Has the wave crested? (Bo9S)

[mmu1]

The wire-fu flavor of Bo9S was an interesting choice made at a level above me.

I was going to say, having played in your game, that Eastern-style wire-fu is definitely not your style, at all. (and the Sword Sages you had show up didn't really come across as Oriental, either) Which in a way shows how much of what's in Bo9S is flavor text.

Actually, since you're a hard man to reach by e-mail these days, I figured I'd shamelessly use this to get your attention, and ask about what your GenCon plans are this year, since Chris mentioned something about invitationals and such...

(Matt)

 

[Andor]

Odhanan I gotta disagree with you on that. Per session usages would vaporize my immersion. It's the ultimate intrusion of meta-game concerns affecting in game events for no freaking reason that is perceptible in game.

Bob: Okay since we have some free time I want to craft another potion of healing.
GM: Nope. You crafted a potion in the dungeon, only one potion per session.
Bob: But our characters have been on the road for 2 weeks since then. I crafted 3 potions in the dungeon and that our took our characters 4 hours.
GM: Yeah but it took 3 sessions. No more crafting till next session.
Bob: Right.
GM: Why are you picking up your books?
Bob: Because I want to craft a potion. See you next session.

On the other hand, what do people feel about per encounter limits as a design feature? For example suppose a spellcasters top tier of spells were only useable once every 5 minuetes in game. (I can come up with a dozen fluff explanations for this and I bet you can too.) That way there is some assurance that the wizard and cleric will have at least a couple of big guns preserved for multiple encounters per day encourageing the party to boot more than one door per rest session.

 

[pawsplay]

Declining resources also encourages a slow pace. If a group blows their load in the first battle of the day, why would they continue knowing full well that they are completely tapped out? "But you just rested, you can't rest again!", replies the DM.

But resting for a eight hours actually only takes thirty seconds, or maybe thirty minutes if you get ambushed by gnolls. So the per day paradigm actually refreshes abilities faster, and still offers the possibility of fighting gnolls while at less than full strength.

It seems to me that actual time (which can be condensed into camera changes) is in every way more flexible than scene-based time (which has a fixed rate).

 

[hong]

When your character is balanced on a per-encounter basis, I suspect the game gets less interesting -- at least for me. I'll know exactly what tactic works best in the first, second, and third round of combat, and that's not typically going to vary much because my resources won't fundamentally change until I level.

I'm basing this opinion on my own experience, of course. My most interesting and exciting games have been where the PCs were almost tapped out, because that heightened the tension level and the excitement. Declining resources encourages clever, creative play. I don't want to see that change.

Most Bo9S classes will be tapped out about 3-5 rounds into the fight, depending on class and level. (Some, like the crusader, never really "tap out" but that's a deliberate design decision.) Therefore, if you want to have declining resources, you should find a way to have fights that go beyond 3-5 rounds. This isn't too hard, but does require bigger fights.

Last month I ran Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde for a crusader, warblade and wizard. The wiz had a reserve feat so he could throw mini-fireballs all day, and I also used reserve points so that people could heal in between fights without a cleric. Thus there wasn't that much call for stopping and resting. During the session, they fought a running battle with swarms of drow. They'd drop a few, and then a round or two later, some more would attack from out of the darkness. They ran out of maneuvers, hit points were getting low, and they were looking for a way to escape from these drow who kept coming at them. Eventually the attacks ceased and they were able to heal up; by this time IIRC the wiz was at single-digit hp.

2 months ago in the last AOW session, we fought a massive fight with a bunch of evil guys at the base of Kyuss' ziggurat. First there were a couple of tanks and some vampire ninjae in the entrance; then, while half the group was finishing them off, the other half went into the main hall and found Lashonna and her minions. It's fun fighting a CR 25 vampire silver dragon and several amped-up erinyes when half the group is missing, let me tell you.

 

[GlassJaw]

But resting for a eight hours actually only takes thirty seconds, or maybe thirty minutes if you get ambushed by gnolls. So the per day paradigm actually refreshes abilities faster, and still offers the possibility of fighting gnolls while at less than full strength.

Aside from being lame and unrealistic, what if you are trying to run something that is time-dependent? If the PC's know they are going to get stomped by continuining, are you going to force them?

And if your players are resting after every battle, why not just refresh their abilities after every battle and just go with it? I would bet that your game wouldn't suffer for it at all.

On the other hand, what do people feel about per encounter limits as a design feature? For example suppose a spellcasters top tier of spells were only useable once every 5 minuetes in game. (I can come up with a dozen fluff explanations for this and I bet you can too.) That way there is some assurance that the wizard and cleric will have at least a couple of big guns preserved for multiple encounters per day encourageing the party to boot more than one door per rest session.

This is absolutely what I would do. There can be many variants, even on a per ability basis, of what "per encounter" means. Abilities could be usable every round, every other round, once, twice, three times, per encounter, etc.

A barbarian could rage once per day,
A paladin can smite evil once per encounter,
A wizard can cast fire bolt once per round,
and so forth.

 

[Odhanan]

Bob: Okay since we have some free time I want to craft another potion of healing.
GM: Nope. You crafted a potion in the dungeon, only one potion per session.
Bob: But our characters have been on the road for 2 weeks since then. I crafted 3 potions in the dungeon and that our took our characters 4 hours.
GM: Yeah but it took 3 sessions. No more crafting till next session.
Bob: Right.
GM: Why are you picking up your books?
Bob: Because I want to craft a potion. See you next session.

That's where you introduce caveats to the particular uses of abilities ("unless there is a rest/fast forward segment to the adventure in which case the ability is usable under the DM's adjudication"), and probably another, intermediary term between encounter and session, like an "adventure segment" (designing actions in the same broad stroke of the adventure involving several encounters, like investigating a person, visiting a section of the dungeon, traveling for two weeks, etc).

Honestly though, if I had a player just pick up books and saying stuff like that at the game table, he wouldn't be welcomed back for next session without a serious discussion about what he did.

 

[GlassJaw]

Per session usages would vaporize my immersion.

Yeah, I definitely don't advocate per session. That's too vague of a unit of "time", and it doesn't correlate to in-game time at all.

You could spend where the players travel for weeks of in-game time and another that consists of a single battle that doesn't last a minute of game time.

Per session mechanics don't work.

 

[hong]

Per-session drama/hero/action points, I could get behind. It's a fundamentally metagame concept anyway.

 

[Odhanan]

What about replacing "per session" with "per adventure segment/chapter" then?

PS: by the way, I think the "per session" unit works for tactical abilities specifically. For instance, the bracers allowing an incorporeal/corporeal or vice versa switch 3/game session I was talking about earlier allow this change to happen quickly. The bracers also allow an unlimited amount of changes with a minute of concentration.

 

[WizarDru]

Furthermore, I have not seen, in my experience, the players actually slowing down the game because their abilities would be "per session". Mechanics being cleanly separated from the fiction, one does not come to mind as influencing the other in our minds.

It sounds more like it would change the focus of game-flow, but not necessarily break it.

I would hazard that in most games (including my own) 'per day' resource management, at least at lower levels, is a heavy influence on player actions. In my experience, it always has been. If the wizard only has two third-level slots and only one of them has a fireball, he's going to save it until he's sure it's going to get the best outing. The cleric will keep some healing spells in reserve and even the rogue and fighter are making judgment calls about when to use that healing potion.

When Complete Champion was announced with it's healing reserve feat (which I have not read yet), it raised quite a lot of discussion in my group. This had the dramatic ability to alter the cleric's role and healing as a factor in general. Let's face facts: players retire from the field whenever they are either tapped out of spells, hit points or both. Altering that dynamic can have far-reaching consequences....whether they would be good or bad, I don't know.

I'm thinking that maybe the problem with per-session or per-encounter abilities is that they change the dynamic in untold ways. If a fighter can pull out a single uber-strike once a combat, does that shift the 'cool things' balance? Are CRs now completely over-valued? Do mages get these abilities? What I am mostly concerned with is how this affects the whole group.

A few years back, one of my players, the cleric, staged a in-game protest during a fairly involved combat with some Frost Giants and winter wolves. The battle took place mostly under cover and involved lots of ranged combat. The rogue and cleric, feeling useless in this situation, sat down and began cooking soup. I resolved to try and not let that happen again. My main concern is that something like per-combat resets would heighten that problem, not remove it.