Confusion

[Zaruthustran]

Encounter seems like an easy thing to define. Encounter starts when you roll initiative. It ends [arbitrary number of minutes] after the last combat d20 is rolled.

[arbitrary number of minutes] can be 1, 2, 5, 10... we don't know, yet. Point is that after a certain period of calm, your "per encounter" expire (if ongoing effects) and recharge.

I guess you could try to hack the system by keeping a prisoner and occasionally punching him, thus prolonging "per encounter" durations. But that's dumb.

 

[LostSoul]

A problem I see is what if the Elf is firing arrows against fruits in a tree, in order to get some food. How often can he use the Elven Accuracy power in this situation?

I don't think that will be an encounter.

Therefore, he won't roll.

His elven accuracy will be described however whoever gets to describe it feels like.

eg.
"I shoot the fruit off of the tree."
"Thanks to your elven accuracy, your arrows hit the stems of the jumy fruits and they fall softly to the ground."


If he does roll, then I imagine it will be an encounter, and the answer is "once".

Plus, I think he'll get XP for it.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Elven perception aura. This feels (like has been said, although I cannot be bothered to track down the post) like the Dodge of 4e. The radius is *just* large enough that, most of the time it applies to the full party, except of course for the not-in-fact-uncommon cases of combat, or single-file corridors with large parties. Lets not even get into line-of-sight issues and corners. The bonus is small, and tracking it fairly screams "tedious". It isn't a fluff linchpin ability, so why include it at all? I thought part of the goal of 4e was to clean up such effects, with "effort to track">"reward".

I agree. I suspect that this ability will largely be forgotten about or ignored. Trying to keep track of bonuses based on distance from one person to another is tedious at best. Aura type bonuses are a very poor mechanic for pen and paper RPGs and I really hope that this kind of thing won't be common in 4e.

 

[kennew142]

Let me give a counter example.

The party has killed some bandits. During the fight, the noise attracted a displacer beast. The beast waits until the bandits die, but attacks before the party can start healing themselves.

Is the displacer beast still in the encounter with the Bandits, or is it a separate encounter?

My instinct is to say 'It's in the Bandit's encounter'. This way, extending the encounter beyond the bandits means that the PCs don't have their Per-Encounter abilities, and now it's tenser because they're less powerful, they've got to think fast, flee, or rough it out.

It would be the same if a monster jumped a 3e party before they've healed, or jumped them in the middle of the night before the mages have recharged their spells.

Now, you could say 'well, it's not the Bandit's encounter, but the party hasn't had time to rest, so even though it's a new encounter, they're still in trouble'.

Either way, when there is a round or three between one enemy and the next, just saying 'nope, you guys haven't recovered your powers' allows for a lot more tension and dangerous encounters, which is part of the point. Running battles, and enemies in waves, should give the characters pause and make them ration out their abilities.

And I honestly think the above is one of the reasons for the Per-Encounter mechanic in the first place.

I'm in that group that doesn't see a problem here. If the GM has designed the encounter to include the displacer beast (and has counted it into the difficulty), it is part of the same encounter. The per-encounter abilities do not reset.

If the displacer beast was designed as a separate encounter, then all the per-encounter abilities reset.

Count me as one of the GMs who has been very disappointed with the fact that edition 3.x has a tendency to take power away from the GM. Luckily, my group is pretty good at trusting the GM. We've all been gaming for decades (well, except for the 19 year old baby of the group ).

 

[kennew142]

Duplicate Post removed

 

[Kintara]

I don't think that will be an encounter.

Therefore, he won't roll.

His elven accuracy will be described however whoever gets to describe it feels like.

Yeah, I should remember this. It's a reminder for me to think about what the stakes are for something before I roll (or ask for a roll). If nothing is at stake, then no need to roll. Of course, there very well could be something at stake, if someone wanted it so....

But, anyway, thinking about "encounters" in that way is...something I should have thought of already. Dammit.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I hate that explanation. That's fine for Monopoly or some other "pure game", but I need something more for an RPG.

Not me. It's a game I play to have fun. If the game is more fun, more exciting and more interesting if all of the characters can only use their powers once per encounter, then I'm willing to accept any excuse at all.

They've already said that Bo9S was a "preview" but that they ended up not liking how the powers regenerated. They've developed a new mechanic. I don't think we know what it is yet.

Yeah, in the Races and Classes book it says that they didn't like the fact that you could renew powers during combat so they made it so it was impossible to renew them during an encounter(Because they felt that the "when to renew your powers game" was a subgame within D&D that they didn't want players to have to play. Originally they thought it might be fun to have card-game like mechanics, where you get to choose when to renew your "hand" of available powers. Later they decided that this game within a game didn't add anything).

It goes on to say that Fighters don't draw their power from some mystic source that can only be used so often or they have to wait for it to come back or something. It's simply a matter of enemies not falling for the same trick twice. So the rules don't allow you to use the same trick more than once against a given group of enemies(an encounter).

It also gives me the impression that there won't be a renew mechanic at all, it'll simply be that from the time you roll init until there are no more enemies around you can only use a power once. When you roll init again you get all your powers back.

They may include a line like Bo9S did saying that outside of combat powers can only be used once every 5 minutes. I'm guessing that they might as well just be at will outside of an encounter though.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Yeah, in the Races and Classes book ...

I knew I read it somewhere!

On a meta-note, this difference of knowledge between those who have R&C and those who don't (or have it, but just looked at the pictures) is getting annoying. Morrus probably won't compile all the salient points on the 4E info page out of some respect of copyright (even though I'm not sure that would be a violation) or just "good will" to WotC, so the difference will remain essentially until June. I doubt everyone will parse all the threads for the tidbits left lying around. And even that's incomplete. :\

It goes on to say that Fighters don't draw their power from some mystic source that can only be used so often or they have to wait for it to come back or something. It's simply a matter of enemies not falling for the same trick twice. So the rules don't allow you to use the same trick more than once against a given group of enemies(an encounter).

Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean, maybe you don't care , but (1) Why doesn't a mindless vermin fall for the same trick twice? (2) How does a PC who's had a power used against him not "learn that trick" and never fall for it again? (3) Why does a person who actually has and uses the same trick fall for it? (4) In the Displacer Beast example above, can you use powers against it that you used fighting the bandits if the Displacer Beast didn't see you use them?

It was not a well thought-out explanation. I'd almost prefer they just said "There is a special magic that only those with a Martial spirit can tap into. It is the magic of Crom, and the secrets of its working is the Riddle of Steel." It doesn't have to be exactly that, of course, but something. Maybe every mortal has a small Astral Spirit inside him, and Wizards and Fighters tap into it in different ways. Whatever.

It also gives me the impression that there won't be a renew mechanic at all, it'll simply be that from the time you roll init until there are no more enemies around you can only use a power once. When you roll init again you get all your powers back.

They may include a line like Bo9S did saying that outside of combat powers can only be used once every 5 minutes. I'm guessing that they might as well just be at will outside of an encounter though.

That's terribly meta-gamey, and would annoy the heck out of me, but: They might. That would make an elven archery contest interesting.

I guarantee though we'll get some weird stuff if all those powers are usable at-will outside of combat. There's on ToB maneuver, for instance, that allows you to ignore hardness for one strike. That makes one Sunder per encounter really sick. But what happens if a PC decides to take his maul to a stone wall outside of combat? How quickly could he tunnel through a mountain? How many flying buttresses can be shattered before a whole cathedral comes down? Frankly, I have no idea what the answers are, but I bet some Sunder-happy barbarian with a big-ass hammer will ask you to make rulings on these.

As someone said above, PC's come up with weird, weird plans. And nothing allows for weirder plans than at-will, costless activities. I hope there's a one-minute rest rule just to curb the worst of the excesses. It's already funky enough when PC's keep Bags of Holding and Portable Holes handy as a "last ditch, foolproof escape hatch."

 

[bgaesop]

Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean, maybe you don't care , but (1) Why doesn't a mindless vermin fall for the same trick twice? (2) How does a PC who's had a power used against him not "learn that trick" and never fall for it again? (3) Why does a person who actually has and uses the same trick fall for it? (4) In the Displacer Beast example above, can you use powers against it that you used fighting the bandits if the Displacer Beast didn't see you use them?

1) "mindless" vermin aren't really mindless, they're just less sentient than most critters. They obviously still know how to fight or else they'd just be sitting there and you could kill them no sweat. 2) People don't remember absolutely everything they've ever encountered, particularly not things they see in the heat of battle. 3) This is a good point, but I can still think of ways to flavor over it. Maybe they set it up in a slightly different way, maybe they weren't expecting someone else to know how to do it so the first time caught them off guard but the next time they won't be so lucky, maybe a million things. Be creative! 4) Again, good question, but maybe you can, if you've got time to rest, or maybe you're starting to get tired and you can't pull off the same fancy swing without catching your breath, or maybe whatever.

It was not a well thought-out explanation. I'd almost prefer they just said "There is a special magic that only those with a Martial spirit can tap into. It is the magic of Crom, and the secrets of its working is the Riddle of Steel." It doesn't have to be exactly that, of course, but something. Maybe every mortal has a small Astral Spirit inside him, and Wizards and Fighters tap into it in different ways. Whatever.

This is the worst possible idea of all possible ideas, and would make me drop 4th edition in an instant.

As someone said above, PC's come up with weird, weird plans.

And this is where "not being a terrible DM" comes into play. If you want to have the PCs not be able to do something, just make it so they can't do it! Do I have to think of everything here? I kid, I kid, but seriously though, this should be something that the DM could fix easily. "You use your maneuver to hew away a good foot of rock, moving much faster than the magic drill the headman brought in, but you feel that if you keep this up you'll keel over from the strain."

 

[shilsen]

Defining encounters is hard.

As far as I'm concerned, a DM who's incapable of defining encounters is going to have much bigger problems at the table.

Some (most) gaming groups aren't perfect. Players will run roughshod over DMs and vice-versa.

Which is a group problem rather than a rule problem. People shouldn't game with DMs or players who run roughshod over them.