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Wandering "Monsters": Magic Items
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6251184" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Yes.</p><p></p><p>Not obtuse at all.</p><p></p><p>The balance issues I see are all the standard ones that are notorious topics of debate - 15 minute adventuring days which lets caster's nova, fighters needing the clerics to take healing spells to keep their hit points up but the clerics nova-ing instead leaving the fighters languishing, etc, etc.</p><p></p><p>It's not my plan to try and derail the thread into a debate around whether or not people experience those issues - I think it's clear that many do, it seems also that many don't. I'm more trying to get a sense of what WotC is thinking about in terms of developing the GM side of resources for handling these issues around pacing, recovery etc.</p><p></p><p>For instance: original 4e doesn't need any advice to deal with this particular issue, because all players regardless of class are on basically the same resource recovery cycle. All you need to worry about is that if the PCs rest after every encounter then they'll have lots of dailies and practically unlimited surges, and so you might want to amp up your encounter strength a bit. </p><p></p><p>Essentials, by creating markedly asymmetric resource suites (no martial dailies), opens up the issue but (as best I recall from reading the Rules Compendium and the Essentials DM book) gives no advice on how to handle it as a GM.</p><p></p><p>13th Age has Essentials-style resources but (unlike default 4e) puts the rationing of rests on the GM rather than the player side, and so enforces balance of effectiveness that way. [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] has often talked about using the "adventure" as the unit of play in terms which I have interpreted along similar lines.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, this thread has got me thinking about how those different sorts of approaches to handling - or not worrying about - balance, and encounter/adventure budgets, etc, interact with magic item rules, and whether or not magic items are "built into the maths". Upthread, for instance, I suggested that if the game advices the GM to alter encounter/adventure budgets, and thereby ration resource recovery, to allow for them then they have, in effect, been built in.</p><p></p><p>In a sandbox style of play in which the players choose their opponents and ration their resource recovery, though, they won't be built in in the same way - but then I'm wondering whether that opens up other issues because of asymmetric recovery across different classes. And I'm wondering what advice/commentary WotC will give in relation to this. (And part of why I mentioned the Gygax PHB is that D&D has, in the past, deliberately embraced a lack of balance arising from asymmetric recovery across different classes. So when I'm talking about advice/commentary, I'm not just talking about "techniques to achieve balance".)</p><p></p><p>I don't think the above is very coherent, sorry. But it's where I've got to in trying to think through this idea about what is or isn't built into "the maths" of the game.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6251184, member: 42582"] Yes. Not obtuse at all. The balance issues I see are all the standard ones that are notorious topics of debate - 15 minute adventuring days which lets caster's nova, fighters needing the clerics to take healing spells to keep their hit points up but the clerics nova-ing instead leaving the fighters languishing, etc, etc. It's not my plan to try and derail the thread into a debate around whether or not people experience those issues - I think it's clear that many do, it seems also that many don't. I'm more trying to get a sense of what WotC is thinking about in terms of developing the GM side of resources for handling these issues around pacing, recovery etc. For instance: original 4e doesn't need any advice to deal with this particular issue, because all players regardless of class are on basically the same resource recovery cycle. All you need to worry about is that if the PCs rest after every encounter then they'll have lots of dailies and practically unlimited surges, and so you might want to amp up your encounter strength a bit. Essentials, by creating markedly asymmetric resource suites (no martial dailies), opens up the issue but (as best I recall from reading the Rules Compendium and the Essentials DM book) gives no advice on how to handle it as a GM. 13th Age has Essentials-style resources but (unlike default 4e) puts the rationing of rests on the GM rather than the player side, and so enforces balance of effectiveness that way. [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] has often talked about using the "adventure" as the unit of play in terms which I have interpreted along similar lines. Anyway, this thread has got me thinking about how those different sorts of approaches to handling - or not worrying about - balance, and encounter/adventure budgets, etc, interact with magic item rules, and whether or not magic items are "built into the maths". Upthread, for instance, I suggested that if the game advices the GM to alter encounter/adventure budgets, and thereby ration resource recovery, to allow for them then they have, in effect, been built in. In a sandbox style of play in which the players choose their opponents and ration their resource recovery, though, they won't be built in in the same way - but then I'm wondering whether that opens up other issues because of asymmetric recovery across different classes. And I'm wondering what advice/commentary WotC will give in relation to this. (And part of why I mentioned the Gygax PHB is that D&D has, in the past, deliberately embraced a lack of balance arising from asymmetric recovery across different classes. So when I'm talking about advice/commentary, I'm not just talking about "techniques to achieve balance".) I don't think the above is very coherent, sorry. But it's where I've got to in trying to think through this idea about what is or isn't built into "the maths" of the game. [/QUOTE]
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