Why is it so important?

[Celebrim]

What's more, most of the time I only had one encounter per day so even the per-day stuff didn't matter.

Hong pwned himself.

Actually, its been a rather hong on hong frag fest. I've barely had time to fire a shot for all the red on red fire.

 

[hong]

Hong pwned himself.

Tch.

Actually, its been a rather hong on hong frag fest. I've barely had time to fire a shot for all the red on red fire.

Tch, tch.

 

[Celebrim]

Looks like I'm not missing the point. You're just invoking the same tautology. A per-day resource does not necessarily constitute a significant portion of the party's resources, especially in a system in which several critical resources reset after each encounter.

Except, of course, that he's attempting to claim that per-day resources automatically constitute a "significant portion of the party's resources" simply because they're per day. Doesn't work that way, especially once you shift a large number of resources over to the per-encounter paradigm.

But I'm not going to make the same argument more than twice, so I'm done here.

Which is fine with me, but I'd like to point out that whether or not RC missed your point, it doesn't really matter because it doesn't really impact the problem I (and presumably RC) has with the 'per encounter' system. In the case that none of the per day resources are significant (not even hit points? healing? you highest level spell/most powerful manuever? teleport? raise dead?), that is to say that none of them have an important impact on your ability to win the next encounter, then for all practical purposes this is equivalent to a strict 'per encounter' system. As I've already discussed, such a system would involve no real resource management at all, and such a system would therefore even more strongly encourage everything to be riding on one big encounter than the current system. Granted, as I've already mentoined, you'd have less 'unease' because the imaginary rest period is more plausible, but there are other issues. I haven't really discussed what is wrong with that yet, but lets do so now.

When resource management goes away as a skill (operational level as opposed to tactical level planning), then in order for any encounter to be 'interesting' it must involve considerable risk of tactical failure in and of itself. What that means is that every 'interesting' encounter involves the possibility of player/party death. Now, there isn't necessarily anything wrong with every fight being a 'real fight', but what it will tend to do is increase character fragility. In other words, with every fight being a real fight that stretches character resources to the utmost, the margin of error is small and there is a serious risk that plain bad luck will decide the encounter. One of the things that is true of 3rd edition play that wasn't true of 1st edition play is that characters don't get less brittle as they increase in level the way that they did in 1st edition. In 1st, high level characters got hard to kill because they were relatively sheltered from bad luck. Thier saves would get absolutely better and better (which is very different than merely relatively better), they would get more and more hit points relative to the amount of damage caused by blows from monsters, and so forth. In 4e, it sounds like this problem is going to be even more extreme, and I still think that its going to lead to an even more extreme emphasis on the 'one big encounter' than you find even in 3rd.

Anyway, if that is your preferred way of play (and it seem's to be for example hong's) then I'm fine with that you will probably be fine with 4e. My point is simply that 4e seems to be trying to fix problems I don't have, and seems to be designed to not support a style of play I have been using for 20 years or more.

Before I finish, let me head off one annoying potential counter argument, and that is that I've not defined 'interesting' correctly, and that interesting is determined by adventure design and whether it advances the story and the player goals. The reason that this is annoying is that AFAIK, I'm the first one that brought up that line of argument in this thread so clearly I'm not unaware of that. But, in the context which I first brought this up I was point out how the real fix to the problem was changes in adventure design, not changes in the mechanics and that as such, if you fixed the real problem then you didn't have the problem regardless of the mechanics you used, and conversely if you didn't fix the real problem (bad adventure design/DMing) then it wouldn't matter what mechanics you'd use. Now, I have people on the other side of this argument suggesting, "Oh, yeah. Well it doesn't matter if the mechanics don't fix the problem, you can just use better adventure design." Well, duh, that's been my point all along.

 

[hong]

Which is fine with me, but I'd like to point out that whether or not RC missed your point, it doesn't really matter because it doesn't really impact the problem I (and presumably RC) has with the 'per encounter' system. In the case that none of the per day resources are significant (not even hit points? healing? you highest level spell/most powerful manuever? teleport? raise dead?), that is to say that none of them have an important impact on your ability to win the next encounter, then for all practical purposes this is equivalent to a strict 'per encounter' system. As I've already discussed, such a system would involve no real resource management at all, and such a system would therefore even more strongly encourage everything to be riding on one big encounter than the current system.

You can have one big encounter. Or you could have multiple big encounters, each achieving a part of the overall objective.

You could fight all of these encounters in one day. Or you could pull back, do something after the first big encounter, and come back the next day (or the next week).

It's up to you. If each encounter does not depend on previous encounters for its tactical significance, then designing the overall adventure becomes so much easier, as does managing the consequences if the party deviates from the anticipated route.

 

[Imaro]

Huh?

Earlier you said your fights were interesting because of the reasons for the fights or the locations...yet not once because the interactions between opponent and PC's were tactically or strategically interesting. What's unclear about this, it's a DM either creating story or uping the EL by increasing the danger, which wouldn't be necessary if the opponents and PC's actual fight was an interesting excercise. It might add to it, but this shouldn't be the reason the fight is interesting.

I had mooks too. In one fight I had an 11th level necromancer summon up about 20 skeletons (which I knew perfectly well would be completely useless); in another fight, the group met 20 wights. The fun in mooks is not in the tactical challenge, but in the opportunities for badassitude. Think Legolas and Gimli competing to see how many orcs they could kill. For the wight encounter, I amused myself by betting on how many rounds it would take the PCs to kill them all (and move on to the two 10th level vampires, who were much more dangerous).

I, as well as my players, can only take so much badassitude in this vein when playing D&D, YMMV of course. When you're selecting appropriate encounters that should challenge the PC's it shouldn't be a thoughtless excercise in rolling dice. In fact, like I said...it becomes boring and less memorable for me and my players. Why? because it's not like LotR...at the table we are consciously aware that there is no risk, no excitement, no real challenge. Once in a while these type of encounters are ok...but if this is the norm, well all I can say is there are games that do this type of badassitude alot better IMHO.

Now if you're going to meet 20 skeletons or wights in EVERY fight, then that could certainly become boring. But they also had fights with, for example, ~12 8th level thugs, who while individually outclassed, could still lay down some serious hurt. Just because a fight involves large numbers doesn't mean there's automatically no serious threat.

You're missing my point...in SW the regular "appropriate" encounters play out like the mook scenario. It's only when you ramp up the power level above the PC's that it gets interesting, and then only because they have to actually think about how to use their powers in a dwindling resource fashion(hey, that's what 3e does on the large scale). The problem with this is that they aren't going to get a chance to rest if they mess up...they're dead. It's either succeed with what you have or die, without any type of inbetween where a player can assess after say 40% of his resources are gone and decide to rest.

Nope. Note the dragon shaman, and the crusader can also heal in a pinch. What's more, most of the time I only had one encounter per day so even the per-day stuff didn't matter.

Don't know about the Dragon Shaman...but are you talking about the Devoted Spirit maneuvers of the Crusader? If so that ability isn't guaranteed and forces you to take certain risks or be in specific situations(ie like combat where you're probably taking damage as well)...it's a far cry from a pure healing ability that refreshes with every "encounter" or every minute.

 

[hong]

Earlier you said your fights were interesting because of the reasons for the fights or the locations...yet not once because the interactions between opponent and PC's were tactically or strategically interesting. What's unclear about this, it's a DM either creating story or uping the EL by increasing the danger, which wouldn't be necessary if the opponents and PC's actual fight was an interesting excercise. It might add to it, but this shouldn't be the reason the fight is interesting.

I don't see why a "fight" should be treated as purely a tactical exercise, shorn of all in-game context or exogenous factors. Ultimately, fights are there because they're fun. I don't know anyone who derives ALL of their D&D enjoyment from the tactical side of things. Fights can be fun for reasons other than just exercising your wargamer gene.

I, as well as my players, can only take so much badassitude in this vein when playing D&D, YMMV of course. When you're selecting appropriate encounters that should challenge the PC's it shouldn't be a thoughtless excercise in rolling dice. In fact, like I said...it becomes boring and less memorable for me and my players. Why? because it's not like LotR...at the table we are consciously aware that there is no risk, no excitement, no real challenge.

What, so while reading/watching LotR, you weren't consciously aware that there was also no risk, no excitement, no real challenge?

Once in a while these type of encounters are ok...but if this is the norm, well all I can say is there are games that do this type of badassitude alot better IMHO.

Eh. That doesn't mean D&D can't steal some of their schtick.

You're missing my point...in SW the regular "appropriate" encounters play out like the mook scenario. It's only when you ramp up the power level above the PC's that it gets interesting, and then only because they have to actually think about how to use their powers in a dwindling resource fashion(hey, that's what 3e does on the large scale). The problem with this is that they aren't going to get a chance to rest if they mess up...they're dead. It's either succeed with what you have or die, without any type of inbetween where a player can assess after say 40% of his resources are gone and decide to rest.

I'm not sure why an issue with what SW considers an appropriate encounter should be considered a problem when it comes to 4E.

Don't know about the Dragon Shaman...

PHB2 class, can heal big loads of hit points per day, as well as remove disease, poison, curses, energy drain, etc etc.

but are you talking about the Devoted Spirit maneuvers of the Crusader? If so that ability isn't guaranteed and forces you to take certain risks or be in specific situations(ie like combat where you're probably taking damage as well)...it's a far cry from a pure healing ability that refreshes with every "encounter" or every minute.

Note that I often only had one encounter per day. Even when I didn't, I tended to just handwave any hit point loss anyway.

 

[Dalberon]

The simple problem I have with all this "resource management problem" posts right now is that I never ran adventures that were based around the simple entering and plundering of a dungeon outside of any other story element.

I think a good deal of us fit into this catagory as playing the game for *only* the combat portion does not appear entertaining to me. For those that are into the combat oriented game, I don't imagine their play will change much from editiion to edition (no down time or down time, they still are doing nothing but going from one combat encounter to the next...the amount of time will be determined as fluff or not by how the DM runs the game)

Like most 4e discussions these are seeming more like arguement for arguement's sake.

 

[Henry]

Ah, I have it. You're thinking of "time critical" as meaning the PCs have hours in which to finish a task. They start at 9 am, and have to get out by 5 pm. A time-critical adventure with a heavy emphasis on per-encounter abilities will be more likely to be counted in MINUTES, where every round counts. You can spend time hunting down the last few orcs who ran away, or you can get on with the mission. Which is as it should be. In a time-critical adventure, the critical resource should be... time.

(And no, it doesn't have to be hard to keep track of time. It can be as simple as keeping track of the total rounds spent in combat, and if it goes above a certain number, the party loses. It's an abstract solution, but if handled well, the players never have to notice.)

Exactly! Some of the most classic adventures of D&D's past used the "hour-by-hour" scenario, the most notable being "Dungeons of the Slave Lords", as well as many of the "We have to stop the marriage/occult ritual/signing of the treaty before noon!" type of adventures. Others not as classic have included murder mysteries, like the one from an early issue of Dragon, or -- heck, even shows on TV like 24 have used hour-by-hour frames of reference, rather than minute by minute, to make the viewer feel the pressure. Minute by minute can be used, but having it be the ONLY way to have a time-critical scenario is just too limiting, not to mention (in my opinion) giving NO chance to catch one's breath narratively. (I've seen some action sequences in movies cut like that, but it's usually just too frenetic usually to keep it up).

I'm also concluding that you and I may never see eye to eye on some of the issues, based on your comments on "simulationism" and things like Undermountain, which along with Castle Greyhawk I consider staples of the whole D&D experience - they might be contrived by real-world standards, but they aren't contrived in a world that lives, eats, breathes, and poops fantasy. What was that quote about thinking about fantasy too hard?

I personally just don't see it as a good solution that if you assume it "contrived" then you aren't worried about "contrived" results coming from it. Narratively, I'm just too concerned with how "per encounter" classes are going to affect tropes that have been a part of the game for over thirty years. I'm willing to wait and see, but the answer lies in just how far they go "per-encounter" with it.

 

[hong]

Exactly! Some of the most classic adventures of D&D's past used the "hour-by-hour" scenario, the most notable being "Dungeons of the Slave Lords", as well as many of the "We have to stop the marriage/occult ritual/signing of the treaty before noon!" type of adventures. Others not as classic have included murder mysteries, like the one from an early issue of Dragon, or -- heck, even shows on TV like 24 have used hour-by-hour frames of reference, rather than minute by minute, to make the viewer feel the pressure. Minute by minute can be used, but having it be the ONLY way to have a time-critical scenario is just too limiting, not to mention (in my opinion) giving NO chance to catch one's breath narratively. (I've seen some action sequences in movies cut like that, but it's usually just too frenetic usually to keep it up).

Eh. Roleplaying is an asynchronous medium, unlike TV and movies. You can take all the time you like in between scenes, assuming the DM isn't being a hardcase and enforcing some kind of realtime <-> game time relationship.

I'm also concluding that you and I may never see eye to eye on some of the issues, based on your comments on "simulationism" and things like Undermountain, which along with Castle Greyhawk I consider staples of the whole D&D experience - they might be contrived by real-world standards, but they aren't contrived in a world that lives, eats, breathes, and poops fantasy. What was that quote about thinking about fantasy too hard?

Hong's 2nd law of fantasy: Thinking too hard about fantasy is bad.
Corollary: You can find a handwave for anything.
Rejoinder: Some handwaves are better than others.

Narratively, I'm just too concerned with how "per encounter" classes are going to affect tropes that have been a part of the game for over thirty years.

You'll note that I'm not crying about the erinyes either.

 

[Celebrim]

You can have one big encounter. Or you could have multiple big encounters, each achieving a part of the overall objective.

You could fight all of these encounters in one day. Or you could pull back, do something after the first big encounter, and come back the next day (or the next week).

It's up to you. If each encounter does not depend on previous encounters for its tactical significance, then designing the overall adventure becomes so much easier, as does managing the consequences if the party deviates from the anticipated route.

I can have one big encounter. Or I could have multiple big encounters, each achieving a part of the overall objective.

I could fight all of these encounters in one day. Or, if the situation allowed it, I could pull back, do something after the first big encounter, and come back the next day (or the next week).

It is up to me. Again, this is attempting to fix a problem I don't have.

Finally, if each encounter does not depend on previous encounters for its tactical significance, then designing the individual encounters becomes much harder, as does managing the consequences if the party has a string of bad luck (because each encounter was never intended in itself to fully stretch the party anyway).