Why is it so important?

[Treebore]

You missed all the posts about suspension of disbelief and versimilitude apparently.

And it does affect gameplay. It means you have to decide wether to set a watch and who to do it. And it means you have to re prepare spells etc.

Yes, but in a "REAL" world you would really do all of that. So how does playing realistically destroy Verisimilitude?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Combat is one of the few mechanical aspects that everyone is expected to participate in.

Not sure I agree here. Explicitly not so in older editions, where having your low-level magic-user wade into combat was a certain ticket to making a new character.

Its one of the few instances in which the party pools their power together to accomplish an immediate goal (defeating the current enemy)....

Not sure I agree here, either. The party pools its power together even when they are not all in the same area, so long as they are each doing something to meet their common goal. I guess you are using the word "immediate" here to preclude the many, many other times that the party pools power/resources to meet a goal.

it is also the most common element in almost every single game.

Here we can agree.

But, I would add, the reason that combat in 3.X was so much less enjoyable than in previous editions for characters who are not combat-optimized is because it takes so bloody long. In earlier editions, even if combat was the most common element, each class could easily get more than a chance to shine within a single play session.


RC

 

[Treebore]

Interesting speculation. Hopefully what appears in the books will be just as good.

I agree, he does have some good looking ideas there.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I don't think they've ever read any Vance, and want mages that play more like most fiction. Most other systems have a lot less record keeping involved, making it easier on GM and players. The D&D magic system is about resource management. Systems that have fatigue or dangerous spell failure usually have a random mechanic that makes easy spells safe, but high level magic potentially dangerous. This adds risk management and lets players try to push their luck when major spellcasting is needed. In D&D they know exactly when their magic will fail.

Quite so.

OK yes, I was playing devil's advocate. I'm not the greatest fan of Vancian magic in RPGs. But I'm not violently opposed to it, either. For example, in my (extensive) house rules, there is one class that uses it (the "Wizard", though renamed). All others use a variety of systems, better suited to the source(s) and/or methods associated with their archetypes (to my mind, anyway).

But this was one case where I felt that the "devil" was certainly in need of some serious legal representation (or inquiry, at least). Hence. . .

 

[WhatGravitas]

Call it what you will, he's supposed to stand at the rear of the party (or in the middle). Our group had a skill called Knowledge (tactics) - you make a check, and you could offer advice to the other PCs that would gain them benefits - kind of like the teamwork feats from PHBII, but we've been using them for years. That's what someone with easily the highest Int in the party would (should) have.

Sure, that would also be a very fun idea, I really like it, and I think that *is* a good solution, but as you've said, it's a house rule. If the new abilities of the new wizard can be altered to such a degree, I'd like it.

The "Wizard Strike" from the last playtest (pushing target back while doing minor damage) is something between the blaster and tactician, so they at least know of that direction.

But just give them some "every round"-shtick, even if it's a helpful, yet sardonic comment (helpful as in game influencing).

Cheers, LT.

 

[broghammerj]

The only difference aside from fluff (we rest 'a minute' and we rest 'a day' are both really no more than fluff and hand waving) is whether there is any risk in resting. If resting takes a whole day, then there is a significant risk provided that the story has a time line and the enemy is ran proactively by the DM. If resting takes a whole minute, then there is comparitively a much smaller risk. You don't even have to set watch and try to avoid a night ambush. You can just keep on pushing on.

Your last line says it all...."You can just keep pushing on." My question is with the per encounter system, players could keep pressing on in the dungeon for longer periods of time. Is there anything in the new mechanic to account for this? Part of the reason you had to camp in the dungeon is you had to physically sleep. Are they going to work in a fatigue mechanic since players won't be doing all this resting?

I offer two perspectives. I am a physician by trade. I have stayed up for 36 consecutive hours without rest. It completely incapacitates a person after a period of time. Now take the physical activity of dungeoneering and combat. I'll say it's similar to my 10 mile hike in Olympic National Park this weekend. Do I need rest after this period? I was pretty darn tired. I couldn't imagine combining them together.

There has to be something to be said about suspending versimilitude if your not resting at night. So if you please, I prefer to camp in the dungeon so to speak.

 

[Victim]

And it's a flawed assumption. I don't know where they're getting this idea. Firstly, a CR 5 monster is an EL ~3 encounter. Secondly, I don't think a party would blow more than about 15-20% of their resources against an equal-EL encounter, unless things went really badly for them.

I have to chime in on the side of folks like Sun Knight - if you're blowing all your spells in one or two encounters, maybe you should rethink how you're playing your PC, because realistically, that PC wouldn't survive very long.

In my experience, at high levels the most important resource the character has is effective actions in combat. Standing around is wasting another kind of resource, and in higher EL fights that resource is probably more important.

Some fights can allow for extremely precise use of spells, others demand considerably more casting action. For instance, once upon a time, our group was attacking a dungeon filled with zombies. We had a swashbuckler, a casting based druid (mainly summoned dire wolves, produce flame, and call lightning), a psychic warrior archer (who refused to use his melee weapon), and a psion. Yeah, the psion was basically doing like 90% of our damage against the zombies, since the nature of the other character's attacks left them ineffective vs DR and undead. Consequently, he burned PP at a mad rate.

 

[Treebore]

I don't think it's really a case of making the game "better." I think it's a case of making the game more in line with how things actually happen.

I've noticed in almost any game I've been in, whether as a player or a DM, the game flows like this:

Enter dungeon, fight a monster (or two) then as soon as the wizard or cleric is out of spells everyone stops and "camps."

No one is really willing to continue if there isn't any magical backup around.

So in a sense everything being per day, or per encounter, doesn't matter because it's easy to just "camp" whenever you need to restock.

Why not just ditch the ignored part?

Thats sort of my point. Why not just gloss over the "rest period" if that bothers your group? Why rewrite the whole system? Vancian magic is just as "realistic" as any other "magic system". I have tried a bunch of other systems and all they seem to do is make the Wizard even more powerful than ever. So I expect in 4E to see more "The wizard is sooo BROKEN!!!" threads now that they will be able to do "so much more" than ever before.

Plus I also assume they will be doing similiar with the other spellcasters, IE cleric and Druid, so guess what threads we'll be seeing a lot more of in 4E?

Oh well. Guess its good marketing to put out a system with a bunch of new flaws so that they can doa 4.5 edition or jump on to 5E all that much sooner. Makes much more (business) sense than overhauling the system you have years of play feedback with which to fine tune it. Can't reissue all of the book ideas all over again if you do that. To easy to retro fit such a system.

 

[Dalberon]

Thats sort of my point. Why not just gloss over the "rest period" if that bothers your group? Why rewrite the whole system? Vancian magic is just as "realistic" as any other "magic system". I have tried a bunch of other systems and all they seem to do is make the Wizard even more powerful than ever. So I expect in 4E to see more "The wizard is sooo BROKEN!!!" threads now that they will be able to do "so much more" than ever before.

I don't think it will be as shocking as most folks imagine it to be. If you look at the Warlock, you can see where they are 'tempering the metal' for people to get used to the idea of a spellcaster not locked into a rigid slot system. They even mentioned how much 4e influence some recent books have recieved (Bo9S). I would highly expect for future 3.5 books to carry similar influence.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I know, for one, I welcome our new per-encounter masters.

Playing in a weekly game, currently at 16th level, and playing a front-line fighting cleric, I know that my character has two settings:

GODLIKE
and
run away!

I'm obsessive about layering redundant systems. I have feats that mimic spells that mimic class abilities, I've got chained spell back-ups to more powerful spells. I monitor resources with exacting precision. If I use up X I know I have Y (which is only slightly less than X).

And then one Targeted Greater Dispel Magic Spell-Like Ability blows away my Death Ward and the five Kyuss Knight's all drop a 10d6 negative energy fireball on my teeth and do 200 damage and I'm dead.

The problem comes with high level binary effects that require magic to bypass. We've fought monsters with +50 Grapple Checks. There's no way any character can ever succeed against that sort of check without Freedom of Movement. So if we don't have FoM or we used FoM against the last SuperGrappler or we have to give FoM to everybody in the group we have to stop, right then, and rest.

For whatever reason, even with prep and careful selection and detailed management, we have 2-3 combats a day, probably more like 1-2. Either we don't have enough of a mission-critical spell or we're forced to use it up every combat. The creatures are optimized to deal with a 250hp barbarian and gets ahold of the cleric and rips her up so we have to use our Heals earlier than anticipated etc.

Something, lately, is always forcing us to go back to the rest period to get back spells. Whatever reduces a reliance on spell slots sounds like a good idea to me.

--fje