How do you feel about them?

Personally I don't like "once per day" at all, but often times it is very hard to come up with another mechanism to limit people's ability to use things. My favourite one is "you have to concentrate for x minutes to use this" but often times it is hard to find the line between making players constantly use whatever ability or never use whatever ability.

But as for why I don't like it I find all to often players never use their daily abilities for fear that they'll be caught off guard without it later. In videogames I'm the kind of person that hoards all of his potions until boss battles and then finds that he has too many to use.

Even when you get to a place where you've got eight charges of some minor combat ability per day, you know that the last two or three of those are going to be reserved permanently for combats that never come.

Is this an issue of players not trusting the GM to keep from kicking them when they're down? Where do you think once per day abilities should and shouldn't be?

It's a tool the same as any other really. If it seems to fit the power in question, use it. I generally don't use Vancian magic but that runs along much the same lines. In my games there's a facility called 'fate points', which can either make a roll succeed or fail beyond belief, rare and expensive to buy, you start the game with only three; even so when their backs are against the wall, the players will use them.

I'm not exactly sure what you're saying here, are you trying to get your players to use their powers and resources more, and throwing tougher challenges at them isn't working?

Quote from: Doccit;687292Even when you get to a place where you've got eight charges of some minor combat ability per day, you know that the last two or three of those are going to be reserved permanently for combats that never come.

And there's really no problem with that. Yes, my players usually keep something in the tank because they don't know if something unexpected is going to crop up. And sometimes they have to tap that tank because an encounter has gone unexpectedly pear-shaped or because something unexpected did crop up.

Games benefit from having a pool of strategic resources instead of just being entirely about tactical resources: It gives the system flexibility. It provides variety.

Those strategic resources don't necessarily have to be "once per day", but if your system is made up only of stuff that can be automatically and mindlessly used in every single encounter your game is going to be much, much poorer for it.

I don't mind once per day as long as there's some setting logic behind it. I cannot abide by ' once per game', because some games take place over the course of a few hours while other can span weeks or months, so the mechanic is completely disassociated

Quote from: Justin Alexander;687314Those strategic resources don't necessarily have to be "once per day", but if your system is made up only of stuff that can be automatically and mindlessly used in every single encounter your game is going to be much, much poorer for it.

Huh. I hadn't considered repetitiveness in player tactics as something that makes games less fun, but you're right, it is.

I think there are better ways to get at strategic variability than daily abilities. If you're in a climate where the way players deal with monsters is more or less the same in every combat, then maybe the option to hit it with your sword twice in one turn once per day is needed to spice things up, but if players are forced to change their strategies by the properties of the monsters/the terrain, the sword double strike is still making the combat more variable, but I think in a less interesting way.

If your daily abilities can flip the combat on its head by changing the way the players interact with the monsters however (eg, the player's ability makes it so the monster can't make ranged attacks without hurting itself), that's a different story. I think if combat strategies are forced to change significantly by combat conditions, it overcomplicates things.

I think it is ideal to have players making complicated and meaningful decisions with as few options as possible. Consider this choice:
"I could hit him with my boomerang, which might paralyze him for a while, or, I could hit him with my sword, which might kill him right away." and then add "Or I could hit him with my double sword, which would definitely kill him, but I might need my double sword later today."

I think adding the second part doesn't make the choice better. I think it just makes it take more time. And because in this instance the player is choosing whether to take his chances and save points, or spend them and win, it makes the situation less tense.

Anyway I've probably been strawmaning you. I think tactical variability should come from the monsters and the battlefield, not resource management decisions.

As well as the 'save for emergency, never use' players there are also the 'burn everything immediately, and now we must rest for a day after every encounter' players. They tend to be particularly annoying as they'll argue until they turn blue that your system is broken and supports 5-minute workdays.

Personally I don't mind daily abilities to an extent, as long as the flavour text for the ability is appropriate. A lot of the time it isn't, making it essentially a lazy design choice - you don't have to balance something very much if it can be used once-only.

I have a few abilities IRL that are once-per-day. Or they have been since turning 30

Heh xD

I've not encountered the burn everything players. But yeah, there is always the "we go to sleep" option for them. I've always thought that having them attacked in there camp would get them to quit that if I encountered it, but it would feel forced if it only happened if they went to bed before dark.

As for the flavour text being integral I couldn't agree more. DnD (3.5 and 4th edition if not earlier) are rich with once per day abilities that have no place being them to my mind. I'm not talking about the wizards.

In the game I'm working on right now there is only one thing that works on a number of times per day basis (called Hexes), and they aren't for killing things. If you're using one you're almost always in a tight spot, and using one won't necessarily get you out of one. So that won't trigger the premature resting I don't think. They are an opt-in system from the player's perspective (it is very easy to build a great character without ever giving it a hex) so I hope that will get rid of the 'save for emergency, never use' behaviour. In games I avoid powers and classes that work like that because I know I'll act that way.

Quote from: Doccit;687341I think there are better ways to get at strategic variability than daily abilities. If you're in a climate where the way players deal with monsters is more or less the same in every combat, then maybe the option to hit it with your sword twice in one turn once per day is needed to spice things up, but if players are forced to change their strategies by the properties of the monsters/the terrain, the sword double strike is still making the combat more variable, but I think in a less interesting way.

Couple of false dilemmas in there: First, you're assuming that the daily powers are boring. Second, you're assuming that you can either have interesting monsters/terrain OR daily powers.

Obviously it would be relatively trivial to have both variations in monsters/terrtain AND interesting daily powers that change the dynamics of an encounter in an interesting way.

the most in setting way of limiting powers is to have them draw off a pool of 'Power Points' (call it spell points, karma, mana, barkara, chi, whatever) have the top powers use a lot of points and have the points regain at a slow rate.
So say 'Fury of the Nine Sentinels' Costs 12 points and a character of the appropriate power level has 20 points and regains 1 point every 30 minutes then this is a once or twice a day power.

However that stuff is hard (and extraodinarily tedious to track in a pen and paper game, thus once per day is born. It would be nice if we one day imagine a world with the best stuff from Computer based games, tracking states and recovery rates and dealing with macro level background stuff on a simulation engine, with the best of the table top with fully realised NPCs and flexible party interactions. One day maybe.

In general, I dislike once per day when the ability in question has no real logical reason for it to be one a day.

Example, if you had a bazooka, and one shot per day, perhaps the quartermaster is rationing the ammo?

But when you use the bazooka, you need to hide from tanks until you fire that one shot, then hide from tanks till tomorrow.


'Fireball' 'hide' 'rest' 'repeat'    


Also,
Once you create a daily ability, and have challenges that require the daily ability, you have created a potential problem for game pacing.


Of course, you can't really blame a player for only taking on a tank when he has his bazooka ready.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;687403Couple of false dilemmas in there: First, you're assuming that the daily powers are boring. Second, you're assuming that you can either have interesting monsters/terrain OR daily powers.

Perhaps I wasn't being very clear.

QuoteIf your daily abilities can flip the combat on its head by changing the way the players interact with the monsters however (eg, the player's ability makes it so the monster can't make ranged attacks without hurting itself), that's a different story. I think if combat strategies are forced to change significantly by combat conditions, it overcomplicates things.
[...]
I think adding the second part doesn't make the choice better. I think it just makes it take more time. And because in this instance the player is choosing whether to take his chances and save points, or spend them and win, it makes the situation less tense.

What I meant in saying these things was that both game changing daily abilities and drastic variability from monster/terrain didn't make the choices more interesting, they just make things harder to keep track of. I didn't mean you can't have them both, I meant you shouldn't.

QuoteOne day maybe.

That is certainly the dream, jibbajibba. I'd love it if I could easily program NPCs and environments on the fly for players to engage with.

QuoteAlso,
Once you create a daily ability, and have challenges that require the daily ability, you have created a potential problem for game pacing.

Quite true. I feel like when you introduce daily abilities, you're stuck between making them screw up the game pacing by requiring them, turning them into deus ex machinas, or having them not with using in the first place. It is a hard line to walk.