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<blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 7636076" data-attributes="member: 12731"><p>The worst of all worlds is when the ruleset pretends it offers challenge and therefore excitement, when in reality it gives the players a thousand and one tools to completely control the frequency of recharging* and therefore the level of challenge, with just a single exception: time constraints.</p><p><span style="font-size: 9px">*) simplistic naive countermeasures such as wandering monsters are so pathetically easy to get around it isn't even funny. Discussions on Rope Trick and how to defeat it just make me nauseous - I'm not playing D&D to have the PCs get stupidly-powerful resting tools, and then focus on how to make them NOT stupidly powerful. That's like handing out Hats of Mind-Blank to evil NPCs because Detect Evil was too good. It's cretinous and I have no patience for it.</span></p><p></p><p>In other words, as soon as you tire of the very tired "the princess will be eaten in three days, please hurry" trope, you're sold out of luck.</p><p></p><p>Competent players quickly learn to use the vast arsenal given to player characters to make sure they get to decide when to take rests, and no native and simplistic adventure design can stop them.</p><p></p><p>In fact, when veteran players realize that the time pressure is a sham in 9 out of 10 official modules (many of which does not even bother to detail what happens if the heroes actually arrive too late), they can completely chicken race the story: "I bet the bad guys will not even heat the kettle until we come a-knocking, so let's hang back in town so we're super fresh before we head out. And if I'm wrong, so what? There will be more princesses to save. Point is the game is at its most fun when we're fully recharged, so let's refuse to get rushed into combat early".</p><p></p><p>In other words, any attempt at balancing the game on a large scale than the individual encounter absolutely must control healing and other recharging. (Examples: you can't rest until you've completed N encounters; or simply you can't rest at all except using a magic mana font) Since that's apparently completely unacceptable to the D&D community, the conclusion is inescapable:</p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 12px">"Balanced at the Encounter" is the only balancing that actually <em>works</em>.</span></p><p></p><p>It doesn't mean "pacing doesn't matter" in the sense "pacing isn't important" or "pacing is unsupported". It means it in the sense pacing is unrelated to encounter balance, which is the correct approach.</p><p></p><p>It still allows DMs to create strings of easy encounters when they want them. It still allows the PCs to rest, only it gives the DM the tools to create an encounter that will be challenging (and therefore fun) despite any efforts of veteran players to wriggle out of that challenge.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CapnZapp, post: 7636076, member: 12731"] The worst of all worlds is when the ruleset pretends it offers challenge and therefore excitement, when in reality it gives the players a thousand and one tools to completely control the frequency of recharging* and therefore the level of challenge, with just a single exception: time constraints. [SIZE=1]*) simplistic naive countermeasures such as wandering monsters are so pathetically easy to get around it isn't even funny. Discussions on Rope Trick and how to defeat it just make me nauseous - I'm not playing D&D to have the PCs get stupidly-powerful resting tools, and then focus on how to make them NOT stupidly powerful. That's like handing out Hats of Mind-Blank to evil NPCs because Detect Evil was too good. It's cretinous and I have no patience for it.[/SIZE] In other words, as soon as you tire of the very tired "the princess will be eaten in three days, please hurry" trope, you're sold out of luck. Competent players quickly learn to use the vast arsenal given to player characters to make sure they get to decide when to take rests, and no native and simplistic adventure design can stop them. In fact, when veteran players realize that the time pressure is a sham in 9 out of 10 official modules (many of which does not even bother to detail what happens if the heroes actually arrive too late), they can completely chicken race the story: "I bet the bad guys will not even heat the kettle until we come a-knocking, so let's hang back in town so we're super fresh before we head out. And if I'm wrong, so what? There will be more princesses to save. Point is the game is at its most fun when we're fully recharged, so let's refuse to get rushed into combat early". In other words, any attempt at balancing the game on a large scale than the individual encounter absolutely must control healing and other recharging. (Examples: you can't rest until you've completed N encounters; or simply you can't rest at all except using a magic mana font) Since that's apparently completely unacceptable to the D&D community, the conclusion is inescapable: [SIZE=3]"Balanced at the Encounter" is the only balancing that actually [I]works[/I].[/SIZE] It doesn't mean "pacing doesn't matter" in the sense "pacing isn't important" or "pacing is unsupported". It means it in the sense pacing is unrelated to encounter balance, which is the correct approach. It still allows DMs to create strings of easy encounters when they want them. It still allows the PCs to rest, only it gives the DM the tools to create an encounter that will be challenging (and therefore fun) despite any efforts of veteran players to wriggle out of that challenge. [/QUOTE]
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