Sfrgttk

I'm working on a turn-based RPG with classes. I want one of the spellcaster classes to have standard magic points, but another to have abilities with time limitations, one or more of

• Use ability every N minutes of real time


• Use ability every N turns of combat


• Use ability once or N times per day (sleep to restore, or wait out day-night cycle)

There would be restorative items that could restore your "charge". These abilities would be more powerful than regular spells but constrained. This spellcasting class is a burster: gives you big hits but infrequently because of the limitations. The party carries them along as baggage until they get in a jam or run into a boss, then unleashes the hammer. I like it as an option to add depth, and it has interesting speedrun possibilities.

The last one is easy enough to balance if the party has to trek back to town and sleep to recharge, but I have a day-night cycle. Here are the problems as I see it:

Real time / N times per day

Player can just wait. I can make the duration punishing, but then it greatly reduces the utility. It also means that the player is not playing the game, this is after all supposed to be about entertainment. No fun.

Every N turns in combat

Player can just have every character defend/heal every round until the burster unleashes another round of big damage. I actually want this to be viable, but I don't want it to become the obviously best strategy for battles. So far it doesn't seem to be a huge issue as the caster just cycles through lesser powers until the big bang recharges. It's rough in the early game, but that's part of the balancing. The problem is that I'm having trouble getting it to be not so OP'd as to be obviously the best while still remaining good enough to be useful.

Any suggestion on how to balance these mechanics to mitigate camping/turtling?

Use ability every N minutes of real time

Since it is a turn-based game, the player can just wait for the ability to be available again.

Use ability once or N times per day (sleep to restore, or wait out day-night cycle)

This works well in the The Elder Scrolls serie because you cannot rest if ennemies are nearby. Meaning, if you are in a dungeon for example, you can probably only use it once for the entire dungeon (not saying it cannot be abused, of course).

If you plan to implement this in a turn-based game, just make sure that the player cannot rest whenever, which would make negate the interest of the reloading time.

Use ability every N turns of combat

In most game, there are often mechanics tied to resource management. For example, your more classical mana-using mage have to manage its mana pool, so he has to make choices about what spell to use. This is interesting for the player.

Your "Use ability every N turns of combat" mage however, doens't have to make those choices, since each spell use its own resource, so to speak. Therefore, the only question the player has to ask himself is "should I keep this spell for later in the fight or use it right now?" (since I assume every cooldown is reset when the fight is over).

I believe this is a less interesting choice, because for example, if you decide to heal an ally for 50 HP when he has 50/100 HP left or 10/100 HP left does not make a difference on the result of the fight.

You mentioned items to restore the cooldown of the spells. They are analogous to mana potions in this case. Therefore, I don't think it solves the issue of your cooldown-based mage being less interesting than a mana-based mage.

Side note

Have you played pen and paper RPG already? Most of the times, those games include spellcaster classes with different resources mechanics. Take a look at Pathfinder classes for example, maybe this could be interesting?