Why is it so important?

[Grog]

Earlier on, both Gizmo33 and I said that nerfing the means to avoid encounters, while making encounters a possible consequence of resting, would deal with the "9-9:30 adventuring day" problem. IOW, we both made a strong claim that a solution to the problem exists within the current ruleset, merely by changing the expectations of those playing the game who are experiencing this problem.

That's no solution to the problem. 3.X is designed so that the players will have to rest after every four (CR-appropriate) encounters. If they have expended all their resources, they have to rest, and if you don't let them, you basically guarantee a TPK in their next fight.

Your solution will lead to much more PC death than any 4E system would.

 

[gizmo33]

The chance is considerably higher than .0001%, and you know it.

Do I? I thought we didn't know anything about 4E. I don't know what the chance is, and since no one will say what it is I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume you know what it is that I know. Granted, .0001% is a strange number, and I didn't choose it to be accurate, but your follow up on this has a certainty that I don't follow.

So I'm not seeing the difference between your proposed 4E scenario and the way 3E already is.

I don't think hill giants (or beholders) are necessarily the best representatives of their CRs. Giants are notorious for having this property due to their strength scores. In any case, the premise of Wyatt's that the first three encounters of the day are boring because they are not challenging would contradict what you're saying here. You're saying more than just that the possibility of death exists with the hill giant encounter. You're saying that it's likely enough that it actually is a factor in how people assess the encounter (ie. "we might die").

Again, compare this to Wyatt's premise, and then just say that you don't agree with his premise that the first three encounters of a matched CR with the party level are boring. He must not have hill giants in his campaign.

If we agree on how deadly a CR encounter is for a matched party level, then I think that fact should remain immutable through the conversation. As it stands now, this "fact" seems to change depending on what argument it is being used to support.

 

[Grog]

Do I? I thought we didn't know anything about 4E. I don't know what the chance is, and since no one will say what it is I think it's a bit presumptuous to assume you know what it is that I know. Granted, .0001% is a strange number, and I didn't choose it to be accurate, but your follow up on this has a certainty that I don't follow.

Sorry, I thought you were talking about 3E there. I can speak with some certainty on that subject, having played it for eight years

I don't think hill giants (or beholders) are necessarily the best representatives of their CRs. Giants are notorious for having this property due to their strength scores. In any case, the premise of Wyatt's that the first three encounters of the day are boring because they are not challenging would contradict what you're saying here. You're saying more than just that the possibility of death exists with the hill giant encounter. You're saying that it's likely enough that it actually is a factor in how people assess the encounter (ie. "we might die").

I don't have the "three boring encounters" problem that Wyatt was talking about. I understand that other people do, but that hasn't been my experience in my games.

I do have the "15 minute adventuring day" problem that he talked about (IME it's more like an hour or two, but close enough).

Anyway, if you agree that there is a significant chance of PC death in many 3E encounters, I don't understand how you can level that as a criticism against your proposed model of how 4E is going to work.

If we agree on how deadly a CR encounter is for a matched party level, then I think that fact should remain immutable through the conversation. As it stands now, this "fact" seems to change depending on what argument it is being used to support.

Or, you know, you're talking to different people.

 

[gizmo33]

That's no solution to the problem. 3.X is designed so that the players will have to rest after every four (CR-appropriate) encounters. If they have expended all their resources, they have to rest, and if you don't let them, you basically guarantee a TPK in their next fight.

I agree, I think RC is oversimplifying here what we've both said at length. Can't blame him, he's had to say the same thing 100 times.

In any case, I can speak for myself:
> I don't think nerfing certain spells like rope trick means that the party can no longer evade detection. It's just that in this thread the anti-resource-management folks have treated resting as a given and said that their monsters typically can't deal with spells like ropetrick. Thus, there's some room in between the extremes of "always effective" and "completely useless"

> Secondly, the current system does not mandate that you rest after 4 fights. It predicts that as a likely outcome. Spinning in this way IMO is misleading, because it makes it seem more arbitrary and artificial than it is. It's not as artificial because CR is the very benchmark that you use to measure difficulty and resource usage. The purpose of CR is to allow the DM to estimate challenges, and if daily resources are an important part of the game system then it only makes logical sense that the impact on them is measured in terms of average result.

> The resting and recouperating situation has been discussed as a counter to Wyatt's implication that PCs always rest uneventfully and that the choice is meaningless. Again, there is a lot of ground between the extremes here. If RC is saying that the decision to rest should carry some risk (and thereby make it meaningful), that's a far cry from advocating TPKs.

Your solution will lead to much more PC death than any 4E system would.

"Any 4E system" is way too broad. Any system would logically include a 4E system that says all PCs will die any time they engage in combat. And this isn't just a matter of nitpicking your language - The vagueness of this doesn't do much to establish what it is you think 4E will do to prevent higher fatality rates.

 

[IanArgent]

Here's my POV: I "grew up" as a GM running Shadowrun (mainly SR3 - I have yet to run an SR4 session, and I had just started playing when SR2 came along), where there is very little (almost none at all) resource management either in the per day department or even in the per encounter department (as D&D has it). Magic is literally unlimited (as long as you can hack the drain, and with only a little bit of effort, you can sidestep drain for most spells). The only expendable metagame resource is the condition track (AKA damage). There's a small amount of cash/treasure management (do you use your expensive grenades/ammo/whatever in this fight or save it for another one), but D&D has that also.

Based on that, it is entirely possible to run interesting, challenging, and fun encounters that involve no resource management decisions whatsoever. Every encounter teh PCs have the same level of (non-damage, non-explicitly expendable) resources available to them as they did in the previous one. And before you go into the whole "it's a different metagame environment" I have run explicit "dungeon" crawls (bug hunts usually) in SR with a good time had by all.

Also, I'm in agreement with Mr. Mearls - a wizard should never have to pull out his crossbow because of game mechanics. He should always have something he can do as a wizard in every fight. As a practical matter, that requires at least per-encounter and probably at-will abilities. I don't like the way the game is balanced now where you give up low-level power for unbalanced power later in the game. (As an aside, I don't care for prestige classes that make you lose caster levels either).

 

[hong]

> Secondly, the current system does not mandate that you rest after 4 fights. It predicts that as a likely outcome. Spinning in this way IMO is misleading, because it makes it seem more arbitrary and artificial than it is.

Hmmm.

I exaggerate because it helps to clarify what I'm talking about. As I said to Hong, often times without "exaggeration" people can stonewall over irrelevant issues.

 

[gizmo33]

Sorry, I thought you were talking about 3E there. I can speak with some certainty on that subject, having played it for eight years

So what is the fatality % for a CR encounter that matches the party level? Do you think this is universal across all, or even most, of people's DnD games. Do you think there is a chance that your games, for some reason, are more deadly than average?

I don't have the "three boring encounters" problem that Wyatt was talking about. I understand that other people do, but that hasn't been my experience in my games.

Well, if you understand that other people do then perhaps you'd understand if we can't really make a universal statement about what kind of death rate exists in 3E. I can follow the reasoning given various initial conditions, but IMO it's not productive to challenge the initial conditions at arbitrary moments. Take anything I say that assumes that CR=Party Level is not a deadly encounter as applying to a game other than yours.

I do have the "15 minute adventuring day" problem that he talked about (IME it's more like an hour or two, but close enough).

Given that your CR=Party Level encounters seem to have a high fatality rate (in that they are never boring even when the party is at full resources) then I would think it's pretty logical that you'd have the 15 minute adventuring problem. I think Wyatt talked about a very similar situation, only his example suggested that the EL would be higher than PC level, but otherwise the effect is the same.

Anyway, if you agree that there is a significant chance of PC death in many 3E encounters, I don't understand how you can level that as a criticism against your proposed model of how 4E is going to work.

I can only agree for your game. This isn't the case in mine, and not apparently in Wyatts. It doesn't invalidate what I'm saying because ultimately IMO this aspect of 3E doesn't have a bearing on what I'm saying - or it certainly doesn't discount it.

Here's how the logic works AFAICT: as it currently stands your players in your game are facing one tough encounter, which you tell me poses to them a significant risk of dying. All other things being held equal, by increasing the numbers of such encounters they face, you are increasing, significantly, the chance that they will actually die on any given day. Either redefine the probability of death (through action points, for example), or use DM cheating, or expect a high turn-over rate in the party. Those are the possibilities I can think of. This is a specific case among the more general cases because of your particular circumstances.

Or, you know, you're talking to different people.

I've said things like "if you send an ancient dragon against a 1st level PC, the PCs will die" and the response I often get is "no! you're wrong because I don't use dragons in my world."

People don't understand well what I mean when I say *if*. If what I'm saying fails to match your circumstances in it's premise, then it is irrelevant to your particular game. However it doesn't mean that the reasoning is invalid. At times perhaps it is hard to keep restating premises, and perhaps there has been some confusion there.

 

[gizmo33]

Hmmm.

Exactly, if his exaggeration had clarified the issue. If it would have eliminated some minor quibble that RC or I would have made that would not have addressed his main point then I would have accepted it. (That was the context that was missing from my second quote AFAICT). However, in this case the exaggeration did exactly what I said *it shouldn't do* in my second quote.

A case of saying "what if you have to lift 10,000 lbs" is a case where the 10,000 lb situation is an exaggeration, but sufficient for establishing an example of something that can't be lifted. In this case the exaggeration satisfies the criteria in the premise. This is not the case in the example that I called out.

 

[Wormwood]

Here's my POV: I "grew up" as a GM running Shadowrun

I hadn't considered Shadowrun until now---which is strange considering I've played hundreds of sessions!

And yes, I agree completely with your conclusions.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Of course everyone is going to answer that they prefer an adventure where they have a chance of failure, rather than a long string of guaranteed wins. But since no one anywhere has said that 4E's per-encounter system will lead to a long string of guaranteed wins for the PCs, your example has no relevance to anything being discussed.

If you answer the questions, we can proceed. At that point, relevancy will either be or fail to be demonstrated. Otherwise, I fail to see the point of endlessly repeating myself.

BTW, I am following this course because I believe that you honestly do not "get" what I am trying to say. Consequently, I am breaking my reasoning down to even smaller steps, and hoping that you will follow me along these steps, so that we are on the same page in terms of what I mean (but not necessarily on whether or not I am right) at the end of the exercise.

At that time, my reasoning will either appear sound/relevant to you, or it will not.

(shrug)

Either is fine with me. The only advantage is that you will be disagreeing or agreeing with what I intend to convey, rather than something else.


RC