This is one of the reasons I'm really not happy with DND. I just don't want to play a resource management game. I want to do cool stuff.
There are lots of games that aren't built around resource management and attrition, but unfortunately DND is so popular it sucks all the air out of the room.
I do feel that slowly, edition by edition, D&D is moving closer to it's recourse management being tied to it's round based action economy which I actually enjoy.
As a player, it's already pretty easy to play this way, before counting subclasses, the rogue has literally no abilities that are limited by anything but once per turn, and if you pick some fun narrative spells as warlock and rely on invocations and eldritch blast, you can be totally effective without any resource management. Both of these exclude hitpoints of course but that is a pretty reasonable resource for a combat focussed fantasy game.
My understanding is that OneDnd was moving more towards per-long-rest instead of anything else. I haven't been following it for a few months though.
I would vastly prefer if powers were based on something more granular than long rest.
Oh yeah it is but I'm not really counting that as a new edition, just a minor reshuffling of the 2014 rules.
NGL if you take out what's left of the resources in 5e you'll reduce the game to exclusively standing in front of the enemy taking turns hitting each other, instead of just mostly.
The truth is if you want a resourceless game you're gonna have to play a different system, and if you're gonna play a different system you're gonna have to run it. Luckily, it's very easy to get groups for new systems, because you just tell the 5e players it's D&D and they probably won't even notice the rules changed.
I'd love to play other systems. My weekly group finally agreed to try other things on the regular, and so far everyone has really enjoyed it. I think the core engine is called Year Zero? Honestly the guy running it maybe did a smart thing by giving the group a short Google doc with the rules summarized instead of the actual rule book. Getting players to read is embarrassing difficult.
Also, are you me? Because I have often half jokingly said that you could just change from 5e to another system and the average player wouldn't notice because they're so bad at the rules anyway.
I'm slightly joking, but it's a lot less than half. My respect for 5e players took a massive nosedive after I actually played it, so I have run a few oneshots that have started with "oh by the way we're using Pathfinder 2e tonight" because I just told the 5e players we were playing "D&D".
I really like where D&D's at, since it has multiple classes at every point along the "at will" to "once per day" spectrum, so players can pick what they like. D&D 4e tried homogenizing everyone into having mostly "at will" powers and players (myself included) hated it.
Agreed about not liking that D&D sucks all the air out of the room, though.
Yeah, I hate that DnD is such a resource management game too. (More so that is is the ONLY game my group will consider playing.)
I tend to horde any limited resource. TTRPG or video game.
Is this group of mooks big enough to justify using power/spell/item X? Is there a bigger group around the corner? Is this just a lieutenant or the BBEG? Oh, this guy is monologueing, he must be the BBEG. But does his fight have multiple phases? OR is he just a puppet and the real BBEG is waiting for us to blow all our abilities.
Doesn’t matter how narratively I’m engaged in the plot. I’ve got a tactically aware mind and these thoughts are always there.
Same.
In my last DND game, where the wizard was extremely fast and loose with his spell slots, the DM gave him a free long rest in the middle of the final boss fight. It kind of sort of made sense for story reasons but not really. I was honestly kind of pissed. Like on the one hand the wizard was having fun. On the other like what's the point if we're going to do that. I've been here doing the tactical "this is how we can solve this problem with the fewest resources spent" and no one else is, and he gets this? Ugh.
Even Baldur's gate 3 betrayed me like this. There's a lengthy sequence that I did with like no resources spent. It was slow and cautious but I knew there was a big boss at the end of it. And then they put a fucking full-rest fountain right before the boss fight. I could've been fireballing everything instead of playing smart!
When it was my turn to DM, before the scene I just complained about, that wizard was practically begging for a long rest. No sir. You get multiple hard encounters and a race against enemies. Maybe don't blow Hold Person on the fleeing civilian when the rogue has expertise and is ready to grapple next time.
I'm much happier now that we're playing a different system.
I will take all the passive abilities please, I already have 5 hot keys assigned and will never remember anymore.
Yeah. I feel like as things keep changing, I'm growing less fond of TTRPG's that are pure battles of attrition. It's nice to have things you can use at will. Or if there is a limited resource, having a way to regain some of that resource on the fly makes for more dynamic game states.
In my current 5e game, I have some items that have soft limits on how often you can use them, in that each time you use them you make a con save or gain a level of exhaustion, and the dc increases as you use them more, and the dc resets when you finish a long rest without any exhaustion.
There's a good reason for the going for the last one: Opportunity Cost.
If you're in a situation and have an ability that can only be used once a day, you can never really know if this encounter will be the optimal use. So you hold off on it and thus get less utility. Even if you are regularly using it, having something you can always get utility out of is far more valuable than something that is strong but wasted sometimes.
I thought that before I started playing, but since then I have leaned further towards the first two.
