This "resting at 9:05 AM" business

[MerricB]

There's two sides to this.

First is the problem of the 5-minute day, where the spellcasters run out of *everything* they can usefully do. I've noticed that things got a lot better in my 3.5e games once Reserve feats were introduced.

Second is the problem of the 1 encounter/day balancing. The current D&D challenge system really begins to break down when the DM only throws *one* encounter at the party in a day.

From what I gathered from the podcast, they don't want to remove all of the Wizard's uniqueness - yes, the Wizard will have 1/day powers, and they will get weaker when they've used them... but no longer to the level where a Wizard is forced to use an ineffective crossbow.

They're also concerned about the "Adventuring all day... do remember 9am when we were 1st level, we're now 8th!", so there's a balance to be struck here.

Cheers!

 

[AllisterH]

Hmm...I've always thought of the characters "roleplaying" when they rest after one to two encounters.

I mean, given a chance, In real life, the military doesn't go into battles with only 20-50% of available gear if they have to. In real life, a fire chief that insisted that his firefighters battle that next blaze with only 25% oxygen in their tanks would be skewered.

So why is it NOT roleplaying for the party to say "ok, one member of the party is out of resources and we're down to only 50% of our full potential. Time to rest...."

Am I wrong?

 

[Vigilance]

Hmm...I've always thought of the characters "roleplaying" when they rest after one to two encounters.

I mean, given a chance, In real life, the military doesn't go into battles with only 20-50% of available gear if they have to. In real life, a fire chief that insisted that his firefighters battle that next blaze with only 25% oxygen in their tanks would be skewered.

So why is it NOT roleplaying for the party to say "ok, one member of the party is out of resources and we're down to only 50% of our full potential. Time to rest...."

Am I wrong?

No you're not wrong, which is why this whole dance of "I know the mage is out of spells, but if you try to rest after every three encounters so the mage can recover, I'm going to have the monsters harrass you" is what the new per-encounter abilities are trying to address.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Again, this whole problem is very heavily dependent on the kind of game the group is playing. If you give them some classic dungeon for careful exploration and treasure-hunting (which the old dungeon crawls in the majority used to be), you should expect your players to play their characters careful and thoughtful. They will be minding the surroundings, their own state and power level, their equipment, etc...and likewise should the DM. If the adventure is a time-critical piece of rescue mission, there won't be that many opportunities to rest and recover.

Between those two extremes (extreme carefulness vs. extreme pressure), there's quite a continuum of ways to play through an adventure. Not every style has the same problems. With an exploration, you might end up with a group camping 30 minutes after they faced the ogre magus and his ogre bodyguards in level 3. With something time-critical, you run into the risk of killing your group 5 rooms before they get to the showdown.

It's always advisable to set the mood of the adventure before you start playing, or right at the start. Trying to modify their behaviour more towards your expectations, or to keep them from doing something that should appear logical, will get you mixed results and usually less fun in the game for all. If the exploring group is intelligent enough to recognize when it is down on their resources, and decides to camp, it should be a question of preparations and locale how many random encounters come by their camp, not a question of a DM trying to harass them into moving on. After all, that kind of game gives them the time to do so. It also gives the DM time to have the monsters inhabiting the dungeon react to the intrusion from a few hours ago.

Personally, I always put a little bit of time pressure on the characters, even if it's a simple dungeon crawl, in order to keep them moving a bit longer. Can be easily done through backstory. I also like to give them an early method of faster recuperation when I put a lot of pressure on them...healing potions, magical items of healing, etc. After all, the somebody who puts time pressure on them also wants to see them back soon with results. But basically, you really need to recognize the kind of approach some adventures open to the players, and play with it instead of trying to go against it.

 

[Reynard]

No you're not wrong, which is why this whole dance of "I know the mage is out of spells, but if you try to rest after every three encounters so the mage can recover, I'm going to have the monsters harrass you" is what the new per-encounter abilities are trying to address.

You make it sound like the whole point of per-encounter abilities is to make sure those nasty, mean DM's don't beat up on those poor, defenseless players anymore...

I don't think that has a lot to do with it. I think the reason for the shift is because the idea is that the only thing that is fun is combat and anything that takes a player/PC out of combat is unfun. I personally disagree with this assesssment -- I think combat is probably the least fun in regards to what makes a roleplaying game fun, as compared to other kinds of games -- but it seems to be the prevailing thought in the 4e design and marketing strategy.

If an adventure is only, say, 25% combat, then the wizard player doesn't "lose out" so much if the character runs out of resource halfway through. It is the fighter type the loses out the most, rather, unless the player makes him more that a door basher, monster slasher.

There's a very unique playstyle associated with exploratory dungeon crawls and I don't think it is for everyone. So I get why the game is moving away from mechanics that promote the style of play. But since that is my preferred style of play, my choices are limited to: houseruling the hell out o the game to get it "back" to being what I mean when I say D&D; or, just playing an old version that does what i want it to do in the first place.

 

[Hussar]

You make it sound like the whole point of per-encounter abilities is to make sure those nasty, mean DM's don't beat up on those poor, defenseless players anymore...

I don't think that has a lot to do with it. I think the reason for the shift is because the idea is that the only thing that is fun is combat and anything that takes a player/PC out of combat is unfun. I personally disagree with this assesssment -- I think combat is probably the least fun in regards to what makes a roleplaying game fun, as compared to other kinds of games -- but it seems to be the prevailing thought in the 4e design and marketing strategy.

If an adventure is only, say, 25% combat, then the wizard player doesn't "lose out" so much if the character runs out of resource halfway through. It is the fighter type the loses out the most, rather, unless the player makes him more that a door basher, monster slasher.

There's a very unique playstyle associated with exploratory dungeon crawls and I don't think it is for everyone. So I get why the game is moving away from mechanics that promote the style of play. But since that is my preferred style of play, my choices are limited to: houseruling the hell out o the game to get it "back" to being what I mean when I say D&D; or, just playing an old version that does what i want it to do in the first place.

Considering that the overwhelming majority of mechanics for D&D has always focused around combat, I'm not sure that saying that there is a sudden push to make combat more important is true. Look at most modules, from 1e forward, and you'll see a very, very heavy reliance on combat. Most encounters in modules are written as combat encounters, the Monster Manual is full of creatures that pretty much only want to eat the PC's, spells are typically combat oriented with a few that are used outside of combat.

The classes are set up to fight stuff.

Killing s*** and taking its stuff is hardly a new paradigm.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised that anyone would point to older editions and try to claim that they were less about the hack. Isn't the basic definition of Old Skool going into dungeons and mass murdering your way through it?

 

[Reynard]

Second is the problem of the 1 encounter/day balancing. The current D&D challenge system really begins to break down when the DM only throws *one* encounter at the party in a day.

IME, only having one encounter in a given "game day" radically alters the balance of the game. if it becomes the standard -- which happened in one of my campaigns, though I still haven't quite figured out how-- every encounter turns into a super-hero throwdown and the problem of the plyer/DM "arms race" is exacerbated. It promotes a style of play -- particularly SBT tactics -- that I don't like and, for me anyway, puts all the negative aspects of 3.x on display in the forefront.

They're also concerned about the "Adventuring all day... do remember 9am when we were 1st level, we're now 8th!", so there's a balance to be struck here.

Level advancement in 3.x has always been entirely too fast. I wouldn't mind the idea of "dead levels are unfun" so much, I guess, if you were still playing extensively before a new level is reached. Especially for casters and classes with lots of special abilities, too fast of advancement is the reason why low level spells and minor abilities get forgotten. There's no time for the player to learn how to use those spells and/or abilities in different kinds of situations, because they are always driving toward bigger and better abilities.

 

[AllisterH]

I'm not arguing about which "playstyle" is better but I am still wondering why people think "camping after one encounter" isn't a VALID incharacter action. In fact, I'd argue that such a style is more in-character and closer toa ctually "roleplaying" a character than the "keep going because its fun to fight against the odds".

 

[Reynard]

Isn't the basic definition of Old Skool going into dungeons and mass murdering your way through it?

Only when people want to disparage "Old Skool" gaming. Don't get me wrong -- combat has always been a part of the game, and always will be. But, as someone pointed out upthread, Old Skool gaming is what originally created the "4 hours of work, 20 minutes of fun" bash because in Old Skool gaming, you might actually only spend 20 minutes of the 4 hour session fighting, with the rest exploring, roleplaying, solving puzzles and all sorts of other non combat stuff. just because the dungeon-crawling is a keystone to "Old Skool" gaming doesn't mean that there's nothing but hack and slash and loot to it. Quite the opposite, actually. The dungeon is an adventuring environment, and combat is only one aspect of adventuring.

And it is the developers in their blogs and articles that are pointing out how 4E design is centered entirely around combat and combat balancing, and how the definition of fun in 4E is going to be "PCs doing cool stuff and winning".

 

[Reynard]

I'm not arguing about which "playstyle" is better but I am still wondering why people think "camping after one encounter" isn't a VALID incharacter action. In fact, I'd argue that such a style is more in-character and closer toa ctually "roleplaying" a character than the "keep going because its fun to fight against the odds".

"In character" means different things to different people and therefore doesn't make a good yardstick for judging whether something is a good design choice or not. It might be "in character" for the party to turtle up and rest after a particularly nasty encounter, but it is equally valid to suggest pressing forward toward the goal -- whatever that may be -- is more "in character". The real issue is not whether it is "in character" but whether it is a necessity based upon the mechanics. If you blow your whole wad in every encounter, it becomes a necessity. if you think about your resources and how best to use them in attempting to achieve some goal, it may or may not be.

The problem is that it seems that a lot of people -- players, DMs and developers alike -- want to kill that aspect of the game entirely, because it isn't fun. Well, I think it is fun. In fact, I think it is a strong component of what makes D&D, D&D. Hence, I don't look forward to a version of the game that works to eliminate it.