How Per Encounter power recharging should work

[Just Another User]

Personally I'm more worried about powers that *last* for one encounter, like they've mentioned there will be, that is a big can of worms IMHO, poisonous, carnivore, burrowing-into-your-living-flesh-and-laying-eggs worms

 

[HeinorNY]

Personally I'm more worried about powers that *last* for one encounter, like they've mentioned there will be, that is a big can of worms IMHO, poisonous, carnivore, burrowing-into-your-living-flesh-and-laying-eggs worms

To be more precise...

How long does an effect that last until the end of the encounter, last when used outside combat?

 

[Just Another User]

How long does an effect that last until the end of the encounter, last when used outside combat?

Oh, boy, I didn't have thought of that

I was thinking more, if i kill the last goblin and 2 round later more goblins arrive the encounter is over or is still the same?

and if the party run away but the monster catch them?

or if the monsters run away but the pc catch them?

I hope they will be really, really, realy precise when they define when an encounter start and end.

And that is only for combat encounters, I'm afraid non-combat enconuters will be even worse. exepecially because it will be the first time they will be strictly defined in D&D.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Oh, boy, I didn't have thought of that

I was thinking more, if i kill the last goblin and 2 round later more goblins arrive the encounter is over or is still the same?

and if the party run away but the monster catch them?

or if the monsters run away but the pc catch them?

I guess we just never really had a problem with this. An encounter was from when you rolled initiative until there were no more monsters in the immediate vicinity.

If monsters spotted you, an encounter begins (and according to to Bo9S, you immediately get back all of your maneuvers everytime an encounter begins). Then you fight the monsters, you beat them, when the last one is dead or unconscious the encounter ends.

If more monsters join the battle before the last of the monsters are dead then they become part of the encounter(and I use the rule that if monsters are coming because they heard the encounter and they will arrive within a round or 2 of the last monster dropping that it is the same encounter)

If the monsters run and the PCs chase them the encounter continues. If the PCs run and the monsters chase them the encounter continues. Once it is clear that one side has lost the other one then the encounter ends. Although without magic of some sort, running away was kind of pointless in 3rd Ed rules, so no one ever did it.

 

[Corinth]

Use of Cooldowns, measured in rounds (combat-applicable) or minutes (non-combat), is better. "At-will" abilities have no cooldown. Per-encounter abilities get cooldowns that vary by this or that criteria. Greater abilities have longer cooldowns. Reagents may or may not be required.

 

[Campbell]

Use of Cooldowns, measured in rounds (combat-applicable) or minutes (non-combat), is better. "At-will" abilities have no cooldown. Per-encounter abilities get cooldowns that vary by this or that criteria. Greater abilities have longer cooldowns. Reagents may or may not be required.

Cool downs work fine for computer games, but as soon as you move the processing away from a computer and into a human brain cool downs introduce complexity for very little gain.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Use of Cooldowns, measured in rounds (combat-applicable) or minutes (non-combat), is better. "At-will" abilities have no cooldown. Per-encounter abilities get cooldowns that vary by this or that criteria. Greater abilities have longer cooldowns. Reagents may or may not be required.

Ugh, no. This is the exact thing they are trying to avoid:

Player: "I activate Blades of Fury."
DM: "Didn't you use that like 2 rounds ago?"
Player: "No, it was 4 rounds ago, it has a recharge of 4 rounds."
DM: "No, I distinctly remember you using Blades of Fury the same round the enemy used his Fire Attack. That was two rounds ago according to my notes."
Player: "Yeah, that was the same round, but I've been keeping track, it's been 4 rounds since then."
DM: "My notes say otherwise. Sorry, you can't use it yet."
Player: "Fine, I activate Blades of Power. I KNOW I used that one first round and it's been 5 rounds of combat."
DM: "It's been 4 rounds of combat. I've been keeping track. You can't use it."
Player: "But it has a recharge of 3 rounds."
DM: "Does it? I thought it was 5. Let me look it up to be sure."

Then you get to the end of the combat and some powers have a recharge of 5 minutes or something and the group then gets into a combat after searching the room and new enemies come in.

Player: "Ok, I use Super All Powerful Strike!"
DM: "You can't, it has a recharge of 5 minutes."
Player: "Yeah, we searched the room after the last battle, that HAD to have taken at least 5 minutes."
DM: "Well, you were in the MIDDLE of searching the room when the new enemies came in. It was about 4 minutes."
Player: "Come on, you said we found all that loot and we put it in our portable hole, we couldn't have done that in 4 minutes."
DM: "Ok, you're probably right, go ahead and activate it."


Every time we have to track durations or recharge times this type of conversation comes up yet again. People rushing from room to room before buffs wear off. People waiting around in rooms until powers come back. It's all pretty lame.

And the metagame reason to not allow players to use the same power twice is to make combat more interesting and encourage a different action each round. If the recharge is set too small or there is a recharge method then people will simply activate their best power as many times as they can.

I think a system where you get back all of your powers at the beginning of every encounter no matter how much time has passed is a good one. And, say, 5 minutes out of combat.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Double Post. Sorry.

 

[Corinth]

Cool downs work fine for computer games, but as soon as you move the processing away from a computer and into a human brain cool downs introduce complexity for very little gain.

That depends entirely on how you implement them, and on how many powers you're actually expected to track at any given time. Combat-capable cooldown abilities are often few in number and with relatively short times; non-combat ones won't be used when in combat, and when out of combat those with such capability are effectively at-will anyway and as such need no tracking. With small enough time intervals, you can use dice to track them; just reduce the number by one at some point on your turn, and when you hit zero remove the die and you're up for another go.

 

[Lanefan]

I have no problem with this, it simply allows the PCs to approach every encounter fresh. Something I believe the 4e designers specifically wanted to encourage in order to avoid the "15-minute" adventuring day.

Where I have a big problem with the PCs being able to "approach every encounter fresh" in that there is no way to wear them down slowly; to have early battles weaken them so the later battles become more dangerous. The more we hear, the less important per-day abilities seem to be, yet there's no reasonable way a party should be as "fresh" for its 5th or 10th battle of the day as it was for its first.

Lanefan