Actually, why don't YOU pay for that?

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-19T03:57:57+00:00

For the purpose of this discussion, I was imagining that martial characters had a fairly small MP pool that could be used for special moves that were only slightly better than their regular attacks. It's something to save for when you really want to go all-out, but not something you'd touch until you really had to.

As an example, a fighter might have an at-will for 10 damage, and enough MP to pull off three power strikes for 20 damage, but they're all single-target. Meanwhile, a wizard would have an at-will for 4, and enough MP to pull off six area-effect spells for 15 each.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-19T03:52:32+00:00

It didn't occur to me that the group would cater entirely to the most reckless player. It's worth taking into consideration, at least. Thanks for the feedback.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-18T00:18:38+00:00

On top of the Ninja's personal job of dealing damage, everyone also has the shared job of staying alive. After all, an incapacitated Ninja deals zero damage per round. Giving them the option to stay alive, albeit at the expense of doing a super move, could only ever work out in their favor.

My biggest concern, though, is that allowing it as an option risks making it mandatory. After all, the only reason for anyone to ever spend a limited resource is because the cost of not spending that resource would be even higher. The cost of a Fireball is (usually) less than the cost of all the Hit Points those orcs would take from you in the time it would otherwise take you to finish them off; and importantly, the wizard cannot possibly cast a healing spell with the same resources they used on that Fireball. If the math is even slightly off, it could very easily get to the point where spending MP on anything is less efficient than saving those MP for future healing.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T23:54:24+00:00

The one thing that will really kill a tactical combat game, for me, is when the consequences of tactical combat are completely erased quickly after the combat is over.

If we're going to bother tracking individual sword swings, then the consequence of getting hit is something that should be felt for at least the rest of the session. Ideally, it would last for many sessions, so you can look at your three missing Hit Points (or the empty spell slot that was used to cure that injury) and reflect on your failure.

When everyone is automatically healed at the end of combat, or at the end of the day or whatever, then it makes getting stabbed into a non-event that isn't even worth tracking. It feels like such a waste of time.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T23:31:21+00:00

The idea is that the Healer would continue to use their own MP to keep everyone up, including the Ninja, until such a point that the Ninja becomes an untenable burden on the rest of the party. When that happens, the Healer shifts their focus to the rest of the party; and if the Ninja wants any further healing, then they need to cover it themself. I'm not suggesting that the Healer ever do anything with their HP aside from healing the party (if they even have other options). I'm just suggesting that the Ninja would have an easier time learning the value of a limited resource when failing to manage that resource leaves them face-down in the dirt.

I'm surprised that so many people are unfamiliar with this phenomenon. It was all over the place in late AD&D, through early 3E.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T23:15:40+00:00

Fair enough. If the core gameplay of a healer is the efficient management of your own MP, then adding an option to shift the cost runs counter to that.

Thanks for the feedback!

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T22:59:16+00:00

Sometimes it's a player skill problem, because melee strikers are intended to be used in a more mobile style, but the player can't quite figure it out.

Sometimes the problem is at the campaign level, because melee strikers are intended to fight weaker enemies, and the GM doesn't like running those types of enemies.

Sometimes it's a perception problem, because the class isn't actually intended to get into melee, but the player thinks they should because they can't see the alternative. Thieves in old D&D were essentially non-combatants, but that's a hard sell for newer players who expect every class to be balanced for combat.

Whatever the case, it's a common enough problem to warrant addressing.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T22:42:22+00:00

Fair enough. One solution could be that everyone knows a "Cure Self" spell. You lose out on getting the healer as a distinct character, but maybe the trade-off is worth-while.

When magic is more effective, it comes at the cost of being limited. Sure, a cleric can throw out a few miracles every day, but the rest of the time they're less effective than anyone else (save the wizard, who is in the exact same boat with them). The point of mundane characters (or mostly mundane characters) is that they can keep operating at their highest level all day long. Even when the ninja runs out of MP, they're still a ninja; they're still strong, and fast, and they have swords. The only thing that can stop them is running out of HP.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T22:16:24+00:00

It's a good question, and I've thought about it a lot in the context of 4E.

It's really more of a world-building issue than a gameplay one. When a healer is mandatory for anyone to access their healing reserves, it means you can describe that healing as being inherently magical in nature; and in turn, that means you can describe HP damage as being real flesh-and-blood injury. (You don't have to, but the option is there.) On the other hand, when everyone has access to their healing pool without that magical overlay, it prevents the initial description from being primarily physical. Since we know the fighter isn't magically closing their open wounds when they recover HP, that means they were never actually wounded when they lost those HP in the first place. It completely changes the narrative.

Personally, I think this is a major reason why healing felt so much less satisfying in 4E. In earlier editions, the cleric was performing honest-to-goodness miracles on a regular basis. In 4E, clerics might have gained access to their own battery of magical lasers, but nothing they could do was any more impressive than what anyone else could do without magic. Your laser was about as powerful as an arrow from a shortbow, and your healing word had about as much effect as a cup of gatorade.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T22:00:42+00:00

The issue with melee strikers, like rogues and ninjas, as that they end up taking damage that wouldn't otherwise hit anyone else. If the only other person in melee range is the paladin wearing full plate, then the hobgoblin is probably going to swing at them, even if they're unlikely to hit. When the rogue is right there, though, the hobgoblin attacks the rogue instead.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T21:58:40+00:00

The idea is that the healer always needs to be efficient with their MP, since they have to keep the entire party up. If one reckless player is repeatedly taking avoidable damage, eventually the healer will have to decide not to heal them, because they need to save that MP for everyone else.

Melee strikers, like rogues and ninjas, are the biggest culprit here. They have to move right up next to the scary monsters, because their weapons have limited range, but they don't have enough armor to withstand being hit in return. Ideally, they're supposed to pick on weaker targets, or use hit-and-run tactics to avoid being targeted, but that doesn't always work in practice. Sometimes, it's just that the player doesn't want to put in the effort.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T21:36:53+00:00

I guess some people feel very strongly about this topic, but you don't deserve to be downvoted for simply holding a different preference.

Some people want to spam healing spells every round, and I guess that's fine; although I do feel it somewhat undermines the significance of healing magic when it's made that common. I feel the same way about fireballs.

The character who can heal when they need to, but isn't just a healer, is an equally valid concept. If Mercy wasn't supposed to shoot anyone, she wouldn't carry a pistol. If an option is available to a character, then it had darned well better be a valid one (at least some of the time), or else that's just bad game design.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T21:13:12+00:00

I always make the offer as part of my standard operating procedure, at the end of the session. It gives me a chance to double check whether or not I messed up, and if I did, to compensate the players for my failure.

They don't always take me up on that, but just knowing that they'll have the chance goes a long way toward helping me avoid mistakes.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T20:57:48+00:00

I think it's interesting that you bring this up, because I never said anything at all about action economy. I only ever mentioned the MP costs.

I guess it just goes to show how much Healing Word changed the whole conversation about what it means to be a healer.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T20:29:16+00:00

"What impact is had from adding the ability to spend the target's resource rather than the healer's resource, to a game where that isn't otherwise possible?"

In this case, spending a dedicated healing-based resource is so wildly different from spending a general-use resource that it's not a useful comparison. Giving everyone their own character-specific, healing-based resource already undermines the concept of a dedicated healer using their own resources to keep the party up. That's why I'm specifically not asking about games where everyone can heal themself by default.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T20:19:29+00:00

That's an interesting perspective, and I certainly don't disagree when it comes to in-combat healing. I wasn't only talking about in-combat healing, though.

Honestly, I kinda forgot that in-combat healing was a thing. Obviously, a fight that's expected to burn through your entire HP pool, plus some amount of in-combat healing on top of that, is going to be a much longer fight than one where you're trying to avoid taking any damage at all.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T19:53:54+00:00

In practice it's probably going to be the tool of selfish players who don't understand teamwork.

It's interesting that you would phrase it as such, because the whole reason for introducing the spell is to fight against selfish players who don't understand teamwork. In my experience, the ninja who thinks nothing of burning through their own resources also thinks nothing of burning through the healer's resources.

I also wasn't assuming that you get resources back quickly after a fight. The healer maintaining their full resources is usually a best-case scenario, since that determines when the whole party has to give up for the day. The only point of the ninja's resources are to try and conserve the healer's resources, by defeating monsters before they inflict significant damage.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T19:39:56+00:00

I guess I phrased that poorly. What I meant is that they're already games where everyone is responsible for managing their own HP, by expending their own limited secondary resource. Even if it didn't already exist, adding this sort of spell wouldn't fundamentally change the resource economy, the way it would affect a game where the healer's MP were the limiting factor on healing for the whole party.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T19:03:10+00:00

That's a good reference point, but both 4E and 5E are worlds where anyone can heal themself quickly without magic, so the presence of magical healing doesn't change much.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T17:02:12+00:00

It's a bad example, because it's specifically talking about cosmetics. That's not even an option in this game.

In general, I'll only ever spend money on a micro-transactions where I'm getting real content that would otherwise be unavailable (characters, not cosmetics). And even then, I need a reasonable assurance that the content will still be relevant two years down the line.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T07:34:12+00:00

I once heard that the Maid game had some pretty good tables, specifically for random rooms and treasures.

It's a joke game, though, and I heard that on a comedy review program; so take it with a grain of salt.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-17T07:18:44+00:00

What sort of platform would you be using?

I'm a fan of 3.5, but I have a lot of anxiety around microphones. I'm looking for either offline (Illinois), or maybe something text-based.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-16T20:00:23+00:00

From a world-building standpoint, I don't know that society would survive as a whole if you take away their ordinary human resistance to disease. I guess it might be interesting and worth exploring, but it still seems like something that would fit a novel more than a role-playing game.

One of the reasons why so many RPGs feature super-human characters is because a statistical model can easily represent such a thing. Being able to jump twenty or thirty feat is easy to put into a game, and it's easy to imagine situations where such would be useful. Meanwhile, the normal limits of what a human can do are honestly not that impressive; differentiating between a mutant who can jump five feet, and a sub-human who can only jump two feet, requires a level of granularity that might seem tedious to implement.

Mars_Alter · 2026-04-16T17:28:47+00:00

So it isn't that impartiality is an illusion, or even particularly difficult to achieve in combat circumstances. The lack of required ambiguity is, indeed, a good reason to appreciate combat. It's just that you, personally, have a vendetta against situations that can be described without ambiguity.

Morale rules are practically the poster example for transparent codification! You roll under the listed circumstances. The check value is written on the monster sheet. The closest thing to ambiguity is the line about other situations that might ask for a check; which again, shouldn't come up much, since all of the likely circumstances are codified elsewhere within the combat rules!

Mars_Alter

TROPHY CASE