Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY

[oxybe]

I find it interesting that, despite how different 3e and 4e are both mechanically and conceptually, a "what do people want out of a 4e-based fix" list looks very much like "what do people want out of a 3e-based fix" list with the exception of making world-affecting magic rare, keeping AEDU, and keeping minions and elites/solos as a thing, which could be made fairly palatable to 3e fans if rituals were made non-terrible and more accessible, there were more per-class and per-power-source variations in the AEDU system (a la psionics or wizard spell prep), and different monster types were made to work in a more verisimilitudinous fashion (so e.g. minions don't explode to low-damage weather effects as soon as combat music starts and solos aren't the only ones with lots of off-turn actions).

There may be peace in our time in the editions wars!

A lot of things 4e did were in response to problems people had with 3rd and some legacy issues that carried over. It wasn't handled well, but that they were willing to throw the baby and it's bathwater and start anew at least told me they were going for a fresh take, instead of pathfinders' "throw a coat of paint on it and add a chesterfeild or two in the living room".

Rituals are bit of a mixed bag, largely the casting time and component cost, as well as making them a bit more flavourful at times would have helped. Largely keeping them for more narrative situations rather then direct.

As far as variations within the AEDU structure, I'm generally ok with the Psionics or Wizard prep.

As far as minions go, some clarification on their use, in that they're largely made to showcase how the characters' scope of ability has outgrown a once dangerous enemy (with swarms being the next step down for them), but i think the problem with the 3rd/4th ed is that minions are a largely cinematic device, so changing it so they really only drop to PC effects or obvious hazards, like spike traps, lava, etc...

I mentioned in another thread that my ideal DMG would look very different then the current ones (largely focusing on teaching the game, rather then teaching the rules: that's what the PHB is for), and I would probably open the MM with a discussion on monster use and how they relate to the PCs and the PCs' growth/scope and maybe have some of these concepts be expounded upon in the DMG.

First off- thank you for the very detailed response.

You're welcome!

Agree. To hit math vs. at level opponents should remain near the average of a d20 throughout the entire game. This is basically the math fix 4e needed. Surprisingly, the math works better using 3/4 level as standard modifier for attacks rather than 1/2.
Here's the math to prove it.

I'm not particularly surprised the math works out better if you cut out a lot of the fiddly +1's and 2's and keep it a bit more strait forward. I can see what they were going for with the half-level bonus, the implementation rather then the concept, like with many 4e things, was just kinda flawed. There are other things I would change math-wise, like simply dropping the pretext of having a 14 or 15 mattering for something, where all you're really looking for is that +2 modifier and by that I mean your stats would simply indicate a Strength score of 3 instead of 16... cut out the big number middleman and just keep what you're looking for. The stat growth could be based off tiering, class choice, be more rare, or just have a hardcap like they did with 5th (and many other games) so you don't go overboard and spam your main stat until it's ludicrously high.

Cleaning up the math would go a long way to help the game's mechanical balance difficulty people had with keeping all their numbers in check.

As I said before, we can still keep the +2/-2 for good ideas and GM given situational bonuses, with advantage/disadvantage (this is one of those "i don't mind the concept, just the execution" things I keep saying about 4e, but for 5e. If something's a good idea, I'm not against stealing) for more significant situations the PCs might be in.

Mostly agree but tying a class to a distinct character concept remains valuable. Forex, in 4e as seen in PHB1&2 what's the real conceptual difference between cleric and invoker? I would role those two ideas together into one broader class as subclasses.

I think we have the same, or similar, idea, I just didn't phrase it right. I'm not fully against tying classes to distinct concepts: a strong concept gives a designer a good design goal. I meant to say I simply prefer to have the class be not tied to one particular set of lore by default . I don't mind if a given GM says "all Barbarians get their skillset from the Sm'oh-ki The Great Bear" but I don't want that to be so ingrained into the class that GMs that don't want them to be tied to The Great Bear (and as such keyed to some of the Sm'oh-ki lore) have to work that out of the class. I find it's easier to add stuff then remove.

I personally like my wizards largely distinct and my fav 3.5 casters were the specialist sorcerors: dread necromancer, warmage, beguiler, etc...

Turning to the divine side of things, assuming active deities(in that they pick and choose their priests and grant them power), I dislike having one generic divine caster that acts like an archetype for all faiths. In my ideal world, to borrow 2nd ed parlance, we would only have specialty priests. A priest of Korrogoroth, the god of arms and warfare, would look and act MUCH different then a priest of Tums, the god of antacids and binging on spicy buffalo wings. The former would probably be closer to a Paladin while the second more gifting their clergy with alchemical knowledge, rather then a traditional D&D cleric.

I legit wouldn't be mad if we dropped the Cleric class entirely in favour for the Paladin and simply had the Invoker class that focused more on the healing magics and summoning of divine beings. Other deities could simply grant the appropriate knowledge via divine means: a Priest of Orcus that would focus on undead and pain sounds a whole lot like a Dread Necromancer, for example, whereas a more militant one would probably look a lot like the 5th ed Oathbreaker Pally.

This is largely what I mean by not tying the lore to a class, but still have a strong design concept.

It's one of those issues that's probably just me being fussy about things, and that's fine: i'm talking about a personal fantasy heartbreaker.

Like the focus on flavorful feats over numeric bonuses, but what if feats were split into combat Feats and non-combat Talents that are gained separately? This would allow for non-combat abilities like Ritual Caster, Linguist, many of the skill focus feats to be worth taking as they are no longer competing for the limited resources needed to improve combat effectiveness.

Rituals, Martial Practices, Alchemy & Magic Item Creation would probably be their own subsystems accessible by feats/talents.

probably gonna have to roll out the 'ol, "it's what playtesting is for" but I can agree that some seperation may be required, I'm just scared that getting too much too quickly could cause issues with choice paralysis, or getting stuff too slowly could cause people to groan they need to wait too long to get the right feats or talents to make their characters work.

Having flavor-only magic items present offers a magic-rich world which supports much of D&D's world building. That being said, I wouldn't have all magic items function like Weapons of Legacy, rather, that's one of three categories of magic items available.
- Basic magic items, which have specific abilities which do not change over time without changing the item (crafting/rituals can do that)
- Legacy items that grow with the character, based around a theme (generally custom-built, likely from a list or table).
- Artifacts which grant more of their power to the wielder based on compatibility/attunement (generally pre-built, as 4e did already).

I'm on board with this. This is why I love spitballing ideas with people to bounce them off of. :D

That seems really cool, and I like it, but I have concerns about how that would interact with general weapon/implement proficiency, (all simple weapons, military melee weapons, etc.)

This is largely what playtesting is for. If it works, yay! If it doesn't try to work something out and if not, shelf it for now. I'm nothing if not willing to defenestrate a few infants and their washbasins until we get one that's acceptable. Martial and Simple weapons may simply be a distinction between the number of mods a weapon can have, while an implement may have a seperate section of mods available to them. As such you could still have a "sword" but depending on if you classify it as a Simple, Martial or Implement. alternatively, you could simply not make a distinction between simple and martial. Hooray playtesting and spitballing!

Classes should be large enough to include out of combat but related abilities, but things like rituals or alchemy should be available as a general-use out of combat power-set.
Admittedly, Utility powers were poorly implemented, half of them being combat powers (Shield, we're looking at you), and half being out of combat utility abilities (Arcane Insight), and I think that the former should have been folded into the attack powers (AED), and the utility Utility Powers should stay were they were.

I can agree with the first line. I would prefer classes to focus primarily on your combat stuff but some thematically appropriate fluff abilities i'm cool with.

Agreed with stuff like Shield being more AED then U.

I think that Swarm should be a separate keyword that can apply to any creature type (even Solos), though your statement that Swarm should apply to Squads of humanoids or Hordes of barbarians is valuable. Gargantuan Swarms could allow one to run massed combat (like Helm's Deep) within D&D rules without it taking an hour or more per turn.

An additional monster type could be the "Legendary" monster. Basically twice an elite, but not a Solo. This is a "Boss," allowing Solos to truly mean "Solo."
Branching off the above, Solos should tend to have multiple "Forms," think Ganon post-ALttP.
As an example of the above, a Dragon starts out in a humanoid guise, fighting as a spellcaster of some sort. Once he's beaten in that form, he reveals his true Draconic majesty and takes to the air, using mainly his breath weapon and strafing claw attacks. Then, once you've injured him sufficiently, he lands and tries to eat you, tear you to shreds, or pound you into paste with his natural weapons.

The bloodied condition seems ideal trigger for this kind of thing.

Thinking about it, on the opposite spectrum of swarms, I also would like to see discussions on fighting colossi, in a Shadow of the Colossus type fight or trying to bring down the Divine Beasts in Breath of the Wild (depending on the sentience and/or awareness of the colossi in question): where the monster itself is both the dungeon or arena and trying to get to it's weak points to kill it is a challenge in itself, with either smaller monsters working in tandem with the colossi to protect the colossi from intruders/invaders or the colossi itself able to "activate" hazards that protect it's more vulnerable areas.

That might be more DMG material then Monster Manual, but gosh dang it I really want those cool scenes.

Having some flavorful descriptions really helps new players visualize their actions.
Ex. Compare Cloudkill in 3.5e/5e to 4e
4e is more flexible and takes up less space, but 3.5e & 5e have some details within (like the fact that it's heavier than air and thus sinks into cracks in the ground, or the fact that it rolls away from its point of origin) allowing for more informed tactical use.

As long as there is still a clear distinction between what is flavour text and what is rules, I don't mind those little add-ons that gives players extra ideas on how the thing interacts with the game world on a mechanical basis, which lets them make more informed choices in-character.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The end to the edition wars!?!

More seriously, how would you feel about a small/moderate change to the AEDU system where power types feel different without changing the underlying structure? Forex, martial characters get more off-action abilities and stances, primal characters might get more abilities with lingering effects, divine characters have the most party friendly AOEs, and if there is a way to balance it, arcane characters get day-to-day or encounter-to-encounter flexibility.

Aside from stance powers, those are still too similar to really convey a difference in power sources through mechanical feel alone; when Controllers have debuff AoEs with durations and Leaders have buffing AoEs, the difference between "an Arcane Controller can hit you for a lingering debuff" and "a Primal Striker can hit you for a lingering debuff" feels more like a class of a certain role splashing a power or two of a different role than a noticeable differentiation between power sources (and the same for a Martial Leader vs. a Divine Defender or whatever on the buffing aura).

Fighters managed to stand out from the rest of the Martial classes and the rest of the Defender classes, at least to some degree, due to their encounter-length stances and powers with weapon-specific riders, but to many players (myself included) they still felt too similar to other classes mechanically because (A) most powers weren't stances or weapon-dependent, (B) weapon-dependent riders were mostly numerical as opposed to something that would really change how the fighter played, and (C) they were still used on the same schedule as all the other classes.

Yes, different classes' powers did different things even though they all used AEDU, but compare that to the difference in 3e between, say, a TWF barbarian with lots of rage-related feats, a fighter with lots of [Tactical] and [Weapon Style] feats, and a warblade with mostly Tiger Claw maneuvers and a few Iron Heart maneuvers. All three of those characters do basically the same thing (wield two weapons, smack people with two weapons repeatedly for lots of damage, often with special riders on the attacks), but the mechanical ways they accomplish those things are very different: the barbarian is largely state-based, gaining a bunch of offensive and defensive buffs while in rage that make him much more durable and threatening on the front lines (entirely Daily, in AEDU terms); the fighter is largely situational, gaining lots of "If X, do Y" debuffs from his feats that give him lots of options round-to-round as well as based on his choice of weapon, all of which are constantly available (entirely At-Will); the warblade has distinct maneuvers he can expend and recover to do certain things (entirely Encounter).

Each of those builds works differently and appeals to different players. If you just replaced barbarians with Tiger Claw-focused warblades, fighters with Iron Heart-focused warblades, and so on, as is sometimes suggested for powering up 3e martial classes, you lose a lot of mechanical variety and make playing different classes less interesting. So shaking up AEDU on a per-power-source basis is probably a minimum bar to get non-4e fans interested in a 4e-based fix.

Doesn't mean you can't divide powers into "usable lots of times per combat," "usable once or twice per combat," and "usable every couple of combats" in general, just that mucking around with the exact resource management system is good. Like, just spitballing, Martial classes could get Stamina points, which let them use any of their X encounter powers and Y daily powers X times per encounter and Y times per day total instead of using each exactly once, and lets them pay Stamina to gain a few extra uses of encounter or daily powers at the cost of a healing surge or the like; Arcane classes could have only At-Will and Daily powers by default, but all Daily spells have an associated weaker Encounter version that could be cast N times before using up the Daily slot, up to a total of X times per encounter from any number of spells (like [Reserve] feats, sort of, and a reverse of 4e psionic augmentation); Primal classes could have no At-Will powers known by default and would instead gain At-Will powers depending on their current environment/terrain, and each Encounter power would have an associated terrain in which it could be used an extra time per encounter. And so on; these suggestions aren't necessarily balanced, but you get the idea.

A lot of things 4e did were in response to problems people had with 3rd and some legacy issues that carried over. It wasn't handled well, but that they were willing to throw the baby and it's bathwater and start anew at least told me they were going for a fresh take, instead of pathfinders' "throw a coat of paint on it and add a chesterfeild or two in the living room".

Granted. I just found it interesting that while usually AD&D and 3e fans have a lot in common in terms of what they want out of a D&D fix and 3e and 4e fans are vehemently opposed, purely-AD&D-inspired fixes usually end up looking quite different from purely-3e-inspired fixes, while this 4e-inspired fix ended up looking pretty 3e-inspired. Somewhat amusing, that's all.

Rituals are bit of a mixed bag, largely the casting time and component cost, as well as making them a bit more flavourful at times would have helped. Largely keeping them for more narrative situations rather then direct.

More flavorful and more generally useful, really. For the few 4e games I ran, I ditched the casting times and component costs entirely and let people "prepare" a certain number of rituals Vancian-style at the cost of healing surges to be usable in combat time, and even then only a handful of rituals ever got used.

I'm generally opposed to splitting combat and non-combat magic (because that generally leads to one or the other category being neglected design- and interest-wise, and if you can't find combat uses for "non-combat" magic and vice versa you're not trying hard enough ), but I'd rather see interesting and world-changing effects relegated to rituals than removed entirely.

As far as minions go, some clarification on their use, in that they're largely made to showcase how the characters' scope of ability has outgrown a once dangerous enemy (with swarms being the next step down for them), but i think the problem with the 3rd/4th ed is that minions are a largely cinematic device, so changing it so they really only drop to PC effects or obvious hazards, like spike traps, lava, etc...

I'm aware of how they're intended to be used, but in practice it's not a great solution. In AD&D and 3e, you get a nice organic progression from "this creature is way too strong to think of fighting" to "this creature is tough but beatable" to "this creature is a fair fight" to "this creature isn't much of a threat" to "this creature is just here to make me look awesome" just through the normal progression of HD and combat stats, with no special rules required; minions require a separate stat block from a normal creature of its kind, and without introducing an extra "super minion" type or similar there's nothing between "beefy normal monster" and "goes down in one hit."

As far as avoiding tracking damage for bunches of mooks, you can achieve similar effects to minions and elites in 3e already simply by setting HP to minimum and maximum for their HD, respectively, but that doesn't get you the simpler-to-run-in-groups benefit of minions without removing or ignoring monster abilities, and I don't know how to easily solve that while retaining gradual scaling and verisimilitude.

[Seerow]

On the note of the AEDU power set up, I feel like the biggest thing is presentation. I agree with the general principle between 4e's design where every character should have abilities they can use at will, ones they can use on an encounter basis, and ones they can use on a daily basis. The main issue comes from giving everybody the exact same resource system and same alotment of powers.


Just as a quick example for a Mage and a Fighter respectively using very different designs, that ultimately come back to AEDU:

Mage:
-Has ~4 spell slots of each spell level available to him. Once past 5th level, lower level spell slots start converting to higher, so you only ever have 3 different spell levels available, and the Wizard has a total of ~12 spells per day, plus at-will cantrips.
-The wizard gains the ability to combine a couple of spell slots to prepare a lower level spell as a reusable spell, with some form of cooldown, ie an encounter based spell slot.
-The wizard is able to burn a spell slot to augment one of his cantrips, making the At-Will effects stronger.

So here you have a Wizard who follows the AEDU structure, but is more flexible as a result. You can go in with a full suite of 1/day spells, or you could have a bunch of spells you can unload every fight all day, or you could have a couple of souped up cantrips... but more realistically a player is going to mix and match and end up with a balanced suite of spells that looks similar to what a 4e wizard gets.

Fighter:
-Has a resource pool that refreshes every turn that he can use to pull off his various special abilities/maneuvers/whatever. You have a bunch of go-to abilities that you can use basically at will from this resource.
-The fighter gains the ability to push himself, gaining a large bump in this resource for 1 round, at the cost of his resource pool being diminished until he takes a short rest. He will have some abilities that cost more, so can only be used when pushing himself in this way. But he could also use the extra resources to do a larger number of at will things simultaneously.
-The fighter similarly would have the ability to push it even further, gaining far more of the resources, in exchange for his resource pool being diminished until taking a long rest.

This one is a bit more vague because there's no resource system currently like it in the game, but the general idea is you have at will resources, and then can make the decision to be less effective for some time period in exchange for stronger moments of greatness.



Both systems have At Will, Encounter, and Daily abilities. But where the Wizard one starts from Daily and then gives the ability to opt into Encounter/At Will options, the Fighter starts from At Will and gives the ability to opt in to Encounter/Daily options. This lets you emphasize the core flavor of the class, while still giving the options needed to ensure the character can fit into any campaign play style or work day length, and putting the two on more or less even footing.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Fighter:
-Has a resource pool that refreshes every turn that he can use to pull off his various special abilities/maneuvers/whatever. You have a bunch of go-to abilities that you can use basically at will from this resource.
-The fighter gains the ability to push himself, gaining a large bump in this resource for 1 round, at the cost of his resource pool being diminished until he takes a short rest. He will have some abilities that cost more, so can only be used when pushing himself in this way. But he could also use the extra resources to do a larger number of at will things simultaneously.
-The fighter similarly would have the ability to push it even further, gaining far more of the resources, in exchange for his resource pool being diminished until taking a long rest.

Somewhat unrelated, but this looks a lot like the suggestion in one of the 5e playtest threads to give fighters "encounter"- and "daily"-level abilities by letting them double or triple their martial superiority dice when activating a maneuver at the cost of losing a die until the next short or long rest respectively, and as I recall you were the one to make that initial suggestion. Do you happen to have a link to that post or have an easy way to unearth it? I was looking for that suggestion and the surrounding discussion recently but wasn't able to find it.

[Seerow]

Somewhat unrelated, but this looks a lot like the suggestion in one of the 5e playtest threads to give fighters "encounter"- and "daily"-level abilities by letting them double or triple their martial superiority dice when activating a maneuver at the cost of losing a die until the next short or long rest respectively, and as I recall you were the one to make that initial suggestion. Do you happen to have a link to that post or have an easy way to unearth it? I was looking for that suggestion and the surrounding discussion recently but wasn't able to find it.

Yes, that was me. I don't have a link to the original post, I feel like it was on the old Wizards Forums rather than in the 5e forum here. But I still feel like the general design is sound, I just have not taken the time to flesh it out much since then.

[Knaight]

On the note of the AEDU power set up, I feel like the biggest thing is presentation. I agree with the general principle between 4e's design where every character should have abilities they can use at will, ones they can use on an encounter basis, and ones they can use on a daily basis. The main issue comes from giving everybody the exact same resource system and same alotment of powers.

I'd agree with that, with added commentary on the concept of qualitative mechanics (I have a post somewhere with a wall of text perfect for my needs, but I have no idea where it got off to) - where mechanics correspond to something happening in the game world that's non-quantitative. As an example of qualitative design Fireball, in setting, produces a ball of fire which then does everything in setting a ball of fire should. Then, secondary to this, there's also a description of how this interacts with game mechanical subsystems (saves, HP).

Most D&D editions tended to be a fair bit more qualitative than 4e, and that particular presentation issue drove a lot of people away from the edition.

[falconflicker]

but compare that to the difference in 3e between, say, a TWF barbarian with lots of rage-related feats, a fighter with lots of [Tactical] and [Weapon Style] feats, and a warblade with mostly Tiger Claw maneuvers and a few Iron Heart maneuvers. All three of those characters do basically the same thing (wield two weapons, smack people with two weapons repeatedly for lots of damage, often with special riders on the attacks), but the mechanical ways they accomplish those things are very different: the barbarian is largely state-based, gaining a bunch of offensive and defensive buffs while in rage that make him much more durable and threatening on the front lines (entirely Daily, in AEDU terms); the fighter is largely situational, gaining lots of "If X, do Y" debuffs from his feats that give him lots of options round-to-round as well as based on his choice of weapon, all of which are constantly available (entirely At-Will); the warblade has distinct maneuvers he can expend and recover to do certain things (entirely Encounter).

Having played mostly 4th and 5th editions, with some experience with 3.5 and Pathfinder, I am somewhat confused as to the difference between the playstyles of the presented builds. Having never played a Warblade, and am not familiar with the feat keywords you're referring to with the Fighter, It seems to me that all three tend to wade in and full attack until everyone is dead. Please elaborate further on how these builds play differently from each other.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Having played mostly 4th and 5th editions, with some experience with 3.5 and Pathfinder, I am somewhat confused as to the difference between the playstyles of the presented builds. Having never played a Warblade, and am not familiar with the feat keywords you're referring to with the Fighter, It seems to me that all three tend to wade in and full attack until everyone is dead. Please elaborate further on how these builds play differently from each other.

Feats are passive benefits that are always on. If a feat says "As a standard action, you can..." then you can do that all day, forever, as long as you have a standard action to spend (and, barring certain conditions, you'll have one per round). [Tactical] feats are a category of feats that grant three thematically-linked options that require sort of setup (usually of the form "If you do X in one round, then in the next round you can do Y" or "If an opponent does X to you, you can then do Y to them"), while [Weapon Style] feats grant a benefit for wielding a specific pair of weapons (usually of the form "If you attack with your X and your Y in one round and hit with both, you can do Z"). Fighters get lots of feats, so a fighter with lots of those feats has a broad repertoire of things he can do with no usage limitations, but they're all situational so only a handful of those may be usable at any given time.

Barbarians can go into a rage, and while in a rage they gain certain benefits; the basic rage gives Str, Con, and Will bonuses (that increase with level) at the expense of an AC penalty and lasts for a few rounds, but alternate versions of rage can grant different benefits and extend the duration, and certain feats and class features can add benefits to being in a rage like extra attacks or energy resistance. A barbarian can rage X/day and once per encounter, and after a rage is over a barbarian is fatigued (usually), so barbarians want to manage when and how often they enter a rage for maximum effect. So rather than having bunches of distinct options usable based on the situation, a barbarian either is in a rage and has all of his rage options at his disposal at all times, or he's not in a rage and can't use any of them.

Warblades have a set of abilities called "maneuvers" that each have specific effects, like "jump really high" or "attack everyone nearby" or "remove a status effect." They're similar to encounter powers in 4e (and in fact Tome of Battle, the book the warblade is from, was based on an early draft of 4e), except that instead of maneuvers being usable once per encounter each, maneuvers start off "readied" and then once they're used the warblade can take a turn to recover all expended maneuvers to make them "readied" and usable again.

The playstyles differ because the fighter cares about positioning most, the barbarian cares about endurance most, and the warblade cares about timing most. If a fighter can get into a position or situation in which he can trigger his feat benefits, he can do so, and keep doing it if those conditions are met; thus, he doesn't just want to wade in and full attack, he wants to figure out how to position himself and chain his actions together for maximum benefit from his feats--for instance, Shock Trooper lets you add a bunch of damage on a charge at the cost of being easier to hit, move a bull rushed target to the side as well as straight back, and trip foes that you charge into, so the fighter would want to position himself so he can charge into a lone foe (so no one can counterattack him) one round and then charge into one of a pair of foes (so he can knock enemies into each other) the next.

Barbarians have a limited number of rages of limited duration and take penalties after a rage; thus, sometimes he just wants to wade in and full attack (if he thinks the whole combat will take less than one rage's duration and he has enough rages left for the day), but at other times (lots of enemies, fourth or fifth fight in the day, large distances between foes, etc.) he'll have to pick and choose targets so he can take out weaker targets or soften up stronger ones before he rages, then make sure he doesn't end up too far away from the rest of the party when his fatigue kicks in and he's vulnerable.

Warblades can use their maneuvers whenever they want, but they can use each once before recharging and can't use a manever and recharge in the same round; thus, each round a warblade has to decide whether to use one of his increasingly-fewer maneuvers or recharge (so it's all about picking which round is best for a plain ol' full attack), and maneuvers do different things so if the warblade is facing a lot of enemies and only has one attack-multiple-enemies maneuver, he has to figure out how to pattern his spending and recovery of that maneuver for maximum effect.

Does that clarify things?

[Velaryon]

For myself, I neither need nor want a massive overhaul to "fix" D&D. Without getting into too many specifics (because I'm posting from work), my general goals would be:

0. start with 3.5 as a baseline
1. excise a few of the most inherently broken options (things that break the action economy or lead to infinite loops)
2. buff some of the weaker options (particularly core classes and feats), and condense
3. more skill points for most classes, and a few tweaks to the skill system
4. reevaluate the Challenge Ratings of monsters using a more accurate measurement (I'm about 90% sure the original method involved a blindfold, a dartboard, and copious amounts of alcohol)
5. revamp the level adjustment and ECL system to be more accurate
6. make it easier for martial classes to reach an AC that remains meaningful past low levels
7. reduce the cost of weapons and armor, particularly for double weapons and dual-wielders
8. remove or revamp any remaining obviously stupid mechanics or loopholes (drown healing, etc.)

[falconflicker]

Does that clarify things?

Yes, that was very informative. Thank you very much.

As a corollary, would you say that a 5e Tempest Cleric, Trickster Cleric, and War Cleric would play more or less differently than your three TWF variations?

[OACSNY97]

Sorry about taking so long to reply as your post deserved a complete and well thought out response.

Oxybe-
Overall, I'd agree it does look like we're headed in a similar direction with our thoughts regarding improving D&D from a 4e basis. I'm really enjoying bouncing ideas and seeing what sticks too.

Turning to the divine side of things, assuming active deities(in that they pick and choose their priests and grant them power), I dislike having one generic divine caster that acts like an archetype for all faiths. In my ideal world, to borrow 2nd ed parlance, we would only have specialty priests. A priest of Korrogoroth, the god of arms and warfare, would look and act MUCH different then a priest of Tums, the god of antacids and binging on spicy buffalo wings. The former would probably be closer to a Paladin while the second more gifting their clergy with alchemical knowledge, rather then a traditional D&D cleric.

I legit wouldn't be mad if we dropped the Cleric class entirely in favour for the Paladin and simply had the Invoker class that focused more on the healing magics and summoning of divine beings. Other deities could simply grant the appropriate knowledge via divine means: a Priest of Orcus that would focus on undead and pain sounds a whole lot like a Dread Necromancer, for example, whereas a more militant one would probably look a lot like the 5th ed Oathbreaker Pally.

This is largely what I mean by not tying the lore to a class, but still have a strong design concept.

I would go with broad classes with distinct subclasses (like 5e did?) where the different subclasses can be and frequently are a different party roles. I.E. the closest 4e came in PH1 was Warlock- fey pack really should have been a controller not a striker while infernal pack was more of a true striker. Let's just embrace this difference.
I also totally agree that it's unnecessary to tie any class too strongly to any specific bit of lore.

Regarding the Cleric's conceptual basis and quickly touching on real life religion, what is the societal role/job of the priest throughout human history and cultures? From my take on things, pretty much regardless of the religion or the time period, any religion that had/has the concept of priests has them filling the roles of god-speaker, rite leader and possibly counselor. Using god-speaker/god-agent and counselor/healer roles in different proportions based on build as the basis for the cleric class, I would use strong domains to distinguish between the cleric's of different D&D deities. I want to avoid the V-shaped class mess that 4e cleric had out of the box, but I also think that if classes can be designed to cover multiple different party roles depending on build, it'll help differentiate characters.

Rituals, Martial Practices, Alchemy & Magic Item Creation would probably be their own subsystems accessible by feats/talents.

probably gonna have to roll out the 'ol, "it's what playtesting is for" but I can agree that some seperation may be required, I'm just scared that getting too much too quickly could cause issues with choice paralysis, or getting stuff too slowly could cause people to groan they need to wait too long to get the right feats or talents to make their characters work.

Totally agree with your concerns regarding choice paralysis. This was something I really struggled with as a new player and something I think should be kept in mind when designing an RPG. 4e was not the easiest system to just pick up and start playing quickly and simplified initial build mechanics would help a lot. I think I've heard that in AD&D 2e it was pretty easy to whip-up a character and start playing without a lot of fuss and I think this is a good idea. I know the 4e devs wanted every concept to be pretty much playable from level 1, but I'm more ok with waiting until maybe level 3 or 4 to get all of goodies to give time to get used to the system. I'll even go so far as to say that you get your first DAILY at level 2 not 1 just to reduce the pre-level 1 decision making. The previous paragraph was pretty much a long way of saying I agree with you but still think separating kinds of abilities is useful.

I've got some thoughts reading the several posts of AEDU discussion but I need to run for now, so I'll try and weigh in on that later (hopefully today).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Yes, that was very informative. Thank you very much.

As a corollary, would you say that a 5e Tempest Cleric, Trickster Cleric, and War Cleric would play more or less differently than your three TWF variations?

From the phrasing of your question, I'm honestly not sure whether it's genuinely curious or a leading question aiming for "But different AEDU classes are totally different because their powers do different things!" So I'm going to assume good faith here and go on a bit of a tangent.

The original point of a "class" in D&D was to determine not just what your character could do but how your character approached the game:

Character class refers to the profession of the player character. The approach you wish to take to the game, how you believe you can most successfully meet the challenges which it poses, and which role you desire to play are dictated by character class (or multi-class).

If you were a wizard, you had spells and solved problems by anticipating or discovering challenges and determining what spells you would need to prepare to overcome them, so you were all about judicious resource usage. There were no feats to take get better at combat and weapon use, no skills to train to get better at stealth or diplomacy; those would come later, but at the start it was "wizard = prepare spells, use spells."

If you were a thief, you had certain skills that no one else could use like Hide In Shadows, Climb Walls, Read Languages, and the like, and the original version of Sneak Attack, called "Backstab," required careful positioning and could rarely be used once combat started, so you were all about figuring out how to apply a limited toolset of always-available-but-thematically-constrained tools to a problem and avoiding a fair fight as much as (demi-)humanly possible. Mid-level thieves could make use of magic items (a la Use Magic Device) but there were no magic shops where you were guaranteed to be able to buy specific magic items, and as with the wizard you couldn't just get better at combat without multiclassing/dual-classing with fighter, so at the start it was "thief = apply skills, ambush enemies."

And so on. Every class gave you a totally different method of approaching the game--different pacing, different resource management, and importantly different levels of complexity for people who liked more or less fiddliness in their classes. When systems for adding more capabilities to your character showed up (non-weapon proficiencies, kits, Player Options customization, etc.) it broadened the scope of each class, but at the end of the day classes were still tied to their their resource management systems and pacing as much as to their own themes. This trend continued in 4e and 5e (where class-based choices are big, important, and character-defining and outside-of-class customization is limited) and even the very flexible 3e (where skills and feats let you customize a lot but class features--especially PrC features--are most important and there are many more class resource systems to choose from).


Coming back to "playing differently," then, there are three axes to consider: focus (what major thing you can do), breadth (how broad that thing is), and style (how you do that thing). The barbarian/fighter/warblade trio is a good example of a set of classes who sit in basically the same point on the focus axis (they all hit things with pointy sticks), but they're at very different points on the style axis (at-will situational vs. use-and-recover slots vs. state-based, as mentioned above), and the warblade is quite a bit farther along the breadth axis: Iron Heart, Stone Dragon, and Tiger Claw maneuvers and stances make him very traditionally fighter- and barbarian-like, but White Raven makes him more marshal-/warlord-like and by using Martial Study (which he does better than any non-ToB class due to how initiator level works) he can pick up Desert Wind for mobility and AoEs, Devoted Spirit for tanking and healing, Diamond Mind for strong defense and single-target striking, Setting Sun for control and evasion, and Shadow Hand for stealth and debuffs.

The three clerics you mentioned play very similarly on the style axis: they're all 5e clerics, so they all have spirit-shaman-style pseudo-Vancian spellcasting and a limited use-and-recover slot system in Channel Divinity. They're also fairly similar on the breadth axis, as they share the same very broad list of cleric spells and each domain grants a thematically-focused but mechanically-somewhat-broad list of spells; contrast a 2e sphere-based specialty priest, who would be noticeably less broad because he is more locked into his theme due to lacking a broad shared spell list, and a 3e cleric, who would be noticeably more broad because his domain choices are broader (he also gets two domain spells per spell level, but he gets them for spell levels 1-9, not just 1-5, and he gets one spell from two possibly-very-different domains rather than two from one) and his shared cleric spell list is vastly wider. Where the three differ is in theme, as they are quite different both in terms of thematics and in terms of combat and out-of-combat roles.

Here's another 5e comparison: a Tempest Cleric, a Land (Coast) Druid, and a Storm Sorcerer. Like the fighter/barbarian/warblade trio, all of them sit on similar points on the focus axis: they're all storm-themed, so they get some lightning/thunder blasting, some energy resistances, some air- and water-based mobility, and so on. They sit on similar points on the breadth axis, like the Tempest/Trickery/War Cleric trio, because they all have a themed collection of powers in their main focus plus a broader cleric/druid/sorcerer list to fall back on to handle things outside their theme. But they have very different supplemental mechanical abilities (Channel Divinity and Metamagic supplement their main magic in different ways and using a different resource, Wild Shape doesn't reinforce the main theme but is usable out of combat in a way neither Channel Divinity nor Metamagic are, and so forth), sitting somewhere between the martial trio's very different style and the cleric trio's very similar style.


So while AEDU is like AD&D, 3e, and 5e in that it can support classes with quite different themes to their abilities (if you ignore that powers are all similar in general and few classes grant notable out-of-combat competence in their utility powers) and enable players to play characters as different from one another as the 5e cleric trio are, it can't support the breadth of either the martial trio (who each focus heavily on the A, the D, or the EU portions of AEDU and don't really use the others) or the storm caster trio (who have the A from their cantrips and sorta kinda the D from their spells even though 4e Daily and 5e pseudo-Vancian are very different, but nothing in common with E or each other in their secondary resource management and a Hells of a lot more U than any 4e class), and going far enough from the 4e version of AEDU to support that amount of variety defeats the purpose of basing a D&D fix on 4e in the first place.

Totally agree with your concerns regarding choice paralysis. This was something I really struggled with as a new player and something I think should be kept in mind when designing an RPG. 4e was not the easiest system to just pick up and start playing quickly and simplified initial build mechanics would help a lot. I think I've heard that in AD&D 2e it was pretty easy to whip-up a character and start playing without a lot of fuss and I think this is a good idea. I know the 4e devs wanted every concept to be pretty much playable from level 1, but I'm more ok with waiting until maybe level 3 or 4 to get all of goodies to give time to get used to the system. I'll even go so far as to say that you get your first DAILY at level 2 not 1 just to reduce the pre-level 1 decision making.

As I've said before, every D&D edition is roughly as approachable for new players as any other from levels 1-5, they just have different pain points. You can think of it like "easy to play characters (A), easy to build characters (B), easy to make the character you want (C), easy to understand the base system (D), pick 2," really:

• 1e is A/B: easy to build and play, but it's not very customizable (!C) and the base system isn't very intuitive at all (!D).
• 2e is B/C: quick to build and more customizable with Player Options and such, but there's more moving parts to track in play (!A) and there are lot of different subsystems to figure out (!D).
• 3e is C/D: you can make any kind of character you want and the rules are unified and cover everything, but there are lots of rules to juggle round-by-round (!A) and new characters are complex to build (!B).
• 4e is B/D: intuitive and has few choices to make upfront, but it has more fiddiliness in play and requires more tactical thinking to start (!A) and those initial choices can be intimidating because the important differences are very subtle (!C)
• 5e is A/D: intuitive and easy to play, but building characters requires lots choices up front (!B) and there's not a lot of official material to support more character variety (!C).

(Obviously, going by this pattern, 6e will be A/C: once you understand the rules you can build and run anything with ease, but you need a PhD in RPGology to get there. )

So by pushing back level 1 choices, you're going to be making things easier for new players to learn and play, but harder for experienced players to make what they want, since they'd have fewer choices when initially building characters and would take longer to get certain capabilities. It's a valid design decision to make, but it is a tradeoff.

[PhoenixPhyre]

SNIP

• 4e is B/D: intuitive and has few choices to make upfront, but it has more fiddiliness in play and requires more tactical thinking to start (!A) and those initial choices can be intimidating because the important differences are very subtle (!C)
• 5e is A/D: intuitive and easy to play, but building characters requires lots choices up front (!B) and there's not a lot of official material to support more character variety (!C).

One note--I went through and and counted (for a different purpose) how many long-term decisions have to be made for each class (including subclasses for 5e) at each level. I did this for 5e, 4e, and 3.5 (using the SRD base classes only). While the exact count depends on exact criteria, changes to criteria are generally neutral across the spectrum if applied consistently.

At first level, the only classes that required more long-term choices than any class in 4e (all 4e classes need exactly the same number of choices) were Bards, dragon sorcerers, and wizards.

Each 4e class takes 12 choices by the criteria I used. 5e monks take 6 (at the low), wizards take 15 (at the high). Note I was counting each spell separately (just like each AEDU ability).

So really, most of the choices are very similar between the two editions. There's rough parity between the systems in that regard.

Race
Class (5e has subclasses for a couple classes)
Ability scores (treated as 1 decision since there's the same number for each)
Skills (treated individually IIRC)
"Powers" (AEDU for 4e, spells for 5e)
Alignment

5e only things:
Background
personality

4e only things:
feat

not counted for either:
equipment (which is much more relevant, especially for martials, in 4e).

----------------
As someone who's taught lots of people to use both 4e and 5e over the last few years, I have no doubt that learning 5e is tremendously easier to get into and for new players to actually use. So much has been simplified and streamlined that it's no contest in my mind. Just the math of building the character (and the functional inability to make a bad character if you take what looks good) is tremendously lower. No need to dig up weapon expertise feats (and worry about "am I using the right weapon"), no stacking fiddly bonuses, no pages and pages of ability cards to memorize). And combat flows much quicker, to the point that I can do 2 full combats and RP in a 1.25 hour session, instead of 3-5 rounds of combat in 4e.

[falconflicker]

So I'm going to assume good faith here

I'm sorry if I sounded like I was asking in bad faith, thank you for taking the time to respond.
The secondary question that I posed was because I've played all three of those clerics, and felt that they had sufficiently different round-by-round priorities to feel completely different in play, though it seems that you have had different experiences than I have.

I would really like it if different power sources functioned legitimately differently from each other. From a design standpoint, however, I find it difficult to imagine how to properly balance different resource regeneration mechanics, as there is no set # of challenges per day, nor any set mixture thereof, thus differing resource regeneration causes different classes to work better in games with certain "styles."
For example:
- On one end, a wide-ranging exploration game would tend to have fewer encounters a day, so classes with more daily resources would tend to shine here.
- On the other, a dungeon crawl would tend to take less in-universe time, heavily favoring a class with at-will or short recharge resources.

Given that D&D is supposed to be played with a mix of Classes, having certain members of the party be heavily disadvantaged depending on the game style seems like a bad idea to me.

Overall, with respect to the different resource mechanics I've seen in RPGs, I'll tend to vote for a singular resource mechanic (such as AEDU, Vancian, or Mana), as it balances characters between each other over multiple scales, where as every time I've seen an RPG try to have multiple forms of resource regeneration, they tend to balance between each other over certain specific intervals, but not others.

[OACSNY97]

One note--I went through and and counted (for a different purpose) how many long-term decisions have to be made for each class (including subclasses for 5e) at each level. I did this for 5e, 4e, and 3.5 (using the SRD base classes only). While the exact count depends on exact criteria, changes to criteria are generally neutral across the spectrum if applied consistently.
---SNIP---
Race
Class (5e has subclasses for a couple classes)
Ability scores (treated as 1 decision since there's the same number for each)
Skills (treated individually IIRC)
"Powers" (AEDU for 4e, spells for 5e)
Alignment

5e only things:
Background
personality

4e only things:
feat

not counted for either:
equipment (which is much more relevant, especially for martials, in 4e).

Do you happen to have access to the rest of your old criteria? I'm really interested to see how what else you used to compare the character design choices.

Also, have you determined an ideal number or range of chargen options that can make for a customizable, but still easy to build character for a new player? 4e's 12(ish) choices sounds like too many for all classes, but is 5 or 6 too few?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Do you happen to have access to the rest of your old criteria? I'm really interested to see how what else you used to compare the character design choices.

Also, have you determined an ideal number or range of chargen options that can make for a customizable, but still easy to build character for a new player? 4e's 12(ish) choices sounds like too many for all classes, but is 5 or 6 too few?

Edit: As to the second question: It strongly depends. The biggest difficulty my new players have is picking spells, especially if they can't switch them every day. The second biggest is picking a class in the first place. Which makes sense. They're both highly detailed, consequential decisions that require knowledge of the system and a prediction of play style. A barbarian (6 choices) takes virtually no time to build, and most of that is just filling in the numbers. A wizard or bard is the worst (at 15 and 14, respectively). Druids are much more heavy later (due to wildshape), but they're heavy mostly at play-time, rather than in build-time.

7-10 seems to be a sweet spot. But that depends.

I have the final spreadsheet--I can probably reconstruct the criteria pretty quickly. I'll update this when I do.

Note I was only concerned with long-term choices--those things that you can't guarantee you can buy your way out of of or swap out daily. So a cleric's spells (since he knows the whole list) don't count, but a sorcerer's do (because he can only swap one per level).

Edit: I think I ignored things like languages as too variable based on race, class, etc.

Criteria: (things marked with a * count as multiple choices, one per individual item)

5e:
* Race (including subrace because you can't not have one if your chosen race gives a choice).
* Background
* Class
* Skills*
* Subclasses (some at level 1, some at level 2, some at 3)
* Spells* (except druid, paladin, and cleric, as noted above)
* Personality Traits (all as one choice IIRC)
* Starting Equipment (one choice)
* Ability Score Distribution (one choice)
* Class Features

4e:
* Race
* Class
* Feats*
* Skills*
* AEDU powers* (not counting swapping)
* Equipment
* Ability Score Distribution (one choice)
* Class Feature Choices (each class gets one at level 1)
* Paragon path
* Epic Destiny

3e (Pathfinder, really, IIRC. I think I used the PFSRD for the information):
* Race
* Class
* Feats*
* Skills (IIRC I counted these as 1 choice since the number of choices varies tremendously between builds, even of the same class)
* Spells* (Same criteria as 5e)
* Class Features (number varies strongly)
* Alignment (since that's mechanically significant here, unlike 5e or 4e)

That's the list, IIRC.

If anyone's interested, the spreadsheet can be seen at this One-Drive link.

[OACSNY97]

7-10 seems to be a sweet spot. But that depends.

---SNIP---

5e:
* Race (including subrace because you can't not have one if your chosen race gives a choice).
* Background
* Class
* Skills*
* Subclasses (some at level 1, some at level 2, some at 3)
* Spells* (except druid, paladin, and cleric, as noted above)
* Personality Traits (all as one choice IIRC)
* Starting Equipment (one choice)
* Ability Score Distribution (one choice)
* Class Features

---SNIP---

If anyone's interested, the spreadsheet can be seen at this One-Drive link.

I took a look at your spreadsheet and checked a couple of the 5e classes versus the 5e PHB and I get different numbers. Forex, I get 8 picks for Barbarian, not 6 at pre-first level chargen.
1. Race
2. Background
3. Class
4. 1st skill
5. 2nd skill
6. Personality Trait
7. Starting Equipment
8. Ability Scores
Would you mind checking my math and letting me know what I either double counted or included that I shouldn't have in order to get the same number of long-term picks you got?

Assuming I can get the numbers to work, I'd be happy to go with the 7-10 1st level character build long-term build choices for ease of customizable build.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I took a look at your spreadsheet and checked a couple of the 5e classes versus the 5e PHB and I get different numbers. Forex, I get 8 picks for Barbarian, not 6 at pre-first level chargen.
1. Race
2. Background
3. Class
4. 1st skill
5. 2nd skill
6. Personality Trait
7. Starting Equipment
8. Ability Scores
Would you mind checking my math and letting me know what I either double counted or included that I shouldn't have in order to get the same number of long-term picks you got?

Assuming I can get the numbers to work, I'd be happy to go with the 7-10 1st level character build long-term build choices for ease of customizable build.

Honestly, I may not have counted personality or equipment. I probably should have. That would bump all 5e characters up by 2.

Edit: My original goal was looking at some homebrew I had made and wondering if it involved too many choices. So I compared 5e to 5e, so things that everyone has to do didn't matter (as much, basically I got lazy and ignored some stuff). Then I chased a wild hare and ended up pulling the other two editions I had access to.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

As someone who's taught lots of people to use both 4e and 5e over the last few years, I have no doubt that learning 5e is tremendously easier to get into and for new players to actually use. So much has been simplified and streamlined that it's no contest in my mind. Just the math of building the character (and the functional inability to make a bad character if you take what looks good) is tremendously lower. No need to dig up weapon expertise feats (and worry about "am I using the right weapon"), no stacking fiddly bonuses, no pages and pages of ability cards to memorize). And combat flows much quicker, to the point that I can do 2 full combats and RP in a 1.25 hour session, instead of 3-5 rounds of combat in 4e.

Honestly, it's almost entirely player-dependent in my experience, so the system comparisons were only relative, not absolute. (Kind of like how the 3e tier system is all based on "Assuming someone of the same skill/math/tactical/etc. ability is playing every class...".) Most people I've introduced to the game, in any edition, have picked everything up fairly quickly, and having one or two experienced players makes it pretty much a wash.

And of course the things you mentioned are all more relevant to more experienced players. New players don't necessarily care about planning for higher-level abilities at 1st level, taking math-fix feats, and the like, and rather than memorizing spells and powers and such I usually see players print out pages of power cards and spell descriptions and just have those handy when they play. As far as the actual act of character creation goes, "roll stats, pick race from this list, pick class from this list, pick proficiencies/skills/feats/background/etc. from these other lists, go!" is pretty simple, as long as it's presented in a non-intimidating way; I believe OACSNY97, for instance, when he says that he found that the number of choices necessary at first level induced analysis paralysis, but when I've introduced new people I've walked them through it like "Okay, you get two powers you get to pick from here, what kinds of things do you want to be doing a lot of? [Describe at-will powers] Okay, cool, now you get a power that you can use once per combat from here..." and so on and no one's had an issue with that.

I'm sorry if I sounded like I was asking in bad faith, thank you for taking the time to respond.

Don't worry, I didn't think you were asking a leading question, but I've been in enough edition war conversations I wasn't sure and thought I'd add that caveat.

The secondary question that I posed was because I've played all three of those clerics, and felt that they had sufficiently different round-by-round priorities to feel completely different in play, though it seems that you have had different experiences than I have.

As with character-building, it really comes down to player preference. Let's say you have a player who wants to play a badass warrior who kills lots of enemies, for instance: I've had players who specifically want to play a warrior because they want to have special combos and deal with positioning and stuff, and they really want all their flavor descriptions of overhand chops and disembowelments and such to all be different mechanically; players who specifically want to play a warrior not because they want to be a warrior per se but because the magical classes looked too complex to them; players who specifically want to play a warrior because it's not a magical character, and only care about resource management insofar as whatever system they use doesn't "feel like magic" to them; and players who just want to play it because they think it's cool, and don't particularly care how that works mechanically.

Barbarian wouldn't be interesting enough for the first one, warblade would be great, and fighter would depend very much on the build; barbarian would be a good fit for the second player, fighter only if built to have mostly passive abilities that they can write on their sheet as opposed to active stuff like Power Attack or [Tactical] feats, and the warblade not at all; and the the third and fourth player would basically be happy with whatever sheet you put in front of them as long as it doesn't say "Wizard" on it.

Regarding the cleric example specifically, I'd personally be pretty bored if every time I played a character it had the same mechanics. Yes, the Tempest, War, and Trickery clerics have different themes and are doing different things each round, but sometimes you want the turn-by-turn and encounter-by-encounter flexibility of a Storm sorcerer, the action advantage and utility of a Valor bard, or the spike damage and out-of-combat reliability of an Arcane Trickster rogue, you know? In 3e, I love playing hybrid characters with access to two (or more!) resource systems because where others may find juggling multiple resources complicated I find it to be a fun challenge (on the rare occasion that I play rather than DM, that is).

I would really like it if different power sources functioned legitimately differently from each other. From a design standpoint, however, I find it difficult to imagine how to properly balance different resource regeneration mechanics, as there is no set # of challenges per day, nor any set mixture thereof, thus differing resource regeneration causes different classes to work better in games with certain "styles."
For example:
- On one end, a wide-ranging exploration game would tend to have fewer encounters a day, so classes with more daily resources would tend to shine here.
- On the other, a dungeon crawl would tend to take less in-universe time, heavily favoring a class with at-will or short recharge resources.

Given that D&D is supposed to be played with a mix of Classes, having certain members of the party be heavily disadvantaged depending on the game style seems like a bad idea to me.

I would dispute that those are necessarily all that different. A hexcrawl may have fewer actual encounters, but can involve just as much resource expenditure; my current 3e campaign has a heavy wilderness exploration component, and while the party may not have many fights per day they're still using up spells to scout ahead, get around dangerous terrain features, supplement their supplies, hide from monsters, and the like, and the fights that they do have can involve a lot more creatures than a dungeon encounter because of the lack of enclosed areas so spellcasters don't have a large advantage just because they have lots of spells.

Meanwhile, a dungeon crawl takes as much time as the party is willing to spend and that the opposition allows them. One dungeon might be an abandoned crypt with mostly mindless undead foes, so you can take things at your leisure and rest whenever you want--and even come and go from the dungeon with relative impunity--as long as you barricade the door sufficiently and don't tip off the mummy at the bottom; one might be an enemy fortress, where you have to go swiftly and stealthily from room to room, if you stop to rest the alarm will be sounded and make everything much harder, and if you leave the dungeon reinforcements will nearly ensure that you can't get back in a second time; another might be a more traditional dungeon, where there are multiple factions in the area and stopping to rest or leave will allow various groups to spread the word of your presence and reinforce to a limited extent, so you have to balance rest periods with increased difficulty and you can push ahead as fast or as cautiously as you're comfortable risking.

And then of course on the opposite end from short-recharge-friendly campaigns you have things like a war- or intrigue-heavy campaign, where much of the resource expenditure comes from information-gathering, preparing for missions, and countering enemy forces doing the same. In that situation, being able to do a few things very frequently is much less useful than being able to a bunch of different things less frequently, as the whole point is to set things up so you can use your limited resources to best advantage and cause your foes to waste their resources, and fights involve either single resource-expenditure-heavy in-and-out assaults or massive multi-day engagements.

Overall, with respect to the different resource mechanics I've seen in RPGs, I'll tend to vote for a singular resource mechanic (such as AEDU, Vancian, or Mana), as it balances characters between each other over multiple scales, where as every time I've seen an RPG try to have multiple forms of resource regeneration, they tend to balance between each other over certain specific intervals, but not others.

Balancing over different scales is only a problem if certain scales are over- or under-represented in the challenges you're expected to face and the adventure and campaign structures the game is expected to take. It's no coincidence that D&D resource management paradigms have traditionally tended towards the ones that are most useful for hexcrawls, multi-faction dungeon crawls, and war scenarios, as those are the things the game was originally built to support. Other games likewise tend toward other resource management paradigms; Shadowrun magic uses drain (damaging yourself if you channel too much power) since you're expected to do most of your casting during downtime to scout Astrally, bind spirits, and so forth and if you end up in a protracted battle where you need to bust out the big guns you've done something seriously wrong, Star Wars games have very little focus on in-game resource expenditure and are all about metagame currency and combat flow/momentum because Star Wars fights are all about climactic confrontations and the will of the Force, and so on. Vancian casting would be a poor fit for either of those other settings, just like adding in a Shadowrun Mage or a Star Wars Jedi to a D&D campaign alongside a bunch of standard D&D classes without altering the assumptions of the game to match wouldn't work out too well.

In 3e there are many different resource management systems, but pretty much everything that is a resource (and not just constant, at-will, or on-or-off) is on a daily "start with X and slowly tick things off as you use them" basis (spell slots, power points, rages, smites, bardic music, domain powers, mysteries, turn/rebuke attempts, etc.). There's only a few cases where you need to track recharges and then only rarely and for a few rounds (dragon breath weapons, crusader maneuver recovery, binder every-5-rounds vestige abilities, and maybe one or two more), which isn't really any more onerous than tracking round/level durations, and only one instance of a "reset at the start of an encounter" system (factotum inspiration).

Imbalances between those systems have much less to do with the resource management part and more to do with how many a given character gets and how powerful each option is. As I mentioned a few pages back, people complain about wizards wanting to rest at every opportunity to refresh spells but no one complains about paladins wanting to refresh their smites or monks their Stunning Fist uses, because spells are broad and powerful and neither Smite Evil nor Stunning Fist is powerful enough or integral enough to a paladin's or monk's fighting style to require constant refreshing. If 3e spells were on the order of 4e daily powers (better than at-will stuff but nothing to write home about) and 3e paladin smites were, say, a major encounter-long buff to the paladin and debuff to her target with multiple selectable effects and she got constant benefits based on how many smites she had left, it would be the smites rather than the spells driving the party's pacing, yet they'd both still be daily resources on slightly different schedules.

[falconflicker]

Good Words

I wish I could like posts on these forums rather than this content-free "You made a good point" post.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, resource systems are all about pacing.

Let's not forget that hp is also a resource (and in 3.X the only one that doesn't recharge within a day), and it's recovery rate is important. Recovering 1d6hp a day isn't a problem if you're only expecting a fight every week, but it is if you're recieving eight a day.

Players will also try to find their way around resource systems, which is actually good. This is the cause of the 15 minute adventuring day, as in 3.5 the only way to recharge spells is to wait until they come back. In many other systems characters will carry around 'containers' of resources or try to stack cost reducing effects on their favourite powers. Doing this is interacting with the system, and is exactly the kind of thing people will do in setting.