Is there any good way to handle recharge/refresh-based resource

>>48673964
The best answer is typically using a variety of refresh rates based on potency, or a unified pool with a set recharge rate - like RQ 6 letting a GM define the refresh of a magic point pool recharging once per hour or only when there is a ritual sacrifice.

>>48674054

"Per hour" is the same as "per day," where you have characters sitting around just to recharge abilities.

"Per hour" and "per day" also make certain kinds of adventures, the "one meaningful event a day" kind, much easier than others for no good reason. Resource management in a sandbox is a joke this way.

One of my favorite games uses a 2D6 + Attribute roll for tests, with the option to let you bank 6's (instead of adding them to the roll) to recharge a general pool that you can use to power a lot of abilities.

It works in that game because it's fairly structured and you can't just roll whenever you feel like it, and I like that it often makes it a choice between failing the roll and recovering your power points. This obviously won't work in a lot of other games, but I think it's a really creative idea.

>>48674385

What game is this:?

>>48674146
Oh, so you're just retarded. Got it.

>>48673964
Once/combat encounter just incentivizes combat and means non-combat abilities act funky. It leads to like "sorry dude I can't climb the wall because we haven't engaged in battle yet but once we do that I will immediately be able to do it again with no internal or coherent consistency because sometimes battles are 2 mins apart, sometimes 2 weeks"
It's also literally 'X recharges after Y number of battles' but x is 'everything' and 'y' is 1.
So that's out.

Everything else you said are fair problems and I don't much like those methods for what you said.

Per hour/per day was listed by >>48674146 as being the same as they're both time based - it's just a dial. Day vs hour changes the pacing of the game, "per day" DOES has the +logic of "I need to rest for 8 hrs because that shit is exhausting" but this can be weird with like "I can cast this spell once but I'll be too exhausted to do it again, but I can do this equally hard task because I'm not too exhausted for it" so that can be weird.

IMO I think mostly recharge based will inevitably be goofy/weird, which is why I prefer stuff based off character activity, eg consuming mana potions, siphoning off energy from their soul or the environment (although HP/fatigue can be a masked form of time-based, since they usually replenish HP/fatigue over time), stealing energy/life force from others, etc.

My favorite method is riskier magic eg the 40k RPGs - cast as much as you once, but eventually demons/explosion

>>48675947
cont
40k has it so every time you cast a spell (some of them have it so the TN for all spells is the same [for some reason], some have it so they differ which means you need more dice so more chance of badness) there's a chance of a bad thing happening (it might be "it gets chilly", or it might be "daemons appear seeking blood", etc).
Savage Worlds no power points has it so you can cast your spell with harder ones being harder to pull off, and failing to pull em off means you take backlash, which hurts you.


Alternatively, you can be insane with abilities: Nothing costs anything. Everything is just an ability you trigger as an action (or maybe it takes 1+ turns? although this has the downside of your action being "I charge")
Of course, everything else probably has to balanced around the idea of such a thing, but it's possible.
This no-cost also limits you a bit (eg you can't have really have an ability spawn meteors endlessly) so you'd need a mechanic that lets that stuff happen (grand rituals? rare/expensive scrolls? I dunno), but at least that can be the exception not necessarily the norm.


Or you can take a cue from some vidya games and wholeheartedly use action points. You got 10 AP. One ability cost all 10, or these weaker ones cost 4, and of course moving costs 2, so.... I'd really be interested in knowing of such a game if anybody knows one

Also I'm assuming this is related to magic-y stuff, so sorry about that. I may have gotten off your intended topic.

>>48675947
>means non-combat abilities act funky

Non-combat abilities shouldn't work on the same refresh.

>>48676196
Got anything in mind?

>>48676346
At-will or bust.

>>48673964
>per day
>characters sitting around and waiting for the next day to recharge their important powers
If you're trying to put the pressure on you shouldn't be allowing them to rest that easily. Make them fight for their rest, draining their powers more. No full recoveries, a limited amount or roll for it a la >>48674385
Numenera/Cypher has alright recovery rules too. You really feel it when even after a full day's rest you're not back up to full strength.

>X per session
This usually works fine as long as 1) you adjust it to suit the usual time/pacing of your sessions and 2) there are some other ways get resources back. Beginning a session at full resources is great though, sets the pace. Unless you're finishing off a cliffhanger, of course
> other stuff
Is just variations on the above.

>>48676196
Non-combat and combat should draw on the same resources. Makes pacing better that after blowing your resource load in one scene you're struggling with the next, whatever those two scenes are

>>48676575

The Cypher system still ultimately boils down to "time-elapsed recovery." While that can work for some games, such as traditional "eventful day" and "dungeon crawl" scenarios, there are many formats of adventures wherein it simply does not work.

A domain management game that "zooms in" on notable events that might take place days apart from one another.
A hexcrawl or sandbox where encounters might likewise occur days apart.
A seafaring or spacefaring game that goes from island to island or planet to planet, and events likewise have long stretches of time between them.

These are completely valid adventure formats whose pacing can severely undermine time-elapse-based recharge.

>Non-combat and combat should draw on the same resources.
I strongly disagree, but then, I am a strong proponent of the siloing of noncombat and combat character creation resources, so this is something we will never agree on.

2hf is this related to your strike thing? it can't be unless you're deciding to add such mechanics to strike?

>>48677383
I think the important distinction to make is that instead of "time" based recovery you have "opportunity" based recovery.

So you can recover you finances, hunt more food or repair you hull in a week IF you have the time to spend doing that and nothing else AND you have the means (trade goods, arrows and wildlife, a spacedock). Since its so situation-based there's not much point putting more mechanics to it other than "roll for it" or w/e, but the onus is on the GM to ensure the PCs narratively fulfil the requirements of recovery.

Again, to really capitalise on resource management, you need to have more costs and opportunities than the players' resources can possible take advantage of. Show them that time spent recovering is time in which their quarry escapes, that their enemies grow stronger, that their other resources dwindle.

So its more a matter of good storytelling than bean-counting mechanics.

Stop avatarposting you atrocious weeb

>>48677646

I am not entirely sure that the idea of "refreshing resources always costs an opportunity."

In games with "per day," "per session," "per episode," or whatnot, it is theoretically possible to have an adventure wherein the players intelligently ration out their resources such that they overcome all of their challenges but are tapped out by the end of the day/session/episode. Then, they can relax and engage the next day/session/episode fresh and recharged. The opportunity cost is clear: they had to conserve their abilities throughout gameplay, perhaps causing a rough spot or two.

If an additional cost was placed on them just to recover their resources, then all of their rationing of resources is met with an additional cost for no good reason.

>>48678030
Of course recovery has to cost something, if recovery is free and without consequence you can recovery whenever you like. Mid-battle, whenever. Stipulating "per whatever" is a cost, you're using up your one "recover resources" resource for that period.

You haven't thought about this at all.

Here is an idea.

Abilities refresh when six "progress marks" are accumulated. These are usually handed out at the end of a challenging scene. This need not sync up with actual sessions, adventure arcs, or in-game days; it is simply a matter of letting players see how close they are to refreshing their abilities, thereby allowing them to better manage their resources.

This can, of course, be undermined by a GM who is stingy with progress marks, but that is no different from a GM being stingy with in-game passage of time or "episodes." This, at least, gives players a vague heads-up on how to parcel out resources.

How might this work out?

>>48674146
>where you have characters sitting around just to recharge abilities.
Random encounters exist to stop this sort of shit.

Recharge by mana points spent on abilities. Mana points are handed out by the GM, who knows how much is appropriate.

>>48679558

>Of course recovery has to cost something

There is no point in stipulating that the act of recovery itself *must* cost something if there is already a heavy opportunity cost associated with parceling out character resources rather than going all-out with a nova.

>>48679611
>that is no different from a GM being stingy with in-game passage of time or "episodes."
Well this is really the problem being confronted here overall. Any system can be maliciously interpreted against the players, so trying to build one that 'prevents' that is an exercise in futility AND will exclude plenty of good systems for not being "tough" enough.

as I see it, the best sort of recovery system would be one that leaves as little room as possible for a GM to ACCIDENTALLY screw over their players through misinterpretation of the rules.

>>48679649
>hey let's analyse game design feature X
>there's no point being explicit about what we're talking about, let's just assume everyone is working from the same knowledge base and axioms
Nah, do let's.

The opportunity to refresh is a meta-resource, which is many systems is monopolised by the GM. If you want some player control over that, give players control over the story and hence when they have opportunity to refresh. Meta-currency like Fate points can do this.
>when does your meta-resources that you use to refresh your resources refresh?
It just keeps happening. Fate does have most of its rules dedicate to the Fate point economy for a reason.

>>48679611
>progress marks
I don't see how it's any different to any other method of a GM determining when resources are refreshed.

>>48679725
RPGs are inherently unbalanced since the GM is omnipotent, by the social contract you sign up for when agreeing to play. It's much more effective to educate GMs about how to run their games to be fun and not to be dickbags than to try and create straitjacket rules. Distributing the GM's power with narrative rules like I mentioned above with Fate is another way, but it changes the type of game you're playing dramatically and introduces a host of other problems too.

>>48679725

It is hardly impossible to be *unintentionally* stingy with episodes, in-game days, and the like. Pacing a game is a fine art, and even experienced GMs can have trouble with it and unwittingly deprive their players of resources, or accidentally screw them over by unwittingly tricking them into saving up resources only for a refresh to come along anyway.

My proposed solution in >>48679611 does nothing to solve stinginess (deliberate or otherwise), but instead serves as a workaround to give players a sense of progress to better help them parcel out their resources. It should be noted that no scene can ever hand out more than one progress mark. One per scene maximum, if the scene hands one out at all.

Incidentally, this also helps GMs get a reasonable grip on pacing out their adventures.

>>48679823
>>there's no point being explicit about what we're talking about, let's just assume everyone is working from the same knowledge base and axioms
>Nah, do let's.

That is not what I was conveying at all.

What I was disagreeing with is the proposal that the mere act of recovery is always something that should be costly.

I strongly disagree. If the players have had to parcel out their resources carefully throughout an adventure, giving them trouble at several points as they were conserving their abilities, then why demand a *further* cost from them to recharge their abilities? Was their parceling out of resources not costly enough?

>I don't see how it's any different to any other method of a GM determining when resources are refreshed.
It gives the players a heads-up on how long it will be until they can expect to refresh their abilities, and it helps give the GM a sense of pacing for the adventure at hand.

>>48679911
>That is not what I was conveying at all.
Yeah, sorry missed replying to your point somewhere along the way.

>opportunity cost
If refresh is freely available then there IS no opportunity cost as you can do your all-out nova then immediately refresh your resources. So there must be a cost to refresh, even if its as 'cheap' as narrating your character taking a power nap with no other consequences.

>progress marks
If a GM is too unskillful to give a sense of how much longer PCs will go before being able to rest/recover/whatever they'll probably give them no progress marks at all then dump a bunch on them at the end. Its exactly the same situation.

I guess explaining it in rules might make newbie GMs concentrate on pacing a bit more, but the mechanics themselves do nothing that understanding how to pace adventures and communicate to players doesn't.

>>48680035

>If refresh is freely available then there IS no opportunity cost as you can do your all-out nova then immediately refresh your resources. So there must be a cost to refresh, even if its as 'cheap' as narrating your character taking a power nap with no other consequences.

If the players have rationed out their resources such that they end the adventure with *all* of their key resources spent and well-used, then the parceling of resources is the opportunity cost. There should not be any further costs extracted from them as they take a break and rest.

>then dump a bunch on them at the end.
The difference here is that since only one progress mark can be awarded per scene and the scene must have involved some form of risk, even if the GM starts handing out progress marks like candy, the players will have some sort of indication that they are growing close to a refresh. That will let them expend any resources at the last minute, preventing them from being wasted.

That is still a step up from the GM suddenly ending the "episode" unexpectedly, potentially screwing over resource management.

>but the mechanics themselves do nothing that understanding how to pace adventures and communicate to players doesn't

At the end of the day, no matter how much the GM is taught such things, the game still needs to flat-out say "refresh per [day/session/episode]" in order to establish a rule. With that in mind, I propose the progress markers in addition to basic GMing advice on pacing.

>>48680172

Also, players should be able to request a progress marker at the end of any scene wherein they had some sort of meaningful risk or challenge. The GM is always free to refuse, but this lets the players remind the GM of the pacing of resource refresh and consequently lets the GM be more mindful of such things.

>>48679823
>>48679850
>>>48679725 (You)
>It's much more effective to educate GMs about how to run their games to be fun and not to be dickbags than to try and create straitjacket rules.
>It is hardly impossible to be *unintentionally* stingy with episode
That's literally what I was saying

>>48680400
Seems like we're agreeing. Is that ok?

>>48680172
>At the end of the day, no matter how much the GM is taught such things, the game still needs to flat-out say "refresh per [day/session/episode]" in order to establish a rule
I think this is where your opinion is fundamentally different to mine. At the end of my day its GM > rules, and so the rules are never as important as a good GM. The GM can and should override rules at any time to make the game better.

>one PM per scene max
That'll create the "grinding for refresh" situation pointed out here >>48675947

>>48680692
>Seems like we're agreeing. Is that ok?
seems so, yes.

On another note, I'm noticing that much of the conversation is tending towards the idea that everyone always has to have "optimal" use of resources or the game/GM is bad (eg: >>48680172 "the GM suddenly ending the "episode" unexpectedly, potentially screwing over resource management.").

This really shouldn't be as big of a concern as people are making it out to be. Unless the GM is running the system in full-wargame mode where all gameplay is TREATED as an optimization problem, then resources only matter as much as the players care to put them to use.
Anecdotal, but in a fate game that I am part of many of us will end sessions with full or overfull Fate pools despite ample opportunity to use them. We either never saw the need to, or preferred seeing where things would go from certain failed rolls. The only time this ever remotely approached being an 'issue' was when a number of us dumped fate points into research at the end of a session, during what was essentially in-character downtime.
In the same game, a few instances of cliffhanger session ends have had the GM push back Stress and Fate refilling until the end of the scene that the game ended on, so the meta times wouldn't interfere with the flow of the game.

Any of them can work as long as everyone works the same. If one person is recovering per-hour and another per-encounter than the power balance of each waxes and wanes relative to the rest of his group based on how you structure the game.

How about point pools that refresh based on the character? Like, it could be complications/compels, where characters get points for getting into situations based on their drawbacks, or it could be just different recharge methods (like sacrificing things, be it money or souls or whatever). These are kinda like "refresh after rest", but instead of something boring like sleeping for 8 hours (which could still be one of the methods), you would have stuff that facilitates gameplay, the characters actively doing something.

>>48673964
>Small Mana/ki pool.
>Ability usage rolls a LA shadowrun magic - more powerful abilities are more likely to cost mp/strain, and to cost more mp/strain when they do.
>allow pcs to regain a small portion of their points with a short rest.

Best solution ive ever encountered.

>>48684879
And a short ready doesn't have to be sleep, just a short period of time out of danger.

And you regain more through an actual night's sleep.

>>48673964
Recharge IF (x) and Recharge WHEN (x) work best if you can bypass the requirements by spending (y) resource points. I'm a big fan of people having to spend HPs (of the dnd "narrative" kind that represent superficial wounds, fatigue and stress; while The 4e like "healing Surges" become The actual wounds) to use their powers more often. Very Raistlin Majere.

>>48679620
Now you just have a system that incentivizes waiting around but then the GM has to clumsily create arbitrary "random encounters" just to prevent them from doing that.
Progress Marks seem to be
>Everything recharges after X number of major scenes
Which is just a mixture of stuff that was tossed out in the OP - now you have "define major scene" and "how do you define when a scene starts and the next one ends?" It's better in that it doesn't require explicit combat but what makes it so much more usable? Because it's so much more vague?

Also it reminds me of 13th age's mechanic where full heal-ups are roughly every 4 battles, whatever happens in the meantime be damned. Not that that means anything

This whole thing is my favourite aspect of D&D 3.5 that got lost in translation when moving to any of its branching successors. There are dozens of resource mechanics and then variants within those just strewn about and you pick what suits you. Per-day in tiers of spells, per-day as a whole, per-day assignment of per-day spells, per-encounter, per-encounter with recharge conditions, point-based per-day, unlimited use, unlimited use after assigning by per-day points, point-based per day after assigning available options from uses-per-day, it goes on and on. And if you don't like any of that there's still a ton of ways to build your character to hit things with sharp sticks.

The various systems that picked up where 3.5 left off got WAY too busy in trying to homogenize things when heterogeneity was quite possibly THE major strength of the system.

>>48685409
No, this is what >>48684034 was talking about.

>>48685409
>unlimited use after assigning by per-day points
Wait, what is this in 3.5? There are classes that use this by default? I want to read more.

>>48673964
I've always liked the idea of Exhaustion being a pool for ass-pull powers. With ordinary combat methods costing very little Exhaustion (1 out of 100) and expensive emergency powers like berzerk and dimension door (90 of 100 or everything you have left, whichever is more). I'm not sure there should be anything in the middle.

>>48686789
Right, ok, but how is this exhaustion replenished?