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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5272330" data-attributes="member: 2067">Really interesting, Stalker0!I'm still having some difficulty wrapping my mind around what, exactly, the problem with the "15 minute adventuring day" is. I mean, if the PC's can go nova in every fight, and fight big, powerful, significant enemies, and risk total party kill in every fight, what does it matter how many fights there are? If there's only one big, significant battle per session, then the adventuring day is 15 minutes, and that's fine. Even in 3e (but moreso in 4e), I have trouble with "filler combats," combats that are there basically to pad out levels to get to the "right XP." If the PC's victory is essentially a foregone conclusion (as it often is), why bother statting out the fight? If there's a challenge involved, what's wrong with "going nova" to confront a nova-level challenge?I guess this is how I understand the problem of the 15 minute adventuring day: it's a problem when the party doesn't feel challenged, and, in D&D typically, the war of attrition and long-term resource management (LTRM) has been how the DM ramps up the challenge.That's less true in 4e (though somewhat true: healing surges and dailies somewhat limit it).I mean, in the 4e game I run now, we have one combat in a 3-hour session (partially because combats take quite a while, partially because that's just how it's laid out, partially because I have 6 PC's). Generally, this means that the party gets a "15 minute adventuring day" by default. There's no milestones, because there's not enough time in the session to have more than one combat. I've got no real problem with that, as a DM, and I'm not sure if the players do (they haven't mentioned anything yet anyway). Each combat is still challenging and relevant (I usually ramp up the challenge level with a high per-encounter XP budget). As long as the heroes are challenged, they needn't be accosted over and over again by wave upon wave of "assumed victories" only hoping that Goblin #240 gets a lucky crit in simply with the law of averages.Basically, LTRM, I've found, isn't a great way to measure a challenge. That said, in FFZ, I find myself trying to add an element of it. Instead of milestones, FFZ characters get Limit Breaks if they keep going, and Limit Breaks are essential to beat some of the tougher monsters. I've also been thinking about using gil as an element of LTRM: that the party can fail their goal because they can't afford to "get supplies and training." Not sure if that's the best plan, though.Of course, in FFZ, pacing is very important, and the combats go fairly quick, so the issue of "sameyness in combats" comes up more often than in 4e or 3e. But I think, overall, D&D could benefit from taking a page from FFZ and Iron Heroes in controlling the pacing of when big powers are available. Some characters (some builds?) might not begin their day with dailies or encounter powers. They might have to "earn them," through milestones or through specific combat conditions. A way to work in a Limit Break System into D&D4e, for instance, would be: "Once per encounter, when the character is bloodied, they gain a Crisis Level. Once they gain 3 Crisis Levels, they can use their Daily Power." Essentially, that's how FFZ limit breaks work. In FFZ, different summons change when you get those levels (so a character with a healing summon might gain a Crisis Level when they heal an ally, or a character with a <a href="http://finalfantasyzero.wikidot.com/boko" target="_blank">chocobo summon might gain a Crisis Level when they flee combat</a>), but they "ramp up" to your big guns. You can't just wake up in the morning and start blasting things with your nuclear bomb.I'm also debating making MP a resource that, like in FFTA-2 (and similar to FF13) charges up at the start of an encounter, meaning that powerful abilities take longer to use. In fact, I might experiment a bit with such a system in D&D4e soon. But I'd probably just prefer to play some FFZ with some folks. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />(BTW, another thing I like about FFZ's summon system is that it's a group resource: the party controls the summoned creature after it executes it's "nuclear bomb" power)I'd also adore for WotC to take the good advice you gave about mechanics emphasizing archetype and apply it to skill challenges, because that's one space that frickin' needs it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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