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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5968370" data-attributes="member: 42582">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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5968370, member: 42582"] 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 [I]attrition[/I] purpose. But running down resources through attrition is, in my view, one of the least interesting reasons for setting up and resolving an encounter. [/QUOTE]

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