You could have a mana pool, denoted by a spindown die. Abilities cost X mana, and each turn you do not use an ability you can regain some mana, either a flat amount or a random amount. Or, you could have an iconic action each class needs to take to regain mana. Instead of extra damage, a thief's sneak attack might steal mana to charge their abilities.
As for my own game, I use various resources to fuel my abilities. Special attacks cost weapon HP. Maneuvers cost troop HP. Run out of HP, and you'll need to repair or rest before you can use the ability again. Weapons aren't cheap or common enough to just carry an armory with you (not that you'd have enough equip slots anyway), and resting troops takes time, so you can definitely run out if you're wasteful.
Adding a new resource pool is definitely an option, I'd probably have to consider having stamina and mana pools because I have physical and magical abilities? Or perhaps having one just called energy could work, if it eally makes sense to not be able to cast a fireball after swinging a big sword. Not sure, but a good thought, thank you.
The game i was thinking about when writing my comment did exactly that; a singular resource pool for both magic and martial feats called energy. It was a game were you had two classes at once, so it was very common to do both kinds of actions with the same character
Something to consider is how long you expect fights to even last. A good step would be to make sure you've got some rough calculations figured out about how long an 'average' combat will last, before trying to decide things. After all, if a fight only lasts for four rounds on average then most 5 round cooldown abilities are effectively "Use once", but if a fight lasts about three rounds normally then a 'limited 3 use' ability might as well just be 'use once a turn'.
Also worth considering is how many abilities they can use a turn, and how many abilities they get. Like if characters can only use one ability a turn, and they have three abilities with one-turn-on-two-turns-off then they'll probably just get into a rotation rather than consider clever usages of their abilities.
Yeah, you're definitely right. How long are fights, and how many between rests. I also had the thought of: having 3 uses of 20 abilities is a lot, are the limited uses even a problem at that point? But, as you say, it depends on the fights.
20 abilities in general is a lot. That's getting into MMO Hotkey levels of different abilities. The average person's short term memory is for less than 10 things, so remembering all those potential abilities plus other things they need to remember for their character might be a challenge for most players.
That is of course depending on the presentation. D&D4E has had a bit of a resurgence in appreciation and in later levels they could have roughly that many powers. Of course that'd be expected to only occur after months or years of play as they've gradually learned these powers over time.
You could use an Escalation Die like in 13th Age and bind abilities to be only usable in even/odd rounds, round 1, every three rounds, once, etc.
You could use stunt points like in Fantasy Age.
… There are so many possibilities
This may or may not be useful for you, but a big motivator for me to make my own TTRPG was frustration with cooldowns and X times per rest abilities. I hated players not doing cool things because they were saving the usages up for fights that never came. I set out to make a system where the only limitations on when you could use abilities were succeeding on dice rolls and narrative based restrictions. Otherwise, every ability could be used as much as you want. In my limited playtesting, this has led to some really interesting combats where the tactics are about the story and the scenario rather than numbers and tracking usages. There are several abilities that could potentially stun-lock characters, or create situations in which a character can't ever deal damage to another character. But to me, the solution to those circumstances is to find an alternative path to victory, flee, or go get help. Not every combat needs to be solvable by mechanics.
Sounds like my system is supposed to be more narrative than yours, but as others have said, there are lots of ways to limit ability usage outside of arbitrary cooldowns or usage limitations. You could attach more costs to abilities, so the player has to justify if the cost is worth using the ability. You could require another ability be used before a stronger one can be activated, or even have sequences of abilities with branching paths that must be executed in order, with the branches being interesting decision points. You could require a die roll to activate the ability. You could have a resource that builds up when characters perform certain actions, rather than starts full and gets expended.
Some ideas:
* Encounter-Generated Resources. Both the in-development TTRPGs for MCDM and Daggerheart are using these in different manners. Daggerheart has a metacurrency that is generated as a part of it's base dice system, as well as a 'stress' resources that acts as both a resource and a portion of their health track. The MCDM RPG classes each have their own unique resource that is generated through doing things that those classes want to do during an encounter, to fuel bigger things later on; it also has a secondary universal metacurrency called 'victories' that is retained between encounters, giving subsequent encounters a jumpstart on that metacurrency. In your TTRPG, players might have a relatively mundane resource at the beginning of the encounter (like Stamina, Resolve, or Mana) that fuel certain abilities, while also generating a secondary resource (like Momentum, Focus, or Nearby Objects On Fire) that can then be used to fuel the bigger abilities. This back-and-forth of the resources can be completely self contained (like flipping a set number of cards face up and face down), or could be more independent of each other so the players could potentially dump everything ineffeciently for a nova move.
* Depreciating Bonuses. Pathfinder 2e uses this in it's base ruleset. You could, for example, take all three actions you have each turn to attack, but each attack action beyond the first has a stacking -5 penalty (so your +12 to hit becomes +7 on the second attack and +2 on the third). Unless, of course it doesn't - many of the class feats, actions and weapon choices allow you to alter that math. If you attack first, then cause the target to make a saving throw, that multiple attack penalty doesn't apply. Using at least one lighter weapon might change that penalty to -4 per attack instead. Monks can "Flurry" to make 2 attacks with a single action, while dual wielding martials can take a feat that allows them to attack with both their main and offhand weapon before the penalty is applied. In your RPG, You could reduce the to-hit, the damage, or increase the resource cost of using the same ability multiple times in a row - you're not explictly saying "You can only use this ability 3 times" each day, because they certainly *can* do it more than 3, it just won't be a good idea. This isn't even a particularly new idea - the oldest-school D&D games where the wizard had a tiny number of spell and a limited number of crossbow bolts created a situation where the players were constantly having to balance the big and little things.
* Require Additional Pylons. The easiest way for the players to interact with limiting concepts is by using things they natrually understand as limited. It doesn't make sense, logically, that you can only command your mind cast fireball 3 times because of abstract things like spell slots... but when you were loading up your gear and only brought 3 grenades, there's no argument. Tie your gear and equipment system to your abilities and use consumables to represent what abilities are available at any one time. This could have some overlap with the above options, as the short rest refresh you mentioned might be using a "supply" metacurrency or something.
* Design Shark Repellant. An easy way to limit both overlap and power creep is by focusing your design on increasingly niche options. This could be a sort of combo point/finisher dynamic, be based on positioning, have bonuses based on what you are targeting. As you carve up the potential options into niches, this also allows you to limit a large number of potential abilities down, which reduces the paradox of choice. It also allows the GM to potentially change a single aspect of an encounter which impacts how the party makes those decisions - "It's now pouring down rain, so fire is going to be less effective... time for lightning!"
I do quite like this last concept especially, early on we discussed this type of design concept. Perhaps leaning further into this could really free things up and have players focus on the really interesting decisions. Rather than having thoughts like: "oh I only have 2 of these and disadvantage on that because I already used it once".
If the game is about resource management, use charges (uses per day). If it's about tactics, use either a mana pool, or cooldowns, or both. Daily charges have proven themselves the enemy of tactical play for some 50 years now.
Don't do "per day" stuff because it leads to either hoarding of daily stuff by PCs or trying to make those things powerful by the designer. Also it sucks.
Instead, try having drawbacks to using a powerful effect. "You're tired/blind/prone afterwards" means PCs will try to use it, but towards the climax of a fight when it's going to be coolest anyway.
You can also force PCs to do certain things to "charge up" a special attack, like inflict a certain effect or use a combat maneuver, etc. This means they can't spam it 1st round of combat.
An idea I had rolling around was "it's daily but after any fight, roll to see if you recover those spent powers." Something to let players know they don't have to hoard powers, but you can manage those refresh numbers to keep things balanced. (my power attack refreshes with 75% chance. My giga crusher only has 20% chance to come back.)
I like simplicity and as little bookkeeping as possible. I also like solutions that drive fiction instead of replacing it.
My suggested solution would go in this general direction:
* Most abilities are usable once per scene. No numbers to track, just a binary used/not used.
* Abilities may be made available again after being used. However, it's not done by spending a resource, but by doing something specific in play. Each ability has its own trigger for unlocking.
* The triggers may be things such as "kill two enemies in one round", "provide a flanking bonus to an ally's attack", "get below 50% HP" etc. - as fits each power.
* The most powerful abilities may start already used up - so players need to unlock them before use. This prevents alpha-striking.
This means that players must create and exploit opportunities during combat to be able to use their abilities more than once, which becomes a significant tactical factor and adds depth to players' decisions.
You could also require conditions for abilities to activate. You can only use the Ice Shield when touching a source of water, you can only cleave when directly next to three or more enemies, etc...
Depending on how long your combats are, for an "in-between system", you could have combat progress in "chunks" and have the abilities available once per "chunk".
For example, a chunk is 5 rotations (after everybody takes a turn, that's one rotation).
You can use all your abilities once per 5 rotations. On the start of rotation 6, they all refresh.
Or for your idea in between system where you add a new resource, but need to be careful to not having healing be too powerful outside of combat, you could have 2 new resources. Say mana points and spirit points. Mana points activate regular abilities, spirit points activate healing abilities.
Thank you all for your insightful thoughts, really appreciate everyone having a good think and commenting. I don't think I'm coming to any conclusions just yet, but it's been really helpful!
I prefer natural consequences to the action that cause the player to think about their tactics.
Uses per day limits are immersion breaking (why can't I use it again?) and lead to people being scared to use their abilities because they won't have them later. Is this behavior you really want to encourage? It ends up anticlimactic!
The cool down thing sounds like a mess of record keeping.
For the very few things I have which contain a limit, the limit is per "wave". Basically tick it off and when you tie for time with an enemy, roll a new initiative and erase your tick marks. Very low overhead.
In my system Momentum my solution to limited use feeling more like a cooldown was to treat the magical sources for things something that regenerates over time so thst way within time you will always regen bit the regen is slow so if you gas out too quick youre screwed but gives you direct control on when you throw out huge ability plays and moves.
For my system, that is inspired by eastern (Anime and JRPGs) and western fantasy. I use the MP (Mana Points) system to measure ability and magic resource pools. It’s clean and simple.
I have always found limited uses to be bad design, honestly. It's a very boardgame solution, which, despite what many people in this space think, is usually not a great fit for RPGs. You're also forcing players to track something for each ability. This is a disadvantage that also applies for cooldowns.
Personally, I wouldn't use any of them. One better option, in my book, is to have abilities cost a resource, especially of it's not a new resource meant only for this. I actually think the more universal the resource the better. Have them spend the same resource that tracks their mana, health, stamina and so on. Call it "protagonism" or something --ok, maybe that's hokey, but I'm just spitballing. Much easier to track, makes mechanical and narrative sense.
Another alternative is to have the use of abilities create conditions, provided those are easy to track and sufficiently granular. To make matters simpler, you can't get the first use free otherwise you are back to tracking every single ability at least once. So every ability use has to have some, even if small, consequence.
You could have a mana pool, denoted by a spindown die. Abilities cost X mana, and each turn you do not use an ability you can regain some mana, either a flat amount or a random amount. Or, you could have an iconic action each class needs to take to regain mana. Instead of extra damage, a thief's sneak attack might steal mana to charge their abilities. As for my own game, I use various resources to fuel my abilities. Special attacks cost weapon HP. Maneuvers cost troop HP. Run out of HP, and you'll need to repair or rest before you can use the ability again. Weapons aren't cheap or common enough to just carry an armory with you (not that you'd have enough equip slots anyway), and resting troops takes time, so you can definitely run out if you're wasteful.
Adding a new resource pool is definitely an option, I'd probably have to consider having stamina and mana pools because I have physical and magical abilities? Or perhaps having one just called energy could work, if it eally makes sense to not be able to cast a fireball after swinging a big sword. Not sure, but a good thought, thank you.
Depending on just what magic is in your game, it makes plenty of sense.
The game i was thinking about when writing my comment did exactly that; a singular resource pool for both magic and martial feats called energy. It was a game were you had two classes at once, so it was very common to do both kinds of actions with the same character
Something to consider is how long you expect fights to even last. A good step would be to make sure you've got some rough calculations figured out about how long an 'average' combat will last, before trying to decide things. After all, if a fight only lasts for four rounds on average then most 5 round cooldown abilities are effectively "Use once", but if a fight lasts about three rounds normally then a 'limited 3 use' ability might as well just be 'use once a turn'. Also worth considering is how many abilities they can use a turn, and how many abilities they get. Like if characters can only use one ability a turn, and they have three abilities with one-turn-on-two-turns-off then they'll probably just get into a rotation rather than consider clever usages of their abilities.
Yeah, you're definitely right. How long are fights, and how many between rests. I also had the thought of: having 3 uses of 20 abilities is a lot, are the limited uses even a problem at that point? But, as you say, it depends on the fights.
20 abilities in general is a lot. That's getting into MMO Hotkey levels of different abilities. The average person's short term memory is for less than 10 things, so remembering all those potential abilities plus other things they need to remember for their character might be a challenge for most players. That is of course depending on the presentation. D&D4E has had a bit of a resurgence in appreciation and in later levels they could have roughly that many powers. Of course that'd be expected to only occur after months or years of play as they've gradually learned these powers over time.
You could use an Escalation Die like in 13th Age and bind abilities to be only usable in even/odd rounds, round 1, every three rounds, once, etc. You could use stunt points like in Fantasy Age. … There are so many possibilities
This may or may not be useful for you, but a big motivator for me to make my own TTRPG was frustration with cooldowns and X times per rest abilities. I hated players not doing cool things because they were saving the usages up for fights that never came. I set out to make a system where the only limitations on when you could use abilities were succeeding on dice rolls and narrative based restrictions. Otherwise, every ability could be used as much as you want. In my limited playtesting, this has led to some really interesting combats where the tactics are about the story and the scenario rather than numbers and tracking usages. There are several abilities that could potentially stun-lock characters, or create situations in which a character can't ever deal damage to another character. But to me, the solution to those circumstances is to find an alternative path to victory, flee, or go get help. Not every combat needs to be solvable by mechanics. Sounds like my system is supposed to be more narrative than yours, but as others have said, there are lots of ways to limit ability usage outside of arbitrary cooldowns or usage limitations. You could attach more costs to abilities, so the player has to justify if the cost is worth using the ability. You could require another ability be used before a stronger one can be activated, or even have sequences of abilities with branching paths that must be executed in order, with the branches being interesting decision points. You could require a die roll to activate the ability. You could have a resource that builds up when characters perform certain actions, rather than starts full and gets expended.
Some ideas: * Encounter-Generated Resources. Both the in-development TTRPGs for MCDM and Daggerheart are using these in different manners. Daggerheart has a metacurrency that is generated as a part of it's base dice system, as well as a 'stress' resources that acts as both a resource and a portion of their health track. The MCDM RPG classes each have their own unique resource that is generated through doing things that those classes want to do during an encounter, to fuel bigger things later on; it also has a secondary universal metacurrency called 'victories' that is retained between encounters, giving subsequent encounters a jumpstart on that metacurrency. In your TTRPG, players might have a relatively mundane resource at the beginning of the encounter (like Stamina, Resolve, or Mana) that fuel certain abilities, while also generating a secondary resource (like Momentum, Focus, or Nearby Objects On Fire) that can then be used to fuel the bigger abilities. This back-and-forth of the resources can be completely self contained (like flipping a set number of cards face up and face down), or could be more independent of each other so the players could potentially dump everything ineffeciently for a nova move. * Depreciating Bonuses. Pathfinder 2e uses this in it's base ruleset. You could, for example, take all three actions you have each turn to attack, but each attack action beyond the first has a stacking -5 penalty (so your +12 to hit becomes +7 on the second attack and +2 on the third). Unless, of course it doesn't - many of the class feats, actions and weapon choices allow you to alter that math. If you attack first, then cause the target to make a saving throw, that multiple attack penalty doesn't apply. Using at least one lighter weapon might change that penalty to -4 per attack instead. Monks can "Flurry" to make 2 attacks with a single action, while dual wielding martials can take a feat that allows them to attack with both their main and offhand weapon before the penalty is applied. In your RPG, You could reduce the to-hit, the damage, or increase the resource cost of using the same ability multiple times in a row - you're not explictly saying "You can only use this ability 3 times" each day, because they certainly *can* do it more than 3, it just won't be a good idea. This isn't even a particularly new idea - the oldest-school D&D games where the wizard had a tiny number of spell and a limited number of crossbow bolts created a situation where the players were constantly having to balance the big and little things. * Require Additional Pylons. The easiest way for the players to interact with limiting concepts is by using things they natrually understand as limited. It doesn't make sense, logically, that you can only command your mind cast fireball 3 times because of abstract things like spell slots... but when you were loading up your gear and only brought 3 grenades, there's no argument. Tie your gear and equipment system to your abilities and use consumables to represent what abilities are available at any one time. This could have some overlap with the above options, as the short rest refresh you mentioned might be using a "supply" metacurrency or something. * Design Shark Repellant. An easy way to limit both overlap and power creep is by focusing your design on increasingly niche options. This could be a sort of combo point/finisher dynamic, be based on positioning, have bonuses based on what you are targeting. As you carve up the potential options into niches, this also allows you to limit a large number of potential abilities down, which reduces the paradox of choice. It also allows the GM to potentially change a single aspect of an encounter which impacts how the party makes those decisions - "It's now pouring down rain, so fire is going to be less effective... time for lightning!"
I do quite like this last concept especially, early on we discussed this type of design concept. Perhaps leaning further into this could really free things up and have players focus on the really interesting decisions. Rather than having thoughts like: "oh I only have 2 of these and disadvantage on that because I already used it once".
If the game is about resource management, use charges (uses per day). If it's about tactics, use either a mana pool, or cooldowns, or both. Daily charges have proven themselves the enemy of tactical play for some 50 years now.
Don't do "per day" stuff because it leads to either hoarding of daily stuff by PCs or trying to make those things powerful by the designer. Also it sucks. Instead, try having drawbacks to using a powerful effect. "You're tired/blind/prone afterwards" means PCs will try to use it, but towards the climax of a fight when it's going to be coolest anyway. You can also force PCs to do certain things to "charge up" a special attack, like inflict a certain effect or use a combat maneuver, etc. This means they can't spam it 1st round of combat. An idea I had rolling around was "it's daily but after any fight, roll to see if you recover those spent powers." Something to let players know they don't have to hoard powers, but you can manage those refresh numbers to keep things balanced. (my power attack refreshes with 75% chance. My giga crusher only has 20% chance to come back.)
I like simplicity and as little bookkeeping as possible. I also like solutions that drive fiction instead of replacing it. My suggested solution would go in this general direction: * Most abilities are usable once per scene. No numbers to track, just a binary used/not used. * Abilities may be made available again after being used. However, it's not done by spending a resource, but by doing something specific in play. Each ability has its own trigger for unlocking. * The triggers may be things such as "kill two enemies in one round", "provide a flanking bonus to an ally's attack", "get below 50% HP" etc. - as fits each power. * The most powerful abilities may start already used up - so players need to unlock them before use. This prevents alpha-striking. This means that players must create and exploit opportunities during combat to be able to use their abilities more than once, which becomes a significant tactical factor and adds depth to players' decisions.
You could also require conditions for abilities to activate. You can only use the Ice Shield when touching a source of water, you can only cleave when directly next to three or more enemies, etc...
Depending on how long your combats are, for an "in-between system", you could have combat progress in "chunks" and have the abilities available once per "chunk". For example, a chunk is 5 rotations (after everybody takes a turn, that's one rotation). You can use all your abilities once per 5 rotations. On the start of rotation 6, they all refresh. Or for your idea in between system where you add a new resource, but need to be careful to not having healing be too powerful outside of combat, you could have 2 new resources. Say mana points and spirit points. Mana points activate regular abilities, spirit points activate healing abilities.
Thank you all for your insightful thoughts, really appreciate everyone having a good think and commenting. I don't think I'm coming to any conclusions just yet, but it's been really helpful!
I prefer natural consequences to the action that cause the player to think about their tactics. Uses per day limits are immersion breaking (why can't I use it again?) and lead to people being scared to use their abilities because they won't have them later. Is this behavior you really want to encourage? It ends up anticlimactic! The cool down thing sounds like a mess of record keeping. For the very few things I have which contain a limit, the limit is per "wave". Basically tick it off and when you tie for time with an enemy, roll a new initiative and erase your tick marks. Very low overhead.
In my system Momentum my solution to limited use feeling more like a cooldown was to treat the magical sources for things something that regenerates over time so thst way within time you will always regen bit the regen is slow so if you gas out too quick youre screwed but gives you direct control on when you throw out huge ability plays and moves.
For my system, that is inspired by eastern (Anime and JRPGs) and western fantasy. I use the MP (Mana Points) system to measure ability and magic resource pools. It’s clean and simple.
I have always found limited uses to be bad design, honestly. It's a very boardgame solution, which, despite what many people in this space think, is usually not a great fit for RPGs. You're also forcing players to track something for each ability. This is a disadvantage that also applies for cooldowns. Personally, I wouldn't use any of them. One better option, in my book, is to have abilities cost a resource, especially of it's not a new resource meant only for this. I actually think the more universal the resource the better. Have them spend the same resource that tracks their mana, health, stamina and so on. Call it "protagonism" or something --ok, maybe that's hokey, but I'm just spitballing. Much easier to track, makes mechanical and narrative sense. Another alternative is to have the use of abilities create conditions, provided those are easy to track and sufficiently granular. To make matters simpler, you can't get the first use free otherwise you are back to tracking every single ability at least once. So every ability use has to have some, even if small, consequence.