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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5905450" data-attributes="member: 2067">This is just a semantic point. I defined my term above. An adventure might happen over about 3 4e-style encounters. If you want to quibble about word choice, that's not really relevant to the broader point. Call it a smerp if you want, and then we have smerp-based design. Blah blah blah semantics. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />Which is why I pointed out that a longer time frame makes more in-fiction sense for this. But my focus wasn't on the time frame. If you stipulate than an extended rest is a week or a day or an hour or every 30 seconds or a dynastic generation or whatever, the mechanics function. If the party recharges, so does the threat.A static threat that doesn't react when the party rests is going to have the "lets rest and recover and nova again" problem regardless of adventure or encounter focus. It's just not very good game design, period. A goblin tribe who just sits in their lair until the PC's show up to kill them and never flees, hires reinforcements, repairs, builds traps, etc., is a gameplay problem, period. "This doesn't work in the face of a static challenge!" is a kind of a strawman argument: a static challenge doesn't work, period. And thirdly, I would really dispute the "railroading" charge. Railroading happens when there is a lack of meaningful choice, and restoring the challenge when the PC's get restored doesn't remove meaningful choice -- they can still choose other challenges, or employ different tactics next time, or swap out their rogue for an assassin or whatever. Just because they ran away from the dragon (who then switched to a backup lair) doesn't mean they can't go slay the orcs instead. Which is why the game-design solution is to restore the equilibrium. You gain all your resources back? So do your enemies. Reset button hit. Try again. Furthermore, this paradigm allows to you model siege tactics fairly well. If you prevent one side from regaining their resources (prevent the party from resting, prevent the goblins from hiring reinforcements, prevent the dragon from switching lairs), it's easier to employ these rest-nova-rest tactics. That's a bit of an advanced trick, certainly not something I'd expect most D&D games to deal with, but it does become possible in a way that wasn't there before. Are we having a conversation, or are you trying to win a debate? If the party retreated from an encounter in an encounter-based design game (like 4e) and then returned, would you keep the same conditions, statuses, damage, and dead monsters as they had when they last left?If not, then there should be no tremendous problem in accepting that the same principle be applied to adventures in an adventure-based game. If you accept that principle, then we just need to find a way to justify that explanation in the game world that satisfies you. If you can't think of a reason that the adventure might regain or change its challenges on your own, I've noted a few above (changing the timescale, changing lairs, rebuilding traps, getting reinforcements) and there's many more where they came from (breeding pools, planar gates, zombie reanimation, newly conscripted noncombatants, hired guns, etc.). Finding one or a combination that helps explain it shouldn't be any harder than explaining how the goblin I stabbed five minutes ago in a combat I ran away from is back at full hit points now that we're starting a new combat. But if you're unwilling to accept these explanations and reasons and causes for why the adventure would recharge, I don't know what else I can do for you. If your challenge isn't reactive, encounter or adventure, you have a problem. In 4e, if you unload your dailies and encounters, and then flee, and come back after an extended rest, do the damage and effects remain? If you accept that it doesn't have to happen in an encounter based game, I don't know why you would say that it must happen in an adventure-based game.</blockquote>

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