Quote from: jhkim on January 22, 2025, 03:16:36 PMD&D isn't designed for this sort of trade-off

Fixing D&D is not my ulterior motive, I can assure you. I've become pretty committed to using Mana Points in my next product, which will be a complete roleplaying game, that I very much look forward to sharing with this community in the coming months.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 22, 2025, 02:16:46 PMI like mana points, but in practice they became overpowered. My fault; should have given fewer. In my defense, I find MUs and clerics too powerful to begin with.

Here is my recent experience:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2024/10/spell-points-revisited.html

You know, that's the first time I realized I should be reading that as "methods et madness", not "method set madness"...

Quote from: ForgottenF on January 22, 2025, 05:32:35 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on January 22, 2025, 02:16:46 PMI like mana points, but in practice they became overpowered. My fault; should have given fewer. In my defense, I find MUs and clerics too powerful to begin with.

Here is my recent experience:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2024/10/spell-points-revisited.html

You know, that's the first time I realized I should be reading that as "methods et madness", not "method set madness"...

Lol, I don't remember why I did take. Probably methodsandmadness was taken and methods&madness didn't work.

I find mana points, as typically implemented, kind of boring.

Sure, it strikes some folks as "unrealistic" to "forget" a "memorized" spell. They can't get over the language. And others want to use their Kewlest Power every round.

But for me, mana systems miss out on what makes Vancian casters so interesting, which is qualitative choice. The Vancian caster has to decide when to use that fireball, not just when to stop using that fireball.

It makes all the difference for me.

I've seen a couple of attempts to combine the two approaches -- i.e. you get to cast each spell N times, or you have a separate mana pool for each spell. But those systems were necessarily more complex, and in play didn't wind up differing from a total mana pool -- because any "number of times" that is enough to make it feel un-Vancian is also enough to allow spamming of spells.