Why is it so important?

Raven Crowking said:

If 4e includes the possibility of the PCs losing against everything they face, then that will certainly make things different. Do you expect a condition track in 4e?

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I'd like one. Heck, I'd like them to go one further and ditch hit points for a toughness save/defense instead, but the chances of that are about the same as my walls spontaneously shooting pineapples at me. I also don't think that it's particularly likely that the PCs will be seriously threatened by a low-level threat: the instance I described was a result of unlucky rolling.

Yes. If you go back upthread, you will see that I acknowledge this many, many times. However, I also realize that death is the most common "defeat" used by average DMs.

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Again, not necessarily. A growing number of gamers simply have a spoken or unspoken rule that they don't kill PCs for whatever reason. For one of my GMs, it's because she can torture them more when they're alive. For another, older DM, it was because he hated working new PCs into the game and really liked the continuity of one adventuring party.

In the attrition model, you are not facing a zero-sum game with encounters. It is possible to win, but to have that win be so costly as to be worthless, damaging, mildly annoying, or to have no cost at all. It is not either/or.

In a per-encounter model, the encounter must answer all mechanical interests. That means it can be, as Shilsen pointed out, a showcase easy encounter where you can show off and try tricky things that you'd hate to have fail in a significant encounter, or it can be an encounter where you can lose, or it can be an encounter that is not mechanically interesting. Since the showcase encounter is unlikely to be mechanically interesting if done too often, that leaves the win/lose encounter.

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And there can be encounters which are at a certain challenge level because that's simply what makes sense within the context of the game. The local militia of a town aren't going to deploy a force of dragons against a high-level party just because the PCs are such a high-level threat: they'll deploy the forces they can muster and probably get cut down in short order. Sometimes it doesn't make sense to provide a particularly dangerous encounter.

When addressing the problem of the 9-9:15 adventuring day, what you or I would do with the system is not IMHO important; what the average DM will do, and what the average players will do, is. So the question becomes, what does the system reward?

If the system rewards the DM when he puts in win/lose encounters (as seems the case), and if the most common "lose" in D&D is death (as has certainly been the case up until now), then it makes sense that the average DM will include more deadly encounters.

If the average DM includes more deadly encounters, it seems more likely (to me at least) that the average players will use their per-day resources before someone dies. Which means, sooner rather than later. Why? Because the PC experience a higher success ratio, which means they are rewarded.

If the average players view their per-day resources as important for dealing with the common deadly encounters, they will want them available. Why? Because the PC experience a higher success ratio, which means they are rewarded.

If nothing else prevents it, then, the PCs will use, rest, rinse, and repeat. Exactly the same as with 3.X. The only differenc might be that the frequency of win/lose encounters increases, in which case the adventuring day shortens.

On average. YMMV.


RC

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Considering how many ifs you need to back up your point, and considering the responses of several posters in this thread which point out quite nicely that PCs don't tend to lead with their biggest resources, I find this argument wanting once again. Until you can prove to me that players lead with their most powerful abilities (which in my experience is utter bunk: they'll always lead with their bread-and-butter abilities that aren't as cost-prohibitve to use), your points aren't convincing. In my experience, the average player leads with the plentiful resources in the middle of the bell-curve, power-wise, for fear of being without a high-level resource if they really need it later on. And since bread-and-butter abilities will always be available, there will be less of an requirement to rest-rinse-repeat, as you put it.

So again, until you can provide convincing evidence to support your claim that players tend to use their most valuable resources first, you're only offering me idle speculation, which on the internet, I can get by the truckload.

However, I am glad to see that you agree that a purely per-encounter system does indeed allow for mechanically interesting encounters, a retraction of your previous argument that challenges under a purely per-resource system cannot allow for mechanically meaningful encounters.

Raven Crowking said:

I don't see how that invalidates my point.

You made a decision knowing what the odds were. You gambled and lost.

RC

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You didn't quote the second part of my message

Ian Argent said:

IMHO, there's a difference between save-or-die (been there, done that), and several rounds of bad luck.

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IanArgent said:

You didn't quote the second part of my message

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I still don't see how that invalidates my point.

You made a decision knowing what the odds were. You gambled and lost. What difference does it make whether those odds are expressed in one die roll or several?

RC

Jackelope King said:

A growing number of gamers simply have a spoken or unspoken rule that they don't kill PCs for whatever reason.

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A vocal minority.

Unless you have evidence to the contrary?

Until you can prove to me that players lead with their most powerful abilities (which in my experience is utter bunk: they'll always lead with their bread-and-butter abilities that aren't as cost-prohibitve to use), your points aren't convincing.

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I'm fully happy to accept that you aren't convinced.

What do you mean by "cost-prohibitive" though?


RC

Raven Crowking said:

I still don't see how that invalidates my point.

You made a decision knowing what the odds were. You gambled and lost. What difference does it make whether those odds are expressed in one die roll or several?

RC

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I made a decision each round. (The decisions was to stay in melee with the necromancer).

In WHFRP Wounds are a much more "granular" resource than HP are in D&D - you typically start with 1 or 2, and top out around 6 or 7 (at the time - I haven't read the last 2 incarnations of the WHFRP system).

Anyway, this is kind of an aside to the whole discussion - an anecdote intended to illustrate that even without a "mechanically significant" threat (we were expected by the GM to go through the encounter like a scythe against wheat) things can go pear-shaped. I was a lot less upset that my character had been done in by the dice because it happened over several levels.

In fact, there's only one character death I was at all upset about in my long and varied gaming career - AD&D2ed Darksun; character died to a Death or 20 HP poison (Type E?), in a situation that I had no idea the character had been poisoned by the hit.
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But I think if you don't understand the difference between the two situations, we're not having the same discussion.

Raven Crowking said:

You made a decision knowing what the odds were. You gambled and lost. What difference does it make whether those odds are expressed in one die roll or several?

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Oh dear.

hong said:

Oh dear.

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This sort of understated sarcasm isn't really my style - I'm a prolix poster - but I'll endorse the sentiment.

Now, let's imagine that the odds don't just play out over several dice rolls, but the sequence of die rolls and the probabilities they represent are themselves consequences of player choice (and perhaps the intersection of the choices of multiple players) at many points in the sequence.

Then we might have a mechanically interesting encounter even if there is little threat of PC death.

EDIT: Oh, and Hong, welcome back to the thread!

Raven Crowking said:

A vocal minority.

Unless you have evidence to the contrary?

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The burden of proof is on you.

What do you mean by "cost-prohibitive" though?

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That a resource is percieved as being in too-short supply to justify using without great threat (highest-level spells tend to fall here in my experience). Players tend to conserve these by instead expending resources which they percieve as more easily renewable or less costly (which they have more of). Hence the meat-and-potatoes/bread-and-butter abilities. They may not be the most powerful, but players percieve the cost of using them as more acceptable in most scenarios.

So again, until you can provide convincing evidence to support your claim that players tend to use their most valuable resources first, you're only offering me idle speculation, which on the internet, I can get by the truckload.

However, I am glad to see that you agree that a purely per-encounter system does indeed allow for mechanically interesting encounters, a retraction of your previous argument that challenges under a purely per-resource system cannot allow for mechanically meaningful encounters.

Jackelope King said:

The burden of proof is on you.

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Why would it be? I state that I disbelieve your statement. If you do not want to convince me, there is no burden of proof on anyone. If you want to convince me, the burden of proof is on you. I don't care whether you believe what you stated or not; if I did, then the burden of proof would fall on me.

So again, until you can provide convincing evidence to support your claim that players tend to use their most valuable resources first, you're only offering me idle speculation, which on the internet, I can get by the truckload.

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I don't care whether you believe what I stated or not; if I did, then the burden of proof would fall on me.

However, I am glad to see that you agree that a purely per-encounter system does indeed allow for mechanically interesting encounters, a retraction of your previous argument that challenges under a purely per-resource system cannot allow for mechanically meaningful encounters.

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Quote me or retract.

Clearly, you did not understand what I was saying, and I will be happy to quote over a dozen places where I said exactly the opposite.


RC

Raven Crowking said:

Why would it be? I state that I disbelieve your statement. If you do not want to convince me, there is no burden of proof on anyone. If you want to convince me, the burden of proof is on you. I don't care whether you believe what you stated or not; if I did, then the burden of proof would fall on me.

I don't care whether you believe what I stated or not; if I did, then the burden of proof would fall on me.

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You're making a claim and not backing it up with evidence. It's as simple as that. You were the first to claim that the group in question was a minority. Provide evidence or retract your claim.

Quote me or retract.

Clearly, you did not understand what I was saying, and I will be happy to quote over a dozen places where I said exactly the opposite.

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I need only quote you in one place.

Raven Crowking said:

Thank you, Jackelope King. As I said earlier, I would probably end up agreeing with you that the encounter was mechanically significant, though I couldn't do so without recourse to the mechanics.

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You agreed that an encounter with per-encounter mechanics only and no net change of resources was mechanically significant. Therefore, I am glad to see that you agree that a purely per-encounter system does indeed allow for mechanically interesting encounters, a retraction of your previous argument that challenges under a purely per-resource system cannot allow for mechanically meaningful encounters.