Why is it so important?

[Raven Crowking]

It's by far the most significant change in 4e. Which is probably why it's received so much discussion.

If by "significant" you mean "potentially deal-breaking to the customer" I suppose so.

But, I would imagine that the social resolution engine, the 30 spell levels, the changes to race, the changes to the basic classes that make up the core of the game, etc., are actually more "significant" by any other definition.

Could be wrong though.

Time will tell.


RC

 

[Celebrim]

Doug McCrae:

Actions in combat = Tactical
Per encounter abilities = Tactical
Per day abilities = Operational
Money = Generally, strategic, although the 'loot the stuff' paradigm tends to make it more operational and depending on how readily PC's could spend the loot it could go below that level (buy a wand in the middle of combat? between encounters?)
Limited use magic items = Operational
Skill points = Strategic
Feats = Generally, strategic, unless you mean 'gives you a per day ability', which most feats currently don't but may in 4e for all we know.
Other character options = Strategic

From the above list, we've been told that there will be a reduction in 'per day abilities' and indirectly 'limited use magic items'. Hense, we are seeing a design for a game which deemphacizes operational considerations. You make strategic choices about what resources you want and how you want to obtain your goal, and then you can expect in every tactical situation to have that list of resources to deploy toward achieving your tactical goals.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The problem, as occurs with killer DMs, is once you get hooked on "making the game entertaining by making it dangerous" is that the body count rises to the detriment of the game.

You're absolutely right. Tougher fights, coupled with more character options, which means it takes longer to create a high level character, will need a solution. Perhaps it will be harder for a PC to die. Maybe there will be fate points. Or raise dead wil become more common.

 

[Imaro]

Addendum:
In D&D 3, the lower level / mook encounters serve as attrition. But does that mean that the individual encounter becomes more exciting because you lost some hit points and spells? Or does it just mean that the last encounter becomes more interesting, because you might or might not have enough or the right ones left then?

If that is the case, is the fourth encounter worth the first "lame" three ones?
Or wouldn't it be more fun if I had just some "fool around encounters" where players get to figure out their new cool abilities (warming up a bit), and then run into the meaty encounters that are all thrilling because you have to use your wits and all the (encounter-renewable) resources available to you?

How important is it that the resources that I have at my disposal during any specific encounter is based on my daily resource management (as opposed to the choices I made on character advancement, maybe).

Well, my experience in D&D has been that the attrition adds an unknown (ie random) factor to the equation, and as stated in UA randomness does not favor the PC's. I think this ultimately helps to balance things out a little, since D&D is weighted towards the PC's when using the EL and CR system.

I also think it rewards PC's who figure out other ways to handle problems, either because they want to avoid wasting resources on it or because they(correctly or incorrectly) assume that they don't have the resources to deal with a strong encounter. In the first you reserve your power and are rewarded with the final encounter being easier...in the latter you still overcame the challenge though maybe not necessarily through the application of power.

I think it also gives a broader base for evaluation and decision making when it comes to player's and their PC's capabilities. You decide if your PC is strong enough, smart enough, or crafty enough to cotinue based on how you play them and what you periceve your power levels to be. If you succeed it was your call and if you fail, it was your call. Instead with per-encounter abilities there would only be two times in a game when I would use my per-day functions(assuming they are more powerful than the per-encounter).

1.) Against the Big fight(actually this would, given optimal conditions be the only time I use them.)
2.) In an early encounter where everything has gone horribly wrong and I have to.

In other words, I will be at 100% barring number 2 and, if number 2 happens, I am going to rest to get it back(unlees there's always some type of time limit in every adventure). So then my question is why even divide the abilities, just make them all per-encounter. Or, a better idea IMHO, implement a cost system like Exalted(essence) or MCWoD(vitae/components/essence) that still regulates the uses of certain abilities.

 

[hong]

Imagine instead of an RPG, you are playing a tactical level wargame along the lines of ASL. Suppose you have a series of combat simulations. If in each combat, you only have so many grenades, rounds of ammo, or bazooka rounds, then you still have limited resources. But, if you come into each combat with the same number of grenades, rounds of ammo or bazooka rounds (which may in some cases be realistic) and even soldiers, then the game is ignoring the operational level of play (there is a helicopter which flies in and restocks the platoon after every fire fight). That can be alot of fun. Operational book keeping can be tedious, and it can (as you noted) be hard to design good balanced operational scenarios.

But sometimes its fun to say that you only have a limited store of supplies that 'the helicopter' can bring in, and once they are gone then they are gone (or perhaps that you only recieve resupply at a limited rate). This turns the series of combat simulations into whats known in wargaming as a campaign (or mini-campaign depending on the scale). The game is still just as tactically rich as before, but now you have to balance tactical decisions (throwing this grenade would be helpful right now) against operational considerations (I won't have the grenade later).

If the cost of supporting such a paradigm is that other, more popular styles of play (or so the zeitgeist would suggest) are hampered, then I see no problem in cutting it out. Yes, there is a cost. Just because you can always run one big climactic encounter doesn't mean that encounter is the best way to use the rules, and it certainly doesn't mean the classes will always be designed to be balanced in such a scenario. Accompanying the issue of the 15-minute day is that certain classes will outshine others if they can blow their load; it should be self-evident that this is not a Good Thing.

And besides, as ruleslawyer has laboured to point out, they aren't COMPLETELY removing support for such a paradigm. There's still going to be per-day abilities, they just won't form as big a proportion of the wizard's abilities as currently. Now maybe the proportion will be so small that people will always decide to go on, even if their per-day abilities are used up, in which case in practical terms there might be a problem. However, the point is this is not necessarily a binary issue.

No, I didn't mind their ditching the erinyes either, why do you ask?

 

[gizmo33]

But its much easier to take something out that you don't like than to put something back in that is missing.

I wish this were the case and I hope it is but I'm really pessimistic about it given how 3E turned out. IME it's very difficult to take things out of the 3E, because all the rules hang on each other.

This has been a concern to me with the resource level issue. At first I thought "well I'll just change "per-encounter" to "5/day" and wash my hands of it". But then I thought - how am I going to deal with balancing out other abilities? What if per encounter abilities are balanced against other class abilities that are not so easy just to change the frequency of usage (it would hard to explain to a rogue why he could only backstab X times/day). So in that case, and IME, taking something out can often have a cascading effect and it actually becomes a heck of a lot of work to rebalance everything else.

That being said I agree with everything else you're saying. What I'd like to see from WotC is a little more depth to their analysis of the problem and possible other solutions before they just throw more powers at everything and hope it fixes it. I'd like to see them make a statment on the role that resource management should play in an RPG to know whether our differences are accidental or unavoidable. Telling me I can now fight 10 Armageddon fights in a given day is not selling me on the idea so far.

 

[Mallus]

It's that operational level of play that is I think at risk.

It is. I think that's a good thing.

That kind of strategic play depends entirely on a kind of contrivance that I dislike, the assumption that the encounters/encounter rate are predictable enough so that I can utilize my fixed resources smartly over time. And framing the majority of encounters as accounting problems rather than imaginary life-or-death situations pulls me out of the game.

I try to emphasize the individual scenes, not the 'operational level planning' (which is invaluable seeing as I rarely know ahead of time how each scene will fit together with the rest, given the open, dungeon-free quality of my setting).

Also, I see the game more as a faintly absurd storybook, not the Pacific Theater during WWII.

In prior editions of the game, and distinctively in 1st edition, a 'mook' encounter still demanded high attention to tactics and still represented a 'threat' because of its potential impact at the operational level. In efficiently handling a series of mook encounters would leave you unable to fulfill your strategic goal, because that final encounter against the bad guy which - in a straight up fight might be easy - would prove an 'encounter too far' due to either poor tactics in otherwise easy encounters you had no real chance of losing, or poor operational planning (you wasted important spells against minor obstacles).

This style of play is predicated on the overall encounter structure being (say, a leveled dungeon, for instance) being known to the players from the start. It works less well the more free-form the encounter structure gets.

'm worried that 4e is heavily weighted toward a specific genre emulation that is quite different from that I traditionally associate with D&D.

4E will still emulate D&D, I'm sure of that. My hope is that it'll emulate other fantasy sources a little more handily.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If the cost of supporting such a paradigm is that other, more popular styles of play (or so the zeitgeist would suggest) are hampered, then I see no problem in cutting it out.

I'm not sure that I accept that the zeitgeist is as you say it is.


RC

 

[Doug McCrae]

Does it matter if it's short, medium or long-term resource management? Resource management will still be there.

In fact it will be increased, assuming all classes now get limited use abilities. Previously 50% of the standard party, the fighter and rogue, had no operational resource management.

For non-casters, decision making in combat was highly limited prior to 3e. 3e brought in lots of interesting options - sunder, grapple rules you could use, bull rush and so forth. AoOs were key, in my view, to making the game much more tactically interesting.

 

[hong]

I'm not sure that I accept that the zeitgeist is as you say it is.

Well, you would say that.