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What is the essence of 4E?
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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7452341" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>That's what I was getting at, though. Because numbers scaled so quickly with level, a high-Paragon party against a low-Paragon encounter could very possibly get through it without spending any healing surges at all. Instead of spending 3-4 rounds, where you make attacks with 50% accuracy, against enemies who hit back with 50% accuracy; you spend 2-3 rounds, where you make attacks with 80% accuracy, against enemies who hit back with 20% accuracy. And it will still take at least half an hour to run through the combat, because you still have to make decisions that are tactically sound, because a hit against you <em>could</em> cost you a healing surge.</p><p></p><p>It just doesn't seem like a reasonable use of time at the table, given how long it would take, and how little attrition it would cause. You could cause more attrition in less time by using at-level encounters, which would also probably be more dramatically satisfying.</p><p>To contrast, I will say that just about every single rule in third edition makes sense to me. For every design decision that they made, I can understand <em>why</em> they did it. Most of it's just because they were trying to bring order to the patchwork kludge which was AD&D, and they didn't have enough design experience to see where it might break down. (To be fair, at the time, nobody had that experience. Third edition was revolutionary in many ways.)</p><p>Of course, just because certain pitfalls were real in any given edition, that doesn't mean everyone encountered them (or found them problematic, if they did). To me, healing surges were a solution to a problem that I never experienced in the first place; which also means that, to me, the solution was worse than the problem it was trying to fix. Likewise, with the segregated rules for monster creation, it was a solution to a problem that I never experienced.</p><p></p><p>I guess that's just one of the inherent difficulties in creating a new edition, is that everyone had a different experience with the previous edition. They kind of just had to play the numbers, and try to fix the biggest problems that affected the most people.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7452341, member: 6775031"] That's what I was getting at, though. Because numbers scaled so quickly with level, a high-Paragon party against a low-Paragon encounter could very possibly get through it without spending any healing surges at all. Instead of spending 3-4 rounds, where you make attacks with 50% accuracy, against enemies who hit back with 50% accuracy; you spend 2-3 rounds, where you make attacks with 80% accuracy, against enemies who hit back with 20% accuracy. And it will still take at least half an hour to run through the combat, because you still have to make decisions that are tactically sound, because a hit against you [I]could[/I] cost you a healing surge. It just doesn't seem like a reasonable use of time at the table, given how long it would take, and how little attrition it would cause. You could cause more attrition in less time by using at-level encounters, which would also probably be more dramatically satisfying. To contrast, I will say that just about every single rule in third edition makes sense to me. For every design decision that they made, I can understand [I]why[/I] they did it. Most of it's just because they were trying to bring order to the patchwork kludge which was AD&D, and they didn't have enough design experience to see where it might break down. (To be fair, at the time, nobody had that experience. Third edition was revolutionary in many ways.) Of course, just because certain pitfalls were real in any given edition, that doesn't mean everyone encountered them (or found them problematic, if they did). To me, healing surges were a solution to a problem that I never experienced in the first place; which also means that, to me, the solution was worse than the problem it was trying to fix. Likewise, with the segregated rules for monster creation, it was a solution to a problem that I never experienced. I guess that's just one of the inherent difficulties in creating a new edition, is that everyone had a different experience with the previous edition. They kind of just had to play the numbers, and try to fix the biggest problems that affected the most people. [/QUOTE]
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