MP

>a bland system wherein the spells are just different names on the same boring mechanic

As opposed to 3.5e which gave us fireball, ice ball, lightning ball, acid ball, fire cone, acid cone, lightning cone, ice cone... All scattered around at different levels with no fucking explaination as to why they should be different

in anima low mp causes you to be tired. acting like hp can differ by system but not mp is foolish

Hey guyz...what if...stick with me here...what if MP = HP?

better idea, what if mp=stamina and you gave both casters and martials a resource to work with

and then allowed martials to do cool things

This is a good idea a lot of systems use.

Unfortunately it makes a lot of D&D players mad. Martials aren't allowed to have nice things.

But martials can already do cool things. Look at all of this damage I'm doing. Do you see how much damage I'm doing? My damage is so big! I can do all of the damage!

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>Same applies to Vancian casting
No, you can run out of one kind of spell but have several other spells available.

Then everything magic has to be balanced against martial damage...and you end up with the blandness of 4E again.

Can you expand on this? Why exactly did you think 4e was bland?

Hardly true. You can get Melee classes powers or maneuvers or "Special called attacks" or what have you- without resorted to the extreme flattened level 4e used.

Unless you're a spontaneous caster. Or just prepare the optimal spells in all your slots.

They're not.

So which games use magic points (well)?

The main reason I object to a martial "stamina bar" is that I don't see why, having swung my sword in X way once, I can't do it again.

Cause you're tired.

Well, depending on the way the system is designed, you might be able to.

If it isn't, though, it's that the system isn't thinking about it in the same terms you are. Whether it's Book of Nine Swords style actually supernatural swordplay, or whether it's a straight up narrative abstraction, there are plenty of ways it can make sense, but not from within a purely simulation/realism perspective.

Do it how GURPS does it. All combat options are available, and fatigue can be spent on extra effort, which soups up your options for defense, offense, mobility, and control. If you want really fancy stuff, you can make powers that cost fatigue, like being able to jump great distances, throw things really far, channel your "martial might" into a bladestroke that lets it pierce solid rock, etc., and you have a decent amount of fatigue to start with (about six or seven uses per combat), and can just buy up your fatigue or get an energy reserve that doesn't fatigue you to power stuff with.

But there's no mechanical effect on my normal attacks, run speed, dodging ability, etc?

BRP based games for example, call of Cthulu and runequest. They also tend to have localized damage so PC aren't hp sponges.It also means it's a lot more lethal so your average player can be overwhelmed be mooks if he is stupid enough.

Because you get tired and expend your Ki, faglord.

A Stamina bar is far better than limiting martial powers by encounter like vancian spells.

Have Stam/MP Bar. Regen half on short rest. Full regen on long rest.

This. What about a martial who cuts the air so quickly, they create a vaccume blade? Or who can split iron and stone with a single strike, negating hardness or armor DR? Or split the earth? Or shout so loud it stuns nearby enemies or inflicts terror? Or who can brace and withstand the charge of a fully armored warhorse?

Running out of Stamina completly applies light encumberance to you. Fixed. Wooow.

Martial encounter abilities can work, it just needs to be in the right context. If you're not going full supernatural martial arts, then the way the system is set up needs to make it clear that it's a narrative abstraction.

Not everyone is okay with that sort of narrative mechanic, but I honestly prefer it. I think it creates variety and allows more interesting options rather than trying to balance spammable abilities against one another, which often just leads to using the same thing over and over. Yes, it's 'realistic', but it's less interesting game design wise and, at least for me and the groups I play with, means there's less interesting choices involved in combat.

Then again, I play in groups who dabble in storygames and boardgames, so taking cues from those two angles makes our acceptance of such mechanics make more sense, I suppose.

Holmes Basic didn't *provide* penalties for low hp, but it did tell the ref to dole them out.

>Because you get tired and expend your Ki, faglord.

Rude. I never said I objected to the idea of martials getting nice things or the powers of demigods. I just specifically object to the idea of making what should be mundane things rely on a stamina bar.

Like, I've got no problem with a martial's ability to cut a mountain in half being restricted by some kind of stamina bar. I'm less keen on letting stuff like tripping or sundering be subject to a stamina bar.

However the issue with NOT putting them on a stamina bar, if there is one, is that it's clunky from a game design perspective. Particularly if everything is supposed to be on basically the same system with the serial numbers filed off (martial stamina/arcane stamina/divine faith/roguish luck/whatever).

I implemented a very crude one for my players when we played with a few new people, and half of them were drunk. I thought it'd be easier than keeping track of days, and fit the scenario for the session well.
Ended up as just magic missile spam with an occasional turn for healing for the whole thing. I think if somebody spent the time to plan out it, it'd definitely work though.

Fine. Normal attacks, movement, and evasion now cost stamina.

Someone hosts shit garden parties

Wrong, this only happens if you take vancian casting and slap melee maneuvers on it.
Riddle of steel and it's family use a combat pool which refreshes completely every other round. And melee maneuvers have different activation costs. On top of that you choose how many of your dice you are throwing every time you choose a maneuver.
Magic works similar, but on a different time scale. Their spells take longer to complete than it takes for a melee character to make an attack, and the sorcery pool refreshes slower. But in turn magic is fucking powerful. Unless you have a javelin through your chest, of course.
Roughly speaking.

not exactly magic points but quite similar. See above

>I think if somebody spent the time to plan out it, it'd definitely work though.
Das schwarze Auge / The dark eye does do magic points. I have never looked much into the system though. Not sure how well it does it.

the two reasons are:
Tends to make vancian casters jealous
can be a pain to keep track of compared to vancian casters

dammit you've made me come up with a Magic Point system that works like a wound system now:
casters have 10 "minor" spell points plus one "major" spell point per caster level (max 8).
Minor spell points are used for 1st level spells and recharge after short rests.
major points recharge after a longer rest and are used for 2nd level+ spells. Those spells cost one major point per spell level -1, so a level 2 spell costs one major point, level 3 costs 2, 9th lvl costs 8 etc...

Once out of minor or major points, a caster can continue to cast spells, but each additional casting (regardless of spell level) gives them a negative penalty to casting rolls, and the caster must make mental fortitude saves (DC: spell level +10 +casting penalties); on successful rolls, they merely recieve the penalty, which are cumulative, but on a failure they get the penalty & gain a derangement.

Penalties are removed at the rate of one point per long rest, as do derangements.
So if a PC cast 4 spells past their spell point allotment and so had -4 penalty to casting and had failed their save throw 2 times and gotten two derangements, the next time they take a long rest they would awaken with only a -3 penalty and 1 derangement (derangements are removed in reverse order of obtaining them, so if a caster got madness1, then madness2, then madness3, madness3 would be removed in the next rest, then madness2, then madness1)

This is why I like the idea of settings that outright state the PC's are abnormal in some way. A game where everybody is a vampire uses blood powers to go superhuman. A game where someones a demi-god uses demigod powers to perform superhuman feats. A "human" uses mastery of the human body to be 100% efficient, and then be 110% efficient in their actions and movements, which the "normal" human body doesn't like, so they can only do it so often.

Sure there are other people like that around, and if you don't abuse your abilities then you might just be equivalent to normal, but it's easier than coming up with "okay, we need to give martial classes something at X level that transcends them above the others and says 'you are no longer one of the normal people' " (which honestly would be setting dependent most likely rather than something a generic system could do).

Because most of them allow you to cast more of powerful spells. It needs more book keeping and will make spell caster even more deadly.

They're only a bad idea in D&D/D20 systems. If your system has terrible spells like Magic Missile and awesome spells like Solid Fog spell points aren't going to work, because there are no amount of Magic Missiles that would be as impactful as one solid fog. Spell points work best in systems similar to Final Fantasy, where spells are simply improved versions of previous spells (fire->fira->firaga->firaja, poison->bio, etc)

This doesn't even need to be specific to the PC's. Wuxia settings have a universal assumption that mundane skill, through enough training, can achieve impossibly potent results, and that informs the scope and tone of the setting.

>the effect numbers can be easily crunched against the MP costs to derive optimal damage spells
As opposed to crunching the number for the optimal damage spell of that spell level?

Actually, with a MP system you could have more tactical options:
For example you could either do a Fire Cone for 5 MP and 6 DMG, Fireball for 10 MP and 10 DMG or a Meteor for 25 MP and 20 DMG or something like that.

But to be honest i am kinda playing devils advocate here, i myself prefer systems that are way lighter then that anyway.

That's called Vitality points. It was in 3.5 UA, and was the default in Star Wars d20.

I prefer setup abilities. So the more powerful the ability the more you need to do during combat to activate it. It may just cost you X actions to activate, maybe you must take a penalty to some of your stats or maybe it works like a combo power and you must activate some other abilities before you can use your trump card.

Set ups are nice ideas, but they can be very restrictive in terms of playstyle. Instead of weighing your options against the encounter, instead you'll always be trying to repeat the exact sequence to get to your big move.

I think the big asset of 1/encounter abilities is the opportunity cost they present. Because you can only do each big thing once, choosing to use it is a meaningful tactical choice, the implicit limitation making the decision more interesting. Stimulating interesting decisionmaking is, at least for me, one of the most important parts of a combat system.

They're actually fine, assuming there's a logical design to the system and magic has some limitations or drawbacks.

Check out Hackmaster 5E for a system that does it well. There's vancian casting for clerics, and spellpoints for mages. The spellpoints allow for the flexibility of amping up spells to get extra effects, as well as having the right spell for the job.

Speaking of tactical options, I once had a MP system where you multiplied the level of the spell by how powerful you wanted it to be, so you a mega-fireball to take down a giant might cost 40 MP while a small fire globe to take down a kobold might cost only 5 MP.

That presented a lot of tactical options in combat and strategic options in long-term resource management.

But it was a lot of paperwork.

>hp isn't meat points meme
Explain poison damage then

Because HP is an abstraction that includes meatpoint. It also includes luck, stamina, minor magical protections and anything else you'd care to fold under the umbrella of 'shit that lets you keep fighting'.

here. I have no idea why you pinged me, since I'm not even talking about D&D (hence "play more games"), but whatever.

>Explain poison damage then
D&D's game "designers" can't design something internally consistent to save their lives. They say that HP "represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck." If that were true, why doesn't Int or Wis add to HP? Only Constitution does. Why is Cure Wounds curing wounds, and not "Restore Fighting Spirit," or some other ham-fisted interpretation? Why can a level 10 fighter take 5 blows from a great axe before worrying about their low HP? It's a big fuzzy mess that's unsatisfying no matter how you look at it.

hp is stamina

Just kill yourself. 3.5 is best

HPs are the things anime characters have that keep them from getting broken bones when they get punched through buildings. You're not dead once they're gone, but you're winded and vulnerable.

>and then allowed martials to do cool things
Fuck your shit weeaboo. Martials shouldn't behave like an anime.

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>"Restore Fighting Spirit," or some other ham-fisted interpretation
and when they tried doing that, people had actual sperg outs for 10 years

in my last 3.5 game I gave my fighter Hero Charges that basically gave him a number of times a day where he could do something remarkable. Way overpower physical skill and ability checks, pull of crits at the right moment and make them more potent, get an extra move action so he could move and full attack, stuff like that. The player really liked it, and he thought it felt pretty powerful, but there weren't any full casters in the party to weigh against it.

It's such a shame. 4e was good, but it was cursed by more than just the ridiculous fanbase reaction, which was mostly based on lies and false assumptions.

>ignoring Roland, who cut a mountain in half with his sword
Nice magical sword.
>ignoring King Arthur killing a thousand men with a sword strike
Nice magical sword.
>ignoring Heracles shooting a arrow at the fucking sun
Nice magical bow.
>ignoring Thor flattening a mountain with a hammer blow
Nice magical hammer.
And some of those are literally anime. Gilgamesh, Lancelot, King Arthuria. Are all anime.

Die, weeaboo scum. My Glock 37 can kill all of those meme characters, some of them are even literally whos

>And some of those are literally anime. Gilgamesh, Lancelot, King Arthuria. Are all anime.

3/10 got me up until then

>Nice magical bow.

Hercule's bow is never stated to be magic in his myths. Heck, it barely gets any mention at all outside of Herc doing impressive things with it and it being too heavy for most men to use.

It's fucking tragic, because 4e was a real step forward for D&D, and 5e is twelve steps back.

Also, I just remembered something else that'll make people endlessly confused (e.g. poison):
>Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways.
>When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit
>point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When
>you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs
>of wear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you
>to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or
>other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious.

Why didn't they make this fluff represented mechanically in the system, like bloodied did in 4e? Why does poison work before you're at a certain threshold of HP if there's typically no signs of injury? Why not have poison kill you outright like it did in the older editions, or do attribute damage, or literally anything else? Who knows! Can't have good game design and gotta pander to a crowd we lost a decade ago to an even shittier version of our game.

If it was a regular bow, Hercules would have broken it with his bare hands, come on bruh

So Hercule's wife was also magic because he didn't break her? How many +s did she have?

There is a hard limit on what you can do and track with pen and paper before it gets easier just to go full digital

>If your system has terrible spells like Magic Missile and awesome spells like Solid Fog spell points aren't going to work, because there are no amount of Magic Missiles that would be as impactful as one solid fog.
Until you first run into a ghost.

What do you mean by that? Is it too hard for you to remember to halve move and doge at 1/3 or less HP? Do you need a computer to do that for you?

>Spell points work best in systems similar to Final Fantasy, where spells are simply improved versions of previous spells (fire->fira->firaga->firaja, poison->bio, etc)
Until you get retarded balancing issues like spell point inefficiency across spells where a stronger spell is less efficient then just spamming lower level spells, or using a big spell is always better than using a smaller spell as long as you have the spell points to spend.

Me? maybe

Jonny averageplayer? possibly

The lowest common denominator that must be designed around least your venture fail? Absolutely

You know its true. Any complexity haemorrhages players

>leaving a bleeding injury or>other trauma
Got a table for that? Post injury tables. The ones I have seen go from bruises to death, and that's no fun

The sad part is that I know it's true. I've had the misfortune of playing Pathfinder with several people, not one, that didn't know how to roll their attacks. And they had played in multiple sessions of it.

Fuck no. I don't play D&D. I just bitch about it when people accuse me of playing it. If you want injury tables, go play the abortion that is Dark Heresy and its ilk. Savage Worlds also has a decent injury table.

>go play the abortion that is Dark Heresy
Or I can just check their pdf and steal the table.

Thanks, gonna look up the catalog.

Slots are like capitalism. They're not perfect, and they don't always work, but it's the best we've got.

I imagine there's a way to let people cast their spells infinitely by forcing them to hyper focus on 1 school and disregard all others

how about slots + magic points?

So make mountain-cutting cost a significant amount of stamina and tripping cost a small amount, but have basic attacks cost nothing. Basically the idea is that only special maneuvers cost resources. Then you just have to define what counts as a maneuver and what doesn't.

You might not like it but stupid tends to win. You cannot ever assume little enough about your fellow man. To be more blunt and possibly more cruel. If second edition is so perfect why are we on 5th?

At least the dumbing down is spread out

5e sorcerer does this and the system is pretty cool, but sorcerer blows. If you don't know, they use slots to cast spells and points to modify them. They just need more options and access to a few more spells known and they'd be great.

Or to be the playtest sorcerer, which was a fucking awesome idea that I'm still mad they got rid of.

How about you just outlaw casters then?
Or add weapon breakdown to meele?

You know how seemingly too many people will horde items in rpgs? Never use one of their 99 stack of buff or healing items. Add MP and slots and your wizards will simply horde most of their spells. Every round will be a nightmare trying to convince yours that its not a waste to spend his precious MP on any given fight when the GM could drop something worse any second.

Or to use a more /v/ example. Dragon age mages used mana and CD's for their spells. Nothing is worse then auto-attacking as a fucking caster because your magical powers are out of breath

I never looked at the playtest sorc. Got a link or pdf or something?

>being this mad
Casters have to be nerfed, this is FACT

>can be a pain to keep track of compared to vancian casters
I find it easier to keep track of one MP number than to keep track of several different numbers for several different spells. "Okay, I have 75 MP left" is much simpler than "Okay, I have 4 Magic Missiles, 2 Hastes, 1 Stoneflesh, 5 Greases, and 1 Improved Invisibility."

I don't see how that's functionally different from using mana/stamina/whatever for more mundane maneuvers. It's just flavored differently.

I don't have it unfortunately, but tl;dr they used an MP system for spellcasting, and unlocked traits as they spent MP.

The playtest example was the Dragon Sorc, where spending MP on spells also let them unlock passive draconic manifestations that lasted until the end of the day, shifting gears from a full spellcaster to a decent second line fighter, meaning even when you'd spent all your resources you still had a role and some cool things you could do.

It was a really cool idea for giving them a very distinct identity and playstyle compared to wizards that was entirely abandoned.

Perhaps. I would support dragging them closer to something like clerics. You want the wizard to be less of a party-ending god? Allow him to do something other then die when removed from his spells. Veeky Forums rarely gives ideas here. Only bleeding anus punishments, you don't want class balance, you want casters to be worthless until 10th edition because petty revenge

The problem with Wizards is that they don't actually have a role or identity beyond 'do magic', and 'do magic' might as well be 'do anything'.

It's why more limited casters in D&D tend to work a lot better, because they have a stronger identity, a smaller but more thematic and focused spell list and features to support that. You're able to build them to be interesting in themselves rather than the bland and overpowered mess you get.

I think fixing Wizards particularly very much starts with nailing down an identify for them that's both more interesting and more limiting than just 'do magic'.

Poison makes you tired -> reduces fighting spirit.

See that actually makes sense. I might suggest simply rolling a lot of the more support oriented magical sub-classes back into wizard. The caster should be utility backed up by a few hard hitting murdercasts. Sure he might be as good as a dedicated trap whore, might be a tier 2 face vs a social character but that's the point.

"Wizards use magic and wit to support their allies and help direct the flow of events"

The wizard identity should be that of a magical everyman. Able to tune his study and spells to cover a groups shortcomings. Leave DPS magic to the sorc or warlock

That kinda infringes Bards niche, though. Then again, I've never quite been sure D&D blends Bard and hedge-mage together.

For D&D, not that wizards are crazy broken anymore.
Drops wizards completely.
Break it down into Conjurer, Evoker, Diviner, etc, they can only naturally learn spells of the school they know.
Create a series of Minor School feats that allow them to have lower level spells of their minor schools available to them.

As for not dying in combat when out of spells, give them a class feature that lets them bind a spell to a weapon and as long as it's bound that weapon deals increased damage. The bound wouldn't count as a spell/day, more of just a permanent weapon enchant that can be swapped around and have different effects.

I'm just throwing shit out there. I think the biggest thing is a focus on a particular school above all others.

>The problem with Wizards is that they don't actually have a role or identity beyond 'do magic', and 'do magic' might as well be 'do anything'.
The real problem here is that magic in D&D doesn't really have well defined (or any) limitations. There's pretty much nothing you CAN'T do with magic if you're high enough level and have access to the right spell.

>It needs more book keeping
How does MP need more bookkeeping than Vancian spell slots? It's a single number. You've got your list of spells, their mana costs, and your total mana. Cast a spell, subtract the mana cost. Very simple.

>Until you get retarded balancing issues like spell point inefficiency across spells where a stronger spell is less efficient then just spamming lower level spells
But if you're fighting something tough, you may not have time to throw ten low-level spells at it before it kills you. You need to hit it with two high-level spells instead.

>or using a big spell is always better than using a smaller spell as long as you have the spell points to spend.
"Using the best ability you have is always the best choice as long as you can spare the resources" would be true in any system.

there's a lot of class overlap right now. With generalist taken by other classes the mage kinda has to go full ham into spell domination. I would say push for -broad- architypes with plenty of customisation. bit I donno how I feel about a world where druid, bard, sorc, wizard, warlock, thuge and Other magic heavy classes are all developed out from the umbrella "mage" category

People would complain about being pigeonholed, discriminated against and "NPC wizards don't have to do this!" and those complaints matter- as trash as they might be.

I do support the idea of swapping out a familiar for some kind of basic magical weapon. Wizard wont be cutting niggers up but his floating blade would at least do consistent damage and require attention to control when spells are exausted

"But I might need it later!" is a problem in any system with any kind of limited or consumable resource.

>Or to use a more /v/ example. Dragon age mages used mana and CD's for their spells. Nothing is worse then auto-attacking as a fucking caster because your magical powers are out of breath
I'd say that depends. Am I forced to autoattack with a melee weapon or a crossbow, or can I autoattack with a magic staff that shoots generic magic blasts and that only mages can use? If it's the latter, I'm okay with it. How does Dragon Age do it? I bought it recently in a GOG sale but still haven't played it.

>For D&D, not that wizards are crazy broken anymore.
>Drops wizards completely.
>Break it down into Conjurer, Evoker, Diviner, etc, they can only naturally learn spells of the school they know.
>Create a series of Minor School feats that allow them to have lower level spells of their minor schools available to them.
I think that would work quite well. People could still do what they want with wizards as long as what they want to do isn't "everything", and it would go a long way toward fixing the balance issues.

>As for not dying in combat when out of spells, give them a class feature that lets them bind a spell to a weapon and as long as it's bound that weapon deals increased damage. The bound wouldn't count as a spell/day, more of just a permanent weapon enchant that can be swapped around and have different effects.
Also a good idea, but increased damage doesn't help if you never hit, and a wizard's stats aren't usually conducive to hitting things with weapons.

"Using the best ability you have is always the best choice as long as you can spare the resources" would be true in any system
There is a difference between "always most efficient" like use 5 SP to deal 30 damage vs spend 4 to deal 20 and a more circumstantial "Enemies cannot move" vs "enemies can move but they take damage when they do it"
The former is the kind most videogames go for, which is the source of my criticism.