Happened at our table a couple of months back.
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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The wizard in my D&D group tends to be somewhat frivolous with his spell slots. As someone who looks at D&D as a resource management game (BECAUSE IT IS), this often gives me pain.
If you want to play a game where you do cool wizard shit on the regular, probably don't play the game built entirely around "you should save your spells for the big fight." And if wotc don't want to induce "but what if I need it later?" anxiety they should fucking fix that, and make powers per-encounter or something.
Just because it has resources to manage doesn't mean it is a resource managing game.
D&D is a narrative game first, a strategic boardgame second. (That is why it is an Role-Playing first, Game second)
The point is to create awesome stories and memories with friends at the table. If this involves spending resources on frivolous shit, then so be it.
I'd bet you will remember stupid shit that Wizard got you in longer than when you tactically defeated a boss.
Lol. This just is not true in the slightest for earlier D&D. Sure, 5E is mostly focused on narrative, and everyone ignores food, water, etc. This was not always the case though. It was a role playing game, but the role was that of a person who had real needs and desires. It was mostly about dungeon crawling, and often even competitive-ish. Players would frequently try to get one up on each other, like sneaking off to steal all the loot from a dungeon before anyone else got there. There was also almost nothing done in cities and stuff. You'd purchase your equipment and move on to the next encounter.
I agree this isn't what the game has become, and it also isn't the way it "should" be. To pretend like resource management and survival aspect were never part of the game though is ignoring a lot of history.
DND is not a narrative game first. It has very few rules for narrative stuff. The bulk of its attention is spent on resource management and combat. Because the bulk of the game is centered around managing resources (spell slots, HP, sometimes gold), I say it is a resource management game.
It's not very good at facilitating good stories. It's just missing a bunch of tooling like you'd find in Fate or other games. You can still play make believe but you can do that with anything. The rules aren't really helping very much. They often don't care at all about the narrative.
I'll remember stuff like him blowing hold person on a retreating mook when the expertise-in-grapple rogue could have just grabbed him, sure, but not happily.
This is what BG3 fucks up in my opinion. Occasionally places will be created where you can't go to camp for a long rest, but usually you can leave and come back trivially. There's almost no need to save spell slots. You can easily long rest after every encounter and just blow all your slots as soon as possible. I enjoyed playing it how tabletop is played. You actually need to manage your slots. If you decide to just long rest somewhere dangerous you're probably going to have some kind of encounter in your sleep, and your armor won't be equipped and it takes time to put on.
Sadly, BG3 doesn't have a dungeon master to see you cheesing something and counter it. I agree the best part of D&D comes from managing resources and making do when you're running low. The fear after you've blown all your spells after a big fight and need to get to safety with low HP is when there's the most tension. It makes for good storytelling.
I too tried to play it 'right' and only rested sparingly. I made a point to never leave a dungeon or major quest sequence to rest, and generally burned through every last slot and ability I had before I chose to go back to camp. Highly recommend. Actually used my damn potions. Only issue is trying to figure out how to catch up on the rest cutscenes. I tried to squeeze them in all at once but I'm sure I missed some here and there.
To be fair though, my first Tav was a warlock. Even after my party was drained of everything, Eldritch blast goes pew pew and tosses enemies off cliffs (if Karlach didn't get to them first)
Add a homebrew spell slot potion
What problem is that intended to solve and how does it solve it?
The big boss had just walked upstairs and we were spying on him. I didn't want to be lured into a trap because we had no idea what was upstairs so I just wanted to look in through the window and see if they had guards posted or something.
That doesn't seem to describe the spell slot restoring potion so now I'm confused what you're talking about.
Oops wrong comment. Just add a potion that can restore spell slots
Right, I read your original post but that has a number of downstream consequences. Which ones do you see and how do you plan to address them?