Per day or per session?

[JDJblatherings]

I'd imagine he means "Months of game time."

So, you can use cool ability X once per hour or once per year, depending on the time scale of the session. That might twig some SoD sensors.

yes..months of game time. As such a per session ability would mean somehting entirely different in that session then it would in a session that spanned 2 or three days of game time. There is no set timeframe for how much game time there is in a session of play.

Adjusting for longer time spans might not work out very well, I can imagine how much some folks would whine if there were per/week and per/month abilities. Even if they could make sense in the context of the camapign world ...can only tranform under the light of the full moon, can only cast that spell after making a sacrifice during your weekly holy day...stuff like that.

 

[Jer]

I agree with what you are saying, but thats generally the way the 3e games I play in run already. Spellcasters dont mind losing a few lower level spells each combat, but are reticent to use their higher levels, or when they do they start itching to rest. Now, in 4e it seems that all classes may have the equivilent of those higher level spells, so perhaps the itch maybe even more prevelent.

Actually, I'm saying something a little bit different. It's not so much the level of the spell that controls when you stop and camp as it is the type of spell that you've run out of.

I've never had a group stop to camp because the wizard ran out of Arcane Lock spells. I have had a group stop to camp because the wizard ran out of Magic Missiles. And the camping wasn't because they were afraid that there would be some horrible monster that they couldn't stop without the wizard's magic - it was more because the wizard had used up all of his combat spells and was going to spend the combat hiding behind the fighters and using his crossbow ineffectively. That wasn't why the wizard's player signed up to play a wizard.

If a wizard has an effective and powerful spell that they can use per encounter (or even at will) that should slow down the need to camp for the wizard's player. Even if every character has such things - if their players perceive what the characters can do "at will" or "per encounter" as being as powerful (or even, dare I say, more powerful) than their "per day" abilities, camping rates will slow down. THAT'S the dynamic I hope they hit with the new edition.

(Really, what I'm hoping for is that the "per day" abilities are useful things that you want to be able to do maybe once or twice in an entire adventure while the "per encounter" abilities are things that you want to be able to do once or twice in every encounter and the "at will" abilities are things you want to be able to do as often as a fighter swings his sword. That's the type of dynamic for spellcasting I've been looking for in D&D for at least 20 years, and I've never been able to get it quite right with any homebrew or third party system I've tried).

 

[Doug McCrae]

Without time pressure there's no way of enforcing encounters per day. If I have set up a dungeon such that the PCs need to face four encounters in a row to get a decent challenge, there's no reason why they can't just face one then return to camp and rest.

The old school approach would be to have them attacked by wandering monsters but that's less acceptable these days.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Without time pressure there's no way of enforcing encounters per day. If I have set up a dungeon such that the PCs need to face four encounters in a row to get a decent challenge, there's no reason why they can't just face one then return to camp and rest.

The old school approach would be to have them attacked by wandering monsters but that's less acceptable these days.

There are a lot of reasons to keep going past the first encounter:
Competition, there are other folks trying to do what you are doing. The bad guys actually aren'tsitting there waiting for the PCs to kill them but instead lead lives that make sense within the campaign setting. The bad guys will go find the PCs and attack them while they are resting in retalliation for what happened in the first encounter. The bad guys will fortify and get ready fo rhte Pcs next assault. The bad guys will get the hell out of dodge and take the treasure with them.

 

[MerricB]

That's a REAL strange definition of "session".

Caffeine can do wonderful things.

Cheers!