Per-Encounter Powers

[Herremann the Wise]

I think that that's a pretty contentious way to describe a well-known and widely-used approach to RPG design.

I believe "artificially contrived" is an accurate way of describing encounter powers, in particular focusing on the "imposed arbitrarily" and "forced/planned/strained" parts of the definitions. Encounter powers represent an absolute restriction upon an action in the name of simplicity and tying resources to the spine of the game in terms of game balance rather than the campaign world. If simplicity and game balance are important game features for a group's gamestyle, then encounter powers are great. However, if the limit placed upon an "encounter action" is seen as unbelievable and artificially imposed, based upon it being a simplistic kludge (that the previous group would define as elegant) to moderate a character's power level rather than believably represent a more natural (non-artificial) restriction, then as game design it really does not work well for that latter group.

I just think it is yet another thing that separates two of the major groups of players underneath that one tent. While "artificially contrived" might easily be interpreted pejoratively, it was a succinct (and I believe accurate) way of expressing the idea.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Neonchameleon]

I believe "artificially contrived" is an accurate way of describing encounter powers, in particular focusing on the "imposed arbitrarily" and "forced/planned/strained" parts of the definitions.

Interesting. I believe "artificially contrived" is an accurate way of describing daily powers such as Vancian Casting, and that it strains plots and stories to have to fit the rhythmic day by day drumbeat of the wizard and cleric always choosing their strategic resources and most other peoples' refreshing.

On the other hand I believe that the scene based model (which is what encounter powers are) is probably the most natural way of framing any RPG or story - and that "recovers a little after a five minute rest" is every bit as natural as "recovers a lot after an overnight rest".

 

[pemerton]

I believe "artificially contrived" is an accurate way of describing encounter powers, in particular focusing on the "imposed arbitrarily" and "forced/planned/strained" parts of the definitions.

They're not arbitrary. There's a reason behind them - namely, the rationing of player resources.

It's true that they ration player resources without a corresponding rationiong of ingame resources, and so in that sense are metagame resources. But so are hit points, at least on the Gygaxian (luck, divine favour) interpretation.

The reason is not to everyone's taste. Nor are (Gygaxian) hit points. But that doesn't make them arbitrary.

As for "forced, planned or strained", they are clearly planned - just like hit points, and much of the rest of the game rules. I personally don't find them forced or strained - I find them elegant. They nicely solve a number of superficially disparate gameplay problems in one fell swoop, namely:

* Reducing the swinginess of combat by limiting the nova-capacity of PCs.

* Encouraging a focus on the situation/scene/encounter as the basic unit of play.

* Reducing the game-breaking consequences of overpowered abilities, by rationing access to them within the confines of a single encounter.

And they do all the above in a way that continues D&D's tradition of mixing it's ingame and meta abilities (like non-meat hit points and pre-3E saving throws) rather than prising them apart into a strictly ingame bit and a strictly meta-bit (HARP and Burning Wheel take this latter approach, and I gather the new version of Runequest does also).

Encounter powers represent an absolute restriction upon an action in the name of simplicity and tying resources to the spine of the game in terms of game balance rather than the campaign world.

I don't disagree with this, although I think the pacing issue is as important as the balance issue.

But the same is true of any number of other features of the game: turn-based initiative and the associated action economy (on which 4e is arguably far more liberal and immersive than 3E, given the widespread availability of encounter and daily out-of-turn actions); BAB increase for all classes in 3E; starting money, and the fact that no PC can start the game as rich as a prince, even though the gameworld is full of princes and princes are notorious protagonists in fantasy fiction; etc. (And there are a number of fantasy games which differe from D&D in one or more of these respects: Rolemaster has continuous initiative, as (to a significant extent) did classic D&D; Rolemaster, RQ, Burning Wheel, etc do not have automatic combat bonuses for all PCs; Burning Wheel PCs can begin the game with the wealth and status of princes; etc.)

All those decisions are made for reasons of pacing, and rationing player resources. Those are pretty important things to have regard to in designing a game.

If simplicity and game balance are important game features for a group's gamestyle, then encounter powers are great. However, if the limit placed upon an "encounter action" is seen as unbelievable and artificially imposed, based upon it being a simplistic kludge (that the previous group would define as elegant) to moderate a character's power level rather than believably represent a more natural (non-artificial) restriction, then as game design it really does not work well for that latter group.

There is nothing "natural" about the action economy or action resolution mechanics in any version of D&D; even Rolemaster and RQ make compromises with nature, but are closer to "natural" in these respects.

But anyway, you are correct that some people (eg me!) see encounter powers as elegant. Hence, describing them as "artificial" and "contrived" is, as I said, contentious.

I just think it is yet another thing that separates two of the major groups of players underneath that one tent. While "artificially contrived" might easily be interpreted pejoratively, it was a succinct (and I believe accurate) way of expressing the idea.

Well, it does present the view of one side of a contentious issue. But I think that tends to affirm my claim that it's a contentious description.

Here is how I would describe the anti-encounter power side: they not only want the game to have rationed player resources (that's part of what makes it a game), but they object to the "active" part of those resources (like powers) having no correspondence to ingame "active" abilities of the PCs (like, say, a spell known and cast). I think the rationale for these players is that they feel they can only identify with or "inhabit" their PC if their reasoning process, as a player, is a more-or-less strict model of their PC's reasoning within the fiction - and so deciding to expend a metagame "token" like an encounter power violates that sense of "inhabitation".

I think the reason these players tend to give "passive" resources like hit point and saving throws a free pass on their metagame character is because the expenditure of those resources doesn't require a player decision. Note the lack here of a uniform correlation between player and PC: often losing hit points or making a save will require a decision by the PC - to duck, to suck the poison from the wound, etc - but the critics of encounter powers don't worry about that. They don't particularly want every PC decision to correspond to a player decision, just vice versa.

So from my point of view, it is actually those who are against encounter powers who are introducing an additional constraint on design, namely, an extra requirement on the mechanical adequacy of a player's active resources. I think it's very hard to design a game that is both satisfying to play and that satisfies that constraint; Runequest and Traveller may be the best two candidates for success here (Rolemaster is perhaps a runner-up). I personally wouldn't put any version of D&D on the list of winners or near-winners. (Part of what I like about 4e is that, from my point of view, it embraces and fully extends and develops those features of D&D that would stop it from winning this prize, by completely abandoning this simulationist constraint on player resources and action resolution mechanics.)

But whichever way D&Dnext goes, I think it is more helpful to look at the actual differences of design preference - eg, in this case (and I think several other cases) the presence or absence of a certain sort of simulationist constraint - than to use phrases like "arbitrary restriction". Particularly because the word "arbitrary", and references to "rules first" vs "story first", are typically used to paint 4e as concerned with delivering a tactical wargame experience rather than a rich RPG story experience. Whereas, for someone with my sensibilities, 4e is just about the only version of D&D capable of delivering a rich RPG story experience, because the only one with the mechanics to do so (such as non-simulationinst player resources on the "active" as well as the "passive" side) without relying on GM railroading.

(And I know some people take the view that the story is whatever emerges from the transcript of play, even if that is "We all went into the caves and got our blood sucked out by stirges. Then we rolled up some new guys, and those guys went to the caves and beat up and robbed some kobolds." When I'm talking about story, I'm talking about something closer to the literary or dramatic notion - characters, situation, complication, resolution, thematic significance etc.)

 

[Doug McCrae]

Is there a OSR game that does anything like encounter powers?

Arena talents in Old School Hack. An arena isn't quite the same as an encounter, as an encounter is made up of two or more arenas, but it's pretty similar.

OSH seems to gets its concept of constant, arena and rested talents from 4e's at-will/encounter/daily powers.

 

[Abstruse]

Wow, that was a well thought-out and reasoned response to my umpteen million posts on this topic. I would love to respond but my attention span just isn't there for going through that point by point. And I'm glad to see I'm not the only overly-verbose person around here as well

In general, though, I still feel that using encounter-based resources over daily-based resources really forces your hand as a DM. You have to craft every single encounter to be both challenging and interesting, and it can wear on you. It also puts a damper on exploration or sandbox style play because each encounter has to be balanced. It's two completely different styles of play and I really think a lot of the complaints about 4e are actually complaints about this style of play being "forced" on you by the game design rather than whatever random thing in the game that people complain about.

Because the rules are heavily based around combat encounters, exploration takes a back seat. You can't do something like Caves of Chaos in 4e (or any of the older-style modules) because it becomes boring very quickly. Because of the combat-based focus of the rules, the "utility" out-of-combat encounter powers become spamable - "I use this for my +10/+20 bonus to the roll, wait five minutes, then do it again." Balance is far more of an issue even without 4e's "on the head of a pin" level of game balance because easy encounters are boring while difficult encounters are next to impossible due to the lack of being able to use powerful combat abilities in concentrated fire.

I also really don't like that killing the guard or taking out the sentries becomes a skill challenge rather than combat. Even if it's treated that way in other editions as well, there's still that element of chance - your hit may not be hard enough to take out the guard quickly and quietly. Using the Encounter Power/Action Point/Encounter Power, that's not an issue anymore. So it becomes solely an issue of "Did you make your Stealth check?"

It also forces you as DM to use more artificial-feeling methods to control pacing to prevent that sort of problem. You want to run the "eliminating the guards" encounter as combat? You have to add in a time pressure. Someone checks in with them every 10 minutes, so you can't pull EP (AP/EP) on them. Or imposing limits on short rests that can break game logic.

Now, all of these issues can be dealt with using enough experience. I'd like to think I got a good handle on the game before I switched to Pathfinder for my current campaign and if I ran another 4e game, I would be able to use the encounter-based design to my advantage. It has a lot of storytelling power behind it if you approach it the right way. And honestly, I'd probably be playing 4e right now if two of my most vocal players didn't have knee-jerk reactions to the system and threw fits when I suggested it as an option, using rhetoric to convince the other players the system was "bad".

The issue I have isn't with that style of gameplay itself or with 4e as I do enjoy both. The issue I have is when the entire system is designed around that style of play without the flexibility to do both. In Pathfinder, I've found that I was able to design adventures both in an encounter-based sense and in an exploration/sandbox sense. I specifically tested out this theory with this week's session, designing an adventure for the session that I could easily turn into a 4e adventure just by playing "swap the monsters". It worked beautifully. The rest of my campaign, however, is based around very story-based and sandbox style gameplay. My players have come across both very simple encounters and incredibly difficult ones depending on their actions and which plot threads they decide to chase. They've even been forced to retreat a few times (something a couple of my players loathe doing and one of the reasons I think those players would like 4e if they gave it a shot).

I want a system that's flexible enough to give me both options. Adding one or two encounter-based abilities for various classes isn't going to do that. Giving pretty much every class that ability will do that. A fighter who gets to do double damage or knock an opponent prone before an attack to gain advantage or can do two attacks a round, but then has to have a short rest before they can do it again...no big deal. Give the rogue those abilities, still not really a big deal. But give them to the wizard and the cleric and the paladin and so on, suddenly everyone's got those resources and you have to work that much harder as a DM on each and every encounter to make sure combat works.

Again, I don't hate 4e and I don't hate encounter-based design. But I've already got 4e as a great system for that style of gameplay. I don't want Next to reinvent the wheel or try to fix something that's not really broken. I want it to give me more options as a DM for what stories and adventures I can cover in my games, not less.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Good stuff!!!

Firstly, an excellent and informative post!

They're not arbitrary. There's a reason behind them - namely, the rationing of player resources. It's true that they ration player resources without a corresponding rationiong of ingame resources, and so in that sense are metagame resources. But so are hit points, at least on the Gygaxian (luck, divine favour) interpretation.

The reason is not to everyone's taste. Nor are (Gygaxian) hit points. But that doesn't make them arbitrary.

And this is kind of where I was going with "artificial", in that there is no direct in-game reason aside from that similar to my 3-year old son at the moment, just "because". [His inflection with that word is priceless by the way.] I will certainly concede that this gives players the flexibility to come up with any in-game reason which again is a real positive for a certain style of play but a serious negative for another style of play.

As for "forced, planned or strained", they are clearly planned - just like hit points, and much of the rest of the game rules. I personally don't find them forced or strained - I find them elegant. They nicely solve a number of superficially disparate gameplay problems in one fell swoop, namely:

* Reducing the swinginess of combat by limiting the nova-capacity of PCs.

But the swinginess they are "fixing" is undone by more powerful daily powers and action points (or the lack thereof).

* Encouraging a focus on the situation/scene/encounter as the basic unit of play.

You say encouraging where as a different interpretation would say forcing or even straining to suit a particular style of play. Personally I would prefer a little more flexibility here.

* Reducing the game-breaking consequences of overpowered abilities, by rationing access to them within the confines of a single encounter.

And they do all the above in a way that continues D&D's tradition of mixing it's ingame and meta abilities (like non-meat hit points and pre-3E saving throws) rather than prising them apart into a strictly ingame bit and a strictly meta-bit (HARP and Burning Wheel take this latter approach, and I gather the new version of Runequest does also).

And this is where you are right that it is contentious, being elegant for some and an artificial kludge for others.

I don't disagree with this, although I think the pacing issue is as important as the balance issue.

But the same is true of any number of other features of the game: turn-based initiative and the associated action economy (on which 4e is arguably far more liberal and immersive than 3E, given the widespread availability of encounter and daily out-of-turn actions); BAB increase for all classes in 3E; starting money, and the fact that no PC can start the game as rich as a prince, even though the gameworld is full of princes and princes are notorious protagonists in fantasy fiction; etc. (And there are a number of fantasy games which differe from D&D in one or more of these respects: Rolemaster has continuous initiative, as (to a significant extent) did classic D&D; Rolemaster, RQ, Burning Wheel, etc do not have automatic combat bonuses for all PCs; Burning Wheel PCs can begin the game with the wealth and status of princes; etc.)

All those decisions are made for reasons of pacing, and rationing player resources. Those are pretty important things to have regard to in designing a game.

When it comes to meta decisions that affect the overall tenor of the game, I think there is room for deciding that some things (such as one character starts with the power of a prince while the rest of the party are not) might not be in the interest of player group cohesion. I would prefer such things are left to the players and GM rather than mandated by the rules (which in effect with rule zero is what happens). The comparison of BAB increase and half-level increase is an interesting one though. One is more finely grained and so informs you that certain classes increase in an ability more easily than others. I appreciate this little bit of mathematical tweaking that represents something about the campaign world, even though the mechanic is purely a "game mechanic". The blanket half-level bonus however does not attend to any such differentiation and so is more coarsely grained and less representative with no mathematical tweak. Again I suppose this is elegant for some but frustratingly simplistic for others.

The bottom line is that such things are game mechanics. However, it is nice when these mechanics are given a little bit of tweaking to represent something about the campaign world. That little "nod to Pythagoras" is perhaps enough to distract players like me that all is well and believable in Elfville.

There is nothing "natural" about the action economy or action resolution mechanics in any version of D&D; even Rolemaster and RQ make compromises with nature, but are closer to "natural" in these respects.

But anyway, you are correct that some people (eg me!) see encounter powers as elegant. Hence, describing them as "artificial" and "contrived" is, as I said, contentious.

This is true. One man's trash is another man's treasure and all that. On a sidenote, I think my preference is for a more freeform sort of initiative where characters and creatures have a differing number of actions (standard, minor and then a variable number of swift actions) that may be spent across a round. You still have your turn where you can perform "actions" but when it is not your turn, you can perform standard/minor/swift reactions that may defend against another's action or take offensive advantage from a particular situation. Just saying.

Here is how I would describe the anti-encounter power side: they not only want the game to have rationed player resources (that's part of what makes it a game), but they object to the "active" part of those resources (like powers) having no correspondence to ingame "active" abilities of the PCs (like, say, a spell known and cast). I think the rationale for these players is that they feel they can only identify with or "inhabit" their PC if their reasoning process, as a player, is a more-or-less strict model of their PC's reasoning within the fiction - and so deciding to expend a metagame "token" like an encounter power violates that sense of "inhabitation".

Really well expressed!!!

I think the reason these players tend to give "passive" resources like hit point and saving throws a free pass on their metagame character is because the expenditure of those resources doesn't require a player decision. Note the lack here of a uniform correlation between player and PC: often losing hit points or making a save will require a decision by the PC - to duck, to suck the poison from the wound, etc - but the critics of encounter powers don't worry about that. They don't particularly want every PC decision to correspond to a player decision, just vice versa.

I think this is true too. Personally, there is a baseline of where I can best express my character in terms of "inhabiting" him or her. Just as I don't feel the need to worry about my character's breathing, I'm not overly concerned with the baseline inherent expectations (such as AC, Fort/Reflex/Will saves/defenses). If my character has an action that can momentarily enhance their "will", then this is when I'll feel the need to express my character doing something above that baseline, but otherwise such basic things don't need to be expressed (in my opinion).

So from my point of view, it is actually those who are against encounter powers who are introducing an additional constraint on design, namely, an extra requirement on the mechanical adequacy of a player's active resources. I think it's very hard to design a game that is both satisfying to play and that satisfies that constraint; Runequest and Traveller may be the best two candidates for success here (Rolemaster is perhaps a runner-up). I personally wouldn't put any version of D&D on the list of winners or near-winners. (Part of what I like about 4e is that, from my point of view, it embraces and fully extends and develops those features of D&D that would stop it from winning this prize, by completely abandoning this simulationist constraint on player resources and action resolution mechanics.)

Some of us hope that D&D can get there one day, one edition (and hopefully this one). Even if it is through advanced rules modules. It would be nice if the core rules are as unobtrusive as possible so that this can be achieved.

But whichever way D&Dnext goes, I think it is more helpful to look at the actual differences of design preference - eg, in this case (and I think several other cases) the presence or absence of a certain sort of simulationist constraint - than to use phrases like "arbitrary restriction". Particularly because the word "arbitrary", and references to "rules first" vs "story first", are typically used to paint 4e as concerned with delivering a tactical wargame experience rather than a rich RPG story experience. Whereas, for someone with my sensibilities, 4e is just about the only version of D&D capable of delivering a rich RPG story experience, because the only one with the mechanics to do so (such as non-simulationinst player resources on the "active" as well as the "passive" side) without relying on GM railroading.

(And I know some people take the view that the story is whatever emerges from the transcript of play, even if that is "We all went into the caves and got our blood sucked out by stirges. Then we rolled up some new guys, and those guys went to the caves and beat up and robbed some kobolds." When I'm talking about story, I'm talking about something closer to the literary or dramatic notion - characters, situation, complication, resolution, thematic significance etc.)

On this, I have always found it possible to blend the two. I have those situations and complications at the ready to be "played" when appropriate but I'm just as happy to let the story tell itself when such is what happens.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Tallifer]

In general, though, I still feel that using encounter-based resources over daily-based resources really forces your hand as a DM. You have to craft every single encounter to be both challenging and interesting, and it can wear on you. It also puts a damper on exploration or sandbox style play because each encounter has to be balanced.

I disagree with these points. Not every encounter has to be a life and death situation. Indeed I much prefer most encounters to simply serve the story/quest/adventure. If there are two guards at the gate and they die easily, then so be it. If there is a wild boar in the forest and the party eaisly kills it and eats it, or tames it , or chases it away, there is still the vignette about the wild boar. No need to make it an epic struggle against a controller Dire Fiendish Vampiric Boar with five Boarlet Minions, three Walking Tree brutes and two Skirmisher Deathnut-chucking squirrels.

Save the epic fights and endless gauntlets for when the story demands them. Or when the party enters a fortress/dungeon/enchanted forest/portal. Let the rest of the story flow naturally within its sandbox.

Furthermore, encounter powers allow the party to swiftly and easily dispense with wild boars and lone guards. No need to spam basic melee attacks ad nauseum to bring down something which was never intended to be a big fight.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Wow, that was a well thought-out and reasoned response to my umpteen million posts on this topic. I would love to respond but my attention span just isn't there for going through that point by point. And I'm glad to see I'm not the only overly-verbose person around here as well

In general, though, I still feel that using encounter-based resources over daily-based resources really forces your hand as a DM. You have to craft every single encounter to be both challenging and interesting, and it can wear on you. It also puts a damper on exploration or sandbox style play because each encounter has to be balanced. It's two completely different styles of play and I really think a lot of the complaints about 4e are actually complaints about this style of play being "forced" on you by the game design rather than whatever random thing in the game that people complain about.

Because the rules are heavily based around combat encounters, exploration takes a back seat. You can't do something like Caves of Chaos in 4e (or any of the older-style modules) because it becomes boring very quickly. Because of the combat-based focus of the rules, the "utility" out-of-combat encounter powers become spamable - "I use this for my +10/+20 bonus to the roll, wait five minutes, then do it again." Balance is far more of an issue even without 4e's "on the head of a pin" level of game balance because easy encounters are boring while difficult encounters are next to impossible due to the lack of being able to use powerful combat abilities in concentrated fire.

I also really don't like that killing the guard or taking out the sentries becomes a skill challenge rather than combat. Even if it's treated that way in other editions as well, there's still that element of chance - your hit may not be hard enough to take out the guard quickly and quietly. Using the Encounter Power/Action Point/Encounter Power, that's not an issue anymore. So it becomes solely an issue of "Did you make your Stealth check?"

This is almost the opposite of my experience.

First, there is absolutely nothing in 4e saying you must run balanced encounters all the time. If my 1st level PCs meet a wandering pack of ogres then they meet a wandering pack of ogres. They know how to hide and how to run. The whole "balance means you can never throw unbalanced encounters" is a strawman. Balance is information.

Second, you expect PCs to be using their encounter powers. And speaking as someone who's both played and run a sandbox in 4e, the encounter powers really aren't a problem whether in combat or out. The daily powers on the other hand are. They tend to be much more powerful than the encounter powers - and most sandboxes (more accurately most wide area hexcrawls) allow taking an overnight rest very easily.

Third, the chance of taking a guard out in 4e can be surprisingly low. It's the high hit points. Two encounter powers won't really cut it. And 'eliminating the guards' should be quick and brutal. If the guards survive the surprise round they scream for help.

4e doesn't require encounter based design (it's just one way to get good results). And scene based framing is what I do naturally.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Interesting. I believe "artificially contrived" is an accurate way of describing daily powers such as Vancian Casting, and that it strains plots and stories to have to fit the rhythmic day by day drumbeat of the wizard and cleric always choosing their strategic resources and most other peoples' refreshing.

I agree with this too. The "real/natural" restriction here is the priest being able to pray and meditate, and the wizard being allowed to study/prepare. The artificial bit is that they have to rest before they do this. Why not just have priests being able to pray when they can and wizards being able to study/prepare when they can? Now priests might be more naturally restricted in this way by needing to pray when the sun rises or the moon appears or by some other phenomena and this does not bother me quite as much. However, the wizard can already leave "slots" open to study and fill when needed. Is there that much difference between an expended slot and an open slot? The time/circumstances to turn an expended slot into an open slot is the weird bit in this game mechanic.

Essentially, I can live with the Vancian approach even if it is not my favourite as it is tied to a specific idea in regards to magic. Genuine encounter and daily powers that are not tied to a specific in-game idea (and this includes many of the daily resources in 3.x by the way) are really not my cup of tea.

On the other hand I believe that the scene based model (which is what encounter powers are) is probably the most natural way of framing any RPG or story - and that "recovers a little after a five minute rest" is every bit as natural as "recovers a lot after an overnight rest".

I think both are a little too simplistic. For myself, I prefer the idea of the "mission" as the overarching unit of adventuring which is made up of many smaller units (encounters, situations, complications, mini-objectives and so on). I prefer character resources to be a little more free form where anything can be tried but it's success (critical or otherwise) or failure (partial or completely botched) cannot be guaranteed or upon occasion even probable or possible. This demands a resolution system a little more involved than the D&D core mechanic [modifier + roll =? DC] but heh, I'm working on that part (I'd love to publish an advanced ruleset for D&DN if given the chance).

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Second, you expect PCs to be using their encounter powers. And speaking as someone who's both played and run a sandbox in 4e, the encounter powers really aren't a problem whether in combat or out. The daily powers on the other hand are. They tend to be much more powerful than the encounter powers - and most sandboxes (more accurately most wide area hexcrawls) allow taking an overnight rest very easily.

This is also particularly true in 3e and is part of the problem I have had with the wizard in my Kingmaker campaign (a sandbox style game). There is very little incentive for the wizard not to Nova the important/prepared for encounter and just assist in the random ones in the 1 in x chance that they get one. The partitioning of resources needs a more natural distribution than that provided by daily and (from my perspective) encounter restrictions.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise