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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Abstruse" data-source="post: 5939576" data-attributes="member: 6669048">Except that it flat out does force that style of gameplay. Again, take 4e as an example (because it's the only game I know of with encounter-based resources). Try to convert one of the old 1st edition modules to 4e, sticking as close to the source material as possible, and see how well it works. I've tried. It doesn't. Most encounters become pointless wastes of time because it's a foregone conclusion that the PCs are going to win the encounter and do so without expending any significant resources.Hell, let's do it with Keep on the Borderlands/Caves of Chaos. Area A where the kobolds are. In 4e, the first encounter or two are wastes of time. The PCs are going to slaughter the couple of kobolds they find and do so without expending anything. And if even one PC wins initiative or they get surprise, it's going to happen without any reinforcements to balance the encounter. Flip side, you have the room with the "up to 40" kobolds in it. In a daily-based game, the PCs can horde their resources and have an acceptable challenge in that room if they choose their ground. An encounter-based game, that's a TPK. They're going to use up their encounter resources too quickly and their daily abilities aren't going to be helpful (except for the couple that are AoEs). Even if you turn that room into nothing but minions to have the same balance, it's just flat out not going to work unless the PCs also choose their ground, forcing a bottleneck or something like that in which case you're right back where you started with a boring, pointless encounter.Let's go the other way and take a 4e adventure and convert it to Pathfinder. I'm going to pick the Storm Tower adventure from Dungeon magazine because it's one I have done this conversion on and it's probably the only well-known 4e adventure due to being the one played during the second set of Penny Arcade podcasts.The group comes up on the tower and finds a couple of humans archer/cultists and some zombies out front. Fight happens, and they probably win. Then they slip into the next room and fight a bunch of monsters. Then they go into the next room and face a puzzle. Then the big final encounter with the adventure's boss. It still works under a Pathfinder/Next style game even with a direct conversion.If you want encounter-based play, you can get it from a daily-resource system with minimal fuss. If you want daily-based play, you can not get it from an encounter-based system without a crapload of work and usually a lot of house-rules.</blockquote>

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