Why is it so important?

[IanArgent]

No. He is saying that those things are not dependent on one another. in other words, with oer day resources, you get the added fun of worrying about longer term resource depletion. Yet you still have fun, challenging and tactically significant encounters. The per-encounter resource focus is not only unnecessary, it actually removes a fun, viable part of the game that has been there since the beginning and is a big part of what makes D&D, D&D.

Pemerton is calling it "operational" level resource management; and I can accept that. Tactics in this case is the management of the encounter, operational a series of encounters, and strategic would be across the adventure as a whole. (Grand Strategy would be the campaign, then).

My complaint is that right now, only spellcasters have to play the operational-level resource management game, and that is their entire game. Either get rid of it across the board, or make everyone play all levels of the resource management game. D&D 4 has chosen the second - everyone has to balance logistics of abilities tactics, operations, and strategy.

I disagree that making your entire character revolve around strictly operational-level ability management is fun, BTW. I hate it myself - which is why I've never played a single-class caster on the tabletop, and rarely on the computer D&D games (where it's easier to evade/avoid the logistical bottlenecks on caster abilities).

Spellcasters should not require a degree of foresight beyond the encounter more than any other archetype; not in core D&D anyway. I think that's where the two sides are splitting - should it be harder to play a caster than a warrior or an expert? Should the caster have to worry more about logistics than the warrior or expert?

4ed game design says no, apparently. "All classes will have a mix of per day, per encounter, and at-will abilities".

I'm going to turn the OP's question around - why shouldn't warriors have per encounter and per-day abilities?

 

[AffableVagrant]

One of the big ones being that for Wizards, magic is all the have, and in the current system they can run out of "prepared spells" and become very nearly useless in terms of combat etc.

Ugh! The worst is at early levels where the Wizard blasts through his 2 or 3 magic missiles and has to call it a day.

Imagine if the fighter had weak cardio and needed to take an 8-hour nap after every fight, "Oh man, I swung my sword like, 8 times, I gotta get some shuteye!"

Limiting it 'per encounter' is the perfect middle-ground, IMHO, and whoever thought of it should get a promotion.

 

[AffableVagrant]

I guess since I have always accepted the limitations, and planned accordingly, and appreciated the challenge of those plans and choices, I have always had versimilitude in my games.

Why accept the limitation of a low-level wizard only being able to cast magic missile twice a day? How does that limitation present a challenge? No amount of planning can undo the fact that you can only cast anything worthwhile a couple times a day.

What if a rogue needed to clean his tools for 8 hours after he disarmed a couple traps? What if a fighter needed an 8-hour nap after he swung his sword a dozen times? "Well guys, I stabbed a goblin. Time to setup camp and get some shuteye."

Point is: Magic-users blast magic, that's why the player wanted to be a magic-user in the first place. To say that they're folding to the challenge of resource management is totally beside the point. Casters who can't cast instead pathetically shoot crossbow bolts while everyone else has the fun.

 

[hong]

Why accept the limitation of a low-level wizard only being able to cast magic missile twice a day? How does that limitation present a challenge? No amount of planning can undo the fact that you can only cast anything worthwhile a couple times a day.

D&D is 25 years of accepting your limitations.

 

[Baby Samurai]

D&D is 25 years of accepting your limitations.

I thought it was 33 years of creating something wonderful amongst a group of people?

 

[AffableVagrant]

D&D is 25 years of accepting your limitations.

Ha ha ha... I can't argue with that.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If no actual obstacles were posted in pemerton's statements, then why did you feel compelled to post the work-arounds in you posted #1010 with the encounters providing you with the resources needed to overcome attrition and sally forth?

There is a difference in posting obstacles, and in posting obstacles that are inherent with a given game set-up related to a given threshold of significance. What I stated was that the per-day resource system did not inherently create an obstacle to any threshold of significance. What pemerton did was attempt to contrive a situation in which an obstacle was created.

Had I said, "There is no situation to which per-day resources create an obstacle" this would have proven me wrong; and very foolish as well, as it would indicate that I failed to understand the whole point of per-day resources.

So, yes, you can use per-day resources to provide an obstacle, regardless of what threshold of significance you are using, but, as I demonstrated, it is even simpler if you so desire to avoid an actual obstacle from being created if that is what is desired. IOW, "halfway competent DM"s do not artificially create obstacles without providing the means to get around them, if the goal in the game is to not have said obstacles.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'm going to add my personal hate-on here for being required as a DM to put certain items in treasure - which is what Raven Crowking suggests I do to work around the limitations of per-day resource management.

Not at all.

What I intended to convey was that the limitations I replied to were contrivances, and easily done away with.

It is no different than saying, for example, that if you expect the party to fight a CR 40 opponent at level 1, you'd better take that into account during your design. If you are contriving to create a problem when you do design an adventure; similarly, you must contrive to create potential solutions.

This has nothing to do with per-encounter or per-day resources.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

In my post #874, I suggested that if it is the threat, but not the actuality, of mechanical significance (in your sense) that is at stake, then a mix of per-encounter and per-day resources might not (as you had concluded) fail to be a solution to the 15 minute adventuring day.

You replied, at post #886, that "Win/lose encounters (in this case, those with the threat of mechanical significance, where anly loss of mechanical resources is perforce a significant one) make the problem worse, not better."

If you create win/lose encounters (where a win/lose encounter is defined as an encounter where there is a significant chance that the PCs could lose), and there is no reason not to, prudent play suggests expending all of your resources in each encounter. This means that, after each encounter, you need to rest to regain those resources.

This makes the 15-minute adventuring day problem worse, not better.

If an encounter may be lost unless you use your significant resources, it would be foolish to claim that the PCs can know which way the dice will roll ahead of time. A fight that can result, for example, in a TPK is only a threat of a TPK until it is over. It would be foolish players indeed to assume that "Hey, it hasn't happened yet, so let's not take prudent action!" However, it would be equally foolish to assume that the "threat" of any encounter would continue to be significant if said threat was divorced from any actual consequence.

My position on this has been extremely clear, over pages of posts, although I understand that it is far easier to answer a strawman position than the one that I am taking.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Exactly - encounters do not need to "generate the threat of long-term resource depletion" to be fun, challenging, and tactically significant. Therefore you don't need per-day resources.

(Weren't you arguing for primary per-day resource management. Or did I get turned around in the fog?

You didn't get turned around....this was an example of the doublethink in Pemerton's examples.

(1) Your resources are almost depleted by fighting the BBEG.

(2) You need resources to have tactically challenging fights.

(3) Therefore mop-up cannot be tactically challenging.​

Coupled with

(1) Tactically challenging encounters can exist without resource depletion.

(2) Therefore you can have tactically challenging encounters that do not take resource attrition into account.​

Because in the first case, the mooks can be designed so as to not threaten remaining resources, either

A. Pemerton is wrong, and per-day resources are not an impediment in the situation described, or

B. Pemerton is wrong, and resource attrition is required for tactically challenging encounters.

All of Pemerton's examples boil down to "Per-day resource attrition is bad because it means that I cannot have five sequential encounters that use 25% of a party's resources each without them regaining resources between those encounters."

My response is twofold:

(1) The reason an encounter has to use 25% of the party's resources to seem significant is due to changes made between 2e and 3e. Moving to per-encounter resources will make the percentage of resources needed for an encounter to seem challenging even higher. I have given my reasoning for this on a point-by-point basis, which has not been answered in a way that demonstrates it wrong (IMHO, of course).

(2) Sooner or later, the next phase will be "Per-encounter resource attrition is bad because it means that I cannot have encounters that use 125% of a party's resources." Then the bar will be set at "at will" abilities. And why not have every ability "at will"?


RC