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Rehabilitating Resonance
I like what the resonance pool is trying to accomplish, but agree its implementation could be improved. I have an idea how to address the problems (with help from other forum posts and Starfinder) while also streamlining a couple of other parts of the game.
Point Pool Purgatory
Has anyone else noticed that hero points only get a half page treatment with no feat or class ability support? Its yet another (tiny) pool that you have to remember you have to use at the crucial moment. The same goes for the cleric channel energy pool. Finally, there is the other whopper point pool that collected all of the various class pools into one place, spell points.
I think part of the problem with resonance and these other pools is that there isn’t a clear in universe explanation of where all of the pools come from and how they are distinct from each other. One pool that represents inner strength, force of will, or whatever is easy enough to understand, but three plus breaks the in-game fiction.
Powers, Cantrips, Hero Points, and all that
On a related topic, has anyone else noticed that powers and cantrips are all but identical except one costs spell points and the other does not? Cantrips are really just powers that have a cost of zero. I think it would open up the design space more to merge these two concepts and allow for costs of powers/cantrips to have costs ranging from zero to 2 or more is special cases and make sure powers of a certain cost are relatively balances with one another. Give some of the power heavy classes like paladin back some at wills this way. This (nod to Starfinder) also points the way to bringing the various hero point “powers” into the same framework.
In the following post, I lay out an alternative that attempts to merge all of these ideas together to significantly reduce in game resource tracking and rationalize some rules elements that overlap heavily. Please Enjoy.