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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Abstruse" data-source="post: 5938348" data-attributes="member: 6669048">Stupid needing to sleep...missed a lot of this discussion.My group, if you pulled what they considered "cheesy" tactics, would rebel. Rolling random encounters every 10 minutes and you'd get lynched. Note that they can do all the cheesy stuff they want and complain when I say no or give them a negative to balance it, because it's okay for them to be cheesy and cheap. Part of the reason I stuck them in Ravenloft for a bit, so I can point to a rulebook and say "It's not me, the Dark Powers did it. I didn't want to, but the rules are the rules."To another point whose post I lost re-reading this thread, encounter powers very much will change adventure design. If a player can take a short rest and get back a powerful ability, they're going to take short rests more frequently to get those abilities back. This means that they're stronger in any particular encounter. If they go with the 4e model, an encounter power is on par with or better than a critical hit with an at-will power.Why would this change design? Because it takes challenge out of short encounters. If players only have daily and at-will abilities and run across a scout or guard, they're not going to waste those daily abilities to not waste the resources. They may, however, lose other resources such as HP/healing or ammunition. If you get a sneaky and dirty-fighting enemy like a goblin, you can make a strong adventure with every encounter only having a couple of goblins. They'll be slowly pecked to death. Think Tucker's Kobolds running ambushes.If resources are shifted back to an encounter based design, that means that any encounter that isn't in and of itself a challenge becomes nothing more than a waste of time. They're not losing any resources with a short, easy encounter. Even if things go bad (which in a daily-based resource balance means they may have to use up spell slots for healing or attack), it's not going to matter because those encounter resources come right back.I can even give you an exact example from 4e when I realized the problem with encounter-based design. I was running the Storm Tower adventure (the adventure from the Penny Arcade podcast season 2), but I had a twist. The dwarf that guides them to the tower was actually a doppelganger who was planning to stab them in the back (literally) during the first combat while they were distracted. However, they rolled well and saw through his lies, confronting him. Roll initiative.He fought to escape. They were third level so each had 2 Encounter powers each to blow. He won initiative and tried to run, but didn't get far enough. Each player in turn used one Encounter power, used an action point, then used their second Encounter power. Or they double-moved, AP'd, and used an Encounter power. There was absolutely no chance for the doppelganger, and the entire encounter felt like a complete waste of time so after the second player pulled that tactic, I just said "You're going to drop him, do you want him dead or alive?"If that had been a previous edition or Next as-written, it still could have been an interesting combat. The doppelganger's HP wouldn't have dropped so easily, and even if they did, his attack would've meant something more than "Oh no, I have to spend one healing surge."What I realized in that exact moment was that I now had to make every single encounter some sort of challenge. The characters had to be threatened every time they entered combat or else they could walk right over the bad guys without expending anything meaningful, wasting time. So instead of spending my time prepping for the adventure coming up with an interesting story or a cool and logical design, I was spending my time crafting interesting encounters and then trying to find a way to tie them together. And I realized I had been doing that for months, and why I was constantly getting burned out so quickly compared to other editions.Now, I like 4e, but it's a different "genre" than 1st-3.x/PF/Next. Those games are more adventure style. They're Indiana Jones. Meanwhile, 4e was action. It was The Matrix or the Legend of the Seeker TV show (if you remember that one). 4e's not bad and neither is encounter-based design, it's just different. And it doesn't really "feel" like D&D to me as much as other editions since D&D has traditionally been that more adventure/exploration base.And the problem isn't encounter powers in and of themselves. If one or two players at the table have encounter-based powers, it's not going to be that bad. If a fighter or rogue can get a damage boost once per encounter, it's not a big problem. It's when there are enough of those encounter powers amongst the group that it actually shifts the adventure design to encounter-based. That's when you shift from adventure or action/adventure genres into straight action and that's when you start losing that classic feel of D&D.</blockquote>

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