Why is it so important?

[pemerton]

The 10 minute adventure day might also be result of aspects like quicken spell and more swift spells. These spells are balanced by the assumption that their effects are lessened (Swift Spells usually) or they cost more (Quicken Spell). On a pure power level, this is in fact the case, I think. But on the resource management side, they mean that you can spend more of your resources during an encounter. But since your resources do not replenish after the encounter, casters are out of spells even earlier.

That is almost certainly true. I GM Rolemaster, which has a PP system for spell-casting, and the more PPs per round that a PC spellcaster can spend, the more s/he does, because more (and more powerful) actions = greater chance of victory.

And while the PP system does answer some of Merlion's complaints relating to the flavour of magic, it does nothing to eliminate the 10-minute day sybndrome.

An interesting variant on the RM rules, which I have not GMed yet, is HARP. In HARP higher level attack spells, although having more powerful effects if they succeed, actually have a reduced, rather than an increased, chance of success. This therefore suggests a type of negative feedback system, in which it will not always be rational to spend the most number of PPs possible in a round. It is possible, therefore, that HARP avoids the 10-minute day syndrome (at least to some extent).

 

[pemerton]

What the system we are currently speculating about seems to imply is that the basic unit of measurement for resource management is shifting from the macro-management of the "day" to the micro-management of the "round".

<snip interesting discussion>

Long-term resource management is one approach. So is short-term round-based resource management. I find that the latter better promotes the sort of games I want to play and run because they are less-likely to enforce artificial, rules-based restrictions on pacing.

If it's a tough battle?? I've made this point many times and it keeps getting ignored: it's really ONLY if it's a tough battle. And so really this is just coming down to a response of "well, every combat I'll make sure that my players are agonizing over their per-encounter resource usage" which is the same thing as saying you'll make all your encounters have a significant chance of PC death associated with them (and then maybe fudge it away the first few times).

Jackelope King, that's a very clear explanation of the change in focus that per-encounter resources will bring.

Gizmo33, that's a very clear statement of what you take the implications of that change in focus to be - I take it (from your earlier posts) that the thought is that no rational player will care about how they manage their per-encounter resources if nothing turns on good or poor management of them (because the encounter poses no real threat even if there is a poorly-managed deployment of resources).

I'm not sure I entirely agree - some players like to optimise their tactics for the sake of it, even when sub-optimal tactics could still deliver a win. And you also seem to be excluding the possibility that there can be other implications of sub-optimal tactical choices, such as "If the combat lasts longer than X rounds, unhappy event Y comes about."

Still, the overall desire to have more dramatic combats, in the sense of threatening PC death, does seem to be there in James Wyatt's post, so even if you are on the whole correct this is probably not going to be taken as an objection to the per-encounter approach.

 

[Hussar]

There is a way to do /round resources that still have /day implications. The Binder is a good example of this. You pick a suite of abilities for the day. Yes, in that day, you can do whatever your vestige lets you do, all day long. However, you may pick a vestige that is less useful on any given day (feats can mitigate this choice).

Thus, you still have /day resource management - "Which suite of abilities do I choose today" while not having to worry about running out of abilities in 10 minutes.

 

[pemerton]

The idea you're talking about is interesting but I don't find it to conflict much with the resource situation. It's a question of how powerful you want story elements to be vs. common sense (not that they'll always conflict, but sometimes they will). Now you can design your campaign/rules/etc. to say that every mortal has some innate psychic ability that is greater than magic items, so using your father's cutless is more powerful than the +1 sword.

I don't see that "common sense" or "psychic ability" comes into it. The sort of mechanics I'm talking about are intended to be purely metagame, in the sense that they do not model anything in the gameworld. The reason the PC's ancestral sword gives a +1 dice bonus is not for any in-game reason, but because the player, who is outside the gameworld, has decided that this issue of ancestry is one of the narrative theme's s/he wants to explore in her play.

Still, whatever rules you make will still just create a new set of tatical considerations.

Perhaps, but they will not necessarily be resource-management considerations, for the reasons I gave in my earlier post above. If the rules allow the PCs to generate the relevant thematic benefit more or less at will (as they do, for example, in TRoS) then there is no resource management required. Rather, the question a player has to answer is "What theme do I want to explore?" Once that question is answered, the mechanics of the game support the player's exploration of that theme through his/her PC's actions (eg by giving bonus dice, or Fate Points that can only be expended while pursuing the chosen theme, or whatever).

 

[gizmo33]

Thus, you still have /day resource management - "Which suite of abilities do I choose today" while not having to worry about running out of abilities in 10 minutes.

I think abilities means useful abilities in this case. So, for example, if someone chooses "fire spells at will" as their ability for that day, and then realizes 2 encounters into the adventure that the whole evil castle is staffed by fire-resistant creatures, then they'll leave the castle and find a place to camp in order to choose different spells. In that way, this type of resource management would have the same effect as the other.

 

[Grog]

I find this to be unsubstantiated. I could just as easily say "the key time frame" is something else, provide no actual context for it. The only thing I'll say in defending the idea that the "after battle" time frame is more significant is that it lasts longer, and also is subject to much greater uncertainties.

The context is the per-encounter abilities that we're talking about. This makes the battle itself the key time frame with respect to those abilities.

Suppose we were talking about 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition's per-day abilities. Well, the use of those abilities doesn't impact the next day or any of the days afterward (call it the "after day" time frame). And I could just as easily say that the "after day" time frame is more significant because it lasts longer and is also subject to much greater uncertainties.

But that doesn't change the fact that the key time frame for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition's per-day abilities is the given day on which they're used. Just as the key time frame for 4E's per-encounter abilities is the given encounter in which they're used.

If it's a tough battle?? I've made this point many times and it keeps getting ignored: it's really ONLY if it's a tough battle. And so really this is just coming down to a response of "well, every combat I'll make sure that my players are agonizing over their per-encounter resource usage" which is the same thing as saying you'll make all your encounters have a significant chance of PC death associated with them (and then maybe fudge it away the first few times).

Well, depending on how they're implemented, the introduction of action points may mitigate the risk of PC death to some degree.

And pmerton already pointed out that there can be other consequences to poor tactical choices on the part of the PCs. I know from experience that, even if a battle doesn't start out as a life-or-death situation for the PCs, bad tactical decisions can turn it into one very quickly.

Me neither, this seems to me to be beside the point that we've been making.

The person I was responding to said that any 4E fight which didn't impact the PCs post-fight resources was inconsequential and would probably just end up being handwaved through. I see no reason to believe that that will be the case.

 

[Hussar]

I think abilities means useful abilities in this case. So, for example, if someone chooses "fire spells at will" as their ability for that day, and then realizes 2 encounters into the adventure that the whole evil castle is staffed by fire-resistant creatures, then they'll leave the castle and find a place to camp in order to choose different spells. In that way, this type of resource management would have the same effect as the other.

True. But, after that day of rest, you can continue on all week long. Previously, you'd still have to rest each and every day to get your spells back. This way, once you find a tactic that works, you can continue with that tactic indefinitely.

Also, TOM introduces feats which allow you to switch your "suite" during the day, although it imposes some penalties for doing so. Perhaps a similar mechanic could be used for casters. You can pick Suite A and it works all day long as advertised. But, if you find that Suite A is ill suited, then you can switch to Suite B but suffer penalties for the rest of the day. Not crippling penalties, because that would just force PC's to camp again. But, penalties that are just strong enough to be felt, but, not too strong.

And, yeah, that's a fine line to walk.

 

[gizmo33]

Once that question is answered, the mechanics of the game support the player's exploration of that theme through his/her PC's actions (eg by giving bonus dice, or Fate Points that can only be expended while pursuing the chosen theme, or whatever).

Ok, I think I see what you're describing now. You are describing something that is very much in the "story-teller" style of gaming. It's not my particular style, but I at least see a strong degree of consistency between the rules you favor and the outcome they are designed to produce. This is not the case with the "per-encounter" stuff on this thread IMO.

BTW - I read Monte's comments on the DnD spell system on the link that you posted and I find it strangely as paradoxical as a lot of the comments on this thread. He defines certain types of adversity (like running out of resources) as "unfun" without giving me a clear sense of how distinguishes between "fun" and "unfun" adversity. He talks about how resting to recover resources can interfere with the ongoing "plot" of the adventure - was "plot" really covered in the 3E DMG as a major consideration for adventure design? When did DnD become a story-teller game, I wonder?

But then he turns around and says something like "but daily resource management is a cool part of the game and something I wish all character classes had". The change I found to be startling and weird. Why in the world would he say resource management is unfun and that it interferes with some important aspect of the game but then turn around and say it's a good thing?

Anyway, it didn't make any sense to me, probably because he really didn't explain his statements with any substance. Most of his statements were made, AFAICT, with a sort of assumption that the reader would share his preferences. If that's not it, I'm stumped.

 

[gizmo33]

Suppose we were talking about 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition's per-day abilities. Well, the use of those abilities doesn't impact the next day or any of the days afterward (call it the "after day" time frame). And I could just as easily say that the "after day" time frame is more significant because it lasts longer and is also subject to much greater uncertainties.

I see. If I understand you now, what you're saying seems pretty logical - the interval of time in which the PCs regain resources is the key time frame. My comments could equally be understood in the context of "what happens when you make 'the encounter' they key time frame in a DnD game".

Well, depending on how they're implemented, the introduction of action points may mitigate the risk of PC death to some degree.

Implementing mitigating factors for failure simply changes the perception of risk (which is part of the problem with the "exclusive per-encounter abilities" scheme). To say that an encounter is interesting because it proposes a chance of death, and then to redefine death as something that's recoverable ultimately changes nothing. Now PCs are leaving the dungeon after 15 minutes because they need to recover action points, or they're not returning at all because action points are a lifetime resource, or you make action points an encounter-level resource to solve the problem.

Now you could probably say something like "but an encounter can be perceived as being dangerous without PCs having to use action points", which leads round about to another frequent topic in this debate, which is my final point on this post.

And pmerton already pointed out that there can be other consequences to poor tactical choices on the part of the PCs. I know from experience that, even if a battle doesn't start out as a life-or-death situation for the PCs, bad tactical decisions can turn it into one very quickly.

I give my players some credit for being reasonably intelligent people. That means if they make a tactical mistake that makes the encounter deadly, that chance of a mistake would be a reasonable part in the overall assessment of the difficulty of the encounter. In other words, IMO there's no such thing as an easy encounter that's suddenly deadly because of a tactical decision - I would just simply call that a tough encounter. Or look at it this way: playing a chess master is probably really easy until you make a tactical mistake, and then you lose. I think it's equivocation to call playing a chess master anything other than tough.

The person I was responding to said that any 4E fight which didn't impact the PCs post-fight resources was inconsequential and would probably just end up being handwaved through. I see no reason to believe that that will be the case.

I've been one of those people saying that. Other than "no" I haven't seen much of a reason why we're wrong on this. The evidence for my position exists in the way people currently assess risk in DnD, which is the reason that people consider the "4 goblins vs. 10th level fighter" encounter to be not worth playing - and previous posts have tried to make the comparison in detail. The factors that make this so seem to not change based on the rule changes proposed for 4E, yet some people claim that, but so far I haven't seen any reason for it.

 

[gizmo33]

And, yeah, that's a fine line to walk.

Sure is!

If I'm a player in the game, then I make the change to my abilities. It either causes an insignificant penalty, in which case I ignore it so who cares. Or, it causes a significant one in which case I walk outside the dungeon and camp with no consequence. Or I camp, and there is a consequence in which case one has to wonder what the problem was to begin with.