Why is it so important?

[Mallus]

Someone's opening a new thread?

 

[gizmo33]

I've played systems that had, essentially, per-encounter resources and systems that had something more "operational". My anecdotal experience is that neither form has any substantial, direct affect on the inherent deadliness of the system.

Well, let me nitpick this: your experiences have shown that you did not experience a higher frequency of death. This is distinct from the system being deadlier because IME DMs will compensate for a rule system they understand in order to reduce/increase deadliness to an acceptable level. If what I am saying were to come to pass in 4E, and 4E would become more deadly, DMs would compensate, the way they already do now such as when module designers habitually increase the EL of their adventures (an example given a few posts above).

However, it is not reassuring to me to consider the possibility that I may have to compensate for this feature of the hypothetical 4E design. Granted, I don't know whether or not your DMs were playing the systems as designed, it's likely that you believe that they were, so this might not be an issue.

 

[Grog]

I'd be tempted to say, AGAIN, what I think on this issue but then I would be subjecting myself to the charge that I don't listen to the arguments against me, wouldn't I? Seriously - Your first statement above is rude, presumptuous, and (as is usually the case when the first two qualify) is not very relevant to the subject at hand.

It's no ruder than this statement of yours:

If we agree on how deadly a CR encounter is for a matched party level, then I think that fact should remain immutable through the conversation. As it stands now, this "fact" seems to change depending on what argument it is being used to support.

Which insinuates that the people arguing against you are doing so in bad faith. But, regardless, I apologize for any rudeness on my part.

In the case of what I've said regarding the 4E death rate, it's not as simple as a "yes/no" answer to your question. But basically - given that the "per-encounter" resource system removes the significance of attrition encounters, then it resigns you to encounters whose only significance is in their chance of death.

This doesn't follow. Multiple people have explained why in the course of this thread. The short version is that risk of death and risk of resource attrition are not the only two ways to make an encounter significant.

But, without even getting into that, in a 3E encounter whose main purpose is resource attrition, the risk of death still exists. Unless you send your players up against encounters that are so weak that they deplete party resources one Cure Light Wounds spell at a time, there exists in 3E the very real possibility that a PC will die in any given battle. 3E "resource attrition" encounters are also 3E "risk of death" encounters. So we're back to talking about what constitutes an "acceptable" risk of death - and as I said, that's all down to opinion and individual play style.

The one issue that might mitigate this is the potential deaths that arise from unfortunate resource management issues - for example camping out while you're weakened, and being ambushed. However, these circumstances are easily controlled by the DM and are part of the challenge level of the dungeon. Easier dungeons would have easier patrols to deal with in the area - it's the same basic technique that you use for encounter balancing currently.

Well, of course easier dungeons will have easier patrols than harder ones - I would have thought that that was a given. That doesn't change the fact that if you ambush your PCs after they've used up all their resources, you will very likely have a TPK on your hands.

 

[Jackelope King]

Statement of opinion only, in this case, my friend. Plus, I believe Jackalope King is going to open a thread to discuss this issue.

RC

Yes, if this lecture on colon cancer ever ends, I certainly will.

 

[gizmo33]

So far as I know, I'm not trying to start an edition war. However, the 3e CR/EL System and its effects on the way encounters were handled are, IMHO, germaine to the issue of resource management and the granularity of encounters with respect to the same.

I was just kidding around. The question you ask (the comparative deadliness of 1E to 3E) is actually a major bone of contention in the editions war though - IMO it's unlikely that someone could propose an answer without objection.

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

Has anyone mentioned James Wyatt's latest blog entry?

It appears as though some of the stuff being discussed here is also being discussed "there" (specifically in his first topic).

Button-mashing and comparing power

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two things bouncing around on this fine morning, my second day back from vacation.

Button-mashing
One is something I alluded to on my personal blog the other day, which was about my experience playing a warlock in World of Warcraft. I like the class, but when I play that character too long, I get tired of pressing the same buttons in the same order every single fight. The only things I vary are (a) which curse to use, which only changes if I'm fighting a spellcaster, (b) whether to default to Shadow Bolt or my wand after I do my three DoTs (which depends on my mana), and (c) whether to put some Drain Manas in there (depending on whether the mob has mana and how my stores are doing). Frankly, it gets boring.

There have been iterations of Fourth Edition where we've had the same problem. Fundamentally, it's a problem you encounter whenever your resources are perfectly renewable. Some characters in Tome of Battle have that problem, although with combat in D&D being more dynamic than PvE combat in WoW, there are always things that encourage you to mix up your pattern. But you tend to default to using your best power, then your next-best, and so on down the line.

For that matter, NPC spellcasters in 3e have much the same problem, and PC spellcasters can fall into it as well. For an NPC who doesn't care about resource management, it's simply the best strategy to lead off with the best spells and work on down the levels. Heck, that's why our new stat block format lists higher-level spells first.

When you have the right balance between powers that refresh all the time and powers that are more limited, the game becomes more interesting. Strong power design also helps. When some of your powers are per-day, you're constantly asking yourself, "Is this the fight where I break out this big gun?" When your powers are well-designed, you also ask the question, "Is this the right round to use this power?"

Look at the 3e barbarian. At low-level, rage is a once-per-day ability. The key question for the 3e barbarian is which fight is the one to rage in. (Unfortunately, that usually translates to, "Is this the fight where I get to have fun?") As he gets higher level, it becomes more like a per-encounter resource, and he uses it every encounter. It lasts long enough to cover the whole encounters, so it's actually no longer an interesting choice. It's more like a default state. If it were better designed, the barbarian would be asking himself, "Is this the right round to start raging?"

Comparing Power
It's funny. I actually had to go and ask Chris Perkins and Andy Collins this morning what people mean when they're asking whether Fourth Edition characters will be "more powerful" than Third Edition characters of the same level. I assumed the question was relative, and it made no sense to me. 4E characters will be just as challenged by encounters of their level as 3E characters would be if 3E encounter design actually worked. The power level, from that mindset, is the same.

That just shows how immersed I am in 4E, I guess. Andy explained that what he thinks people want to know is whether characters will have more hit points and do more damage. Purely a question of raw numbers, rather than of what those numbers mean in the world.

Given that 3E is inherently unbalanced—low-level characters are too weak and high-level characters are too powerful—I guess the right answer is that low-level characters will be more powerful and high-level characters will be less so. Everyone will be balanced, because we've erased the accident of math.

When it comes to sheer numbers, though, I guess the answer is that we've worked hard to adjust the scale of the math so that the numbers feel right. The math of the system would work the same if our baseline weapon damage were 3d6 as it would if the baseline weapon damage were 1d6, assuming that everything scaled properly from that baseline. But the 3d6 baseline would make all the numbers feel inflated, and 4E characters would seem a lot more powerful than their 3E counterparts. So we've tried to set the baselines at a level where the numbers will feel comparable to historical numbers. Even if fireball no longer does 1d6/level.

We have not gone the route of some well-known TCGs. Magic does single points of damage. Pokemon does damage in units of 10. Yu-gi-oh does damage in units of 100. Duelmasters uses units of 1000. It's all basically the same math, but inflated so the numbers feel different. We could do that in D&D. Heck, anyone could. Add a 0 to the end of all your numbers, and see how that feels. That won't be 4E.

Oh, and ability scores—that was the other thing Andy said. I think the answer is the same: low-level characters will look better, and high-level characters will look worse. But only when you compare them to 3E characters decked out with magic items. Shifting emphasis away from magic items means that raw numbers will look higher across the board.

But I still have a hard time grasping the fundamental nature of the question. The real answer is that characters will be balanced, across 30 levels.

 

[Celebrim]

Has anyone mentioned James Wyatt's latest blog entry?

It appears as though some of the stuff being discussed here is also being discussed "there" (specifically in his first topic).

To me, that's the first positive feeling post about 4e by anyone with inside access.

Summed up, it says, 'Ok, so there are these various tradeoffs in the design, but we are aware of them and looking at them, and we think we'll have a winning combination.'

Ok, sweet. And for once, it doesn't have a structure like, "This was bad. We are doing this. Now things are totally awesome.", because alot of the time not only did the thing that they are doing carry a cost, but it wasn't clear to me how it fix the thing that they said was bad. At least after this sort of post, I don't have to put up with people with a sudden case of tribalism going, "I hate the bad thing. WotC said that after they do this new thing, the bad thing is going to go away. Therefore the new thing is an absolute good and I will smite anyone that says anything against it."

I'm still far from being sold on anything they are doing, but at least I'm not being turned off of it for once. There is I think some honesty, and that goes a long long ways for me.

Anyway, reading between the lines:

1a) Higher default point buy for starting PC's. Higher starting hit points for starting PCs.
2a) Smaller progression of powers per level.
2b) How they are going to do this and not have dead levels is going to be interesting. It almost suggests quasi-point buy, where each level you can choose between several minor powers to buy.
3a) More speculative, but it looks like random hitpoints per hit die are going away.

 

[gizmo33]

Which insinuates that the people arguing against you are doing so in bad faith. But, regardless, I apologize for any rudeness on my part.

The statement that I made was an appeal for some constistency, and I've been pretty specific about the areas where it's lacking. Some of you (and that's a general you) are accepting statements without debate when they're made by folks who support your conclusions but then object to virtually the same statement made by someone trying to make an opposite point. The insinuation of bad faith is not completely out of line, but I actually hadn't made up my mind *why* this was happening. In any case I don't think an apology is really necessary or productive in a case where it's mixed with an accusation.

This doesn't follow. Multiple people have explained why in the course of this thread. The short version is that risk of death and risk of resource attrition are not the only two ways to make an encounter significant.

And I'll say - again - that this directly contradicts Wyatt's premise. Now if you want to change the premises upon which the line of reasoning is based, then we can start from the beginning. But the basic topic of "Wyatt's changes are not solving Wyatt's problems" is not resolved. I also think it's significant that while people have repeatedly said what you've said here, they are strangely reluctant to provide an example. Actually, I would agree with what you're saying, but I don't think that the other types of encounters you're suggesting exist are frequent enough to have a significant bearing on this issue. But as I said, I would find that easier to discuss if it were an established premise.

But, without even getting into that, in a 3E encounter whose main purpose is resource attrition, the risk of death still exists. Unless you send your players up against encounters that are so weak that they deplete party resources one Cure Light Wounds spell at a time, there exists in 3E the very real possibility that a PC will die in any given battle.

And as I said before (and I meant it), .0001% is a real value. And it exists. But it's probably not significant, though that is somewhat a matter of opinion. I suspect that you believe (understandably) the chance to be higher. But much higher? Significant? To me that's more the relevant question.

3E "resource attrition" encounters are also 3E "risk of death" encounters. So we're back to talking about what constitutes an "acceptable" risk of death - and as I said, that's all down to opinion and individual play style.

Again, it went uncontested in Wyatt's blog entry that an EL=APL encounter did not post a "risk of death" that was suitable for making the encounter an interesting one. I don't mind changing premises at some point but I'd rather start with Wyatt's since they seem to be uncontested by most folks that support the "per-encounter" system.

Well, of course easier dungeons will have easier patrols than harder ones - I would have thought that that was a given. That doesn't change the fact that if you ambush your PCs after they've used up all their resources, you will very likely have a TPK on your hands.

It does, in fact, change that. If you "ambush" the resting 20th level PCs with a single kobold scout, you would not have a TPK on your hands. This case might be extreme but it is sufficient for showing the existence of a counter example, and most likely a range of counter examples. The fact that you can make patrols easy in the design can mean that the patrols are manageable/escapable by the PCs, and thus not any more of a guarrantee of a TPK than any other encounter.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Well, let me nitpick this: your experiences have shown that you did not experience a higher frequency of death. This is distinct from the system being deadlier because IME DMs will compensate for a rule system they understand in order to reduce/increase deadliness to an acceptable level. If what I am saying were to come to pass in 4E, and 4E would become more deadly, DMs would compensate, the way they already do now such as when module designers habitually increase the EL of their adventures (an example given a few posts above).

However, it is not reassuring to me to consider the possibility that I may have to compensate for this feature of the hypothetical 4E design. Granted, I don't know whether or not your DMs were playing the systems as designed, it's likely that you believe that they were, so this might not be an issue.

Keeping in mind that anecdotal experiences are merely anecdotal experiences... I played the systems as designed, to the best of my ability. I think my ability, while not perfect, is considerable here, since I come from the school of criticism that tries to take things on their own merits. Then I also played those systems with house rules, seeking to aid that design, and also played them with considerable house rules in an attempt to bend the system to a different design. In one case, Fantasy Hero, I played multiple editions this way. With FH, you can set up a campaign to have "operational resources", or not, within the rules. OTOH, i was usually the DM. So since I'm aware of these kind of things, I would have teased out the level of deadliness I wanted even if it were difficult to do so.

I did see enough other people running games to suspect that the deadliness of a game has more to do with what the DM wants, than anything else. But to the larger question--of course a DM will compensate. A DM always compensates, unless he wants the game to just happen. If he can't figure things out himself, he will get help--from players, experiments, or nowadays, online.

Give deadliness an arbitrary scale, say 1-10, with 10 being the deadliest possible. You can design a game with operational resources that is a 1. You can do one that is a 10. You can design a game with no operational resources that runs the whole range, too. The first game will take some DMs and players a little longer to tease out, and there will be a subset of players and DMs that never get a full handle on it. Until teased out, the games will have surprised in deadliness, or lack thereof. Once teased out, these will diminish--whether through system mastery, DM compensation, house rules, whatever. The second game, with no operational resources, will follow the same pattern, except that more people will figure things out, faster.

Let me be clear. If you changed nothing in 3E but switching per-day resources out for per-encounter resources, there would be a (temporary) shift to more deadliness, until people got used to the change--at least if the change was supported by official modules. (If not so supported, the shift would probably be the other way, because we'd see more cakewalks until DMs adjusted to the idea that characters didn't run out of resources.) Likewise, loss of an operational resource is one obvious thing that can be signficant short of death. Taking these away could encourage a subset of DMs to become more deadly. But that is a far cry from saying that per-encounter is inherently more deadly (or less deadly, for that matter). It isn't. It's like alcohol. It brings out what is already there, misery or happiness--the deadly DMs will see their way clear to do that, and the less deadly DMs will see their way clear to do their things.

Finally, I wouldn't be terribly happy with removing all operational resources, as I personally like them, and want that toy in my DM toolbox (when I'm setting deadliness and other things). Obviously, there will still be some operational resources in 4E. The effect of reducing operational resources in a new edition can in no way be tied to inherent increased (or decreased) deadliness until we see it in play. It depends on the design choices. When players are used to having 40 resources (e.g. mid-level Wizard spell slots) and then they switch to having a lot less, but some, we really don't know what that will do to the mindset.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

And I'll say - again - that this directly contradicts Wyatt's premise. Now if you want to change the premises upon which the line of reasoning is based, then we can start from the beginning. But the basic topic of "Wyatt's changes are not solving Wyatt's problems" is not resolved.

I would say that, in regards to Wyatt's premise, the proposed changes are necessary but not sufficient. In theoretical terms, as discussed at length in this very topic, doing nothing but switching to a per-encounter would simply modify the playing field. However, in practical terms, how players relate to the overall system is more than strict mechanics.