Why is it so important?

[Merlion]

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.

This is a lot of what I've been getting at, put better.

 

[Merlion]

See, this is my problem with your argument, Celebrim: It's too binary.
I disagree that this is really the expected scenario. IME, even serious D&D tacticians back off only once significant or critical resources are expended. Your argument appears to be (and in fact you phrased it almost literally this way earlier in this thread) that "dropping to 99% of resources is going to force a rest." Again IME, the calculus is neither so extreme nor so linear. A party typically (again IME) retreats and rests when hp are low, buffs are exhausted, and the mages have no really decent combat capability to bring to bear. Add to that "essential defenses" like death ward, mind blank, and protection from spells. It's not a case of "Okay guys, Joe is down 10 of his 200 hp and I've got only one 9th-level spell left, so let's leave." A per-encounter system DOES address this issue by allowing critical or significant resources to be replenished to the point that the party doesn't feel the need to retreat.

Moreover, those players who feel a single cantrip or 5 hp damage to be sufficient reason to retreat and rest aren't going to be worse off in a per-encounter/per-day hybrid; they're going to play it exactly the same. Thus, at worst, there's not an iota of difference between a per-encounter/per-day hybrid system and and a straight per-day system. The difference with a hybrid system, to use your example, is that a timed adventure like Ravenloft can be played with the understanding that the party will be weakened, but not entirely gimped with respect to spellcasting and other essential party roles, by the climax of the adventure.

And this is one of the other things I've been getting at, also put better

 

[gizmo33]

Right - but I imagine that your problem with the 9:00-10:06 example is the fact that the PCs can create such huge swathes of destruction in such a short period of time. If you increase the amount of in-game time this takes, doesn't that solve the problem?

I have all kinds of problems. This is one of those situations where the suggestion seems to me to be "redesign your campaign to fit a certain pattern", and unlike designing to deal with PCs camping outside the BBEGs fortress, this one isn't based on common sense but instead on the peculiarities introduced by the rule system.

Basically this will impact city-based and similar campaigns in strange ways, and ultimately having to enforce distance between objectives and limit the PCs ability to travel those distances quickly IMO is precarious solution to a problem that doesn't need to exist in the first place. To be fair, the bulk of the problems with PCs going from noob to god-like in the span of a year were introduced in 3E. But this isn't helping.

Except the fighter also has "Blood Frenzy," which, 1 / day, allows him to do the equivalent of the big fireball (assuming that everything else is equal).

Well then the question is whether or not "blood frenzy/big fireball" is significant or not. Recall that one of Wyatt's beefs is that every encounter but the 4th one in a given day is insignificant. Well it wouldn't be insignificant if wizards simply used a crossbow instead of blowing all of their spells in the first three encounters. But then DMs don't design things that way because encounters that require only "at will/encounter" level resources to overcome are not interesting. Why this somehow is not the case in 4E continues to escape me.

So to address your "blood frenzy" statement, it appears to me to now put the fighter in the same situation as the wizard (though it does address the balancing issue, but at this cost).

And, while, yes, using your at-will Simple Magical Ray Attack may not be all that much different than a crossbow in terms of overall effectiveness (less damage vs. touch attack), it is vastly different in that one is magical and the other is mundane. People who sign up to play wizards generally want more of the former, in my experience.

I am totally cool with this and if this was all that it was about I'd have nothing bad to say about this. My probably is that, IMO, Wyatt is very clear what his issues are, and it's not a matter of mundane vs. magical flavor. It's about resource management and AFAICT he wants to significantly change how it works in order to change the way DnD plays.

In Saga terms, the Jedi can certainly attack with his lightsaber every round and can continue to do so as long as he has Hit Points. However, using a properly timed and placed Force Slam to beat up a horde of battle droids / clone troopers / stormtroopers is fun. And being able to do that once or twice in each combat is fun. Being able to do that once a day is less fun (because it's less likely you'll use it or more likely that once you use it it'll be time to take a sizeable break).

There are two aspects that I see to this paragraph. One is the magical vs. mundane flavor issue. I will readily agree that wizards should be able to use more magical effects during combat, even if it's crossbow powered stuff.

The other aspect is that it what you're saying can be interpreted as hinting at some sort of arms race. IME adventure gaming has a tendency to raise the bar over time. This is why Conan is considered 30th level by designers. There's no real reason IMO why Conan isn't just 9th level except that everyone else has 9th level characters and even though you can kill scads of normal warriors at 9th level, and do things inconceivable in the real world, it's just not special anymore. So if the power aspect of Force Slam is what is interesting, doesn't that just get taken for granted after a while?

The people that I know that like to play wizards prefer them over fighters because (for one reason) they'd rather have a few strategic, important effects on the adventure rather than the consistent slogging that fighters seem to offer. By evening out the wizard's combat ability to consistent slogging, wizards aren't offering what they used to as a class. Making wizard powers a daily resource makes it possible for wizards to evoke interesting effects at critical times - that one big fireball that saves the party. A level of tactical decision making that I don't see in a "100% per-encounter" design. The trade-off is having to camp, et. al. I just don't see any way around this that maintains game balance.

 

[gizmo33]

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..

This, and much else of what he says, is not inherent in the Vancian system. In fact, someone with exprience in 1E can tell you that a lot of the changes in 3E, in terms of save DCs that increase with spell levels, et. al. have significantly affected the situation.

Most of the "Vancian spells" of DnD increase their capabilities, range, damage, etc. by level. All they need to do perhaps is to take a look at smoothing out the power curve so that a 1st level spell cast by a 20th level caster has some useful effect against a 20th level monster.

 

[gizmo33]

A per-encounter system DOES address this issue by allowing critical or significant resources to be replenished to the point that the party doesn't feel the need to retreat.

The day a "critical or significant" resource is replenished per encounter is the day that it stops being a critical or significant resource IMO. Fighters, *right now* have the ability to swing a sword whenever they feel like. That is not a calculation in anyone's decision to rest, nor is it significant in the DMs calculation of what challenges to throw at the players. A fighter's ability is assumed, and so then it becomes *the other* resources that are the important ones. Just try saying "but I can still swing a sword" the next time the party wants to rest.

So what happens here? That hitpoints (and by extension healing magic) become the only significant resource, or do even they respawn with a moment's rest? If the party never feels the need to retreat, then basically all possible 4E outcomes boil down to victory or death?

And in the event that healing magic is a "per encounter" ability, not having a cleric in your party is a death sentence, because the other party just shoots you full of arrows and then runs off and insta-heals while you wait for them to come back or hope you can find them before hand or kill their cleric. I don't like the idea of having to put a certain character class in a fighting force in order to make it credible.

 

[ruleslawyer]

The day a "critical or significant" resource is replenished per encounter is the day that it stops being a critical or significant resource IMO. Fighters, *right now* have the ability to swing a sword whenever they feel like. That is not a calculation in anyone's decision to rest, nor is it significant in the DMs calculation of what challenges to throw at the players. A fighter's ability is assumed, and so then it becomes *the other* resources that are the important ones. Just try saying "but I can still swing a sword" the next time the party wants to rest.

I see. So a significant ability is a per-day ability, and therefore a per-day system is required for there to be significant abilities replenished? Tautology, anyone?

So what happens here? That hitpoints (and by extension healing magic) become the only significant resource, or do even they respawn with a moment's rest? If the party never feels the need to retreat, then basically all possible 4E outcomes boil down to victory or death?

That "only" and "never" are again big red flags to your argument.

In short, you appear to be missing the point, which is, in short, that a party of PCs under average expectations will forge onward until a significant portion of its resources is expended. If a PC party can recover sufficient resources after an encounter to downgrade "significant portion" to "slight portion," then it will be able and willing to continue to additional encounters.

For players with the (IMO, extreme bordering on absurd) tactics you're suggesting (i.e. "I've blown one powerful and non-replenishable spell! We must rest!"), a per-encounter/per-day hybrid doesn't change outcomes at all as opposed to a per-day-only scenario, so what's the difference? The point I'm making is that a) most groups IME don't play that way, and b) what Celebrim is (and now you are) proposing is the most extreme set of players vis-a-vis resource conservation preference. So, AFAICT, per-encounter abilities can only alleviate the five-minute-adventuring-day factor; my experience suggest that, in fact, they will provide a huge amelioration to that factor, and moreover will assist DMs and PCs greatly in planning and dealing with time-sensitive scenarios, respectively.

 

[Doug McCrae]

9:00-9:15: PCs fight the Armageddon of all battles
9:16: PCs rest up and are fully charged
9:17-9:25: PCs fight another Armageddon battle
9:26: PCs realize all monsters within a mile radius have been killed. Push loot into portable hole.
9:27: PCs teleport to next dungeon. Rest in order to recover teleport spell.
9:28-9:30: PCs fight another Armageddon battle
9:31: PCs level up
9:32: PCs teleport to King's castle, ask for new quest
9:33: PCs adventure through next dungeon
9:34-10:00: PCs fight a handful more Battles to End all Battles. Level up a few more times.
10:01: PCs teleport back to King. Usurp throne.
10:05: PCs heal after fighting King's army
10:06: PCs retire.

Much the same is possible in 3e, but occurring over days rather than hours. In fact beginning the game at 1st level and hitting 20th after six months is a noted problem.

Also your example assumes teleport is a 'per encounter' ability which seems highly unlikely.

In superhero games, which often have 'at will' abilities I've only seen the above happen once, a campaign where there was no downtime. It was a GM mistake, which the players eventually complained about.

 

[Doug McCrae]

In 3E, I'll have 1 Big Fireball per day

I really hope that's the name of the ability in 4e, not some cr@p like 'fiery strike'.

The sudden feats from Complete Arcane were one use per day. I used to play a wizard with Sudden Maximise, which I often did use with fireball, giving me '1 Big Fireball' per day. Similar to 4e.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'm saying that the noose continues to tighten, so to speak, as the amount of game world elements that the players have to interact with is reduced.

And that, in a nutshell, is my biggest complaint about 3.X as well (a major component of my Sense of Wonder threads).

 

[gizmo33]

I see. So a significant ability is a per-day ability, and therefore a per-day system is required for there to be significant abilities replenished? Tautology, anyone?

Significant in terms of resource management. As far as "Tautology" goes, I'm putting things into two categories, "significant" and "less so". You may or may not agree with my classifications, but your idea here that there is a logic problem completely escapes me.

"I see. So balls are round, and therefore something has to be a ball to be round." Not only is that not what I'm saying, I'm not sure it's a tautology.

That "only" and "never" are again big red flags to your argument.

I was hoping the "IF"s would be big red flags too. At times I'm trying to talk about different scenarios to try to pin down exactly how you guys see this working.

In short, you appear to be missing the point, which is, in short, that a party of PCs under average expectations will forge onward until a significant portion of its resources is expended. If a PC party can recover sufficient resources after an encounter to downgrade "significant portion" to "slight portion," then it will be able and willing to continue to additional encounters.

If that really were the point then why's the word "retreat" in there? There are parts of what you're saying that don't match what you're now saying the point is. In any case, at worse I'm just simply not addressing what you're saying. I don't have an issue with what you're saying the current point is, seems pretty sensible - though I do think that Celebrim is saying pretty much the same thing and this is really down to a case of what you think is "significant".

For players with the (IMO, extreme bordering on absurd) tactics you're suggesting

I'm not suggesting any tactics. In fact I don't really recognize what you say I'm saying, maybe you're getting mine and Celebrim's posts confused. I am interested in one thing you've said, and it has a bearing on my concern - and that is: you say that you're exprience shows you that the per-encounter thing alleviates the 9:00-9:15 problem. What experience? Is this the Star Wars system?