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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8744413" data-attributes="member: 4937">In my experience, it's very hard to dictate play according to an expected number of encounters per day.&nbsp;&nbsp; If the party is travelling, they might have 0-3 combats in a day depending on how deep into the wilderness they are, but more than that is going to strain credulity.&nbsp; If the part is in a town, there tends to be single big combats as opposing forces are confronted, but rarely is there a reason for multiple combats.&nbsp; And in a dungeon, you have to have some reason why the party keeps pushing forward despite diminishing resources.&nbsp;&nbsp; If you are going for a natural organic play style all sorts of different things will turn up.&nbsp; And this shows up even in WotC's adventure designs.&nbsp; They don't have a forced number of encounters per day all the time.&nbsp; So if you are building parity on the expectation that a spellcaster can only spend a small portion of their spells on a combat, you're basically lying to yourself.There is an even more subtle thing going on here that is equally bad.&nbsp; Martials tend to have unlimited access to their abilities as opposed to spells tending to be 'once a day sort of thing'&nbsp; So in theory crafting you might think that the ability to do something all the time is better than the ability to do it once.&nbsp; But it turns out that in a typical adventuring day you probably only encounter one need for stealth, or one need to climb, or one need to search things.&nbsp; If a spell caster can cheaply and effectively do that one thing for the cost of a spell, then it turns out that the skill has no use.&nbsp; This for example was a major problem in 2e, where the thief skills were less reliable and less useful than spider climb, invisibility, find traps, clairaudience and so forth.&nbsp; The amount of utility in all the thief skills in a typical day was typically smaller than the number of slots you'd have as a caster.&nbsp; So it was almost always an upgrade to replace the thief with another caster, choose a few utility spells and then have utility left over for other things the thief would be useless dealing with.So in short, not only do you need martials to be good skill monkeys, but you need to try to write spells such that they enhance skills rather than replace them.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8744413, member: 4937"] In my experience, it's very hard to dictate play according to an expected number of encounters per day. If the party is travelling, they might have 0-3 combats in a day depending on how deep into the wilderness they are, but more than that is going to strain credulity. If the part is in a town, there tends to be single big combats as opposing forces are confronted, but rarely is there a reason for multiple combats. And in a dungeon, you have to have some reason why the party keeps pushing forward despite diminishing resources. If you are going for a natural organic play style all sorts of different things will turn up. And this shows up even in WotC's adventure designs. They don't have a forced number of encounters per day all the time. So if you are building parity on the expectation that a spellcaster can only spend a small portion of their spells on a combat, you're basically lying to yourself. There is an even more subtle thing going on here that is equally bad. Martials tend to have unlimited access to their abilities as opposed to spells tending to be 'once a day sort of thing' So in theory crafting you might think that the ability to do something all the time is better than the ability to do it once. But it turns out that in a typical adventuring day you probably only encounter one need for stealth, or one need to climb, or one need to search things. If a spell caster can cheaply and effectively do that one thing for the cost of a spell, then it turns out that the skill has no use. This for example was a major problem in 2e, where the thief skills were less reliable and less useful than spider climb, invisibility, find traps, clairaudience and so forth. The amount of utility in all the thief skills in a typical day was typically smaller than the number of slots you'd have as a caster. So it was almost always an upgrade to replace the thief with another caster, choose a few utility spells and then have utility left over for other things the thief would be useless dealing with. So in short, not only do you need martials to be good skill monkeys, but you need to try to write spells such that they enhance skills rather than replace them. [/QUOTE]

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