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Message: <blockquote data-quote="xechnao" data-source="post: 5168588" data-attributes="member: 58105">Agreed. In fact this is what I am thinking but spelled out in a more diplomatic way. To me it was kind of obvious but based on the thread responses it seems I should have spelled it out like this. Glad you did it.So, let me be try again to settle down some arguments of this discussion. Yes, the core of the problem is not the existence of encounter roles but the way encounter roles are designed to be balanced. It seems, in 4e are balanced in a discrete way regarding the encounter and out of the encounter. Possibly as you say, this distinction may mostly be a matter of quantity. But in the end, even if it is just a matter of quantity (encounter options vs non-encounter options) the overall game will function as if the distinction was a matter of quality. Why? Because the game is a guiding machine. It needs to guide you to the continuum you are talking about. If there is too much of something on one end, it may be impossible due to game design reasons to achieve said continuum. You could end up needing so much guidance of anything that said guidance comes at controversies and breaks, thus failing the game. Or so much strict that leaves no space for anything but just a single course of action.Regarding encounters, in previous editions players where negotiating on three fronts at the same time: whether to risk having an encounter, what encounter and what happens within the encounter. What the warrior wanted could be at odds at some points or elements (again not on an either-or ground- more likely on a social or set theory ground <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />) with what the mage wanted. This is where the negotiation took place and made the warrior feel like a warrior and the mage like a mage. In 4e, a warrior mostly feels a warrior by playing out the defender role in an encounter and the mage by playing out the controller role within the encounter. This ingredient also existed in previous editions but at a different relative dose in the final recipe and thus the cake was of a different taste. Set theory, social science and stuff, I think sometimes cooking is the better way to talk and think about games. Mmm... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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