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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8742354" data-attributes="member: 82106">How would that have been coherent with the game's hard encounter-based structure, and quest-driven player-side goal setting? The reason that SCs exist in 4e is because they allow ALL play, potentially, to be measured in terms of encounters, thus tying into the win criteria for quests, the XP system, the treasure system, and the resource replenishment system (short and long rests). You would have to do a pretty significant redesign in order to do away with SCs and replace them with clocks. I can imagine ways to do that: organize the game entirely around quests, so that they actually replaced encounters as the organizing measure of progress in all cases, and then built quest completion around clocks. So, sure, such a game is certainly possible, though there would be some other issues to iron out, like how that meshes with combat encounters (I guess they become less central constructs, simply being a type of 'obstacle' in a quest, effectively). Its unclear how you would handle the 'put an SC inside a combat' option either, though I guess you could use clocks tactically there as well, which is less of a reach.I think the fundamental problem is, it would be a bridge too far for D&amp;D! I mean, people were already weirded out by the idea of Skill Challenges, which are really just a 'non-combat combat system' in their most vanilla form in DMG1. They really don't have to be a very radical thing, but a clock-based design WOULD need to be a pretty radical restructuring of D&amp;D, you couldn't get away with pretending it was Trad at all, not even for a second.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8742354, member: 82106"] How would that have been coherent with the game's hard encounter-based structure, and quest-driven player-side goal setting? The reason that SCs exist in 4e is because they allow ALL play, potentially, to be measured in terms of encounters, thus tying into the win criteria for quests, the XP system, the treasure system, and the resource replenishment system (short and long rests). You would have to do a pretty significant redesign in order to do away with SCs and replace them with clocks. I can imagine ways to do that: organize the game entirely around quests, so that they actually replaced encounters as the organizing measure of progress in all cases, and then built quest completion around clocks. So, sure, such a game is certainly possible, though there would be some other issues to iron out, like how that meshes with combat encounters (I guess they become less central constructs, simply being a type of 'obstacle' in a quest, effectively). Its unclear how you would handle the 'put an SC inside a combat' option either, though I guess you could use clocks tactically there as well, which is less of a reach. I think the fundamental problem is, it would be a bridge too far for D&D! I mean, people were already weirded out by the idea of Skill Challenges, which are really just a 'non-combat combat system' in their most vanilla form in DMG1. They really don't have to be a very radical thing, but a clock-based design WOULD need to be a pretty radical restructuring of D&D, you couldn't get away with pretending it was Trad at all, not even for a second. [/QUOTE]

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