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Keep on the Shadowfell vs Reavers of Harkenwold
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7432155" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>I think that's been over-stated. Other eds /depend/ upon an adventuring day (or a whole campaign) to balance classes out over time, 4e just has (comparatively, for D&D) balanced classes, whether they're in an encounter per day or many, that's not an encounter-based design, just a less-pacing-dependent design. </p><p>In 3.x, in particular, it was popular to break the game with the infamous 5MWD (and, in 1e, sometimes the 5MWD - if not week - was necessary simply to survive 1st level), in 4e, you could play with that pacing if you wanted, and it would mean you could handle tougher encounters, but it wasn't a game-breaker. You could play 4e over an adventuring day with an emphasis on attrition & planning, it'd really kick in at 8+ encounter days, but you could do it - the dungeon section of KotSf could be run that way (it's how our DM in my old group ran it, and 9 encounters in a row at low level was certainly challenging) - it also wouldn't break the game, but it wouldn't have the virtue of /fixing/ it, the way HoNfS fixed powergamers' scry-buff-teleporting 5MWDs in 3.0, either. </p><p></p><p> I hadn't noticed that about Gardmore, but I didn't play in it long. I've never so much as glanced at Harkenwold. </p><p></p><p>Though I can see how dramatic decisions would be present in combat, it seems to me more that higher-level decision points set up encounters (challenges), which then lead to other challenges or decisions, prettymuch regardless of edition (or even system). It's just that traditional D&D requires a certain structure - the 'adventuring day,' the dungeon crawl, magic-item acquisition, etc - to really work well, while 4e didn't. Once the need to force something like HoNfS or KotSf structure onto stories to impose functionality on the game is removed, the poverty of those stories is revealed...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7432155, member: 996"] I think that's been over-stated. Other eds /depend/ upon an adventuring day (or a whole campaign) to balance classes out over time, 4e just has (comparatively, for D&D) balanced classes, whether they're in an encounter per day or many, that's not an encounter-based design, just a less-pacing-dependent design. In 3.x, in particular, it was popular to break the game with the infamous 5MWD (and, in 1e, sometimes the 5MWD - if not week - was necessary simply to survive 1st level), in 4e, you could play with that pacing if you wanted, and it would mean you could handle tougher encounters, but it wasn't a game-breaker. You could play 4e over an adventuring day with an emphasis on attrition & planning, it'd really kick in at 8+ encounter days, but you could do it - the dungeon section of KotSf could be run that way (it's how our DM in my old group ran it, and 9 encounters in a row at low level was certainly challenging) - it also wouldn't break the game, but it wouldn't have the virtue of /fixing/ it, the way HoNfS fixed powergamers' scry-buff-teleporting 5MWDs in 3.0, either. I hadn't noticed that about Gardmore, but I didn't play in it long. I've never so much as glanced at Harkenwold. Though I can see how dramatic decisions would be present in combat, it seems to me more that higher-level decision points set up encounters (challenges), which then lead to other challenges or decisions, prettymuch regardless of edition (or even system). It's just that traditional D&D requires a certain structure - the 'adventuring day,' the dungeon crawl, magic-item acquisition, etc - to really work well, while 4e didn't. Once the need to force something like HoNfS or KotSf structure onto stories to impose functionality on the game is removed, the poverty of those stories is revealed... [/QUOTE]
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