Encounter-based Design: The only smart elephant in the room

[SkidAce]

Easy

Separate XP budgets per playstyle.

Have 4 1st levels?
400XP per fight for a 4 encounter day
150XP per fight for a 10 encounter day
2000xp per fight for a 1 encounter day

I'm missing the point....why would I get more experience for less combat?

 

[Herschel]

Sacred Cows will not be slaughtered, and some may even be revived. There may be modules to slaughter them again or get back some more esoteric ones, but the core will most likely be closer to the experience of past editions, and Daily Spell Slots and the potential for novaing (realized in some play styles, never seen in others) were part of that.

Maybe, but I wasn't thinking of slaughtering those sacred cows, per se, just put them in the next pen with an easy-to-open gate.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm missing the point....why would I get more experience for less combat?

Not less combat. Just all at once.

Instead of 30 goblins and their king split almost evenly into 4 fights, you fight 15 goblins and their king all at once.

 

[TerraDave]

...
Simply put, the only way to make a game that can fit all the playstyles is to have a core with no daily resources. They need to be in modules or D&DN is destined to not unify anyone.

Thoughts?

I guess you have to define "playstyles".

The play style were there is

1) some self pacing by the party and some pacing "encouragement" by the DM

2)in which there is a desire to have some kind of "reserve" to tap into, but is not, or may not, be used for every encounter

3) the encounter is not the be all and end all of story, adventure design, etc

Then encounter (only) based resources would be a problem, not a solution.

 

[SKyOdin]

The 15 minute adventuring day is a playstyle issue. People will complain about it, but the power to fix the issue lies with them - and pretty much only with them.

I think you are very wrong here. All playstyles ultimately derive from the game rules. Thus game design can have a significant impact on playstyle. Solving the problem of 15 minute adventuring can certainly be done by changing the mechanics of the game.

Without wanting to sound too bitter or cynical or whatever:

I think the D&D Next approach can be rather simple here: If problems existed in past editions, they don't need to be fixed entirely. We can later give people modules to fix it, or we don't do it all, since we tried to fix a lot of things in 4E and guess what - we split the fanbase and annoyed a lot of people. We may have removed or fixed a lot of issues, but we brought a lot of new ones, most importantly, that people simply didn't want these things to be fixed if it took away elements that people considered "core" to the D&D experience. Even if not all did, enough did.

What is the point of making a new edition of D&D if it doesn't attempt to solve the problems of older editions? Why should I buy an edition if still has all the problems that bugged me in older editions? I don't see how a game that intentionally keeps the problems that turned away fans from previous editions possibly bring them back.

 

[Mengu]

Already impossible since we know DDN will have vancian wizards.

Why can't vancian memorization, refresh with a short rest instead of extended rest? You read through a few pages of your book, or meditate or whatever vancian casters do, and boom, you're good to go.

Taking away Vancian spellcasting and daily resources does not fit any edition of D&D. Every edition, including 4E, had it! If you take it away now, you are very likely to annoy a lot of people.

If they fear people getting annoyed, it will only lead to a paralyzed system, stuck in the early 80's. If they don't want to annoy people, they can quit this endeavor right now. They will annoy some people. It is inevitable.

I think they have accepted this (though they'll never publicly admit it). They are trying new systems. The skill system is nothing like any edition of D&D. It's got some kinks that need to be worked out, some better examples for attribute checks need to be presented, but there is an elegance to the idea they are running with. They are trying a totally new mechanic with advantage/disadvantage. Again, it has some problems, but the core idea is promising. There is nothing to say they can't come up with something more innovative with power refresh rates, that will fit in with the ideas of having dynamic adventuring days from 1 big fight, to hit and run dungeon crawls, to jam packed 24 style action.

 

[nightwyrm]

Why can't vancian memorization, refresh with a short rest instead of extended rest? You read through a few pages of your book, or meditate or whatever vancian casters do, and boom, you're good to go.

Well that won't be vancian at all. You just turned all spells into encounter powers. People will be screaming bloody murder about how it's 4e.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

1) some self pacing by the party and some pacing "encouragement" by the DM

... is independent of the system, and can be done with or without daily resources.

2)in which there is a desire to have some kind of "reserve" to tap into, but is not, or may not, be used for every encounter

This can be accomplished with limited-use gear (e.g., wands, scrolls, and potions) or can be layered on-top of a functional encounter-based system (with the understanding that you know you're unbalancing something). The other way (balancing something unbalanced) is harder.

3) the encounter is not the be all and end all of story, adventure design, etc

What does this mean, exactly?

 

[Mengu]

Well that won't be vancian at all. You just turned all spells into encounter powers. People will be screaming bloody murder about how it's 4e.

I realize the term "encounter power" rubs some people the wrong way, but a spell is a spell, it's a fireball whether you can cast it once per day, per hour, per 5 minutes, per 2.5 seconds, whatever.

Isn't vancian about choosing the spells you want? So you might have 8 spells in your book, but can memorize only 4, you know you're going into a treacherous cave area, so you pick light, feather fall, acid arrow, and sleep. You end up fighting some cave bats, and run into kobold tracks. You put some bats to sleep, and killed a resilient one with an acid arrow. When rememorizing after your rest, you figure burning hands will be more useful against any mob tactics, so you swap acid arrow for burning hands, and you keep featherfall in case kobolds have any pit traps in store for you. It's still spell memorization, it's just instead of having to wait 23 hours and 55 minutes so you can go into the kobold lair with a burning hands, you wait 5 minutes. I don't see why that wouldn't "feel like" D&D. You're still making the same decisions, casting the same spells, fighting the same monsters.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I realize the term "encounter power" rubs some people the wrong way, but a spell is a spell, it's a fireball whether you can cast it once per day, per hour, per 5 minutes, per 2.5 seconds, whatever.

Isn't vancian about choosing the spells you want? So you might have 8 spells in your book, but can memorize only 4, you know you're going into a treacherous cave area, so you pick light, feather fall, acid arrow, and sleep. You end up fighting some cave bats, and run into kobold tracks. You put some bats to sleep, and killed a resilient one with an acid arrow. When rememorizing after your rest, you figure burning hands will be more useful against any mob tactics, so you swap acid arrow for burning hands, and you keep featherfall in case kobolds have any pit traps in store for you. It's still spell memorization, it's just instead of having to wait 23 hours and 55 minutes so you can go into the kobold lair with a burning hands, you wait 5 minutes. I don't see why that wouldn't "feel like" D&D. You're still making the same decisions, casting the same spells, fighting the same monsters.

It's not just bout choosing which spells you prepare, but also when you use them with the best effect and still have "over" so you're prepared for the next situation. "Operational Play", I believe, is the word to be used here.

What is the point of making a new edition of D&D if it doesn't attempt to solve the problems of older editions? Why should I buy an edition if still has all the problems that bugged me in older editions? I don't see how a game that intentionally keeps the problems that turned away fans from previous editions possibly bring them back.

A fair warning - I am becoming a grogn4rd, aka someone that seems to believe that D&D Next is not heading in a direction I wish it would go, and believes that he may actually stay with 4E. (But realistically, we've only seen the bare bones of the new system, so it may be premature and a lot can still change).

The way I see it, 4E did fix a ton of problems previous edtions, and especally 3E had. 3E wanted to be balanced, but it failed. 4E focused totally on balance. But this cost it fans, because there were a lot of fans that didn't need more balance and instead actually liked entirely different aspects of 3E - aspects that 4E sacrificed, sometimes for balance, sometimes for other reasons. Maye some even liked the imbalance, even if only because it "made sense" to them that, say, high level Fighters cannot compete with a novaing Wizard since dammit, a Wizard breaks the laws of nature, a Fighter doesn't. Or they had a play style where it simply never became a problem, where the novaing Wizard didn't happen and everything felt fine.
Or look into a different direction - 3E introduced really cheap magic healing thanks to Wands of Cure Light Wounds and magic item by level rules. But not every group actually used these - some may have ignored those guidelines, or at least didn't allow easy access to this. So they never had the experience of people healing themselves up without spell expenditure each combat. Some groups almost never noticed natural healing and entire relied on sucking those wands dry, but others experienced natural healing -and 4E suddenly said - you get all hit points back after a night of rest. That basically lead to the same gameplay experience as for people in 3E with healing wands, but for the other group, it turned into something alien, that no edition of D&D had them experienced.

So every "problem" you fix can be unintentionally taking something away from some other player. And in the end, D&D across al editions had a ton of players despite all its flaws, and despite better non-D&D games out there. Sure, they lost players to those flaws, no doubt -but they also kept a ton of them around. And now they get the impression that fixing a ton of issues did lose them more than they gained.

So we're seeing the pendulum swinging back, very hard, and them instead trying to recapture the "old" game. Some flaws can be eradicated - non-standardized saves, THAC0, demi-human level limits, inconsistent skill system (non-weapon proficiencies or d% rolls?) because no one really missed them that much, but others may have to stay because they defined the experience of D&D for several decades and were flaws only to some players, and features for other players.

It could very well be that WotC is "wrong again" and they won't actually manage to get their all-inclusive D&D edition with this either, because they don't bring enough new stuff and innovation and turn off people that see flaws returning. But that may still be the long run - the other view here is - people really first have to see the core rules in play - which often requires outright buying them - first before they decide it's not enough. But if D&D Next says "Like D&D 4, but even more extreme changes", then they know they have little chance of recapturing audience D&D 4 lost. They kinda have to bring the pendulum back first because they can go in that direction again.

Or maybe they are wrong on a more fundamental level - with the OGL and Pathfinder's success, the D&D audience will be split forever. There are just too many options that come close enough to D&D for parts of the audience that they can't patch it up. Then there only hope may be churning out new editions every 5 years or so.

Or maybe I am wrong and it will work out great, and maybe future playtests will see a lot more thought put into these things and ways to fix it in manners (with modules, for example) that everyone likes.

But even then. There has to be defined a core. And I think it's likely it will include Vancian magic and Daily abilities. Maybe a module can throw them out, maybe not.