Why is it so important?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Combing per encounter and per day resources and At Will powers.

Currently, a wizard that casts spells at all during any kind of encounter will notice that at some point, he is out of usable spells for the next encounter. It's not just that he is missing the most powerful ones, he is also missing the weaker ones. That's because all spells regain only once per day. So, the only way to ensure that your spells last till the moment you _really_ need them means that you don't cast any at all until that point.
But if you don't cast spells, what are you doing at all during that encounter? Acid Flasks and Wands might do something, but do you really want to depend mostly on your alchemical/magical equipment? How effective is that actually at high level? Anyway, If you're happy with this solution, you probably don't really need a change.

But let's say you are unhappy, and think about how you can address your perceived problems. Let's try mixing different "replenishments" for spells:
Per Day, per Encounter and At Will abilities.

Your most powerful spells are still limited per day. A 5th level wizard casts only one Fireball per day. But he can cast one scorching ray per encounter. And he can cast Magic Missile at will.

So, in a typical encounter, you will probably get by fine without your most powerful spells. You throw off At Will powers and your Per Encounter spell and everything works fine.
Only if the encounter is really tough, you will throw your precious daily resource. Then, and only then, you are forced to decide: Do I continue without that spell? Or should we get some rest now?
Since you never know that the current encounter is the really tough one, you will probably usually try not to use your most powerful spell at the beginning of an encounter, only if either the encounter turns out be the tough one, or if you know beforehand.

Sure, the guys that want to be on the real safe side will still want to use the most powerful first and then get some rest. But they would have done so before, too.

If you design your adventure for such a system, you can make a pretty safe assumption that you can string a lot of encounters after each other without needing to fear that the group will rest somewhere between because spells have run out. You can put time constraints in your adventure without worrying that the realities of the game itself get in your way, or that some players have to restrain themselves too much.

Interestingly, you can also put your toughest encounter at any point you like, making it also a lot easier to have an "all or nothing" fight in middle of your adventure - maybe the encounter where the forces of evil unleash an avatar of the demon lord Namem'ayn'otbes'poken to kill the adventurers, and the adventurers need to follow the trail of his summoning cultists back before the invisible dimensional portal to their secret lair closes...
If he characters die, well, all is like in the "old" system. If the characters survive, they can immediately follow their attackers and are just short their most powerful spells...

Note that every time I wrote "spells" might also refer to other rare resources, maybe hit points, action points, second wind or whatever else D&D 4 will have to offer as a "resource"...

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

You forgot to say why.



The more complex the example, the harder it is to get across the point. And, apparently, it is a hard point to get across. Better to start with a simple example, and then extrapolate from there to the more complex example.

RC

Yes, I forgot to explain why. Dinner was ready, so I rushed my response. As an answer, it would be because the first one offers encounters that would not be automatic victories. Unlike a few of my players, I do not enjoy automatic victories and find them to be boring.

As to the hypothetical third example, I agree that it probably is too complex to draw out properly (staying within the parameters of Wyatt's design goals, which don't necessarily point directly to that style), but it may be the most widely accepted possible result of what we know about 4e design. Let's hope that they can come as close as possible to providing something for everyone.

EDIT: I am willing to concede that going by Wyatt's design goals, there is a very big danger that 4e may cause more headaches for DMs, rather than less. I have faith that this will not come to be (speaking of yours and others' scenarios). I don't believe that it will turn out how I want it, either (at least not exactly), but I think it will be close enough to be a very good game (better than 3.x, most likely - but, they are targetting almost every problem that I have with 3.x).

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Regarding the "entirely per-encounter" issue (where all resources are reclaimed) - the reason I assume that is because I largely find the mix of per-encounter and per-daily resources to be nothing more than per-daily resources with a higher threshold of significance/danger for individual encounters. I don't find it significantly different than the current situation for 3.5E in terms of the "9:00-9:15" problem - though I DO think it's potentially different in terms of flavor (wizards use spells instead of crossbows) and balance between classes (both fighters and wizards can adventure for an equal amount of time before resting).

I don't believe it creates the same situation. The reason given for the 9:00-9:15 problem was that DMs find it more fun to throw a REALLY hard encounter against the players first thing in the morning, since that that's a fun encounter (one where you need to use nearly all your healing and damaging spells in order to survive). However, it uses up 80% of the parties resources so they need to rest to get it back.

My experience is that most parties don't rest until down to 20% resources or lower. The above situation reduces them down to 20% in one combat. In the new system, you NEVER reach 20% or your resources, so you never need to rest.

As an example, I've played a Warblade (which has ALL their abilities as per encounter) and I've taken a number of magic items that are usable only a certain number of times per day (such as bracers of quick strike, boots of speed, etc). Even if ALL my magic items were used for the day, there's no way I'd suggest we rest for the night. It just doesn't make sense from a role playing perspective to stop unless my character is too tired to keep going or heading forward without resting is certain death. Most of my powers are usable every combat, so that isn't the case.

Even a "hard" encounter, one that stretches my resources to the limit isn't a reason to stop, since I still have enough to continue. I believe your issue with this is that a "hard" encounter HAS to use by my daily resources in order to be called "hard" and if my daily resources are gone, I'm going to want to rest to get them back in case the next one is "hard".

The difference here is the perceptions. As a warblade, battles were still "hard" when I had to use a number of my abilities to win and my hitpoints were getting low by the end of the combat. It was hard because it was reaching to zone where I might have died. It didn't matter than the cleric had 100% of his healing left. It mattered that the enemies were doing enough damage and surviving long enough that the cleric couldn't cure fast enough to keep everyone in the party alive. We had to worry about whether we rolled too low on this attack roll or the enemy rolled too high on their next one.

Even if the cleric could heal us all to 100% of our hit points AND have 80% of his healing strength left, it still FELT like a hard encounter DURING it.

 

[Merlion]

Combing per encounter and per day resources and At Will powers.

Currently, a wizard that casts spells at all during any kind of encounter will notice that at some point, he is out of usable spells for the next encounter. It's not just that he is missing the most powerful ones, he is also missing the weaker ones. That's because all spells regain only once per day. So, the only way to ensure that your spells last till the moment you _really_ need them means that you don't cast any at all until that point.
But if you don't cast spells, what are you doing at all during that encounter? Acid Flasks and Wands might do something, but do you really want to depend mostly on your alchemical/magical equipment? How effective is that actually at high level? Anyway, If you're happy with this solution, you probably don't really need a change.

But let's say you are unhappy, and think about how you can address your perceived problems. Let's try mixing different "replenishments" for spells:
Per Day, per Encounter and At Will abilities.

Your most powerful spells are still limited per day. A 5th level wizard casts only one Fireball per day. But he can cast one scorching ray per encounter. And he can cast Magic Missile at will.

So, in a typical encounter, you will probably get by fine without your most powerful spells. You throw off At Will powers and your Per Encounter spell and everything works fine.
Only if the encounter is really tough, you will throw your precious daily resource. Then, and only then, you are forced to decide: Do I continue without that spell? Or should we get some rest now?
Since you never know that the current encounter is the really tough one, you will probably usually try not to use your most powerful spell at the beginning of an encounter, only if either the encounter turns out be the tough one, or if you know beforehand.

Sure, the guys that want to be on the real safe side will still want to use the most powerful first and then get some rest. But they would have done so before, too.

If you design your adventure for such a system, you can make a pretty safe assumption that you can string a lot of encounters after each other without needing to fear that the group will rest somewhere between because spells have run out. You can put time constraints in your adventure without worrying that the realities of the game itself get in your way, or that some players have to restrain themselves too much.

Interestingly, you can also put your toughest encounter at any point you like, making it also a lot easier to have an "all or nothing" fight in middle of your adventure - maybe the encounter where the forces of evil unleash an avatar of the demon lord Namem'ayn'otbes'poken to kill the adventurers, and the adventurers need to follow the trail of his summoning cultists back before the invisible dimensional portal to their secret lair closes...
If he characters die, well, all is like in the "old" system. If the characters survive, they can immediately follow their attackers and are just short their most powerful spells...

Note that every time I wrote "spells" might also refer to other rare resources, maybe hit points, action points, second wind or whatever else D&D 4 will have to offer as a "resource"...

This is just the kind of thing I've been getting at, Mr. Dancing Baby.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Just one question about the above statement, if there is no actual risk, doesn't there become a point at which a player realizes this(granted it will take a little time of actual play) and even the "perception" of death starts to fall apart. What I don't get is can't this be accomplished in D&D 3.5...I can send wave after wave of inconsequential low-level CR monsters at the PC's and it will not deplete any significant resources. Or better yet, let the PC's roll or do whatever but ultimately fudge so they win every encounter. This type of play, unless a genre device in something like Star Wars, is just, after the umpteenth time unsatisfying to me as a player and GM.

Well, there IS actual risk. One of the enemies could roll a crit twice in the same combat and therefore you'd have used your emergency button for the combat already and die.

Plus, there is a difference from a perception point of view between:
-The creature who walks up and misses then is taken down by normal attacks
-The creature who walks up and hits for 80% of your hit points but then gets killed when everyone in the group has to use their most powerful damaging ability and then you are able to heal up to full hit points

Even though, essentially, they had the same amount of "risk" involved. And in my experience, no...players never figure out that they are the same thing. There is a major difference between a 5% chance that someone in the group dies and a 0% chance that someone dies.

I guess I just see no point in playing a game, which stresses such tactically oriented things as exact movement, AoO, combat maneuvers, etc., but ultimately makes 90% of the tactical choices I make have no, or such minimal consequences to my actions, that there is little to no risk involved. It seems pointless. Then when I actually do have real risk involved it is a life or death struggle, where the fact that I may have used one of my per-day abilities could mean a TPK. This doesn't sound that "fun" to me.

There ARE consequences though. If you choose to use the ability to give the enemy -5 to hit on his next attack while doing 10 damage, it might end up winning the battle compared to just attacking for 30 damage. But both will feel like you are doing something cool compared to standard attack that only does 10 damage with no other effect.

It's funny to me because I play Exalted and it's pretty much exactly as you describe above, but still has per day resources(essence) and it's whole genre is based around badassitude...the problem it runs into is that the major fights are often a more desperate feeling, life or death struggle, while fighting "mooks" is a breeze. Now this being a "genre" based game it has certain tropes that make it easy for the players to determine that mortal guards are clearly "mooks" and the fact that the Deathknight; Mourner of the East Wind isn't.

I think that the idea in D&D will be that the "mooks" will combine their powers in a way that makes them hard. You might be able to take out that raging barbarian before he can hit you really hard, but what about the Cleric who can bring him back and possibly give him another chance to hit you? What if the Wizard can cast a hold spell on you and make the Barbarian's attack do more damage? You need to worry about all of them, even though they aren't a threat individually.

 

[gizmo33]

So you agree with me when I argue that there's more to an encounter than a binary "attrition?yes/no" setup, that the context of the encounter matters?

I don't konw what you mean here (out of context, ironically). What I think of when I think of context includes the resource issues, and removing daily resources removes this context. There are other contexts that matter that have to do with the world/plot, those things are affected neither way.

What about, as I described, fireballing the enemy when they're clustered together or spread apart?

I compared that to calling AoOs a resource issue - clearly certain attacks are best done at certain times, I consider that more of a tactical issue. Again though, that's out of context and I don't really know why this matters. Hypothetically if you went with daily-only resources, you'd still worry about using your fireball at the right time. Most of this argument seems to me to be something like "well you still can do XYZ", but when I'm arguing against something's removal, this necessarily sway me. Suggest cutting the number of monsters in DnD to 1/10th of the current Monster Manual, and then try to soothe folks by saying "but there are still monsters." In the case of "dimensions of significance" to combat, more is better.

The game no longer supports 4 challenging encounters as well as it does 4 average encounters. The risk of TPK increases exponentially with each subsequent encounter, to the point where it's no longer to my tastes.

But by auto-refreshing resources after each encounter, how does it become challenging at all? Again, you haven't really established a "% chance of death" for me to figure this out.

Why does adding one tough challenge mean that I must now have one fewer average challenges?

Same reason people don't play 5 football games in one day. It's somewhat of a nod to the limits of endurance, and some of the boundaries of reality. Other than that there's no real reason any more than there's a reason why dragons are color coded.

Why does it arbitrarily limit how much the PCs can be challenged in a day to what the designers feel is appropriate?

A number of reasons IMO. First: it's a logical consequence of determining power levels for the monsters and the various levels of character classes. The designers are going to decide that your average first level fighter is not going to kill your average dragon. Secondly, I don't think you can have a floating scale of resource values because these things are balanced across classes. So if it's decided that wizards can cast a spell X times per day, and that's balanced against a rogue's unlimited backstab ability, how are you going to arbitrarily and safely increase spell casting without finding some compensation for rogues - which could be very difficult depending on the nature of the powers you have to work with.

Where have I suggested removing random number generation?

You haven't, but it seems a logical question to ask when the only virtues you establish for a rule change are identical to other changes. It makes me believe that I've missed some crucial factor that distinguishes why you support one and not the other.

You must have missed the part where I discussed the world reacting realistically to the PCs, and the players being forced to respond.

I guess I did miss something. I'm not sure how this relates to my analogy about the 4-armed PCs.

So following your logic, so long as you're one day removed from any given encounter, then none of them were long and brutal, because the PCs current operating state is *indistinguishable* one day after the so-called "long and brutal mission" from that of a cakewalk.

If that were my logic. But by that logic, 10,000 years from the events, since it won't matter, then nothing matters. That's not really my logic. Hopefully my logic carries with it shades of degree. A one minute refresh time is orders of magnitude less significant than a day.

The only difference is how long it takes before they're capable of moving on to the next part of the game.

That's not the only difference, there are others. For example they won't perceive any combat that does not pose a measurable chance of death, or a measurable chance of daily resource expenditure, as a challenging encounter. Now even in the case of daily resource expenditure, if it seems clear that losing a day doesn't matter to the overall mission, it won't matter then either (as Wyatt's blog insinuates AFAICT). There are other qualitative differences I must refer you to my previous 100 posts on that subject

Bah! No crunchy bits are immune to canibalization! Long live the OGL!

 

[gizmo33]

Even if the cleric could heal us all to 100% of our hit points AND have 80% of his healing strength left, it still FELT like a hard encounter DURING it.

Apparently because you stood a measurable chance of dying during the encounter. If this is what now will be considered an interesting encounter in 4E then that would lead me to another chain of reasoning. But so far this point has been somewhat elusive to make, since threat of death seems rather universal in these anecdotal musings yet few times is anyone ever ready to admit that it's basically required in this new way of thinking.

 

[Grog]

Apparently because you stood a measurable chance of dying during the encounter. If this is what now will be considered an interesting encounter in 4E then that would lead me to another chain of reasoning. But so far this point has been somewhat elusive to make, since threat of death seems rather universal in these anecdotal musings yet few times is anyone ever ready to admit that it's basically required in this new way of thinking.

So what if it is? How is that any different from 3E?

Even in a "standard" 3E encounter (4 PCs vs. one monster of CR equal to the APL, no special battlefield characteristics) PCs have a chance of dying. 4 7th level characters vs. a hill giant? You could easily have a PC death. 4 13th level characters vs. a beholder? PC death is a real possibility there, too. And that's with the party at full strength going in.

If your players don't at least have a chance of dying in most battles they face, well, either they're tactical geniuses, or you're throwing them up against exceptionally easy battles.

 

[gizmo33]

So what if it is? How is that any different from 3E?

I can only get through this a step at a time. Either it is or isn't true - then once there is consensus on that we can get down to what the significance is. No sense in being cagey about it. Being different or not different from 3E shouldn't prevent anyone from answering the question. Not wanting to reason through the consequences may perhaps, but that's not a really fair assessment of the situation anymore is it?

Even in a "standard" 3E encounter (4 PCs vs. one monster of CR equal to the APL, no special battlefield characteristics) PCs have a chance of dying.

By chance you mean .0001%? Again, this is equivocating - I've tried to point out "significant chance" although I continue to not hear anything about what folks would consider a reasonable chance of death for a given encounter. We know what the resource expenditure for an EL X encounter is - that's 25%, right?

4 7th level characters vs. a hill giant? You could easily have a PC death. 4 13th level characters vs. a beholder? PC death is a real possibility there, too. And that's with the party at full strength going in.

25% resources is the definition of CR as I've said. Otherwise "easily" means whatever you say it means I guess. The point I'm trying to make is that some of you seem to be saying that a chance of death is now thing that really constitutes a serious encounter. What happens when you take away the reasource issues from an encounter and all you're left with that's remarkable is how close the PCs came to dying. The fact that 3E and 4E will share a least common denominator of "dimensions of interest" for an encounter is not IMO remarkable.

If your players don't at least have a chance of dying in most battles they face, well, either they're tactical geniuses, or you're throwing them up against exceptionally easy battles.

Yes, a chance. Now back to my question about the 4E design.

 

[hong]

Apparently because you stood a measurable chance of dying during the encounter. If this is what now will be considered an interesting encounter in 4E then that would lead me to another chain of reasoning. But so far this point has been somewhat elusive to make, since threat of death seems rather universal in these anecdotal musings yet few times is anyone ever ready to admit that it's basically required in this new way of thinking.

Threat of death is also universal in the per-day balancing mechanic. The whole point of resource attrition is that it makes the last fight that much more risky, hence more fun. The difference is that it assumes players will go through the motions of N not-fun fights before getting to that last fight.