Why is it so important?

[Plane Sailing]

Now what *really* worries me is that it apparently took at least 4-5 minutes for me to write just that one line, considering the time difference between Rel's moderator comments and mine.

Timezones. It must be timezones...

 

[Rel]

Now what *really* worries me is that it apparently took at least 4-5 minutes for me to write just that one line, considering the time difference between Rel's moderator comments and mine.

Timezones. It must be timezones...

The time difference between merry old England and the east coast of the U.S. is 5 minutes? Why the hell is airfaire so expensive then?!

 

[Dacileva]

No, I asked (someone else) specifically for evidence of the "masses" of people professing such objections. It seemed to me, from your last post, that you (who decided to attempt to provide evidence on behalf of another) could not provide this.

How many posters would it take to convince you that there are "masses" of people professing these objections? I provided over twenty after a cursory search, and that wasn't good enough. What number should I aim for?

This is not something you mentioned (that you were "sifting through several thousand pages of posts") before - presumably, you mean "thousands of completely relevant posts". . .?

No, I did not. I don't see a Search option in these fora (it's been a while since I last used them), so I had to manually sort through all the posts on relevant boards, rather than directing my search. The Wizards forum (Gleemax) allows searching, though, and I provided several relevant links regarding this topic there, to demonstrate that there are large numbers of people who have always been calling for the removal of Vancian spellcasting.

Not really. It exists because someone made it. And someone made it because. . . well, there is an infinite variety of reasons why someone might choose to do that. Or just astoundingly many reasons, perhaps. Either way.

Well, why wouldn't an RPG writer put whatever it is they're presenting in a positive light? I've seen writers do that, from just about any game company, for just about any book. It doesn't always mean a great deal. OK, it might. But yeah, it equally might not.

There is no such thing as a perfect RPG. House rules and rules variants don't come out of nowhere. Most house rules and variants are created in an attempt to address a perceived flaw, inconsistency or lack (even if that lack is 'this doesn't quite work the way I'd prefer it to').

If something works exactly how you want it to work, why create a different way of doing it?

If something doesn't work how you want it to work, why not create a house rule/variant rule to be constructive, instead of being critical of the original?

Given the development teams' comments during 3.0, 3.5 and 4e development, it is obvious that they, at least, see "what items get house ruled most frequently?" as shorthand for "what should we change next edition?".

Not all people play the game the same way. Simple as that.

I haven't seen (or encouraged/discouraged) those things - well, apart from the odd attrition encounter, actually - in games I've run, featuring at least some Vancian spellcasting.

And as a player, it ain't that way, either. Not IME.

Taking only games that feature Vancian spellcasting:

1. How many encounters do you (as a player or DM) go through each in-game day?
2. How long (in-game) do those encounters take, total?
3. What percentage of the party's resources (spell slots, hp, expendable magic items) are expended in each encounter on average?

 

[gizmo33]

For medium-term resource attrition, substitute short-term resource attrition.

IMO that's not exactly and even swap. AFAICT the short-term situation requires more contrivance by the DM. Granted, I guess it's a matter of style but I'm not accustomed to having BBEGs show up miraculously at just the right time for no reason - which is how I interpret this.

Under the current paradigm, you get beaten up by some mooks, explore some more, and meet the BBEG. Under the 4E paradigm, you get beaten up by some mooks, then just as the last mook falls, the BBEG enters the room (encounter keeps going, everyone is down resources).

What you're saying matches the snippets of what I've seen from WotC, so AFAICT we at least see them saying the same thing. My problem, as I alluded to above, is that I think it narrows the range of interesting encounters. In the current paradigm, the BBEG showing up just at the right time can still happen, but it's not *required* in order to make the battle with the mooks meaningful.

Similarly, escalating challenge over time can be done by varying the encounters rather than the resources.

It's not so much the matter of escalation, it's the *possibility* of escalation that's present in the old paradigm. You had to burn a spell to heal the fighter after an unlucky hit by a kobold, and the question hangs over your head as to whether or not you'll need that spell in the future. In the proposed 4E paradigm, the question is settled after "the encounter is over" (whatever that actually means, but I guess that's another topic)

Under the current paradigm, you meet some monsters and have an easy fight but lose some resources; then you meet some more monsters and have a slightly harder fight and lose even more resources; then you meet some more monsters etc. Under the 4E paradigm, you meet some monsters and have an easy fight; then you meet some tougher monsters and have a slightly harder fight because the monsters are tougher; then you meet some even tougher monsters etc.

Are you saying the paradigms require this? I can't quite tell what you mean here. In the case of the 4E paradigm, are you saying that an easy fight must be followed by a tougher fight in order for things to be interesting? One of my issues is that I can't see how the easy fight has any meaning at all once your resources have all reset, and given that an easy fight is likely to utilize only encounter-level resources.

Some of this might come down to gaming style: I like to run a fairly open-ended adventure. I don't run a story-telling style per se. I don't know that the BBEG is going to show up at a particular time, it's often the case that NPC actions are contingent on events in the game that I don't know the outcome of until we play. In 4E apparently, my judgements are going to be pressured by the fact that certain situations that weren't so boring in the 3E paradigm are boring in the 4E paradigm. I have to string together even more contrivances in order to make the adventure interesting. If I don't have the BBEG show up after the mook battle, I shouldn't have wasted everyone's time. Granted, for a few seconds you might not know how it goes, but that's it.

Granted, this is a continuum. I don't play out uneventful travel time across great distances. I don't play out trivial battles between 20th level characters and a few low-level bandits. But according to the proposed 4E paradigm, they're actually increasing the list of uninteresting things that I'll have to skip over, and so far shortening the list of interesting things.

Resource management IMO was an interesting part of the game, and it keeps me from having to rely on battles that constantly threaten the lives of the PCs in order to make things interesting.

Maybe I should cut to the chase - healing magic. It might all come down to hitpoints and healing magic. If you can't insta-heal after encounters, then I suppose it's back to a more 3E paradigm. I don't particularly think that giving wizards magic spells instead of a crossbow to rely on makes much difference to the game flow. I like the idea for flavor reasons. I'm not exactly ready to give people a pass on their habit of blowing all of their high level spells in a first few rounds of combat, but I think there could be a decent comprimise.

 

[hong]

IMO that's not exactly and even swap. AFAICT the short-term situation requires more contrivance by the DM. Granted, I guess it's a matter of style but I'm not accustomed to having BBEGs show up miraculously at just the right time for no reason - which is how I interpret this.

Why not? How is it any more contrived than to have the party miraculously wander into his living room just as they're half out of resources? The only difference is that with one setup, the onus is on the party to keep things moving; with the other, it's on the DM.

Or if you don't like the BBEG just showing up unannounced, you can just run it as one big fight against BBEG-plus-minions, all at the same time.

What you're saying matches the snippets of what I've seen from WotC, so AFAICT we at least see them saying the same thing. My problem, as I alluded to above, is that I think it narrows the range of interesting encounters. In the current paradigm, the BBEG showing up just at the right time can still happen, but it's not *required* in order to make the battle with the mooks meaningful.

However, the battle with the mooks is meaningful _only_ if the party decides to keep on going. If they do, great! If they don't, then all that elaborate resource attrition is nullified. Again, the difference is only in who the onus is on to keep things moving.

It's not so much the matter of escalation, it's the *possibility* of escalation that's present in the old paradigm. You had to burn a spell to heal the fighter after an unlucky hit by a kobold, and the question hangs over your head as to whether or not you'll need that spell in the future. In the proposed 4E paradigm, the question is settled after "the encounter is over" (whatever that actually means, but I guess that's another topic)

The issue of uncertainty also happens in per-encounter balancing, but over a shorter time frame. Do I burn a spell this round to heal the fighter, when I might need it next round?

Basically instead of small, individually meaningless fights that only make sense from a design perspective if you string them together correctly, you can have larger, more elaborate fights that make sense even when taken individually.

Are you saying the paradigms require this? I can't quite tell what you mean here. In the case of the 4E paradigm, are you saying that an easy fight must be followed by a tougher fight in order for things to be interesting?

No, I'm saying that IF you like the escalating-challenge paradigm, THEN you can still do it with per-encounter balancing. Personally I think escalating-challenge is silly more often than not, and a relic of the focus on dungeoneering; instead I have lots of one-off, climactic fights. But if that's the kind of thing you like, you can still do it. And yes, IF you want escalating-challenge, then fights have to happen in a particular sequence. The same thing happens with per-day balancing, only in that case the sequence is not in terms of specific fights but that there _is_ a sequence. The onus is on the players to make sure that sequence comes about: if they don't want it, they can just run away and rest up, thus making a mockery of escalating-challenge.

One of my issues is that I can't see how the easy fight has any meaning at all once your resources have all reset, and given that an easy fight is likely to utilize only encounter-level resources.

"Easy" is relative. An easy fight might still be enough to kill someone, or come close to it.

Resource management IMO was an interesting part of the game, and it keeps me from having to rely on battles that constantly threaten the lives of the PCs in order to make things interesting.

Why NOT rely on battles that threaten the lives of PCs? Isn't risk supposed to be part of the game, or so that's what a lot of people keep saying? Where's the excitement if there's no risk?

 

[Rykion]

I think it is interesting to note that there is currently a poll on the 4th ed page asking what rumoured aspects of 4th ed people like. Currently around 64% of the people who have responded like the defocus on Vancian magic. That seems to indicate there are quite a few ENworlders who favor a change in the magic system.

 

[WayneLigon]

I would be ah. . . very surprised, to say the least, if someone could "prove" that Vancian magic *does* cause those things. Because my experiences IRL directly contradict that claim.

My experiences correlate exactly to it, at least as the "15-minute adventuring day" goes. The Vancian system is a guessing game that requires you to metagame somewhat and read the GM's mind for you to attempt to maximize your ability to affect the encounters.

You pick spells and hope that you have the right ones for the job. If you guess wrong, you're stuck with a boatload of useless magic until the next day. So your mage sits around and tries to hit things with a crossbow. Not fun.

OR You find that you're one of the major people that can affect the encounter. UNless you're loaded up exetnsively with all-mass-damage spells, you fire off three or four of those... and you're done. For the day at lower and mid-range levels. The rest of your spells, since they are discrete packets of 'spell' instead of scalable 'powers' either have no chance of affecting the encounter or will not do an appreciable amount of damage.. and you have to save some for the next thing and the next thing.

Two things now happen; either you spent your best spells in the encounter, or you saved them, hoping against hope that something else will utilize your strengths. That isn't really strategizing, it's guessing. At some point, though, the Vancian system means you'll be using that crossbow if the party keeps on going and having encounters. No-one wants to use the crossbow. You picked a wizard because you like tossing around flaming death or penetrating the minds of others, not playing a +0-BAB rogue.

So eventually (especially when you have a part that's heavy in spellcasters) the players are going to say 'OK, we go back to town' after the first room or two when they are out of their best spells. The problem actually increases at higher levels, because so much of what you have becomes useless due to high saves and SR and other factors. By the time you're 12th level, that first couple levels of spells might as well go away. And where do you have your greatest magic potential? Right: in the first couple levels of spells.

You can say 'NO, you keep going'. And the players will either say 'To heck with you, we're leaving' or hand you the character sheets since apparently you know what's best for the PC's than they do. Short game or no players. No fun for anyone.

Getting to do something fun every round isn't possible with the Vancian system and people are finally, finally starting to realize this and that is is possible to have just as much fun as the fighter or rogue - all that needs to change is the system.

 

[gizmo33]

Why not? How is it any more contrived than to have the party miraculously wander into his living room just as they're half out of resources?

It's not more contrived, but then I don't see it as an either-or choice. Up until when they actually meet the BBEG they don't know what their resource requirements are going to be. In the standard dungeon crawling paradigm you don't actually *have the PCs wander" anywhere.

The only difference is that with one setup, the onus is on the party to keep things moving; with the other, it's on the DM.

I don't think there's enough information to say that in the 3E paradigm. In many cases the "dungoen will come to the PCs" if they don't go to it. If a kobold escapes, for instance, and warns the BBEG. Then the fight is meaningful on two levels, whereas it's only in the case that the BBEG gets there within the hazily defined boundaries of "the encounter" that the 4E paradigm is of equal interest.

The 4E paradigm seems to assume that DMs have stopped designing their adventures in ways where the bad guys react in a sentient fashion. James Wyatt's quote counts the daily recharge period as a given, which I think is a consequence of rather superficial adventure design. What 4E is attempting to do is remove the situation where the PCs have to recharge resources, thus removing the requirement from the DM that he plan for this contingency.

In the 3E paradigm there are consequences to not managing daily resources - mainly that you don't achieve daily objectives. The time requirements for encounter-based resources are much more narrow, and the situation where time is a factor become much more contrived. Now I don't see why the "James Wyatt quote" calls out not achieving the daily objective as somehow being unfun, but getting killed is? Because getting killed seems to be the only thing preserved on an increasingly short list of things that can happen to your character.

Or if you don't like the BBEG just showing up unannounced, you can just run it as one big fight against BBEG-plus-minions, all at the same time.

I don't *have* as many things happen as a DM as you imply - I suspect some of this is a gaming style issue. Any kind of perceived pattern to when things happen in my campaign will hurt the versimilitude. BBEGs IMO should fight the PCs when it makes sense, and adding a pressure that certain battles won't be interesting unless that fight happens in a certain way seems like a negative to me.

However, the battle with the mooks is meaningful _only_ if the party decides to keep on going. If they do, great! If they don't, then all that elaborate resource attrition is nullified.

I think that's overstating it - it's nullified eventually no matter what - it can't go on forever. What I'm saying is that significance is maintained longer in the 3E than in the 4E paradigm. You skipped over the fact that the choice to rest and reset is a significant one when it isn't an "insta-boost". Having to find someplace to camp and assess your safety against potentially intelligent foes makes the decision to camp non-trivial. Spending 3 rounds standing around until everyone boosts is pretty trivial by comparison unless things are rigidly scripted.

The issue of uncertainty also happens in per-encounter balancing, but over a shorter time frame. Do I burn a spell this round to heal the fighter, when I might need it next round?

If you're wondering round-to-round whether or not to completely use up an encounter-level resource then I would consider that a tough fight, and hopefully addressed by my comments below.

Basically instead of small, individually meaningless fights that only make sense from a design perspective if you string them together correctly, you can have larger, more elaborate fights that make sense even when taken individually.

In order for fights to be meaningful they must be larger, that's the basic situation with the 4E paradigm. In the 3E paradigm, you don't need to "string them together correctly" AFAICT. The resource management combines with uncertainty about the future to create interesting strategic issues. With an encounter-level "insta-boost", there's really no uncertainty about the future because your use of resources doesn't affect it. (Except within the encounter itself, again, IMO, this is an implicit suggestion that an interesting 4E encounter has to be a potentially deadly one.)

instead I have lots of one-off, climactic fights.

I don't understand how the 3E paradigm fails to support this. The stated problem with the 3E paradigm was that it forced people to rest after the mook-encounters, but if you don't have those then how exactly does the existing system not mesh with the "one grand battle per day" practice?

The onus is on the players to make sure that sequence comes about: if they don't want it, they can just run away and rest up, thus making a mockery of escalating-challenge.

Again, I don't see the onus. Example one: PCs enter the fortress of Sauron - a bunch of mook encounters plus BBEG. If they decide to retreat after mook encounter #1, then they'll have to face the consequences, which could reverberate for some time.

Example two: PCs enter a forgotten tomb without intelligent adversaries. In this case retreating after a mook encounter has no real consequence, unless there are unknown time issues. But then it's probably not the case that a tomb designer designs his guardians/traps to be handled in such a way, and this is according to in-game versimilitude, not some arbitrary pacing forced on the PCs by the game system.

"Easy" is relative. An easy fight might still be enough to kill someone, or come close to it.

? I'm talking about easy from the perspective of the PCs. I can't imagine someone using the term "easy" to describe a fight where they thought they were going to die. IME players can pretty quickly and accurately assess their chances of survivial in most situations - IMO it's a consequence of the game rules (like hitpoints).

Why NOT rely on battles that threaten the lives of PCs? Isn't risk supposed to be part of the game, or so that's what a lot of people keep saying? Where's the excitement if there's no risk?

Because, as I thought everyone with a "killer DM" phase under their belt would know, relying on the threat of death to make things interesting is going to result in a high fatality rate. It's a similar argument to the standard argument that Gygax made against critical tables. Unless you fudge pretty regularly (and I guess that's a big if), there's really no way to keep this going. A perceptible chance of death, over time, results in a near certainty that someone will die. Now granted, if there's resurrection or "redo" type magic, then maybe death is an issue the first or second time, but IME you just can't keep the con going indefinitely.

IME, the transition from "killer DM" to DM happens when you realize that the thrill of risk is enhanced with uncertainty. And *that* is the crux of my issue because instantly recharging resources removes a dimension of uncertainty. There are still ways to add uncertainty to the 4E paradigm, but the list is at least shorter by 1.

I don't mean to be presumptious about your DMing style (which I don't know about), these are just all of the possibilities that I can conceive of. Either there *is* a real risk of death with every encounter, in which case the fatality rate will be high and new characters will be rolled up frequenty (talk about long-term resources), or the risk of death is mitigated by DM fudging, which IME is something the players catch onto in fairly short order.

 

[Minicol]

While I agree somewhat with what you're saying, I think any benefit from the level of strategy provided by managing "per day" resources is outweighed by the hindrance of dealing with the 9:00 -> 9:05 adventuring hours problem.

That looks rather like a bad DMing problem than anything else IMHO.

Anyways, i am the minority, so ...

 

[gizmo33]

Anyways, i am the minority, so ...

The minority being who? Everyone who plays the game the way it was originally designed?

I don't quite understand what the "9:00 to 9:05" problem exactly is.

PCs: That was a tough battle. What time is it?
DM: It's 9:05?
PCs: Ok, well hopefully there's nothing in the dungeon that's picked up our trail. Let's go rest a day. (Other players agree). We go outside, cast Leomund's Secure Shelter, and sleep.
DM: (reviews his design, decides on no encounters) Ok, the day passes uneventfully.
PCs: Alright, we rememorize spells and back into the dungeon we go.
(The End)

Oh the humanity! Is this really a problem? Do DMs make people role-play out the sharpening of their swords? Are these situations that common? And what's really the significant difference between that and:

PCs: That was a tough battle. We wait a round until we hear that "clicking noise" that indicates we've gained back our powers.
DM: (reviews his design, decides on no encounters in that short time): Ok, the round passes uneventfully.
PCs: Alright, we got our spells and hitpoints back, let's go.