star Wars and Starfinder. Lots of other systems have had a version of it too. I think it's a good idea, though I do think that the massive amount of healing available in baseline 5E kinda made it a moot point. Under your proposed system it seems like PCs would be going into almost every encounter at max capacity, which does seem to be what a lot of groups gravitate toward. But if that's the goal, why not just say PCs start every encounter topped off?
Second, I don't see how this prevents casters from going nova at all, in fact I would argue it encourages it. Even if some spells are Long Rest and some of Short Rest, you are still dramatically increasing the casting capacity of any caster. Why wouldn't they go nova on every encounter if they know they can just rest for 5 minutes and get the majority of their spells back?
Third, this increases combat length rather dramatically as you're increasing everything's hit points without increasing the capacity for damage dealing. Doing some of the cool things we want to do in combat is even harder now because enemies have a big pool of Will points that have to be hacked through first before you even do real damage. Downing a low HP monster in one hit becomes much rarer like this. And ultimate the party is going to spend more resources on each encounter to resolve it. It seems like this would encourage players to be more frivolous with their resources and less likely to retreat from combat or try to find another way to resolve an encounter because they can go so much longer and know they can get the majority of their resources back after every encounter.
Finally, tieing HP healing to HD I think is inherently limiting, as the max healing any character can receive in a day is basically equal to their HP (assuming all rolls are average). This ultimately caps how many encounters a group can have in a day far more than the RAW rest system does I think. Fighter types for instance tend to take far more damage than anyone else and to need the most healing. It's not unusual in the typical adventuring day for a front liner to have taken many times more damage than their max HP over the course of the day thanks to healing. Now, you've limited how many encounters a melee type can have and made them a resource sink; RAW they have a pool of healing to draw upon from their allies' spells in addition to their HD that could be used in a short rest, under your proposed system now both of those resources are limited by the other and use each other, meaning that fighter types have LESS of the primary resource they need for adventuring over the course of a day than they do raw. One possible way to address this is to switch Will Points and Hit Points; make Will Points the much larger total and Hit Points much smaller. That would make HP damage less frequent but also far more dire, and would make HD much less limiting to how many encounters melee types could have.
I hope you don't take my critiques in the wrong spirit, I find this fascinating and enjoy exploring this topic and your insights into it:)
Thanks for reading and for leaving your thoughts! Let me go through these; I really appreciate the commentary. :)
Will Points: The reason why PCs don't start every encounter topped off is because the goal is for encounters to slowly wear them down over the course of the day, unless the PCs play intelligently enough to avoid this (e.g., using defensive spells, staging tactical retreats, or fleeing from combat before their WP can be entirely depleted). I enjoy tactical, strategic gameplay, which I feel this style of play promotes in contrast to RAW.
Going Nova: The problem with going nova isn't that casters cast spells; it's that casters cast duplicates of their highest-level spells. "Going nova" means three fireballs—not one fireball, a mirror image, and a shield. This rework removes their capability to spend three fireballs in one place, which means going nova is no longer an option.
Combat Length: You'd think so, but the reason why combat length stays the same is that RAW 5e DMs usually rely on Hard and Deadly encounters to give their players a meaningful challenge. However, once you remove the ability for players to go nova, Hard and Deadly encounters (I've found) become actually hard and deadly, respectively. As a result, you can start using Medium or Hard encounters to give players the same challenge that a Hard or Deadly encounter used to. Instead of eight goblins, the PCs are facing five or six. That means fewer hit points, and will points mostly make up the difference. As a result, a Hard encounter that used to take two or three rounds is now taking around four or five rounds without overstaying its welcome.
Tying Healing to HD: Obviously it'll take some playtesting. But I strongly suspect that—both since WP regenerate fully on a short rest, martials are getting more out of magical healing than they used to, and low-level magical healing is only limited by the number of hit dice (of which PCs have twice as many compared to RAW)—it'll be largely a wash.
Ultimately, it'll come down to playtesting, and I'm excited to see where it goes!
So rest system doesn't inherently reduce the ability of a caster to nova, it's the nerfing of the spell slot system that you propose later in the article that does. That makes the earlier assertion when just talking about recovering spell slots on a short rest not really make sense in context until you get to the end of the article.
On that note, I think the spell slots revamp nerfs casters too much. I don't see a big difference between a character casting fireball every round and casting their highest level damaging spell each round; they'll have a lower average damage output, and enemies will have more hits they can take due to will points, which again seems to incentivize the casters to just dump all their spell slots into the highest damage dealing spell they have available that encounter because this system penalizes them for trying to use variety with their spells and to use non-combat oriented spells. They essentially have to spend more resources to be less effective, and they lose the option for versatility in combat because now everytime they don't cast their highest level damaging spell it is setting them back in the resource attrition race even more. If you're choice is hold person or sound burst, this revamp heavily incentivises the damage dealing AOE spells over almost any other choice because your spell slots in a combat encounter are so limited now that you don't get another shot if someone makes their save or you use a non-damaging spell. Better to cast a spell that does some damage on a successful save stil than to risk one that can fail entirely on one roll.
I think the extra time spent in combat is more significant than you give it credit for. By your own admission, it can 50% longer or more. That makes everyone's actions feel less impactful, and that is a very significant increase in the amount of time that has to be spent in each combat encounter. That means that overall you will be seeing less combat encounters in a session, and combat will dominate the time compared to the other pillars of play. I feel like this leans into some of the same issues that existed with 4E's combat, where an average encounter of medium difficulty could sometimes take 15 rounds. Ultimately our players want their actions and decisions in an encounter to feel meaningful, and DMs want the encounter and enemies to feel meaningful in some way to the players (even if that meaning is that these are a bunch of minions you can plow through with ease), and when encounters take longer and when enemies take more hits and resources to overcome then everyone's actions feel less meaningful and impactful.
Something I brought up when talking about this on the Inspiration Point discord was why not just ditch all the extra math and give parties a recovery pool (Healing Surges or whatever) to draw from based on number of PCs plus their proficiency modifier? Let casters recover spell slots up to their proficiency mod or something, and let all classes spend HD to recharge some of their long rest abilities? You could also make popping back up from 0 with healing during combat cost a HD from the healed character, limiting those kind of jack in the box shenanigans.
Good point about the interplay between the rest system and spell-slot changes; I'll edit the article to clarify that.
You're right about save-or-suck spells being more risky, but that was always a risk in RAW 5e. Moreover, in RAW 5e, fizzling on a save-or-suck spell means that you have to dip into next encounter's resources; under my changes, you just switch to a lower-level spell slot and play slightly more tactically. (Remember, you still have that WP shield.) Non-damage spells are actually more impactful, not less, because they protect you from losing HP if your WP gets too low, which is important to ensure long-term survivability.
I think you're still missing my point regarding combat length. Because casters can't go nova, encounters are more difficult. As such, instead of using a Hard encounter, the DM can use a Medium encounter to provide the same experience. For example, a 2nd-level Medium encounter of five wolves (50 HP + 30 WP) in my system has almost exactly the same number of total health as a Hard encounter of seven wolves (77 HP) in the RAW system.
To test this, I ran simulations on two versions of the same Medium encounter (three wolves) against the same party of three 2nd-level PCs under identical conditions. Assuming both parties make the same attacks and cast the same spells, the first party uses 33% of their daily resources, ending the encounter after two rounds, while the second party uses none of their daily resources and ends the encounter after three rounds. In both cases, the PCs lose 0 HP, though the second party loses 12 WP.)
Does the second encounter take slightly longer? Sure, but it's not an enormous amount longer. Plus, the first encounter's party used more of their daily resources, which makes it reasonable for their encounter to end more quickly. (They "nova'd" out.) Plus, as I mentioned above, a Medium encounter under my system is more difficult than a Medium encounter in RAW (which is basically a speed bump); as such, it makes sense that it would take longer. (It'd be more appropriate to compare it to a RAW Hard encounter, which would very likely take at least three rounds.)
I'm not really a fan of a recovery pool, because I prefer having each PC regain their resources in a vacuum compared to the others. It also wouldn't solve the problem of the standard adventuring day or the martial/caster disparity.
You are going to a lot of trouble to re-invent 4e, without letting on that you are re-inventing 4e.
Given the number of times I discuss how much I'm borrowing from 4e, I don't think I'm hiding anything!
I prefer to think of it as a fusion of 4e and 5e, mixing 5e's accessibility, feature design, and natural language with 4e's encounter-based gameplay loop. I think the resulting product is comfortably 70% 5e and 30% 4e, all things considered.
Very interesting. Only if I have to change the main basics of the system it is better to change to another system already. I like DnD but I don't have the strength to fix it all the time anymore.