Effects lasting until the end of the encounter, w00t!

[Chuangel]

"Bob, do you remember if my one buff is still in effect?"

NO MORE! What glad news that buffs just last until the end of the encounter, and that's it. I love the change. No more figuring out, "Well, was there only five minutes in between this encounter and last, cause then my Bull's Strength is still here."

And most of the buffs I'm sure will come from per encounter abilities, so you're not saving your buffs for a bigger monster that never shows up.

Simplicity, wonderful.

 

[Green Knight]

Agreed.

And welcome to ENWorld.

 

[Grymar]

Very cool, but the new argument will be when does one encounter end and another starts. At initiative? What about an out-of-combat buff like bull's strength before breaking down a door?

I'm sure these questions will be answered, or at least I hope so.

 

[Wormwood]

Finally!

Ticking off seconds, turns and hours is a tedious chore; I'm amazed it took this long for D&D to crawl out of that particular design cave.

 

[Chuangel]

Very cool, but the new argument will be when does one encounter end and another starts. At initiative? What about an out-of-combat buff like bull's strength before breaking down a door?

Yeah, that was a problem with SAGA Edition. I was a jedi, and to recover your abilities you had to be out of combat for a minute resting. I was constantly asking, "Has it been a minute yet? Do I get my stuff back yet?" but other than that the system was so great, because you never had to skimp because you were saving your abilities for a bigger guy just to learn you were fighting the big guy.

And welcome to ENWorld.

Thanks!

 

[KingCrab]

Very cool, but the new argument will be when does one encounter end and another starts. At initiative? What about an out-of-combat buff like bull's strength before breaking down a door?

I'm sure these questions will be answered, or at least I hope so.

I hope so too. I love the idea of not keeping track, but my mind instantly came up with a dozen confusing scenarios where the 'end' of the encounter is ambiguous.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Finally!

Ticking off seconds, turns and hours is a tedious chore; I'm amazed it took this long for D&D to crawl out of that particular design cave.

Turns?

Design cave?

Pot, meet kettle?

 

[Wormwood]

Turns?

That's the problem with repressed memories (in this case, the utterly lame ten-minute turn), sometimes they bubble up to the surface.

I apologize for the flashback.

 

[Kraydak]

You can get really weird effects with splitting the party mid-encounter... one portion getting "out of combat" well before the other one (and then potentially triggering the next encounter and pulling it back onto the other portion of the party).

If you can have someone who burned few important per-encounter abilities lock down the sole remaining minion, he can keep his encounter-duration per-day buffs up indefinitely! I forsee a return of the infamous blindfolded kobold of 3e days

 

[Logan_Bonner]

I hope so too. I love the idea of not keeping track, but my mind instantly came up with a dozen confusing scenarios where the 'end' of the encounter is ambiguous.

Honestly, this is what we have DMs for.

Good rules of thumb are "has it been 5 minutes" and "did we break out of initiative?"