Encounter-based Design: The only smart elephant in the room

[Tony Vargas]

First, if you base your design on encounters, this means your encounters must be balanced.

Not really. You could still have trivial encounters or very tough encounters or encountes the PCs'll probably have to run from. You just have a much clear idea, as the DM, on how to design them, since you don't have to worry about the party blowing resources unneccessarily on an early filler encounter, taking an extra rest at an unexpected juncture, or otherwise going into a fight greatly stronger or weaker than you'd expected when you designed it.

This creates the problem we saw in 4e of "microbalance," of ruling out elements of the game such as flight, instant death attacks, teleportation, etc., because such things are not balanced for the encounter. They let you bypass the encounter or dominate the encounter. They are, at the encounter level, wildly unbalanced.

Anything that's wildly unbalanced at the encounter level is just wildy unbalanced. Flight, teleportaiont and the like aren't neccessarily, but instant-death, yeah, that can safely go.

 

[pemerton]

We played 4e, and my players kept pushing time and again for the 15 minute day just because dailies packed more punch.

Interesting. Can you remember what classes/builds your players were playing?

I've found that it is healing surges, not dailies, that provide the "hard cap" on going on - my players tend to ration their dailies, partly out of caution but partly just as a consequence of rational play, because dailies are often situational and so don't get used all at once or straightaway (and the players don't mind this because they know they have them in reserve for if the situation does come up, or if they think it is worth trying to create the situation).

If there are builds where non-situational power is locked up in dailies, then I could see how the dynamic would be different.

Then your group was, quite frankly, pretty lousy at picking powers that truly packed the most punch. Most of the best Wizard dailies, for example, require sustaining and make using multiples in an encounter really a tough (and outright bad) choice.

<snip>

My Warlord, for example, using Encounter Powers in concert with another ranged attacker using only at-wills does a lot more aggregate damage than both of us using "selfish" Dailies.

This is closer to my experience, but I'm wondering how build-dependent it is.

In my game, there are two strikers. The archer ranger (hybrid cleric) mostly uses Twin Strike together with various encounter immediate actions to attack, and has as dailies a couple of semi-situational cleric options, plus Attacks on the Run which he pulls out in emergencies. The sorcerer uses as his default attacks Blazing Starfall (augmented with feats to do thunder damage and be burst 2) and Flame Spiral (and he has two daily items for getting it back, so often uses it multiple times in an encounter). A lot of his dailies are situational immediate actions that he uses when it makes sense but that are not essential to his damage output.

The paladin has melee/close at-wills and encounters, but mostly ranged dailies, and so again they are somewhat situational. And the fighter's mainstay is his suite of close burst encounter powers - he goes to at wills or dailies only in special circumstances.

(The fifth PC, an invoker, is new and so I haven't seen yet how he plays. Previously he was a wizard, and played in the sort of way you describe.)

So personally I've been impressed how 4e makes dailies useful and important, but not mandatory or ubiquitous.

But as I said, maybe this is a build-relative thing.

It took a good many months to fix it, but eventually we established a suite of fair houserules (basically a little cheese to motivate players away from it) to keep play moving and stop the 15 minute day.

Nothing wrong with a bit of cheese! (For my own group, milestones tend to be enough.)

But this does look like a mechanical rather than a playstyle solution - doesn't it?

 

[BobTheNob]

Then your group was, quite frankly, pretty lousy at picking powers that truly packed the most punch.

I give genuine feedback about the experience my group had and this is your response...

Do you do that alot. Get genuine feedback from people, and because you dont agree with it attempt to assassinate them or their position in some way? How is that working out for you?

 

[pemerton]

if you base your design on encounters, this means your encounters must be balanced.

I've seen you say this before, but I still don't follow your reasoning.

I run what (at least I think of as) an encounter- or situation-based game. But some of the encounters that I set up are very dangerous (the 17th level PCs have just come out of back-to-back 21st level encounters, and I have another one of those planned for next session). While others are not (one recent encounter involved two PCs in a complexity 1 skill challenge of their level). And yet others are more or less dangerous depending on who turns up to the session (not too long ago I ran an encounter with a solo troll, a rat swarm and some gargoyles that would have been close to a walkover for the full party, but pushed the 3-PC group who actually went through it pretty hard).

For me, the essence of encounter-based play is that mechanical consequences are confined to the encounter. So 4e doesn't quite possess this essence - it has (i) healing surges and (ii) daily abilities - but is pretty close to it (in my experience) because in any given encounter (i) the constraint on healing is generally imposed not by total surges remaining, but by resources available to access them, and (ii) action points and unlocked item abilities somewhat make up for the running down of dailies (and for limitations inherent to dailies in my experience, see my post above this one).

That means that easy encounters often won't serve any attrition purpose. But running down resources through attrition is, in my view, one of the least interesting reasons for setting up and resolving an encounter.

 

[BobTheNob]

Nothing wrong with a bit of cheese! (For my own group, milestones tend to be enough.)

But this does look like a mechanical rather than a playstyle solution - doesn't it?

Sort of. Even though players were pushing for the 15 minute day, no-one sort of liked that it was happening, it was too much white-washing encounters.

Lets just say we put motivations to NOT rest after every fight. Not so much mechanical, just a reward structure. In and of itself it didnt change the mechanics of 4e, but player stopped saying "rest" after every fight and started thinking about power conservation.

I guess my point is the 15 minute day wasnt attributable to anything about how 4e mechanics or how it handled the dailies, it was all about what the players decision was based upon. If the only thing contributing to the decision to rest is the ability to get back powers, then yes, they will rest every encounter. Put in other motivators and things start to change.

At the end of the day, its either
a) run a system that has limited resources WITH motivations to not spend those resources in the first fight that comes along
b) run a system that does not use limited resources

If you try a) without a reason NOT to rest...people will rest.

 

[pemerton]

At the end of the day, its either
a) run a system that has limited resources WITH motivations to not spend those resources in the first fight that comes along
b) run a system that does not use limited resources

If you try a) without a reason NOT to rest...people will rest.

Yes.

In my 4e game, the motivation to not spend the resources arises out of the action economy and action resolution mechanics more generally (dailies aren't always the best choice for spending one's standard action) plus the milestone mechanics (going on restores resources or grants substitute ones).

Obviously that didn't work for your group as written.

One thing that would be nice would be for the rulebook to do something that D&D traditionally hasn't (except in Gygax's DMG) and talk a bit about what the design is meant to achieve. So that, if for one particular group it isn't working out, they have some idea of what parts of the design to tackle and tweak, rather than just being left to sort it all out for themselves from first principles.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Simply put, the only way to make a game that can fit all the playstyles is to have a core with no daily resources. They need to be in modules or D&DN is destined to not unify anyone.

Why? Why not have "no daily resources" in a module? Why not have the core, which is designed to provide the basic D&D experience, include daily resources, something that has been core in every edition of D&D ever? Why does your favorite style "need" to be core?

 

[I'm A Banana]

What?!?!?! How does Encounter design rule out flight, instant death attacks and teleportation? That makes absolutely no sense. The closest would probably be instant death attacks, but those should in no way be core anyway because a number of fans of all editions don't like them.

Because those things subvert encounters. Subverting encounters is what makes things Overpowered if encounters are your metric for balance.

And yet even in 4E I've thrown Dryads and the like out and teh group doesn't fight them either.

Sure, but then that wasn't a "balanced encounter" in 4e terms. It was just a non-encounter chatfest or maybe a skill challenge at best. You only need balance for things that are going to challenge the party, after all.

BS, that's just "one true way"ism.

No, it's actually just recognizing that D&D has always had daily resource management that has gone across encounters for very good psychological and game design reasons. I'm not telling you how you have to play, I'm telling you what the game's design has indicated for 30+ years.

I think you have it backwards. It's easy to add elements to throw balance off, it's not easy to add elements to make an unbalanced system balanced.

This is only relevant if you consider daily rescources automatically unbalanced. That isn't true. Days can be balanced. So by making a balanced encounter within a balanced day, you're just telescoping the balance.

You can also build a balanced day out of balanced encounters, but encounter-based balance invalidates the use of certain daily resources that are an important psychological component to the game's brand identity and pacing, as I explained.

That's a lot different than Kobolds tearing you up and you roll a 1 on a HD recovery roll or getting hit for instant death. That's bad swingy.

It isn't objectively bad. Indeed, that chaos helps create an emotional response in the audience: excitement. It creates the sense of dread and anticipation that you get when gambling. It is what makes the die roll something cathartic.

It may not be what you're looking for, and I absolutely believe that 5e should help those who want more...er...stability?...find it. But it is not automatically bad just because it's not your bag.

You could still have trivial encounters or very tough encounters or encountes the PCs'll probably have to run from.

Those encounters in an encounter-based system are no different from non-encounters, since there is no real effect beyond the encounter. Run from the terrasque or chat with the dryad, either way you've just not had an encounter.

A daily-based system allows those threats to still consume some resource that you don't get back, so it's not a wash. They can be an important mechanical part of presenting an overall adventure, rather than just set dressing. It can MATTER, mechanically, in your characters' resources, that you had to run from the terrasque or that you chatted up the dryad.

Anything that's wildly unbalanced at the encounter level is just wildy unbalanced. Flight, teleportaiont and the like aren't neccessarily, but instant-death, yeah, that can safely go.

Your first sentence is false, though. Encounters are not automatically and exclusively the measure of balance.

I've seen you say this before, but I still don't follow your reasoning.

It might help if you dissociate the idea of "encounter" from the idea of a "scene."

A game session consists of innumerable scenes. Shopping, traveling, talking, bantering, eating, drinking, carousing, even confronting...these scenes might influence character choices or options, but they have no mechanical impact. They are not a place where challenge is held. They are irrelevant for the purposes of balance. They are non-encounters. They may even have dice rolling ("Roll to see if I'm getting drunk!"), but they pose no immediate risk of failure. You don't have to roll dice to walk outside in a thunderstorm. You just do it. It has no mechanical impact. The dryad conversation might be interesting, but in an encounter-based system, it cannot truly matter for "balance." Running from the terrasque might be fun, but in an encounter-based system, it cannot truly matter for "balance" (that is, the PC's probably escape successfully and thus are fully recharged).

An "encounter" is a specific type of scene in which there is a risk of failure and thus a mechanical impact (as D&D understands mechanical impacts, anyway). It is here that mechanics are most judiciously employed, to determine if the outcome of the encounter is success, or if it is failure. It's where the game part of the RPG is played. You DO need to roll dice to kill the goblins, or to convince the dryad to stop murdering foresters, or to save the villagers from the rampaging terrasque: there's something at stake if you fail, and success is not guaranteed.

I'm specifically only talking about the mechanical nature of the encounter vs. the mechanical nature of the "adventuring day," because that is all that matters in the context of balance. Being able to walk outside in a thunderstorm can't usually be considered "unbalanced" (I guess if you're playing a game about agoraphobics maybe? But not usually in D&D anyway.). Being able to kill the terrasque with a cheap resource can be.

In that context, if you remove all challenge from an encounter, you have effectively turned it into a non-encounter, and thus unbalanced the game, since you have not spent anything to remove that challenge. It bypasses threat. It is an "I Win Button." It invalidates difficulty. It dispenses with the "game", where balance matters.

So these abilities -- these things that can turn encounters into non-encounters -- must be severely controlled, curbed, and tamed, so that they cannot render an encounter moot anymore. Because if you're playing an encounter-based game and you can render most of the encounters moot, you're suddenly playing a character who effectively removed most of the challenge from the game. It's only scene after scene, with nothing really at stake. Which is, ultimately, kind of dull. And at any rate, ultimately indistinguishable from playing with a Story Stick.

 

[pemerton]

Sure, but then that wasn't a "balanced encounter" in 4e terms. It was just a non-encounter chatfest or maybe a skill challenge at best. You only need balance for things that are going to challenge the party, after all.

<snip>

Those encounters in an encounter-based system are no different from non-encounters, since there is no real effect beyond the encounter.

<snip>

It might help if you dissociate the idea of "encounter" from the idea of a "scene."

<snip>

A game session consists of innumerable scenes. Shopping, traveling, talking, bantering, eating, drinking, carousing, even confronting...these scenes might influence character choices or options, but they have no mechanical impact. They are not a place where challenge is held. They are irrelevant for the purposes of balance.

<snip>

An "encounter" is a specific type of scene in which there is a risk of failure and thus a mechanical impact (as D&D understands mechanical impacts, anyway). It is here that mechanics are most judiciously employed, to determine if the outcome of the encounter is success, or if it is failure. It's where the game part of the RPG is played.

By "scenes" I don't mean shopping, travelling, talking, eating etc. I mean scenes in the "RPGing by way of scene-framing" sense - more-or-less straight-down-the-line Forge-ist play.

But it is just false to say that an encounter becomes irrelevant because (for example) success by the PCs is guaranteed. Because the way in which that success is achieved may well matter. Here is an example that illustrates that, that LostSoul posted a while ago now:

I run a quick skill challenge as Kryx convinces the guards to turn against Sosruko.

This was interesting. Kryx had a massive modifier - +13. He was rolling against the Will Defence of the guards - 14. That means he could only fail on a 1 if he said something that gave him a penalty.

Pointless exercise in dice rolling? No, as it turns out. Having to go through a number of checks meant that the guards made some demands of their own - that Kryx would be their new sheriff, that they would still keep their jobs, and that Kryx would "deal" with the bandits. Kryx gave them his word (part of the reason he was able to get such a high modifier), and as a dragonborn and a paladin that's a big deal.​

And of course there are a whole range of possible challenge-levels between "guaranteed not to fail" and "encounter that will consume 1/4 of your daily resources". All of which can matter in the sort of way that skill challenge mattered, and/or in other ways as well.

It seems to me that when you are saying certain encounters have "no real effect beyond the encounter" you are meaning only that they have no effect on resources available outside the encounter. But they may have all sorts of other, highly relevant effects on the fiction. Those effects on the fiction may, in turn, have all sorts of mechanical consequences. For example, being polite to a dryad might give a bonus in some future social interaction with a treant; running away from the Tarrasque might have a pretty significant impact on the way the next scene is framed.

(Encounters that you are classifying as "non-encounters" can also be relevant to resources available. An easy social encounter, for example, might lead an NPC to provide assistance in a subsequent encounter, which would be a form of resource creation on the part of the players. Burning Wheel puts quite a bit of emphasis on this particular approach to the generation of player resources.)

And the fact that encounters matter, in all sorts of ways, whether or not they drain resources in a way that will ramify beyond the encounter, makes balance highly relevant. Because if one character is consistently able to dominate play in the scenes that the GM frames, it is irrelevant whether or not those scenes are level-appropriate encounters. There will still be an imbalance in the capcity of the various players, via their PCs, to affect the content of the fiction and the unfolding story of the campaign.

I don't quite get the conception of an RPG scenario that you are working with, but if you reallly think that skill challenges aren't mechanically significant, are not sites of challenge where important stakes are put into play and resolved one way or another, and therefore are not episodes of play in which mechanical balance between PCs becomes relevant; if you really think that the only way an encounter can be relevant in a mechanical sense is if it depletes the resources available to the players in a subsequent encounter; then your conception is very different from mine, I think, and also different from the one that 4e most naturally presupposes.

 

[Libramarian]

Resource management and "operational" play pretty much = D&D to me. I give the edge to my preferred version of D&D because it's older and more traditional.