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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5918369" data-attributes="member: 42582">The issue for me isn't about bookkeeping. That's a pain in 4e, sure, but it's a side effect of a certain sort of mechanical system. The durations could be tidied up a bit, but fundamental change would require getting rid of 4e's condition sub-game as part of its combat mechanics. And I enjoy that sub-game.The issue for me with long durations is that they mean that units of time other than &quot;the encounter&quot; become crucial to adjudicating action resolution. Which means that distances travelled have to be very carefully tracked, time spent eating or searching tracked, time spent bandaging wounds tracked - it puts the focus of play away from where I want it (the conflicts that drive the game) and onto where I don't want it (the transitions between these conflicts).In practice, when I've GMed spells with 1 min/lvl or 10 min/lvl type durations, and there's been some ambiguity at the table as to how much time has passed, I let the player roll a d% to see if the spell is still up. At which point we may as well make the duration be some sort of percentage chance of ablation per encounter. (Somewhat analogus to systems like Burning Wheel or d20 modern that use abstract wealth mechanics rather than actually have the players track their wallets and bank accounts.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5918369, member: 42582"] The issue for me isn't about bookkeeping. That's a pain in 4e, sure, but it's a side effect of a certain sort of mechanical system. The durations could be tidied up a bit, but fundamental change would require getting rid of 4e's condition sub-game as part of its combat mechanics. And I enjoy that sub-game. The issue for me with long durations is that they mean that units of time [I]other than[/I] "the encounter" become crucial to adjudicating action resolution. Which means that distances travelled have to be very carefully tracked, time spent eating or searching tracked, time spent bandaging wounds tracked - it puts the focus of play away from where I want it (the conflicts that drive the game) and onto where I don't want it (the transitions between these conflicts). In practice, when I've GMed spells with 1 min/lvl or 10 min/lvl type durations, and there's been some ambiguity at the table as to how much time has passed, I let the player roll a d% to see if the spell is still up. At which point we may as well make the duration be some sort of percentage chance of ablation per encounter. (Somewhat analogus to systems like Burning Wheel or d20 modern that use abstract wealth mechanics rather than actually have the players track their wallets and bank accounts.) [/QUOTE]

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