Why is it so important?

[Merlion]

Unless th cleric or "healer type" has a per encounter healing abilty. Even if it only heals a small amount but refreshes every minute it's going to make anything but the most damaging encounters negligible.
.

And at this point, we DONT KNOW if this is the case or not, which goes back to my whole issue with people coming to total conclusions based on whats really not much information...

This are all story resources, but let's for a minute suppose you are running a dungeon crawl...now what resources have changed?

First off, I have a strong feeling that 4e will move away from the whole being built around dungeon crawls thing, since despite the name D&D has I think already de emphasized this quite a bit.

And, once again...managing resources from one encounter to the next isnt the only kind of resource management. Such will still exist, just as Vancian spellcasting will still exist, but it will no longer be the sole concern.

 

[Merlion]

One thing I will be curious about concerning this new paradigm in design...is how, exactly the designer's plan to balance the Wizard(and to a lesser extent the other spellcasters) versatility. I always thought this was the fact that other classes shined in the type of situations you sight above. I mean a fighter will never ba able to do the type of things that spells such as polymorph, wish, fly, etc. allow a wizard to do. So yeah, I wonder how they will balance this without spellcasters again being more powerful at higher levels.

Most likely by having those sorts of spells be very much like the are now.


I personally dont think there are going to be per encounter or at will SPELLS. I think Wizards will have a few per encounter and per day magical ABILITIES probably either supernatural or spell like. They may well be linked to the prepared spells, in a manner similar to the Reserve feats, but I dont see them getting things like Polymorph or Fly or the like at an at-will level. And if they get them at a per-encounter level it will probably be less versatile, more specific versions of the effects.

 

[gizmo33]

You're making the same mistake that gizmo33 did. The key time frame is not after the battle, it's during the battle.

I find this to be unsubstantiated. I could just as easily say "the key time frame" is something else, provide no actual context for it. The only thing I'll say in defending the idea that the "after battle" time frame is more significant is that it lasts longer, and also is subject to much greater uncertainties.

Per-encounter powers most definitely are not inconsequential in the middle of a battle. Indeed, if it's a tough battle, deciding when and how to use your per-encounter powers will be every bit as critical as deciding when and how to use your per-day powers is under the current rules.

If it's a tough battle?? I've made this point many times and it keeps getting ignored: it's really ONLY if it's a tough battle. And so really this is just coming down to a response of "well, every combat I'll make sure that my players are agonizing over their per-encounter resource usage" which is the same thing as saying you'll make all your encounters have a significant chance of PC death associated with them (and then maybe fudge it away the first few times).

In any case IIRC Imaro is also making the same mistake as RC and I are - he describes it in his experiences with the Star Wars saga system earlier in the thread.

I see no reason why a battle can't be fun, exciting, and potentially dangerous even if the players mostly or entirely use only per-encounter abilities to fight it.

Me neither, this seems to me to be beside the point that we've been making. Make sure every encounter carries with it a measurable chance of killing one or more of the PCs. Just come out and admit that this is the consequence of the "per-encounter" design and you won't hear much objection from me.

 

[Merlion]

I find this to be unsubstantiated. I could just as easily say "the key time frame" is something else, provide no actual context for it. The only thing I'll say in defending the idea that the "after battle" time frame is more significant is that it lasts longer, and also is subject to much greater uncertainties.



If it's a tough battle?? I've made this point many times and it keeps getting ignored: it's really ONLY if it's a tough battle. And so really this is just coming down to a response of "well, every combat I'll make sure that my players are agonizing over their per-encounter resource usage" which is the same thing as saying you'll make all your encounters have a significant chance of PC death associated with them (and then maybe fudge it away the first few times).

In any case IIRC Imaro is also making the same mistake as RC and I are - he describes it in his experiences with the Star Wars saga system earlier in the thread.



Me neither, this seems to me to be beside the point that we've been making. Make sure every encounter carries with it a measurable chance of killing one or more of the PCs. Just come out and admit that this is the consequence of the "per-encounter" design and you won't hear much objection from me.

No one is going to "admit" that, because thats a matter of perception and taste, and that conclusion is only according to yours.

 

[Victim]

I'll admit it, in so far as we replace kill with incapacitate. It's already the case at high levels in DnD, and seemed to be true in saga as well. Of course, SW was less lethal since attacks have to drop a PC 0 AND exceed their damage threshold to kill instead of KO. Plus PCs can spend their force points (action points) to avoid death when those powerful hits occur.

 

[gizmo33]

For example, suppose a player decides one motivation for his character is to "uphold my late father's honour" and this includes wielding his father's sword. That PC might receive a bonus of +1 dice of damage whenever pursuing this goal. The player then has an incentive to pursue the theme, and does not have to trade off that goal against the prospect that the +1 greatsword is a tactically superior choice to his father's cutlass.

This reminds me of the Pendragon system IIRC, where you can add bonuses to actions if they deal with certain "passions" (or whatever they're called, I vaguely remember) that have been chosen for your character.

The idea you're talking about is interesting but I don't find it to conflict much with the resource situation. It's a question of how powerful you want story elements to be vs. common sense (not that they'll always conflict, but sometimes they will). Now you can design your campaign/rules/etc. to say that every mortal has some innate psychic ability that is greater than magic items, so using your father's cutless is more powerful than the +1 sword.

Still, whatever rules you make will still just create a new set of tatical considerations.

 

[gizmo33]

No one is going to "admit" that, because thats a matter of perception and taste, and that conclusion is only according to yours.

Doesn't seem like perception and taste to me. It seems like it's at the root of every response to this topic. Of course it's always phrased as an "if you make the encounter deadly enough that the PCs have to worry about their ability usage on a round per round basis..."

So you're saying that you don't, right? So we can continue to use the 4 goblin vs. 10th level fighter situation as an example? Something really seems to be missing in what you're saying. Yes, I suppose that is a matter of perception, hmmm.

 

[Merlion]

Doesn't seem like perception and taste to me. It seems like it's at the root of every response to this topic. Of course it's always phrased as an "if you make the encounter deadly enough that the PCs have to worry about their ability usage on a round per round basis..."

So you're saying that you don't, right? So we can continue to use the 4 goblin vs. 10th level fighter situation as an example? Something really seems to be missing in what you're saying. Yes, I suppose that is a matter of perception, hmmm.

What level and type of resource management a person enjoys, and what they consider a high risk level or a difficult battle is in the end a matter of perception and opinion.

Your not arguing the balance of these changes, your just saying you think they will rain on your particular playstyle. I'm not even so sure about that, but those things in the end are a matter of preference.

 

[gizmo33]

What level and type of resource management a person enjoys, and what they consider a high risk level or a difficult battle is in the end a matter of perception and opinion.

That is true but not what I've been arguing about. I'm arguing about some of the consequences of the rule changes, not so much whether those consequences are good or bad, although I think it's obvious how I feel. And you're right, but if it's really a matter of you finding the consequences tolerable/preferable, then why argue about the logic of reaching them? Basically what Wyatt says he wants to fix in the game will not be fixed by many of things that people are proposing, although it's such a moving target that it's hard for me to generalize everything that's been said to support the "per-encounter" game.

 

[Imaro]

What level and type of resource management a person enjoys, and what they consider a high risk level or a difficult battle is in the end a matter of perception and opinion.

Your not arguing the balance of these changes, your just saying you think they will rain on your particular playstyle. I'm not even so sure about that, but those things in the end are a matter of preference.

I think the above is true, but a baseline has to be considered for practical purposes. If the above argument holds then reward/risk/power etc. is all subjective and the so called balance of the game need not even be a considerstion. I think it's safe to say most enworlders would agree one goblin is not a challenge for a group of 4 PC's...some might argue the reverse, yet to have any meaningful discussion at least a broad standard needs to exsist. That standard, since it needs to be neutral or at least commonly accepted, is the CR/EL system. No, I'm not saying it's perfect, but nothing in life is.

Well here's a totally different concern as far as "balance" goes...By opening up either new or previous abilities as per-encounter it creates a new additional axis upon which later classes, monsters, splats and additions must be balanced, thus producing a higher likelihood of imbalance in the game. Or is this also an invalid concern?