Why is it so important?

[Imaro]

As far as I am aware, the only thing the designers have stated involving 80% resources is that a wizard who has used up all of his per-day vancian spells will be at 80%

Yo know this is getting petty...does anyone know exactly what 4e will entail...anyone. Ok then when discussing it it is necessary to extrapoilate from what we've been told. I mean the whole "We don't know for sure" argument doesn't predicate not disscussing in a reasonable context what has been stated.

We've also been told SW saga is a preview for 4e and I've had plenty of experience with that game and ran into certain problems which I stated earlier in the thread and even gave examples of others playing and running into the same issues. Issues which correlate to what we are discussing.

 

[hong]

How is this different from now?

The difference is that now, you're supposed to have a bunch of boring encounters first, before being killed. It's all about the anticipation.

 

[Imaro]

How is this different from now?

I stated this above but I'll state it again...

Per-day is significant in that the ramifications, even if it isn't win/loose causes the players to manage resources on a long-term basis.

Per-encounter is only significant if the specific encounter is hard enough(win/loose) where resource management within that specific encounter is necessary.

The funny thing is I've seen this play out in Star Wars and cited examples where others who played had the same experience.

 

[Imaro]

The difference is that now, you're supposed to have a bunch of boring encounters first, before being killed. It's all about the anticipation.

I mean if we go with your solution you should just have all those story resources for impact so no encounter will be boring. Right?

 

[Jackelope King]

Insufficient information.

Precisely. During the time-frame of an encounter, there is no magical loss of interest/coolness/fun/whatever. Each encounter can still be significant and fun.

Consider, for a moment, the following scenario:

In one day, you have one fight. During that fight, the party expends 20% of its resources.

You know several things about this fight automatically. It was over 90% likely to use per-encounter resources.

This does not logically follow. It is equally likely to have occured under a per-day resource system. There is no logical connection between a small expenditure of resources and a per-encounter model as of the last round of the encounter.

Those resources regenerated at the end of the fight. Because of the resource usage, the fight would have been at least somewhat significant in any edition from OD&D up to and including 3.5. Unless there is some other factor to make it significant, it will not be so in 4.0.

RC

You have insufficent information to claim that all resources will regenerate. From what we've ready, not all resources will regenerate. Thus, this conclusion you reach is invalid.

 

[hong]

I mean if we go with your solution you should just have all those story resources for impact so no encounter will be boring. Right?

You could do that. Or you could accept that this is putting the cart before the horse, and design your ruleset so you don't have 3 boring encounters per day to make interesting.

 

[gizmo33]

My challenge to you:

Identify whether this encounter was run using a per-encounter resource system or a per-day resource system.

My answer: per-encounter.

If it were per-day the DM wouldn't have felt compelled to make the encounter a life-or-death struggle in order to make it interesting.

For extra credit I'll also say that the DM fudges dice reguarly because for every "woohoo we got lucky and won" situation that occurs, those same characters are killed a week later by a "uh-oh, we got unlucky and lost". The DM has fixed this through fudging.

 

[Merlion]

Yo know this is getting petty...does anyone know exactly what 4e will entail...anyone. Ok then when discussing it it is necessary to extrapoilate from what we've been told. I mean the whole "We don't know for sure" argument doesn't predicate not disscussing in a reasonable context what has been stated.

We've also been told SW saga is a preview for 4e and I've had plenty of experience with that game and ran into certain problems which I stated earlier in the thread and even gave examples of others playing and running into the same issues. Issues which correlate to what we are discussing.

You made a statement that the designers have said its assumed PCs will be down to 80% after each encounter. I said, as far as I know, they have said that a Wizard who uses all his Vancian spells will be down to 80%. Two different things, but similar enough that they might be confused or conflated.

How is mentioning the fact "petty?"

 

[Merlion]

The difference is that now, you're supposed to have a bunch of boring encounters first, before being killed. It's all about the anticipation.

Ahh ok. Thanks for the clarification, Mr. Orange Kitten.

 

[Raven Crowking]

How is this different from now?

In terms of the 9-9:15 problem? AFAICT it isn't. Which is rather the point.

In terms of the range of significant encounters using the mechanical threshold? It narrows the mechanical threshold by quite a large margin if you are not experiencing the 9-9:15 adventuring day problem already.

If you examine the CR/EL system, it is quite clear that an encounter that the party can clearly (even easily) beat is still significant because of the expenditure of resources that do not instantly renew.

Some groups, to hedge their bets, decided that they could use all their resources in a few battles, rest, and then repeat. This created the double problem that we call the "9-9:15 adventuring day". The problems caused by this are (1) the problem with verisimilitude, and (2) it causes any encounter that doesn't challenge full resources to become mechanically insignificant.

Wyatt's solution, AFAICT, is to simply give the benefits of resting without requiring resting. On the surface, this targets (1), but not (2), which is the far more significant problem. Moreover, because it makes the problems caused by the 9-9:15 adventuring day the de facto baseline of the game, it means that DMs not experiencing these problems get the joy of doing so. Finally, because the entire baseline has moved, it encourages DMs to do exactly what the DMs having the 9-9:15 problem eventually do -- set up every encounter to challenge a party at full resources.


RC