This use of ability pools was spawned by my review of John Reyst’s Threshold d20 system. While I was not interested in how John was implementing them, I realized that with the modifications I am making I may have a replacement for a few mechanisms I do not like.
Daily Abilities
First among them, ‘daily abilities’. As far as I can see, the primary purpose of daily abilities (or limited uses per day) is to prevent a creature from spamming the same attack or action. This is a reasonable desire, but it leads to a structure that can encourage ‘nova behavior’ where characters focus their power as much as possible for a single decisive strike rather than conserve it for use throughout the day.
I have seen several mechanics introduced to try to fix this, including a ‘rest mechanic’ in Trailblazer that allows recovery of daily uses of power. I believe there is a similar mechanism in D&D 4e (along with designation of ‘encounter’ and ‘at will’ powers).
Instead of applying ‘daily uses’ to various powers, I have them draw from a resource that is limited in size at any given time but easily recovered, given time and opportunity. A character is still limited in how big an effect he can draw at any given time (and that gets bigger as he reaches higher levels), but with careful management can continue to draw on this resource for a larger number of encounters.
Ability Score Changes
Second, temporary ability score changes (damage or bonuses) as implemented in D&D 3.x is hugely annoying. A change to an ability score can have broad effects (changing skill check modifiers, attack roll modifiers, saving throw modifiers, saving throw DCs, spell access, hit point totals — Constitution effects can be wicked) and can be a pain to handle during play… especially when they happen more than once. Also, ability score damage can be an easy way to victory — 4d6 points of Constitution damage isn’t that difficult to cause and will be directly or indirectly fatal to most creatures, Intelligence damage cripples wizards, and so on. Even a moderate amount of Strength damage can stop a warrior in his tracks if it means he can no longer carry his armor.
Instead, Echelon ability scores are relatively difficult to change in play. Talents may allow change to an ability score, but this is determined outside normal play. Changes to the pool may have lingering effect, so there is some resource management concern, but the recovery is relatively straightforward as long as the character does not overspend.
Conditions and Damage
The primary mechanism for killing (or staying alive) in Echelon is still hit points. Damaging ability pools should be relatively difficult and have limited immediate effect.
Condition removal is written as it is to put some limit on the desire to overspend in a single encounter. If a character keeps his ability pool above zero he will recover fully at the end of each encounter and not suffer conditions. If his pool drops to 0 or less, he will suffer a related condition until the pool fully recovers — to the end of the current encounter and one more, at least, barring other circumstances that let him recover more completely before the next encounter.
Well-Rounded Characters
(This point is still conjecture based on consideration of ability pool calculations. At the risk of making all characters MAD…)
In D&D 3.x (and in 4e, from what I can see but have not personally experienced) it is often most effective for a character to focus on his best ability score. Wizards want some Constitution for the hit points and some Dexterity for Armor Class, but for maximum power and survivability focus on keeping their Intelligence scores as high as possible. Passive defenses such as saving throws and hit points don’t, as a rule, do as much to keep a character alive as incapacitating or killing the opposition as fast as possible.
The way ability pools are set up, the difference in size between best and worst probably won’t be very large (about 7 points if using 27-25-23 to generate ability scores — 18/2 = +9, 5/2 = +2, 9-2 = 7). Barring effects that can increase the base ability scores, this relationship holds as a creature increases in level. As a result, for maximum use of ability pools it can actually be to a character’s benefit to take talents that do not align just with the best ability score. A wizard may well want to take Spot or Listen talents to improve his ability to detect or discern his opponents (through clairvoyance, clairaudience, or blindsense, for example, or to have easy access to true seeing) using his Wisdom pool, instead of making everything use his Intelligence pool.
(todo: find more example as talents get written)
I understand the basic concept of “ability pools” and that they’ll be used to limit the equivalent of “encounter powers” because you restore up to the base pool #points after each encounter. But I would understand a lot better if you could link to an example or two of a specific “encounter power” you could limit in this way.
I imagine “dailies” become “used less than 1/encounter” because of the limit on how much gets recovered per encounter.
I predict Tetsubo is still going to hate it because rests only happen immediately after an encounter.
The Shield Proficiency and Two-Weapon Fighting talents include some abilities that are powered using an ability pool (Dex pool in both cases).