I actually really like how Romancing Saga Minstrel Song (PS2) handles things. For this discussion I'm considering RS1's BP as the equivalent of MP.

Since each character has different initial BP amounts at the start of battle and then a different BP recovery rate while the battle progresses, one can have many fun party combinations (especially considering all the available class options). You can easily create a party that can be more of a glass cannon that will wipe out regular encounters in the first turn or develop a party that is better for the longer boss battles where recovery is paramount.

The trick of course, is creating a party that can do both.

But as I know you've played this one, I won't talk about it more :)

Morrowind's magic not regenerating on its own at all is a big reason I avoided mages in that game. Not because it made it hard at all really, you could stock 1,000 potions as money means nothing in that game, but just because it created a hassle I didn't want to deal with.

And that's one of the reasons why I liked picking the atronach sign in that game. If you can't regenerate mana without resting normally, why not get some great protection from spells?

Also summoning an Ancestor Ghost to refill your mana (after attacking it) worked fairly well too.

It's also worth noting that BP isn't the only resource. Some attacks requires DP from the weapon being used; this DP can be recovered by going to the inn, provided that you haven't forged the weapon with a material to make it slightly stronger. There are some attacks that are quite strong for their BP cost, but make up for it by costing DP. There's also some weapons that require you to pay the DP cost in LP, and powerful spells can require LP. (LP recovers at the inn, but it it runs out, the character is removed from your party.)

There's also ways to reduce DP and LP costs.

These factors create some interesting dynamics, like whether you want to make individual battles easier at the cost of having to manage an extra resource, and how much effort you want to go in reducing or eliminating these costs.

It can also be worth looking at The Alliance Alive's SP. Characters regenerate 1 SP per round (including the final round of combat, something many games get wrong!), but by using points earned through combat, you can increase SP regen, or you can make it so that, if it goes below a certain percentage, it will be raised to that percentage at the start of the next battle. You can also reduce the SP costs of a type of weapon by spending points, and the earlier reductions for a given type are much cheaper than the later ones, so there really isn't a reason to at least get the first one for each weapon type. You really do see a lot of influence from RS:MS here. (Note that TAA has no counterpart to DP, and while there's an LP counterpart (max HP temporarily drops on death), no abilities use it.)

Indeed. It's a very well balanced system.

Regarding weapon DP, I don't recall off hand if it was an in game quote or not, but to paraphrase:

There are weapons you'll use for your every day fights,
and then the weapon you'll use when it actually matters.

Or in other words, there's good reason why each character has multiple weapon slots!

I like the idea of MP being an "ammunition" for dungeons, you don't have enough for your spellcaster/s to go all-out in every fight, so it's a matter of conserving it for more difficult fights. You regen MP in town by paying for mana crystals (or whatever), just like Bard's Tale.

That said, there should be ways to recover MP in dungeons like potions or whatever, but you should be limited in how many you can carry at once.

One could choose to forge a weapon for higher attack power, but then it becomes harder to repair, as you now need to find the right material to re-forge it, instead of just going to the inn. Hence, such a weapon would only be used for "when it actually matters".

Or, one could forge a weapon to reduce DP costs. It may be harder to repair that weapon, but if you combine this with the weapon crown (know at least 20 weapon techniques and at least 10x as many weapon techs as spells) and a high class level, you can eliminate DP costs entirely! This is an advanced strategy, but if you can't use up DP, you don't need to ever worry about repair.

It's also interesting playing SaGa 1/2 (and 3 remake), where weapons have finite durability, but you can easily equip several at once. Or Fire Emblem games, which use a similar system.

And then there's Bard's Tale 3, where there's an MP (well, SP, but the only difference is the label) restoring item that's intended as the primary means of getting SP. Thing is, in good versions of the game (that is, not the DOS or Amiga version), these Harmonic Gems are so common that you'll find yourself having to either waste them or discard them without using them because your inventory is getting full. In fact, in the Apple 2 and Commodore 64 versions, late game (5th alternate dimension) it gets to the point where you can go all out with magic all the time, casting the two most powerful (and expensive) spells in the game all the time, and *still* get Harmonic Gems faster than you need to use them. (Victory! You found a Harmonic Gem. You found a ?Misc. Item (which turns out to be a Harmonic Gem). And before you asked, these dropped in the *same* battle. I don't remember if I've ever had 3 drop from the same battle, but I think it's possible.)

At this point I would like a fresh, full MP at the start of every battle. Non-automatic MP recovery makes me spam 'free' normal physical attacks for every random encounter and save my magics for the bosses. It works in most cases, but it's a shame that I purposefully avoid half of your battle system because magic attacks are more costly (and often in most encounters don't offer significant advantages over normal attacks).

A fresh full MP on every battle would make me experiment more freely with the magic system.

Another interesting ability to regenerate mana is absorption. Like, i.e. in the TES games where with the Atronarch birth sign you'll have a larger mana bar, but severely limited regeneration abilities. But: absorption.

Those moments when you dance around in front of the enemies "C'mon, hit me with a spell already..." :-)

Ability cooldowns in turn-based games would emulated with lower AGI / SPD stats so your spellcasters would attack 2-3x less frequently than your melee warrriors. FF10 and TitS's conditional turn-based battle system works out really well here. Maybe some people have a personal vendetta against you? Some of my heavily cited data-driven posts have also been negrepped too because people don't agree with the contents or simply don't like your character and/or posting history. I'd try crossposting these threads with /r/TrueGaming and comparing the responses. You might get better reciprocation and discussions there than here.

Too many different systems for MP.
Regen shouldnt be too high thats for sure. If it makes spells spammable removing mana management then whats the point of having mana?:O
The other bad end is when your spells are so costly you can barely use them, and have to hold back for big fights.

What if a game took the other approach to removing the distinction and took away the basic attacks. so the *only* things you can do in battle, with the exception of defending or running away, cost MP? What would you do then?

(Also, perhaps we could make the encounters work like in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, so you can't just run from everything, as you actually have to kill enemies to progress through the dungeon.)

I don't like it when games do this. Specifically:
* I don't like systems where faster characters get more turns than slower characters, as it makes the AGI/SPD stat too powerful. (Lords of Xulima is an example here, where if you don't spend 1 of your 2 level up stat points on the speed stat at level up, enemies will get too many turns later in the game.)
* I also don't like it when typical spells give a turn penalty. I like my mages to be able to cast spells quickly, or at least have the option of developing them that way.

I don't mind that If the MP is refilled at the end of every battle. If it becomes an actual non-replenishable resource I have to manage, I hope the grinding is a pleasant experience because I'll have to hoard ethers to the maximum limit.

Make ethers too scarce/expensive or not easily grindable and... let's just say I hate playing classic Resident Evil because ammo (basically the MP cost of guns) is hard to come by.

Not an easy answer, because it depends on a lot of things.

Let's start with a stupid example of an "RPG": Diablo. It wouldn't be fun at all if you'd have to regenerate MP by going back to town and "rest". You need plenty of MP-regen in ARPGs. Except maybe for melee characters who don't use a lot of magic (which would mean no MP consuming special attacks either).

The same goes for games like The Elder Scrolls. Playing a mage would be kinda stupid if regenerating MP isn't easy. You don't want to watch your character - who maybe is the head of the mage's guild - fighting Deadra with a two-handed mace, because your MP is depleted after a few seconds.

In party based games it's a different matter. If magic is really powerful, you can definitely make MP a valuable ressource that players have to use carefully. If magic isn't really that powerful... well... Why limit MP then?
Let's take some Final Fantasy games as an example. Your Level 1 character attacks with his sword and is dealing ~40 damage. Your mage attacks with a fire spell and deals ~50 damage. After casting fire 10 times, your mage doesn't have any MP left. Attacking with his staff, he deals ~10 damage. You maybe have two or three MP restoring potions (they are rare and expensive, early in the game). You know what? F*ck that mage! Useless character.

Mid game, mages can become great. With support spells, magic that attacks all enemies and some more powerful spells, they become important characters to get rid of dangerous enemies. But then comes the point where normal attacks deal 9999 damage. Maybe you even have an ability to hit two or four times in one round. Or counter attack. Suddenly your mage becomes crap again, because only the late game spells deal 9999 damage - and they cost a lot MP and have too long animations. There's plenty of Ethers (restores 100 MP), but with 999 MP and spells that cost almost a 100 MP, you need a crapload of them to keep your mage going.

Some Final Fantasy games have really stupid MP management. FFX manages to keep your mages useful, because of the "1 MP cost" ability (every spell costs 1 MP). But this basically makes MP a joke, because you can spam your most powerful spells 999 times before having to worry about your MP.

MP recovery is a difficult thing. If your MP means something, your mage can't cast a lot of spells and is useless most of the time. If your MP means nothing, your mage is basically just like any other character, just with somewhat longer attack animations. And you'll have problems balancing support spells. If MP doesn't matter, they'll have to be useless (very weak).

I guess the best system is to make MP regeneration very difficult, but to give your mage's staff a "standard spell" that doesn't cost any MP (and deals similar damage as other characters' attacks with a weapon). This allows for very powerful spells that you have to use carefully, while allowing your mage to attack in every round.

Perhaps we tweak it further:
* Spells need MP, which recovers very quickly, so you can use low and sometimes even mid level spells and you'll still out-recover MP.
* Physical attacks, even the most basic ones, require a resource that is not easily restored; you have to manage your physical attacks carefully during a dungeon or you'll run out before the boss.

How would that sort of game feel?

(Interestingly enough, SaGa Frontier 2 is sort of like this; the difference is that there's some WP regen (WP is the resource physical attacks use), though it's much easier to get high SP regen, and SP will recover to a certain amount if it gets too low after battle.)

If this is the damage cap, this should never happen, at least not in the general case. In FF7, even the 6k I was doing with an ultimate weapon felt like it was too much for a normal attack, especially since the same character could use powerful spells.

By contrast, in FF2 SNES (actually a simplified version of FF4, not the Famicom game), Cecil's normal attack would only do around 4k damage by end-game, while Rydia and Rosa could hit the damage cap with their spells. (Cecil *can* hit 9999 damage with a normal attack, but only against undead.)

In FF6:
* Gem Box (Soul of Thamasa in GBA IIRC) allows casting 2 spells per turn, while Quick allows you to take 2 extra turns.
* Use Ultima as the attack spell, and you can do 9999 damage 5 times in one turn.
* Cost: 499 MP, but you can use a Gold Hairpin to reduce the cost to 250 MP. (Also Economizer to reduce it to 6, but that's a rare drop/steal.)
* Osmose is in this game, and it's *really* powerful, to the point where I could see it draining over 250 MP, allowing this strategy to be sustained.

(FF5 has a similar set-up, but it's not as game-breaking, and you don't have the Economizer. On the other hand, that Bahamut summon is perfect for the final battle that has 4 real targets that can take damage separately.)