Why is it so important?

Celebrim · Sep 4, 2007

Grog said:
In your response to me, you talked about metagaming parties resting after every encounter. That pretty clearly deals with how often parties are allowed to rest.

I don't see how that follows.

You even went so far as to mention wandering monsters as a way to reduce the frequency with which the party can rest.

Which still doesn't get into the notions of allowed or required or similar 'restriction'/'permission' words like 'can'. Wandering monsters do not allow or require anything. Players choose to rest or not rest regardless of whether there are wandering monsters, and they can rest with or without them. Like many other risks, the risk of wandering monsters may encouarage or influence certain player decisions, but they don't require anything. However, verbs like 'encourage' and 'influence' are just so comparitively non-provocative and I can see why you'd want to avoid them.

Dacileva · Sep 4, 2007

Aus_Snow said:
I *have* "read through" (and posted at) these and other forums - but not WotC's - for years now. In various subforums. At some stages, almost daily. Like lately, for example.

I *am* honestly willing to believe that those aggrieved masses slipped my attention somehow. All you need to do is prove it.

Patryn of Elvenshae · Sep 4, 2007

Raven Crowking said:
And, yet, for three (and a half) editions, this worked out pretty darn well.

No, it didn't, really.

I always hated playing the Wizard / Magic-User 1.

It wasn't fun until about 5th-level, or so.

ruleslawyer · Sep 4, 2007

gizmo33 said:
I think it's clearly a consequence of the reasoning that Celebrim has outlined. IF all you have are "per day", "per encounter", and "at will" abilities, then what does a challenging encounter look like in DnD? It doesn't look like an encounter that requires nothing but "at will" abilities because those are of no consequence to use. Think of those encounters in 3E right now that require only "at will" abilities from characters and have no effect on daily resources. Those encounters are insignificant.

So in 4E, just like in 3E, only encounters that tap daily resources will be considered significant (as will those that pose an immediate risk of death/dismemberment - where dismemberment can be considered a kind of "daily resource" cost.) Those types of encounters have a consequence that affects the rest of the adventure. Therefore, daily resources (that 80% level) will probably quickly evolve into the threshold for resting.

SO - if a single encounter uses the daily resources of the party, then it probably was exciting. But then the PCs are likely to rest. If it doesn't use the daily resources, then it's probably insignificant.

Thus, AFAICT the "per-encounter" logically fails to mitigate the thing it's trying to solve. The thing AFAICT that the "per-encounter" folks seem to be missing is that DnD already has "per-encounter" abilities for the character classes and that just simply causes the expectations to be revised.

Of course, the fix to this is to just ditch the per-day abilities.

Celebrim · Sep 4, 2007

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
No, it didn't, really.

I always hated playing the Wizard / Magic-User 1.

It wasn't fun until about 5th-level, or so.

I'd agree with that. In fact, I'd say it didn't really start getting fun until 7th level or so when you were likely to get through most of the day without running out of spells. About fifth was just the first level were you got a chance to really play a big role on the team.

I think 3rd fixed that to some extent, but it still quite admittedly has problems.

Let me do a full confession. I always hated DMing low level wizards because they were so dull mechanically even in the hands of the better players, and because they are so fragile that its hard for me to avoid killing them. (In 3rd edition, I got so notorious about killing off wizards that my players who wanted to be wizards took level 1 in fighter and the accompanying end game power loss just to be durable enough to survive.) Whenever it happened in long term campaigns that a player wanted to be a wizard, I confess that I've been cheating since about age 14. I always borrowed a page from Dragonlance and either had the character start with or quickly find some highly useful magical device that let them play a bigger role right from the start. I do it so often that I'm not going to mind if 'journeyman Wizard's apprenticeship gift inherited from his mentor' becomes a class feature. Typically, it was a ring or staff that would increase the number of minor per day features that the class could do. In modern terms, it would give the character say 3-6 more cantrips per day and maybe some other small bonuses. At low levels this would give the character something to do and wouldn't matter at high levels.

So to a certain extent, I am comfortable with the notion of wizards killing the warlock and taking his stuff while losing some of thier phenomenal cosmic power at high levels. If a 1st level wizard could do 'Ray of Frost' as a standard action, and 10th level one could fire a single 'Scorching Ray' as a standard action, I don't think its going to hurt and it might help the game.* But I just don't see 'per encounter' balancing as the way to go here, because I can think of only a very small number of things for a wizard to do 'per encounter' that are interesting and mostly they don't involve spells per se.

*On the other hand, given how rapidly 3.X levelling is by default, such a system of 'at will blasts' is not very different than simply assuming that a Wizard will equip themselves with an affordable wand at all times. I've never seen a 3.X edition wand actually run out of charges, unless it was a wand of CLWs or such.

Grog · Sep 4, 2007

Celebrim said:
I don't see how that follows.

Do you want a recap of the whole conversation thus far?

You said "Per-encounter balancing will not change anything from 3E (unless 4E parties cannot run out of useful resources)."

I said "Yes it will, because parties will still be able to push on when most or all of their per-day resources are gone, thanks to the per-encounter abilities."

You said "But metagaming parties will still rest after every encounter."

I said "That's entirely beside the point."

I made a point about how often 4E parties will be required to rest vis a vis 3E parties, and you responded with a point about how 4E is not going to change the fact that metagaming parties can and will rest after every encounter. That looks an awful lot like a non-sequitur to me.

Celebrim · Sep 4, 2007

ruleslawyer said:
Of course, the fix to this is to just ditch the per-day abilities.

Yes, but its a 'fix' that carries it's own large problems and of the two, I'd rather take the set of problems we have.

If every scene plays out like an episode of ST:tNG and the crew is left in the same state that they began the episode, I don't think I'm going to find the experience as intense as I have in the past.

Maybe its just because I'm a nerd boy, but I think fiddly resource management and such is and should be part of the game. I realize that no modern RPG book would be written like the 1st edition DMG with its talk of the 'superior player' being the one that is faced with severe resource management challenges and overcomes them and all that sort of talk is out of fashion right now, but I really think that fiddly resource management produces not only a superior player but, in the right doses, produces superior play.

Celebrim · Sep 4, 2007

Grog said:
Do you want a recap of the whole conversation thus far?

How about just recapping my first few sentenses when I laid out my thesis (#160).

Wormwood · Sep 4, 2007

Dacileva said:
The upshot is that Vancian magic forces either the fifteen-minute adventuring day, or it forces pointless and boring "attrition" encounters. These are both problems.

Getting rid of Vancian limitations, but keeping other limitations (such as a stronger emphasis on per-encounter limitations) means that every encounter can be interesting without forcing a fifteen-minute adventuring day.

If I could, I would make that my signature.

Hell, I may just have it tattooed somewhere. Somewhere prominent.

Very well said.

HeapThaumaturgist · Sep 4, 2007

Celebrim said:
Maybe its just because I'm a nerd boy, but I think fiddly resource management and such is and should be part of the game. I realize that no modern RPG book would be written like the 1st edition DMG with its talk of the 'superior player' being the one that is faced with severe resource management challenges and overcomes them and all that sort of talk is out of fashion right now, but I really think that fiddly resource management produces not only a superior player but, in the right doses, produces superior play.

But you might be in the minority. Which is fine!

But I think NOT catering to the needs of a larger audience, not drawing more players, not making the game more fun and easier to play for MORE people ... would be a mistake.

Keeping Vancian magic because it is a Sacred Cow and how some people cut their teeth on the game, and because early editions encouraged people to feel superior to other players for learning and enjoying the system within the limits of the rules, just doesn't seem like good sense.

Because 1st ed is here. So is 2nd. 3rd. They're there and people who love that type of play have lots and lots of material to play with.

In the end I imagine that when 4th comes out the resource management geeks will find new resources to manage and more things to be geeks about. The guy that loves per-day abilities might find himself playing a Fighter for the first time, enjoying his Talent Tree choices that give him Per Day super-cool Fighter Mojo. And it'll be great if you can focus on per-day more or less depending on talent trees. I'm a proponent of option-based play.

--fje

Why is it so important?

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