Effects lasting until the end of the encounter, w00t!

[Mistwell]

You are missing the (probably, but not certainly) crucial point of time spent buffing. If per-encounter buffs cost actions, you want to keep them up (or precast them). Keep an Angry-Rat-On-A-Stick around to allow for arbitrarily premature buffage!

(If they cost actions with trigger conditions, well, triggering conditions can be manufactured)

A dedicated party will be able to turn per-encounter, encounter duration buffs into permanent abilities. That being the case, why bother with durations at all? (per-day buffs, of course, might be worth sacrificing some burned per-encounter abilities to keep up by artificially prolonging an encounter)

People used to say that about the Bag of Rats and Great Cleave, and it was as much an urban myth then as it is now. Despite the theoretical extension of abilities by keeping angry critters around to trigger them in ways they were not intended, in practice DMs almost universally close this loophole as soon as it is mentioned by a player (sometimes rapidly followed by a boot to the head).

 

[Kraydak]

I usually don't do this, but, are you frickin serious?

You regularly play with people that regularly do such system bending stuff and a DM that lets such actions pass?

I don't think so.

The silliness of the rat-on-a-stick (or the blind kobold, or the bag of rats) serves to illustrate issues that *will* occur. One issue is what occurs if the party rebuffs immediately every time their buffs drop? If starting a new encounter drops encounter-duration buffs, you will have buffs lasting for seconds in one case, hours in others, and heated arguments over what counts as a new encounter. If buffs don't drop at the start of a new encounter, people will have their (per-encounter) buffs up all the time. If per-day buffs are powerful, people *will* stretch the definition of an encounter to keep them up. They will be able to find better excuses than blind kobolds, too.

Time based durations, at least, are well defined and non-negotiable.

(note further that if the party is trying to escort an angry "prisoner" that they don't really want to harm, a princess who is trying to run away say, to choose something in genre, then you *do* have a fully legitimate "blind kobold" scenario... and the PCs may well choose to buff themselves so they can handle her better without causing permanent harm...)

 

[Stogoe]

Time based durations, at least, are well defined and non-negotiable.

I prefer to call them arbitrary and impossible to keep track of.

 

[scrubkai]

We have run many per encounter abilities in the past (having played witht he TOB a bit) and it's never really a problem.

Everyone sort of knows when an encounter starts and ends.
Yes there have been some corner cases where two encounters have run together, but it's just a case of asking the DM, should I reset my powers?

Our group found that much simpler then trying to keep track of all the buffs.
I can think of a few fights where high level Bard, Artificer, cleric and mage were all had different buffs going on others. We literally spend as much time recalculating who was affected by what, and what everyone's bonuses were every round as we did actually rolling for the outcome in some combats.

IMHO: Once you get more then about 5 or six buffs per character going, keeping track of who is affected by what is a total pain...

 

[Voss]

I don't think five or six will be an issue, as long as they cost actions. At that point, you're party is going to be butchered by the fact that they haven't taken any meaningful offensive actions.

Buffs will have to compete with other per encounter actions as well. If the paladin smites are any indication, its going to be a difficult to choose between buffs and attack actions. Yes, the buffs can help, but dropping enemies faster (and at x2 damage straight off, like the sites, you will) often helps your survivability more.

The question I really have is how many per encounter abilities can you have, because at a certain point it means that normal attacks are completely pointless, because you won't be making any.

 

[Xfer83]

If the encounter duration buffs come from per encounter abilities, I don't see a problem with the duration being effectively permanent. Just allow the buffs to last until the buffer refreshes his per encounter abilities. It would probably work best if they set up some kind of time interval for such restoration, like a 1 minute period of quiet meditation or something like that.
Example: Cleric casts bull's strength on Fighter using 1 of his 3 per encounter ability slots.
Fighter has the effect of bull's strength until Cleric decides to recharge his per encounter ability slots, but as long as fighter still has bull's strength Cleric is stuck at 2 out of 3 per encounter abilities.
This gives Cleric the advantage in saving a round of combat he would have had to buff in the "next encounter", while at the same time reducing his potential flexibility in the "next encounter" only being able to cast 2 per encounter spells, rather than 3.

 

[small pumpkin man]

The silliness of the rat-on-a-stick (or the blind kobold, or the bag of rats) serves to illustrate issues that *will* occur. One issue is what occurs if the party rebuffs immediately every time their buffs drop? If starting a new encounter drops encounter-duration buffs, you will have buffs lasting for seconds in one case, hours in others, and heated arguments over what counts as a new encounter. If buffs don't drop at the start of a new encounter, people will have their (per-encounter) buffs up all the time. If per-day buffs are powerful, people *will* stretch the definition of an encounter to keep them up. They will be able to find better excuses than blind kobolds, too.

Time based durations, at least, are well defined and non-negotiable.

(note further that if the party is trying to escort an angry "prisoner" that they don't really want to harm, a princess who is trying to run away say, to choose something in genre, then you *do* have a fully legitimate "blind kobold" scenario... and the PCs may well choose to buff themselves so they can handle her better without causing permanent harm...)

It wasn't a problem with ToB, it wasn't a problem with the Factotum and it wasn't a problem with Saga. The WoTC design team has consistently shown it's possible to balance per encounter abilities without it getting fiddly or annoying, so maybe you should just take breather and accept the possibility that the designers aren't complete idiots, and have looked at these really obvious problems which would have come up in the first play test in the unlikely event they even got that far.

 

[Henry]

...in practice DMs almost universally close this loophole as soon as it is mentioned by a player (sometimes rapidly followed by a boot to the head).

...and said boot to head keeps the encounter going, causing the abilities not to drop.

I do agree, though. While I don't really like per encounter resources that much, adjudicating them is just going to take DM "common sense" like so many other tricks and workarounds in the game -- they're not any more likely to allow rampant shenanigans than anything else in the game.

 

[FireLance]

If the encounter duration buffs come from per encounter abilities, I don't see a problem with the duration being effectively permanent. Just allow the buffs to last until the buffer refreshes his per encounter abilities. It would probably work best if they set up some kind of time interval for such restoration, like a 1 minute period of quiet meditation or something like that.

First off, welcome to the boards!

An alternative for DMs who want to impose limits on player "creativity" is to set a maximum duration for the per encounter effect - one that would be longer than practially all "normal" encounters so that it would effectively only trigger when the players try to bend the rules.

One good way would be to tie it to the time taken to refresh per encounter abilities (say, five minutes), so that the refreshing per encounter abilities automatically means the termination of all pre-existing per encounter effects.

 

[3catcircus]

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.

Huh - so I guess the ten-minute turn was no longer needed in 3rd edition, what, with all those 10 minute duration buff spells...