Why is it so important?

[Jackelope King]

"very significant mechanical impact" = somebody getting killed? Otherwise, what would the significance be?

Whether or not a given PC drops is indeed a significant mechanical impact. But also whether or not the PCs defeated the enemy and got their loot. And also what options remained to the PCs when the last bad guy ran out of hit points. If you're a fighter down to his last Death From Above for the encounter, or a wizard down to his last Fireball. then the whole encounter seemed pretty significant all the way through. There might not have even been a significant threat that the PCs were going to die, but if you're running out of attacks to fling at the enemy, then every spent resource seems very significant.

And remember, we're likely not talking about the deep pool of resources that 3e characters enjoy and are expected to manage over the course of the day. 4e will likely make the pools of per-encounter resources much shallower, meaning every single time you use one, it's a significant expenditure.

I don't think that these somewhat general statements accurately reflect what's going on. A blog entry by James Wyatt that was referenced on this thread (a later one with a given link) seems to contradict what you're saying, for example. He was talking about his WoW experience and that basically without long term resource attrition to consider, he was basically just going down the list of most powerful to least powerful abilities and firing them off.

The implication that I always see is that somehow encounter-level resource usage is like some sort of chess game and that people are careful about how they use them. But look, for example, at what people say about the "1-encounter per day" situation in 3E. The problem that people identify is that wizards are basically overpowered in that kind of environment. And why? Because they're "nova-ing". And why do they nova? Because they aren't really managing their resources as carefully as statements like you're sometimes imply. They don't need to, I don't blame them. It makes more tactical sense to do whatever you need to in order to kill whatever is in front of you when there is nothing else to consider. The risks IME of a hidden enemy are less than the risks of allowing an enemy you see and has closed with you to continue to act round after round.

And this argument swings both ways, as you've demonstrated with your nova-ing example. Players can approach either system with the tactical depth of a sledgehammer to the skull. The implication I always see is that somehow day-level resource useage is like some sort of chess game and that people are careful about how they use them.

 

[Jackelope King]

Truth be told I think a better example of per-encounter resource use management would be warranted.

Consider this one from Iron Heroes, then.

An Archer has the ability to attack his foes in numerous ways beyond simply shooting. If he takes careful aim, he can deal additional damage ("Deadly Shot"), or inflict his foe with a penalty to attacks ("Disrupting Shot"), or even rain arrows down upon a small area of the battlefield (peppering everyone with attacks; "Storm of Arrows"). He's limited in the use of these abilities (and the strength of these abilities) to the number of tokens he has in his aim pool. He can always spend actions to take aim and build up his aim pool too.

So let's say the archer finds himself and his friends fighting a band of brigands and their hard-bitten captain. The archer must focus his attention on one enemy at a time, building up an aim pool. Right away, he's faced with decisions: should he focus on trying to take out the captain, or is his action better spent trying to build up an aim pool against one of the other bandits?

After spending a round building up aim tokens against one enemy (say the captain, 4 tokens for taking a full round to aim), he's presented with a new choice: should he spend some or all of his tokens, and which ability should he use? If he decides to use the Storm of Arrows he can strike the captain and the two bandits fighting shoulder to shoulder with him, but his damage against the captain will be limited. Or he can spend two of his tokens and deal additional damage to the captain this round while conserving some tokens to use to do the same thing next round with Deadly Shot, though the other bandits won't be affected, and the higher damage is a wash if he misses. Or he could spend all of his tokens on a Disrupting Shot to prevent the captain from hurting his allies as easily with that big flail he's carrying. Or he can spend more time aiming so that next round, his shot can be even more effective.

Fast forward a few rounds. Now three of the bandits are dead, and only the captain and his two lieutenants are left, and they're being pushed back across the bridge, trying to escape. Now, since he's on the defensive and less of a threat, the choice is more obvious: take him down as fast as possible before he gets away. Keep firing off Deadly Shots and hope one drops him before he gets away.

There is no real "strongest ability" here. Since it takes fewer rounds to build up, sometimes it's simply better to use a weaker ability. In other situations, it's better to take your time and line up the shot before you fire so as to inflict the most damage possible. And still other times it's prudent to just give up your aim pool against one opponent and focus on a new one (as your current target might be about to be on the recieving end of the now-enraged berserker's very large, very sharp axe).

After the encounter ends, the archer hasn't "run out" of his ability to use any of these options. Indeed, if twenty more encounters happened, he'd be able to use these abilities in each and every one. But within the context of each of those encounters, he's presented with different scenarios and different foes, and needs to consider how best to use his limited pool of aim tokens within that encounter. Maybe in a later encounter, he's faced with a harrier (among other opponents). The archer would do well to focus on someone other than the harrier, since the archer can aim more effectively against oppoents standing still than he can against someone like the harrier, who gains his abilities from moving quickly around the battlefield. The archer is faced with interesting choices of how to marshal his resources during an encounter, both in how to build them up (spending actions aiming) and then in how to unleash them.

 

[gizmo33]

There is no real "strongest ability" here.

This is a matter of definition of "resource management". To you, it seems that any tactical decision involves a resource if the words are used broadly enough. Stepping into a threatened square in order to improve my circumstances then becomes a matter of managing the resource of "space"?

Deciding whether to rain down arrows on mooks or take a single powerful shot against a leader is a tactical decision. Such a decision would exist in a "per-day" resources situation as well. The core argument I've tried to make is that "per-encounter" resources removes a dimension of strategy from the game. That doesn't mean that you wouldn't continue to face problems in a "per-encounter" game, it's just one less problem.

And implicit in your example, as it seems with every example, is a tangible threat of death from that encounter. Otherwise the choice of whether to rain arrows or take a single precise shot is relatively meaningless because you're going to win the encounter either way.

 

[Jackelope King]

This is a matter of definition of "resource management". To you, it seems that any tactical decision involves a resource if the words are used broadly enough. Stepping into a threatened square in order to improve my circumstances then becomes a matter of managing the resource of "space"?

And to yourself and RC, anything which doesn't reset within the framework of 1 day or more isn't a resource. Certainly the tactical consideration of when to use a limited resource is interesting, but I thought I was very clear in this example that the archer only has a limited number of aim tokens at any given time, which he can build up or spend depending on his actions.

Deciding whether to rain down arrows on mooks or take a single powerful shot against a leader is a tactical decision. Such a decision would exist in a "per-day" resources situation as well. The core argument I've tried to make is that "per-encounter" resources removes a dimension of strategy from the game. That doesn't mean that you wouldn't continue to face problems in a "per-encounter" game, it's just one less problem.

And a per-day resource system includes arbitrary restrictions on how many encounters you can have, creating disparity in power level between casters and non-casters. I'd much rather have a per-encounter system and lose the fun of daily resource management than have a per-day system and be forced to tread carefully so as to keep all the classes balanced. I also question whether the same level of tactical decision is still there, since there's less of a pressing need to manage your fireballs if you have four of them in your pocket versus if you only have a single one available to you in any given encounter. I've yet to see a valid counerargument against this.

And implicit in your example, as it seems with every example, is a tangible threat of death from that encounter. Otherwise the choice of whether to rain arrows or take a single precise shot is relatively meaningless because you're going to win the encounter either way.

Actually, I thought I was pretty clear that in this particular example, the enemy was actually running away, and the decision became one of "take him down before he gets away".

 

[gizmo33]

Whether or not a given PC drops is indeed a significant mechanical impact. But also whether or not the PCs defeated the enemy and got their loot.

Ok, these two cover the "you die, or they die" situation. I think we all agree that a per-encounter situation has this dimension to it.

And also what options remained to the PCs when the last bad guy ran out of hit points.

This is sort of a "tree falls in the forest does it make a sound" situation. Why does it matter what resources a PC has when he's not fighting someone? It only matters if the encounter isn't over. Once it's "over", by definition, all those resources are back.

If you're a fighter down to his last Death From Above for the encounter, or a wizard down to his last Fireball. then the whole encounter seemed pretty significant all the way through.

The premise here is insufficient IMO to establish your conclusion. I get two meteor strikes per day and I use one against a kobold. I'm down to one meteor strike but I don't think you'd call the kobold encounter significant. AFAICT you're making an unstated assumption here.

There might not have even been a significant threat that the PCs were going to die, but if you're running out of attacks to fling at the enemy, then every spent resource seems very significant.

Why would it be? If I'm not facing a significant threat of death, then the depletion of my resources doesn't mean anything to me. If running out of resources means a significant chance of death, and you're running out of resources, then the logical conclusion is that you *are* facing a significant chance of death. It seems paradoxical to me to be otherwise.

And remember, we're likely not talking about the deep pool of resources that 3e characters enjoy and are expected to manage over the course of the day. 4e will likely make the pools of per-encounter resources much shallower, meaning every single time you use one, it's a significant expenditure.

It's significant only when not having them means you're going to die. Implicit in all of this reasoning is a significant chance of death at the per-encounter level. Without that, it's like a character with two fireballs, AC 1000, and 1000 hitpoints fighting 30 goblins. That's a situation where there's no significant chance of death and yet I'm probably going to use a fireball which is a 50% expenditure of my top resources. It's not an interesting encounter if my fireballs are going to reset themselves at the end of the encounter.

And this argument swings both ways, as you've demonstrated with your nova-ing example. Players can approach either system with the tactical depth of a sledgehammer to the skull.

The DMs complaining about nova-ing are actually implicitly recognizing that it works. The "sledgehammer to the skull" analogy carries with it an implication AFAICT that is not true. Nova-ing makes a lot of sense, and is a sensible tactic, that's why players keep doing it over and over. In fact, in a medieval fantasy game a "sledgehammer to the skull" is probably pretty effective too

The implication I always see is that somehow day-level resource useage is like some sort of chess game and that people are careful about how they use them.

They are careful, and least in the experience of those of us advocating for them. There is an important issue of wizards nova-ing in the per-day situation, only because of the mismatch between wizards and fighters - not because of the existence of the per-day paradigm.

The reason that players are careful IME is that a day is a far longer, and more significant period of time to have to think about than a minute. A player's ability to forsee their resource needs, when an encounter is over, for the next 60 seconds, is far more accurate than it is to forecast it over a period of time hundreds of times as long. Without the uncertainty that the day-long time period provides, most of the uncertainty is going to come down to "is this encounter going to kill me", which has been one of my points from the beginning and seems to be at the core of every description of a per-encounter paradigm, often implicitly.

 

[gizmo33]

And to yourself and RC, anything which doesn't reset within the framework of 1 day or more isn't a resource. Certainly the tactical consideration of when to use a limited resource is interesting, but I thought I was very clear in this example that the archer only has a limited number of aim tokens at any given time, which he can build up or spend depending on his actions.

Yes, but if fear of death is not a significant part of the encounter than the expenditure of the tokens are meaningless. Consider - we wouldn't have as much to debate if you would agree that a per-encounter paradigm shifts the DMs encounter design focus to make sure that each encounter carries with it a measurable chance of PC death.

And a per-day resource system includes arbitrary restrictions on how many encounters you can have,

Calling it 'arbitrary' here is unwarranted/misleading it seems. PCs have an arbitrary restriction on the speed at which they can move, for example.

creating disparity in power level between casters and non-casters.

That disparity is not created by the existence of daily resources, but instead a disparity in the amount and power of the resources.

I'd much rather have a per-encounter system and lose the fun of daily resource management than have a per-day system and be forced to tread carefully so as to keep all the classes balanced.

I agree with your goal. I just think that the per-day situation doesn't create this. It's like saying that one character class gets d2 for hitpoints and the other gets d100 for hitpoints, but the problem is the hitpoint mechanic. The problem is actually class design.

I also question whether the same level of tactical decision is still there, since there's less of a pressing need to manage your fireballs if you have four of them in your pocket versus if you only have a single one available to you in any given encounter. I've yet to see a valid counerargument against this.

Convincing and valid are two different things. Counterargument against what? Against the fact that if you have 4 fireballs, and you use one, that you have 3 left? I will concede that basic arithmetic agrees with you here. However, your other assumptions and your conclusion are not stated so there's nothing to argue with. Suggest that having 3 fireballs left instead of 4 is an insignificant situation in a per-day paradigm, for example, and you've got a tougher case to establish IMO.

Actually, I thought I was pretty clear that in this particular example, the enemy was actually running away, and the decision became one of "take him down before he gets away".

Oh, ok, I missed that. Your example is one of a class of "ticking timebomb" type situations. Your facing a kobold, who is not himself a significant threat but he has his finger on a button that can blow up the world. Or whatever.

These situations exist in both per-day and per-encounter. What I don't see is how a per-encounter situation enhances this, or makes it exclusive. Even with per-day resources I'm still choosing from those resources the tactically optimal way of keeping the bandits from running for help. There's no real fundemental difference in the decision at that level.

The "per-day" resource situation though, carries with it the additional consideration of the fact that if I use a fireball against the fleeing bandits in order to keep them from raising an alarm, that I won't have it later. It's possible that it might actually make sense to let the bandits escape because saving the fireball and using it against bandits+BBEG might make more sense. In the per-encounter resource none of that matters - you blast away with whatever your tactically best option is and there are no consequences outside of making a wrong tactical decision (as you would in 3E as well).

 

[pemerton]

Deciding whether to rain down arrows on mooks or take a single powerful shot against a leader is a tactical decision. Such a decision would exist in a "per-day" resources situation as well.

The second sentence strikes me as false. In a pure per-day resource system that choice exists only if the resources remain available. In an at-will systemt that choice is available every round. In a per-encounter system that choice becomes more interesting than in an at-will system, because it is there to be made in every encounter, but making the choice once then affects the dynamics of one's future choices for the encounter.

It's like saying that one character class gets d2 for hitpoints and the other gets d100 for hitpoints, but the problem is the hitpoint mechanic. The problem is actually class design.

To bring fighters and wizards into parity requires not only toning down spell power. It also requires giving wizards something to do every round - ie increasing their avaible resources. The most obvious way to do this is by giving wizards at-will abilities, or a suite of per-encounter abilities. So given the way wizards work at present, I just don't see how you can divorce the question of class design from that of resource management paradigm.

Your example is one of a class of "ticking timebomb" type situations. Your facing a kobold, who is not himself a significant threat but he has his finger on a button that can blow up the world. Or whatever.

These situations exist in both per-day and per-encounter. What I don't see is how a per-encounter situation enhances this, or makes it exclusive. Even with per-day resources I'm still choosing from those resources the tactically optimal way of keeping the bandits from running for help. There's no real fundemental difference in the decision at that level.

The "per-day" resource situation though, carries with it the additional consideration of the fact that if I use a fireball against the fleeing bandits in order to keep them from raising an alarm, that I won't have it later. It's possible that it might actually make sense to let the bandits escape because saving the fireball and using it against bandits+BBEG might make more sense. In the per-encounter resource none of that matters - you blast away with whatever your tactically best option is and there are no consequences outside of making a wrong tactical decision (as you would in 3E as well).

There are a couple of differences. In the current system, it is the wizard who has to conserve the fireball, while the fighters plink away at the bandit with arrows, or mount their horses and ride after him, or whatever. The 4e designers take the view that this is not fun for the player of the wizard PC. They are therefore looking for a system in which the wizard also has something to do which will have a significant impact on the resolution of the encounter.

A second difference is this: in a system which introduces per-encounter abilities, it is easier to design the time-bomb scenario, because the desinger does not need to worry that the encounters will deplete so many resources that the PCs have no chance of actually stopping the bomb when they find it. This is just a particular instance of the general proposition that a move away from per-day resources removes obstacles to the use of other thresholds of signficance.

A related consequence is the converse: if the PCs manage to skip some of the intermediate encounters they do not arrive at the bomb so tanked that the encounter poses no challenge. For 1st-ed style play this is obviously anathema - clever operational play is not generating a reward for the players, of delivering them a walk-over encounter! But 4e play is obviously not interested in supporting that style of play. It wants the encounter to be interesting, regardless (mechanically) of what preceded it, or is to follow it. In this respect 4e is just continuing the trend of 3E.

I do not believe that 4e will be able to do everything 1st ed could do. But I think it is equally false to claim that 1st ed (or 3E) can do everything that a system that includes per-encounter abilities can do.

 

[pemerton]

Examine the following:

"For whatever reason, you do not accept that mechanical interest can result from the dynamic unfolding of an encounter, in any round of which the players do not know whether or not it will result in resource-attrition, if in the end it does not result in such attrition."​

An encounter unfolds, "in any round of which the players do not know whether or not it will result in resource-attrition". This is a win/lose situation. The players know they might win; they know they might lose. They do not know which it is going to be.

Let's just stop there. You are making the following inference: because the players do not know, at time T, whether or not they will win or lose, it is therefore (objectively) a win/lose situation.

This inference is unsound, for two reasons. First, the players might be ignorant. This is a relevant consideration, because the 4e designers have stressed that the new monster build rules will make it more difficult for the players to predict the character of an encounter.

I note that you reject this first reason:

I do not accept that, having played the game for a reasonable amount of time, that players will not know which encounters are likely to be win/lose, and which encounters are merely "fluff".

I'm not sure why you are so confident about this - my own experience in playing RPGs leads me to a different view - but in any event it is of relevance only to the first of two reasons for the unsoundness of the inference above.

The second, and more important reason, is this: it may be that the situation is only win/lose if the players choose poorly subsequent to time T. Or to put it conversely, as far as I can see the point of the 4e mechanics is to generate mechanical interest in the following manner:

By making effective choices about the deployment of their resources, the players are able to bring it about that encounters are not ones in which their PCs have a significant chance of losing, and are not ones in which their PCs have to use their per-day abilities.​

It is thus simply false, in my view, that mechanical interest depends upon encounters being win/lose. Rather, it depends upon them being ones in which the players do not know what the outcome will be until they make their choices - but those choices, if made rationally, bring it about that the PCs win. Both I and Jackalope King have made this point several times. You appear to deny it. Hence my summary of your apparent denial.

I do not accept that mechanical interest can result in the long term from encounters in which the players know that resource-attrition will not occur, and which they cannot lose.

My point is: an encounter unfolds over time. The epistemic situation of the players is a changing one. Furthermore, the threat posed to them by the encounter is something that they, through their choices about resource deployment, are able to influence. From the fact that, in hindsight, the PCs had no chance of losing, it does not follow that, at any given time, the players know this. For example, the hindsight judgement may depend upon the knowledge that the players made tactically optimal choices. At the time at which the players are actually making those choices, they are unlikely to experience them as uninteresting, especially as they will not able to be fully confident of the tactical optimality of those choices until the end of the encounter.

In the model thus far described for 4e, this means an increase in win/lose encounters will probably occur. IOW, DMs will try to make battles mechanically interesting by presenting scenarios in which, in any round "the players do not know whether or not it will result in resource-attrition".

The equation suggested by "IOW" does not in fact obtain. An encounter can be one in which the players do not know, at the outset, whether or not it will result in resource attrition, and yet not be one which is, if properly played, a win/lose encounter. The interest is generated by the need for proper play. I believe many game players find the proper play of a game interesting.

If you're a fighter down to his last Death From Above for the encounter, or a wizard down to his last Fireball. then the whole encounter seemed pretty significant all the way through. There might not have even been a significant threat that the PCs were going to die, but if you're running out of attacks to fling at the enemy, then every spent resource seems very significant.

Why would it be? If I'm not facing a significant threat of death, then the depletion of my resources doesn't mean anything to me. If running out of resources means a significant chance of death, and you're running out of resources, then the logical conclusion is that you *are* facing a significant chance of death. It seems paradoxical to me to be otherwise.

The claim "If I'm not facing a significant threat of death, then the depletion of my resources doesn't mean anything to me" is false.

To give a parallel example: the claim "If I'm not facing a significant threat of divorce, then the effort I make in my marriage doesn't mean antyhing" is obviously false, for the obvious reason that the effort I am making in my marriage might be the reason why I am not facing a significant threat of divorce.

Another example from a different field. I often have philosophical and legal discussions with my undergraduate students. With some students, whatever argument I put, good or bad, they will not be able to engage with it in an interesting fashion. Those discussions can be classed as "mechanically uninteresting" for me. On the other hand, some discussion actually require me to put my intellectual skills to work, and require me to deploy my best arguments in an intelligent way in order to defend my position. In such discussions I am typically still in no danger of "losing": very few undergraduate students have sufficient mastery of the discipline (be it philosophy or law) to be able to knock down the arguments that I am able to put up. But such discussions are not "mechanically uninteresting" - I find them very interesting, and indeed they're one of the best parts of my job, precisely because in order for me to defend my position I have to do some interesting thinking.

Similarly, as I have been arguing for several posts now, if the decisions that the players have to make about the deployment of their resources make a significant difference to whether or not they experience the threat of death (or the threat of per-day resource depletion) then those decisions have mechanical interest even if, once those decisions have been successfully made it turns out that the PCs win is more-or-less inevitable. The interest arises because the players have to make choices on which their PC's fates hinge.

It is, of course, crucial that those choices be genuine ones (in the sense that for the typical player there are a range of options to choose from, each of which is at least plausible). This requires good design. There's no reason to think that the 4e designers are incapable of this.

Truth be told I think a better example of per-encounter resource use management would be warranted.

I've tried pretty hard with a couple of 1000+-word posts. It's hard, because the game isn't released yet and I don't own SWSE. I've done my best to sketch something logical around what little bit of information is out there.

From my understanding of this example (i am pretty sure you made the abilities up) there was no real decision to make. If you didn't have enough hits and were out of the encounter you would have to use second wind (otherwise you are out of the encounter). If you are in the encounter and have enough hits the only real choice would be to use the added level damage bonus (there would be no reason to use the second wind) so there isn't really much tactical resource management going on.

I don't know what your gaming experience is, so I don't know where you're coming from here. Suffice it to say that I think the question in an encounter, of trading off healing versus damage infliction, is a tactically interesting one. It depends on a good sense of probabilities, a good sense of where you and your enemy are in terms of hit point reserves and damage capability, a good sense of where the party healer is and what s/he is able to do for you next round, and so on.

If you're not persuaded by that, I will give another example drawn from RM. Warriors in RM (and HARP) have access to Adrenal Move skills. These are skills which (i) on a successful roll give a combat buff, (ii) suffer an increasing penalty to the roll each round to maintain the buff, and (iii) on a failed roll leave the character at a penalty to all actions which is proportionate to the number of rounds for which the Adrenal Move was sustained, and which reduces each round at a constant rate.

As a result of these 3 features, there are a number of different ways in which to use Adrenal Moves. A fighter can go in and out, buffing for a round and then wearing a (relatively minor) penalty for the next round. Or s/he can sustain the Move. In the latter case, if the combat lasts long enough s/he might choose to come out of the Move at the point at which failure is getting quite likely, and the penalty is not enough to prevent effective defence - at this point going into full parry, effectively doing no more damage in the combat but having no serious danger of death. Or if the combat is one which is very hard for the party to win, s/he can just keep trying to sustain the Move until she fails, at which point s/he is hors de combat and not able to parry very well either.

Having GMed RM games for over 15 years in which fighters have used these skills, I can say that the choices they give rise to make for interesting game play situations. One of my players - and the one who makes the most sophisticated use of these mechanics - did his honours in the mathematics of optimisation, and likes to build spreadsheet models for various categories of encounter in order to plan out his PC's tactics. Adrenal Moves aren't the only factor that he takes account of - RM has a lot of numerically complex and interacting mechanics, including the choice each round of the balance between attack and defence - but they are part of it.

Given that the 4e designers are (overall) probably better game designers than Terry Amthor and Coleman Charlton, I'm sure they will be able to come up with suites of abilities at least as good.

Unless the players are given a reason to do so, it is never prudent when facing a win/lose encounter to not use per-day resources.

The truth of this sentence turns entirely on what those resources are. If, for example, the wizard's per-day resource is a Teleport spell, then it is not prudent to use that when facing a win/lose encounter unless (i) it is the start of the encounter and the players believe that by teleporting out their PCs will be able to subsequently return to the encounter better equipped for victory, or (ii) the party is losing the encounter and therefore need to escape. One of these things may often be the case, but I don't think one or the other will always be true.

I have already canvassed a fighter's "second wind" in earlier posts. Again, it is not the sort of ability with which one would start an encounter.

If the per-day resources are simply bigger badder attacks, then what you say is true. As I have said in earlier posts, and earlier in this post, it all depends on the design of the suites of abilities.

certainly, mechanical interest can result from the dynamic unfolding of an encounter, in any round of which the players do not know whether or not it will result in resource-attrition, even if in the end it does not result in such attrition, so long as they are given a reason to attempt to conserve resources.

This presupposes that it will always be prudent to lead with per day resources. I have contested that. But let's return to the problem of the 9-9.15 adventuring day.

Mechanically, I see the problem this way. To have a meaningful effect on an encounter, a wizard typically has to cast a spell of somewhere near his/her maximum spell level. A wizard does not have more than 4 to 8 such spells. Therefore, the first encounter of the day is either one in which the wizard goes nova, thus overshadowing the fighters in that encounter, or is one in which the wizard does nothing for one or more rounds. The 4e designers clearly take the view that the latter is an option that provides a poor play experience for the wizard's player - and I assume that the typical play experience bears this out, with the players of wizards opting to do something each round, and thus nova-ing.

After 1 or 2 encounters, then, the wizard has nothing left to do. Thus the party rests. Furthermore, to make those encounters interesting in the face of the wizard's nova-ing, the GM ramps up the EL to somewhere above that of the party - and in these encounters, the overshadowing of the fighter by the wizard only increases.

One solution to this state of affairs is the 1st ed one. The players of wizards are encouraged to hold back, not acting in many rounds, conserving their resources for when they are crucial. Wandering monsters and other constraints on resting support this solution. It is a solution which 3E has obviously abandoned and which 4e will not embrace.

An alternative solution is to make all abilities at-will. In such a system, a wizard would use a wizard's blast every round just as a fighter swings his/her sword every round. This solution, in order to generate mechanically interesting challenges, has to go to win/lose encounters (and presumably this is how 3E is playing once one embraces the one-encounter-per-day paradigm). As an alternative, of course, it might look to other thresholds of signficance - and at this point a genuine at-will mechanic is preferable to a one-encounter-per-day mechanic, because the latter just imposes a pointless constraint on those other thresholds of significance.

A variant of the at-will solution is one which throws per-encounter abilities into the mix. These are then able to generate the sort of mechanical interest that I described above in relation to Adrenal Moves in RM and HARP, but also do not get in the way of other thresholds of significance.

4e seems to be going for a mix of this, plus per-day resources. As I've already acknowledged, if this model is to avoid the one-encounter-per-day problem, then it will be crucial that it not always be rational to lead with per-day resources. This is, as I have noted above, in part a question of design.

But it is not only a question of design. Because the availability of a wide range of non-per-day resources means that a wider range of alternative thresholds of significance become viable, it also becomes possible to introduce a wider range of reasons, derived from those other thresholds of significance, as to why it may be rational to conserve per-day resources. For example, it is obvious that a party which conserves per-day resources may be better able to proceed with the adventure, if the adventure is one in which time matters. And the presence of non-per-day resources makes such adventures more viable, by giving the wizard player something to do other than conserve resources for the adventure climax. (My reply to Gizmo33, post #1117, elaborates on this.)

Similarly, a party which conserves per-day resources may be better able to handle an encounter that comes unexpectedly, or turns out to be more difficult than was expected, or is one in which a player makes a mistaken choice which leads to the encounter really becoming a win/lose situation. These considerations all become important if the adventure is one in which the players cannot predict the likely number and sequence of encounters. And such an adventure becomes easier to design and to run when per-day resources are not the only resources to which a significant number of players have access.

If, however, you know that you cannot simply reset the per-day power, and that you might face more difficult encounters today, with whatever resources you have left, then you are faced with an actual decision.

I do not dispute this. The question is, what is the decision in question? If the wizard player has to choose to do nothing, then in effect they are choosing to miss a turn now, in order to have the chance at a really exciting turn in the future. For various reasons relating both to actual play experience with 3E and the desired play experience of 4e - which reasons may be open to criticism but are not obviously absurd - the 4e designers have decided to build a set of mechanics in which this decision does not have to be made.

The 15-minute adventuring day problem was created by a combination of a sharply narrowed range of mechanically significant encounters, coupled with the idea that it was "unfun" to prevent PCs from resting to recharge. The narrowed range of encounters makes it more desireable to use your big guns (because, if a monster can affect you, it can probably kill your); the ease of resting removes any counter argument to using your big guns (because once used they can simply be reset).

We obviously disagree here, at least to an extent. I think the biggest cause of the problem is that players of wizards like to take a turn like everyone else, and therefore choose to cast spells that will actually make a difference (ie their big guns) and therefore run out of things to do.

Do I think that a mix of per-day and per-encounter is the best solution? I don't have a view on that. It seems obvious to me that well-designed per-encounter abilities can produce mechanically interesting encounters without constraining the range of non-mechanical thresholds of signficance that get introduced. Adding in per-day abilities obviously has the risk of outcome that you see, namely, re-creating the one-encounter-per-day problem. But only if they are poorly designed. And I doubt that they will be, given the designers involved.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I have both read and understand what you're saying, RC. However, you have not seemed to understand what I've been trying to communicate.

I most specifically did not include you, JK, in that assessment. I believe that your contributions to this discussion have all been honest. However, when you say "If there is no attrition, then an encounter is simply irrelevant because it in no mechanical way impacts a later encounter" this is wrong.

If there is no mechanical effect that lasts beyond a given encounter, and the players reasonably know or suspect this going into the encounter, the encounter is insignificant because the players know that, regardless of what happens within the encounter, nothing has changed. An easy illustration of the same would be if, every time you landed on a property in Monopoly, you had to play a mini-game that had no effect on the game of Monopoly at all. Very, very quickly, many groups would stop playing the mini-game.

Conversely, given what I have seen of the setup of 4e, the only set of encounters where the players will not reasonably know or suspect that they are playing the "landed on the Monopoly property" mini-game are those encounters where there is a significant chance of loss. If there is no significant chance of loss, players will not use resources that do not reset after encounters. If there is no significant chance of loss, the encounter is unlikely to force the players to lose resources that do not reset after encounters.

So, if I handwave away arguments that do not address what I am saying, it is because they have been answered dozens of times in the past. 3e also has the "landed on the Monopoly property" mini-game within it -- as exampled by 4 goblins facing a 10th level fighter. If you can tell me why we are constantly told to simply ignore or handwave "4 goblins facing a 10th level fighter" encounters in 3e, you will also have answered both your and pemerton's quoted points. Or, you could go back to my analysis, which also answers those points.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

There might not have even been a significant threat that the PCs were going to die, but if you're running out of attacks to fling at the enemy, then every spent resource seems very significant.

For the first combat, sure. For the first 100 combats, maybe. For 1,000? For 10,000? How many of these battles where you'e down to the last Death From Above and Fireball do you have to have before you notice that you're always down to....but almost never cross...that threshold? How long does it take you to realize that the "down to the last" encounters are filler?

The obvious response is that, if you don't use your resources wisely in those encounters, you will cross the theshold.

But now we are talking about encounters that can kill you. And, yes, I agree that the narrow subset of encounters that can kill you are exciting. In fact, my analysis predicts that DMs will quickly respond to the 4e set-up by making sure that most encounters have a win/lose aspect.

IOW, we will go from 1e, in which few encounters by themselves could kill you, through 3e where maybe half the encounters you faced could kill you, to 4e where almost all the encounters you face can kill you.

And this argument swings both ways, as you've demonstrated with your nova-ing example. Players can approach either system with the tactical depth of a sledgehammer to the skull. The implication I always see is that somehow day-level resource useage is like some sort of chess game and that people are careful about how they use them.

And this is because, as Gizmo33 and I have been trying to say over and over again, changing the resource struncture will not solve this problem. This problem is only solved by making a cost/risk associated with resetting resources (so that you have to consider whether or not to use them), or, as you said, taking resource renewal completely out of player hands.

If there is no cost/risk involved with using your strongest tactics/resources first, prudent players will always use them first.