Who is more bothered by the whole per-encoutner thing?

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Still doesn't make it any more palatable in my opinon.

Why?

What's magical about "a good night's rest" that makes it better than "a minute to catch your breath"?

 

[hazel monday]

Why?

What's magical about "a good night's rest" that makes it better than "a minute to catch your breath"?

Hm. With that simple question, you actually changed the way I think about a lot of stuff in D&D. Seriously.
I mean, not everything- but a lot of stuff.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Hm. With that simple question, you actually changed the way I think about a lot of stuff in D&D. Seriously.
I mean, not everything- but a lot of stuff.

Huzzah!

Seriously.

I forgot to point out, in my earlier post, that this was present in D&D even before the Bo9S, in the form of the Psionic Focus. There were lots of feats and other abilities that gave you bonuses so long as you were focused, and you could expend your focus to get a larger bonus.

Regaining your focus generally required you to Take 20 on a Concentration check until higher levels (or until you'd expended more feats) (or, of course, spend an action in combat and hope you rolled high).

Thus, your psionic focus, early on, was a per-encounter resource, which eventually turned into a 2x per encounter resource, etc.

Thus design was mirrored in ... Complete Arcane? ... with the reserve feats. Memorizing a high-level fire spell with the feat gave you an at-will fire ability, until you elected to expend that higher-level spell.

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

Thus design was mirrored in ... Complete Arcane? ... with the reserve feats.

I think a web or Dragon article actually added an Arcane Focus mechanic along the same lines as Psionic Focus a year or two ago.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I DM and run PCs of all kinds, and I really like the idea.

Same here... what can I vote?

Cheers, LT.

 

[Li Shenron]

I really don't know what to say yet about per-encounter abilities...

Mostly I play spellcasters, but I've also played both rogue-types and warrior-types.

I certainly hope that per-encounter abilities are kept to a minimum amount, so that effectively each character can use 1 of them or maybe 2 per encounter but not more (otherwise they effectively turn into 1/encounter EACH but 1/round all together). They also certainly must be abilities that do not dramatically change the encounter from a loss to a win. At the same time, they probably needs to be somewhat scalable, so that at every level there is at least some per-encounter ability with a significant effect.

Huge design task IMO, but I guess they managed to pull it through...

 

[pemerton]

I certainly hope that per-encounter abilities are kept to a minimum amount, so that effectively each character can use 1 of them or maybe 2 per encounter but not more (otherwise they effectively turn into 1/encounter EACH but 1/round all together). They also certainly must be abilities that do not dramatically change the encounter from a loss to a win.

I don't understand your reasons for these assertions.

If the introduction of per-encounter abilities is to solve the problem of the 15-minute adventuring day, then an encounter in which only per-encounter resources are used has to be as interesting, for the players, as one in which per-day resources are used. (Otherwise, GMs will just cut straight to the per-day consuming encounters, and we'll be back in the 15-minute day.)

The most obvious way to achieve this is to have a large number of intricately interacting per-encounter abilities, so that (properly deployed by the players) they render an encounter which might otherwise be trouble for the PCs into one which is easy for the PCs (but not for the players - it is their challenging and difficult play that makes the difference).

 

[jasin]

Same here... what can I vote?

In retrospect, I should've included those options for completeness sake, but they wouldn't tell me much about what I was interested in.

In fact, I didn't vote myself, because my answer is "even mix, like per-encounter"!