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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7420619" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not sure who you are positing this as an ideal for - a designer? a game publisher? an individual table, or GM?In 4e, without changing the resting rules, the passage of ingame time does have a &quot;meaningful but not overwhelming impact on difficulty&quot; - because of daily powers and healing surge replenishment. But the GM also has the capacity to shape challenge by using the encounter-building rules.In Cortex+ Heroic, pacing is entirely in terms of &quot;Action Scenes&quot; (recovery is generally harder), &quot;Transition Scenes&quot; (recovery is generally easier) and &quot;Acts&quot; (the Doom Pool resets). But these don't correlate to ingame time periods. There is also the Doom Pool, which generates a similar &quot;threat&quot; dynamic to hp attrition in classic D&amp;D, but isn't directly connected to pacing at all.In HeroQuest revised, there are only scenes/encounters, and difficulty is a function of the PCs' run of successes. (The more they succeed, the higher the difficulty, with failures producing resets of the difficulty level.) So all pacing, &quot;encounter building&quot;, escalation, etc is built into a single mechanic.I'm not sure any of these is the ideal, nor any sort of departure from it. I see them as various approaches. I think the issue of lingering consequences is different from the issue of class mechanical balance on a per-encounter (short rest) or per-day (extended rest) basis. For instance, Cortex+ Heroic and HeroQuest revised both have lingering consequences although they have no &quot;per day&quot; mechanic at all.And in a 4e-like framework one could fairly easily make hit point recovery strictly per-encounter (of course that would require revisiting other aspects of class balance, given HS is currently part of that) without getting rid of lingering consequences (eg via conditions, curses, diseases, etc). I don't know the 4e-version of Gamma World very well, so I don't know whether it had any sort of lingering consequence mechanic.I am not saying that &quot;per encounter&quot; balance is a sufficient condition of mechanical balance between classes. (How could it be?)I'm saying that &quot;per-encounter&quot; balance is a necessary condition of a game allowing events to unfold in the way I describe, while also achieving mechanical balance across classes. Whereas &quot;per day&quot; balance is at odds with this, because in order to achieve that sort of balance across classes it requires the GM to treat the &quot;future&quot; of play as in some sense fixed or foretold (so as to generate the pressure and consequences that in turn will yield the balance).Where did the word &quot;failing&quot;, or any synonym, appear in the post of mine that you quoted? I identified a contrast that is, from my point of view, salient. Since when did identifying a salient contrast - which is not utterly at odds with a contrast you have been drawing for the past page or two - become a (purported) identification of a failing in a ruleset?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7420619, member: 42582"] I'm not sure who you are positing this as an ideal for - a designer? a game publisher? an individual table, or GM? In 4e, without changing the resting rules, the passage of ingame time does have a "meaningful but not overwhelming impact on difficulty" - because of daily powers and healing surge replenishment. But the GM also has the capacity to shape challenge by using the encounter-building rules. In Cortex+ Heroic, pacing is entirely in terms of "Action Scenes" (recovery is generally harder), "Transition Scenes" (recovery is generally easier) and "Acts" (the Doom Pool resets). But these don't correlate to ingame time periods. There is also the Doom Pool, which generates a similar "threat" dynamic to hp attrition in classic D&D, but isn't directly connected to [I]pacing[/I] at all. In HeroQuest revised, there are only scenes/encounters, and difficulty is a function of the PCs' run of successes. (The more they succeed, the higher the difficulty, with failures producing resets of the difficulty level.) So all pacing, "encounter building", escalation, etc is built into a single mechanic. I'm not sure any of these is [I]the[/I] ideal, nor any sort of departure from it. I see them as various approaches. I think the issue of lingering consequences is different from the issue of [I]class mechanical balance on a per-encounter (short rest) or per-day (extended rest) basis[/I]. For instance, Cortex+ Heroic and HeroQuest revised both have lingering consequences although they have no "per day" mechanic at all. And in a 4e-like framework one could fairly easily make hit point recovery strictly per-encounter (of course that would require revisiting other aspects of class balance, given HS is currently part of that) without getting rid of lingering consequences (eg via conditions, curses, diseases, etc). I don't know the 4e-version of Gamma World very well, so I don't know whether it had any sort of lingering consequence mechanic. I am not saying that "per encounter" balance is a sufficient condition of mechanical balance between classes. (How could it be?) I'm saying that "per-encounter" balance is a necessary condition of a game allowing events to unfold in the way I describe, while also achieving mechanical balance across classes. Whereas "per day" balance is at odds with this, because in order to achieve that sort of balance across classes it requires the GM to treat the "future" of play as in some sense fixed or foretold (so as to generate the pressure and consequences that in turn will yield the balance). Where did the word "failing", or any synonym, appear in the post of mine that you quoted? I identified a contrast that is, from my point of view, salient. Since when did identifying a salient contrast - which is not utterly at odds with a contrast you have been drawing for the past page or two - become a (purported) identification of a failing in a ruleset? [/QUOTE]

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