Why is it so important?

[Grog]

I agree, I think RC is oversimplifying here what we've both said at length. Can't blame him, he's had to say the same thing 100 times.

That's what happens when you don't listen to the arguments being made against you.

In any case, I can speak for myself:
> I don't think nerfing certain spells like rope trick means that the party can no longer evade detection. It's just that in this thread the anti-resource-management folks have treated resting as a given and said that their monsters typically can't deal with spells like ropetrick. Thus, there's some room in between the extremes of "always effective" and "completely useless"

Fine. Say the party can only evade detection while resting some of the time. All this means is that you've moved from guaranteeing a TPK all of the time, to guaranteeing a TPK some of the time. Maybe that's an improvement, but it's not a significant one.

Seriously, what do you expect to happen when you hit the PCs with wandering monsters once all their resources are expended?

> Secondly, the current system does not mandate that you rest after 4 fights. It predicts that as a likely outcome. Spinning in this way IMO is misleading, because it makes it seem more arbitrary and artificial than it is. It's not as artificial because CR is the very benchmark that you use to measure difficulty and resource usage. The purpose of CR is to allow the DM to estimate challenges, and if daily resources are an important part of the game system then it only makes logical sense that the impact on them is measured in terms of average result.

Yes. And the average result of having four CR-appropriate encounters in 3E is that the PCs will have expended most or all of their resources and need to rest afterward. So we're back to where we were before - the PCs have to rest, you don't let them, and they die in their next fight. This is the average result of the system you propose.

 

[Raven Crowking]

That's no solution to the problem. 3.X is designed so that the players will have to rest after every four (CR-appropriate) encounters. If they have expended all their resources, they have to rest, and if you don't let them, you basically guarantee a TPK in their next fight.

Your solution will lead to much more PC death than any 4E system would.

But the "9-9:15" problem isn't caused by resting after every four (CR-appropriate) encounters; it is caused by resting between those encounters.

Also, it is certainly true that if 3e had more of the granularity of its predecessors, you could have a greater number of "lower-CR" encounters that would be meaningful, further extending the time one could adventure without either rest or a TPK. It seems that 4e is moving in this direction, from what I've read, although the "per-encounter" model may work against this, as discussed previously.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The difference between the per-encounter and per-day resources, IMHO, in this situation are as follows. Every encounter in a per-day model is "significant" because the total effect they have upon a character must always be considered. In other words even casting a low-level spell must be considered against whether that spell may be useful, or even necessary in the next encounter or the third or fourth. This makes every encounter significant in the fact that it carries consequences that must be accounted for besides what is best right here and rigt now.

In a per-encounter model, the only concern in using one's abilities is what is effective in the here and now. You need not consider, as long as you use only per-encounter or at-will abilities...what the ramifications of holding in reserve or unleashing full blast will cause. Instead it makes sense to always unleash since they will come back. In other words there is no consideration for long term consequences only short term.

I think of it like this...

Per-day abilities are more like chess in that a move you made 15 minutes ago will affect your capabilities later in the game...in fact all the way to the end.

Per-encounter abilities are like a fighting game(Tekken or Soul Calibur) they take strategy at the moment of the combat, but if you make bad decisions in the first round and loose, you still start at full power in the next round(though there are certain games where loosing the first round causes you to start with less life in the next round, and IMHO, it's a superior style of play.)

The other difference I see is that with a game that promotes long-term strategy, you have time to recognize the mistakes you've made and adjust your strategy to those mistakes outside of combat. In confining strategy to the moment of combat, it does tend to promote a live or die(just like the fighting game) type of encounter.




Okay a few problems I see with your example...the sending wave after wave without letting them recover per-encounter abilities. This is not the same as the per-day abilities resource management(it's not just about attrition). You've in effect taken the characters from 100% capacity and stuck them in a fight at 20% capacity...This means that at this point they use their per-day abilities, and if they are enough...they survive. If not they die. The player's didn't manage their resources over a long period of time(Unless they are aware there will be more fights in the same "encounter"), you surprised them with an encounter and the resources they have left is based on random factors(how hard the earlier fight was, if they were throwing abilities for "fun", how dangerous the second fight will be, etc.). Basically it's promoting one playstyle and then doing the switcheroo on your players without warning. It's more likely to get them killed than to promote any type of long-term considerations.

To take the fighting videogame example above...it would be like playing that and one player being aware that depending on how much you use your abilities affects your power level and life in the next round, but the other player doesn't. I guarantee player 1 and player 2 are going to approach that first combat in totally different ways. And my money would be on player 2.

I don't get the more "dynamic" encounter argument. In D&D 3e you can do the same thing and with a finer grain of accuracy. An encounter can again be challenging in and of itself without the risk of death or even major depletion of resources because the management of the resources itself is dynamic. It gives a raneg of resource depletion that the DM can use to shape how long the PC's can go on, which IMHO is a good thing since the DM is the one who must be prepared for the encounters they will experience. Only got 2 to 3 hours for play well then have three major encounters, each of which should deplete 30% of the characters resources. Got 6hrs to play make up 4 encounters that deplete 10% of their resources each, then one balanced for 20% of their resources and a Big Bad who takes 30%. I'm not seeing how these are any less dynamic than the per-encounter abilities.

1) Players might very well have been aware that there are others around that might be alerted by their activities. (
2) The point was not that the encounter based system can do the "attrition" thing better - but you can do it too, if you really want.
3) The major point is: If the players get out, they can go on. This might not be what they want to do, but if it fits the plot (time constraints, story reasons) or the player's style, they can go on knowing that they can still fight in a few combats, just not one that is as tough as the last one.

I think others have pointed it out:
There is no guarantee that some players will not decide to still go for the 9:00 to 9:15 adventure day. But the mechanics make it a lot easier to not do that, because if you are still at 80% of your resources, you know there is some kind of "buffer" that will protect you from harm. if you stumble into a encounter to tough for you, you have more time to notice that and can probably retreat before someone is killed. In the current system, if you enter a new room and the monsters in there take 75 % percent of the fighters hitpoints in the first round, he probably has little chance to retreat if the Wizard doesn't have some "control" magic left to shield him from the next attacks or the Clerics can't heal him back to a more "reasonable" amount of hit points.

 

[Grog]

So what is the fatality % for a CR encounter that matches the party level?

Obviously it's going to be different across different games. But I think we can agree that the chance of PC death exists, and is significantly higher than .0001%, can we not? At least for the majority of games out there.

Given that your CR=Party Level encounters seem to have a high fatality rate

Just as an aside, I never said that. I said that those encounters aren't boring in my games. PC death is pretty rare in CR=APL fights IME - though, again, the experience of others may be different.

I've said things like "if you send an ancient dragon against a 1st level PC, the PCs will die" and the response I often get is "no! you're wrong because I don't use dragons in my world."

People don't understand well what I mean when I say *if*. If what I'm saying fails to match your circumstances in it's premise, then it is irrelevant to your particular game. However it doesn't mean that the reasoning is invalid. At times perhaps it is hard to keep restating premises, and perhaps there has been some confusion there.

I understand that you are making a general argument and not one specific to any particular gaming table. What I'm saying is that if you agree that the possibility of PC death exists in most combat encounters in 3E, then I don't understand why you are criticizing your assumed 4E system for also having the possibility of PC death in most combat encounters. Is it that you believe there will be a higher chance of PC death in your assumed 4E system? Because if that's the case, all we can really do is argue about what constitutes an "acceptable" risk of PC death in any given combat - and there's probably not much fruitful discussion to be had that way, because that's strictly a matter of opinion and individual play style.

 

[Grog]

If you answer the questions, we can proceed. At that point, relevancy will either be or fail to be demonstrated. Otherwise, I fail to see the point of endlessly repeating myself.

As I said, I'm sure everyone will choose the adventure where there's a possibility of failure over the adventure with the long string of guaranteed wins. Further, I thought you had assumed that answer going in and thus your question was rhetorical. If your question was not rhetorical, then my honest answer is that my preference aligns with the majority in this particular case - I prefer adventures with possibility of failure over adventures with long strings of guaranteed wins.

 

[Raven Crowking]

That's what happens when you don't listen to the arguments being made against you.

No, that's what happens when the arguments being made "against you" don't actually speak to the points you have made.

Ex:

Person 1: "I don't think that this system will solve the problem that Wyatt says it will."

Person 2: "Sure it will. It will make wizards more fun to play."

Person 1: "The problem Wyatt identifies isn't that wizards are unfun."

Person 2: "Of course wizards are unfun now! This will help."

etc.

Fine. Say the party can only evade detection while resting some of the time. All this means is that you've moved from guaranteeing a TPK all of the time, to guaranteeing a TPK some of the time. Maybe that's an improvement, but it's not a significant one.

Seriously, what do you expect to happen when you hit the PCs with wandering monsters once all their resources are expended?

Once all their resources are expended, they are already dead, so I imagine that they will be eaten.

Seriously, though, 3e made changes to the attrition model of earlier editions by changing the granularity of encounters. This means that there is a far narrower range of encounters that are both mechanically "challenging" and possible to defeat without extraordinary luck. One result of this is that it is more difficult to seed "small but significant" encounters that bridge the line between speed bump and TPK for a party that is low on resources.

WotC apparently recognizes this as well, and are therefore returning to a more 1-2e granularity of encounters (at least, according to the material released thus far).

At least we've gotten to the point where we agree on the factors that make the PCs rest so frequently in 3e (I think we have, anyway). Could you sum up, succinctly, why your first three fights aren't boring?


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

my honest answer is that my preference aligns with the majority in this particular case - I prefer adventures with possibility of failure over adventures with long strings of guaranteed wins.

How many guaranteed wins per adventure can there be before the adventure suffers?

 

[Grog]

But the "9-9:15" problem isn't caused by resting after every four (CR-appropriate) encounters; it is caused by resting between those encounters.

Well in my experience, while having four encounters in 15 minutes is probably a stretch, it's certainly possible to have four encounters in an hour. So change the 9-9:15 adventuring day to the 9-10 adventuring day if you prefer - it's still the same basic complaint.

Also, as the encounters get tougher, the number of them needed to force the PCs to rest decreases. So if a party just has one or two really tough encounters, they could easily have a 15 minute adventuring day.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well in my experience, while having four encounters in 15 minutes is probably a stretch, it's certainly possible to have four encounters in an hour. So change the 9-9:15 adventuring day to the 9-10 adventuring day if you prefer - it's still the same basic complaint.

Also, as the encounters get tougher, the number of them needed to force the PCs to rest decreases. So if a party just has one or two really tough encounters, they could easily have a 15 minute adventuring day.

OK, we certainly agree on this.

In fact, this is crucial to the point I am trying to make.

So, it is fair to say that resting between those encounters, or after one encounter, doesn't matter. The problem is the same. Right?

RC

 

[Imaro]

1) Players might very well have been aware that there are others around that might be alerted by their activities. (
2) The point was not that the encounter based system can do the "attrition" thing better - but you can do it too, if you really want.
3) The major point is: If the players get out, they can go on. This might not be what they want to do, but if it fits the plot (time constraints, story reasons) or the player's style, they can go on knowing that they can still fight in a few combats, just not one that is as tough as the last one.

This isn't attrition, at least not in the sense of slowly degrading abilities that have longterm considerations. What you've effectively demonstrated is a single encounter where the PC's can be pushed to lower than 80% of their resources. The fact of the matter is that this was never in question. In fact the same thing is possible in D&D 3e by using a higher rated CR creature or creatures in a single fight, but it's not the same as attrition of resources over time.

As far as "if they get out they can keep going"...the point I'm making is that in order to have a significant encounter they're chances of dying in that one encounter must be significantly higher than a per-day encounter that is significant because it weakens the PC's.

I think others have pointed it out:
There is no guarantee that some players will not decide to still go for the 9:00 to 9:15 adventure day. But the mechanics make it a lot easier to not do that, because if you are still at 80% of your resources, you know there is some kind of "buffer" that will protect you from harm. if you stumble into a encounter to tough for you, you have more time to notice that and can probably retreat before someone is killed. In the current system, if you enter a new room and the monsters in there take 75 % percent of the fighters hitpoints in the first round, he probably has little chance to retreat if the Wizard doesn't have some "control" magic left to shield him from the next attacks or the Clerics can't heal him back to a more "reasonable" amount of hit points.

It makes it easier to do this at an increased risk of PC death or even a TPK(if we are dealing with a significant encounter) within each instance of an encounter. If we are dealing with insignificant encounters then again as RC said it soon becomes unsatisfying anyway(10th level fighter in combat with 4 goblins problem). So how does this "fix" anything?