Why is it so important?

[Doug McCrae]

I haven't read most of the thread so not sure if this point has been made already.

In 3e it is possible for physical combatants - fighters, barbarians, druids in animal form, etc - to keep going all day long thanks to wands of cure light wounds. It all comes down to money. A 1st level wand costs 750gp for 50 spells. CLW heals 1d8+1hp, 5.5hp on average. So each hp healed costs less than 3gp. It should be easy to make enough money from each fight to cover the costs of hp loss, especially if you tackle foes that only hit on a natural 20.

The only real limit is travel time between foes and finding more of them. This is much less of a problem in a traditional massive dungeon, which is in fact required for physical fighters to shine. Few encounters per day favours casters.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Of course it will. Not in the sense that everybody will suddenly start having six dozen fights before lunch, but in the sense that they will not feel vaguely foolish for forging on after the first fight, despite the rational decision being to stop.

Why, I get the feeling I might have said this before.

Of course you have. But it remains an unsupported statement, whereas the converse view has been massively supported.

Furthermore, by explicitly designing the game around per-encounter, they also remove the issue of classes that can overshadow everyone else by blowing their load all at once. Which I might also have said before.

This may be true, but I haven't noticed that it is a contentious issue.

RC

 

[D.Shaffer]

Your comments on 1a don't make sense. The base assumption, as stated by the designer's, is that characters will be at about 80% capability after every encounter.

Actually, no we dont know this. We know they have said this about WIZARDS but not about other classes at all. I also think the subject is getting a bit to clouded, with people using the argument of 'Whether per encounters will fix the one hour day' as a spring board to attack the entire idea of per encounter abilities and try to convince others that they are 'badwronglessfun.'

As is, I DO believe Per Encounter abilities will solve the 'one hour day' problem, but only in the fact that it will delay it. In my experience, there is a certain threshhold level of resource expenditure which will cause a party to retreat and rest for the day. As long as they do not go below this threshhold, they will continue on. By switching certain resources to a rechargeable model, this slows down the rate of resource expenditure and thus delays the average point at which the threshhold level is reached.

Note, this isnt the ONLY way to decrease the time until threshhold is reached, but it will do so. However, which of these methods is superior will fall down to opinion and playstyle. For my prefered playstyle, I prefer per encounter abilities, so I welcome a shift in that direction.

 

[Jackelope King]

You have Problem A using System 3. I say that I can cure Problem A by using System 4. It therefore follows that I believe that the differences between Systems 3 and 4 can resolve Problem A.

In order to determine whether or not this claim is likely to be true, we need to examine the factors that are known to be different between Systems 3 and 4. Factors that remain the same between both systems are not relevant to such an analysis. They may be very, very relevant to other aspects of gameplay, but not to such an analysis.

Earlier on, both Gizmo33 and I said that nerfing the means to avoid encounters, while making encounters a possible consequence of resting, would deal with the "9-9:30 adventuring day" problem. IOW, we both made a strong claim that a solution to the problem exists within the current ruleset, merely by changing the expectations of those playing the game who are experiencing this problem.

Your additions to my analysis, along with Hong's statement that there is more than one way to have fun in an encounter, are both strong claims that a solution to the problem exists within the current ruleset, merely by changing the expectations of those playing the game who are experiencing this problem. However, unless there is something I missed in your analysis is not present in the current model, your additions to my analysis (1) are indicative of methods in any model that could resolve the problem, and (2) are not indicative of any effects that the changing model has over the current model.

In order to determine whether Wyatt's claim is correct, therefore, they are irrelevant. Not irrelevant to the game, or good DMing, or anything else. My statement that you could use wandering monsters and nerf Rope Trick and Teleport are also relevant to solving the "9-9:15 adventuring day" problem, but not relevant to the discussion of whether or not Wyatt's claim re: per-encounter abilities in 4e will, in fact, solve this problem.

Relevance is based on context.


RC

But the question is whether or not what you reduce the problem to remains relevant enough to model reality. Further, it completely ignores the depletion of resources within an encounter.

Consider, for a moment, the following scenario:

In one day, you have one fight. During that fight, the party expends 60% of its resources. During that fight, both parties expended significant resources, and as the encounter continued, the party was left with fewer and fewer options. It was difficult for them to overcome their enemies in this fight, as shown by the resources expended during the course of the battle. The PCs honestly don't know if they'll survive this one and reach the inn to play drinking games and make dwarf jokes this time. The wizard is down to chucking his weakest spells, and the cleric's healing magic is all but exhausted. The ranger takes an unlucky hit and goes down, and the fighter is down to a quarter of his hit-point total.

And then, at the end of round 13, the fighter crits and drops the BBEG with a lucky swing. Everyone lets out a cheer, for the heroes have won! The heroes are bloodied, bruised, but not beaten. The ranger is dropped, but the cleric managed to stabilize him. He'll survive to fight another day.

My challenge to you:

Identify whether this encounter was run using a per-encounter resource system or a per-day resource system.

 

[hong]

Of course you have. But it remains an unsupported statement,

What, so you think people _will_ suddenly start having six dozen fights before lunch?

whereas the converse view has been massively supported.

This is clearly a new meaning of "massive support" that I wasn't aware of before.

This may be true, but I haven't noticed that it is a contentious issue.

Yes, I've noticed you don't notice a few things.

 

[Jackelope King]

And a thought I had while typing that last response:

We've been hearing a lot about "thresholds" from the designers. What if the per-encounter system is limited in so far as healing is concerned because the healer's at will/per-encounter healing can only bring a character up to the cap for what his current threshold is, while the per-day healing can bringing up to cap for the next threshold? That would certainly be a solution to "the party always being at full hit points".

 

[Merlion]

Your comments on 1a don't make sense. The base assumption, as stated by the designer's, is that characters will be at about 80% capability after every encounter

As far as I am aware, the only thing the designers have stated involving 80% resources is that a wizard who has used up all of his per-day vancian spells will be at 80%

 

[Raven Crowking]

My challenge to you:

Identify whether this encounter was run using a per-encounter resource system or a per-day resource system.

Insufficient information.

However, there is enough information to know that it was a significant battle.

OTOH, since I have stated repeatedly (as have Gizmo33 and others) that the per-encounter model is likely to decrease the range of encounters to win/lose scenarios, it is telling that your example is a win/lose scenario.

Simply targetting per-day resources no longer raises the mechanical challenge beyond the threshold of significance. You need either to target long-term resources (possibly ability damage) or permanent resources (such as character life).

Consider, for a moment, the following scenario:

In one day, you have one fight. During that fight, the party expends 20% of its resources.

You know several things about this fight automatically. It was over 90% likely to use per-encounter resources. Those resources regenerated at the end of the fight. Because of the resource usage, the fight would have been at least somewhat significant in any edition from OD&D up to and including 3.5. Unless there is some other factor to make it significant, it will not be so in 4.0.

RC

 

[hong]

OTOH, since I have stated repeatedly (as have Gizmo33 and others) that the per-encounter model is likely to decrease the range of encounters to win/lose scenarios, it is telling that your example is a win/lose scenario.

How about the range of non-boring encounters?

 

[Merlion]

OTOH, since I have stated repeatedly (as have Gizmo33 and others) that the per-encounter model is likely to decrease the range of encounters to win/lose scenarios, it is telling that your example is a win/lose scenario.
RC

How is this different from now?