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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 9855173" data-attributes="member: 7031982">By "interim" combat, do you mean lesser fight on the way to the BBEG?If so, I guess I have two different takes, that aren't necessarily in alignment:First, somehow it's just satisfying to smack down those low level mobs, even if there's no challenge or decision-making of exactly the kind of been advocating.  Yes, it undermines my whole argument.  But...but...it's true!  There's something about imagining carving through goblins like Conan going through a <s>harem</s>...I mean, um, band of pirates that just wouldn't be satisfying without the dice roll, and in a way that is not at all replicated by crushing the Climb roll by a wide margin, or totally dominating that cheap lock.  It's just not the same!Really, I blame my parents.  If they had just bought me that Atari in 1983 I wouldn't be this way now.Or maybe it's Jen T.'s fault, for not reciprocating the crush I had on her from 1st through 6th grade. (She ended up marrying my frenemy from middle school.  Can you believe it?!?!?!)Um, where was I...Oh, yeah, my OTHER take is that I find the whole game strategy of "conserve resources for the BBEG, and then rest up afterward to refill your resources" to not be really satisfying, either.  As I've stated in many posts, I dislike having powers gated behind finite resources, whether it's a pool of bonus dice, or spell slots, or just "3x/day" stuff.  I don't enjoy the game of guessing whether I should use my precious special abilities in this fight, or save them for a harder fight.  I want my strategy to be focused on the present moment, not predictions about the rest of the adventuring day.  EVERY fight should be an all-out, desperate effort to kill before being killed.  The reason you can kill all those goblins with ease is BECAUSE you are fighting for your life.I don't know exactly how you design a game to do that, but I do know that powering abilities with finite resources is the antithesis of it.  Special abilities should either be usable circumstantially (e.g. positioning, teamwork, reactively, or maybe even by RNG) or as a trade-off where the benefit comes with an immediate cost (e.g. Barbarian's "Reckless Attack").EDIT: Possibly my one beef with Shadowdark is that Kelsey still occasionally slips in those "3x/day" kinds of abilities.</blockquote>

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