Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4842737" data-attributes="member: 80487">Making all XP awards &quot;quest&quot; awards could indeed perform the same function as the old XP for treasure. By the standard scheme, XP for a quest are only 10% of what's needed, or 25% of the award for an encounter of the same level.Otherwise, there is a very basic flaw with -- or, depending one's preference, feature of -- the whole &quot;encounter&quot; concept in 4E. It's compounded by the notion that whatever is not a combat is a &quot;skill challenge&quot;, and further by the nature of the skill challenge formalism itself.An advantage for some is that, because it is incumbent on the DM (or scenario writer) to set boundaries of &quot;encounters&quot; and define what &quot;overcoming&quot; them means, the players are by default heavily directed.Thus, if one wants to impose a lesser frequency of combat, then simply defining fewer &quot;combat encounters&quot; can go far to do the trick.What I have seen in play is that players are quickly trained to look to the DM for cues as to the conditions particular to the latest discrete sub-game, taking a reactive role.One could of course break that mold, but it seems to be a key binding structure in the design and presentation of the game.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ariosto, post: 4842737, member: 80487"] Making all XP awards "quest" awards could indeed perform the same function as the old XP for treasure. By the standard scheme, XP for a quest are only 10% of what's needed, or 25% of the award for an encounter of the same level. Otherwise, there is a very basic flaw with -- or, depending one's preference, feature of -- the whole "encounter" concept in 4E. It's compounded by the notion that whatever is not a combat is a "skill challenge", and further by the nature of the skill challenge formalism itself. An advantage for some is that, because it is incumbent on the DM (or scenario writer) to set boundaries of "encounters" and define what "overcoming" them means, the players are by default heavily directed. Thus, if one wants to impose a lesser frequency of combat, then simply defining fewer "combat encounters" can go far to do the trick. What I have seen in play is that players are quickly trained to look to the DM for cues as to the conditions particular to the latest discrete sub-game, taking a reactive role. One could of course break that mold, but it seems to be a key binding structure in the design and presentation of the game. [/QUOTE]

Verification