Why is it so important?

[Raven Crowking]

It doesn't matter if the character can expend all of his per-encounter resources if his per-encounter resources under 4e are 1/4 of his per-day resources under 3.5. For a number of different reasons its likely to be closer to 1/3 or so. Will that assuage your worries, about 'nova', Raven?

Could you please tell me which concerns you are asking about?

 

[IanArgent]

Ah, then. Obviously the problem doesn't exist. I can't use more per-day resources within a given encounter than allotted to me in a given day either.

But if you use all of your per-day abilities in one encounter and the adventure designer assumed you woud only use 1/4; the next encounter fails. Alternatively, if you do use only 1/4 of your abilities in an encounter where the designer assumed you'd use more, the encounter fails. That's the problem - there is no way per-encounter for the designer to know (within a reasonable margin of error) what power level you have available and are willing to use, in this encounter. Encounters are the quantum of D&D design; days are not.

 

[Raven Crowking]

But if you use all of your per-day abilities in one encounter and the adventure designer assumed you woud only use 1/4; the next encounter fails. Alternatively, if you do use only 1/4 of your abilities in an encounter where the designer assumed you'd use more, the encounter fails.

So long as the encounter is fairly presented (i.e., given enough context to make meaningful decisions) I call this "consequences" and believe that it is a laudbile design goal. The designer doesn't need to know what power level you have available and are willing to use, in this encounter. He only needs to what resources you should have available for the entire adventure.

Encounters are the quantum of D&D design; days are not.

IMHO, it was a poor decision to hinge so much of the design structure on this maxim.

That you believe that it is impossible for a module designer in 3.X to present fair-yet-challenging encounters throughout the course of an adventure, whereas this was very, very simple in earlier editions, can be taken as evidence.

 

[IanArgent]

I think that my point is even more true under these circumstances. A COTS module should not decide what resources should be used in any given encounter, if for no other reason that that the writer cannot have enough information to make this determination. A COTS module should present interesting decisions, with context and consequence built into them.


RC

Exactly. The COTS designer cannot know what resources the party has available. HE has to make reasonable assumptions based on the assumptions built into the system. The assumptions built into 3.5 make it impossible to know what resources a party has available for the current encounter. Not hard; impossible. The designer cannot know with any certainty what every party has available.

Thus the decision in 4ed to make that much more predictable. You can see this reflected in the SWSE skills system, where the designer can know, with a high degree of certainty, that the party has the ability to make a skill check between 1/2 APL and 1/2 APL +10. (We have been told that the SWSE system is a reflection of 4ed design theory at that point in time - on the other hand it is not being ported as-is to 4ed). We can also see this in the statement that 80% of a character's resources will be available in any encounter via the statement that after a character's per-day abilities are expended they will still be at 80% of capacity. This is a "good thing", it means that when a designer makes an assumption of the party being at 90% when he designs an encounter, he can be within +/-10%.

As long as encounters are the quantum of adventure design, the party's abilities must be balanced to a per-encounter paradigm. Otherwise game design suffers.

 

[IanArgent]

So long as the encounter is fairly presented (i.e., given enough context to make meaningful decisions) I call this "consequences" and believe that it is a laudbile design goal. The designer doesn't need to know what power level you have available and are willing to use, in this encounter. He only needs to what resources you should have available for the entire adventure.

If resources were all per-adventure, that would be a laudable goal. They aren't.

IMHO, it was a poor decision to hinge so much of the design structure on this maxim.

What maxim would you design around? Please note that it has to work in both the DM is intimately familiar with his party and the rules and wrote his adventure to exactly fit that one party and the scenario of a COTS adventure and an entirely inexperienced DM running the game for the first time. The quantum of design being the encounter is easy to explain and design around.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The assumptions built into 3.5 make it impossible to know what resources a party has available for the current encounter. Not hard; impossible.

Which makes them piss-poor assumptions to build into the system in the first place. However, whereas you see the 4e design notes as pointing away from those assumptions, I see them walking even farther along that path.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If resources were all per-adventure, that would be a laudable goal.

What maxim would you design around?

Answered your own question on that one.

The quantum of design being the encounter is easy to explain and design around.

The COTS designer cannot know what resources the party has available. HE has to make reasonable assumptions based on the assumptions built into the system. The assumptions built into 3.5 make it impossible to know what resources a party has available for the current encounter. Not hard; impossible. The designer cannot know with any certainty what every party has available.

Easy to explain and design around? While at the same time making part of the designer's job impossible?

Color me unconvinced.

RC

 

[IanArgent]

Which makes them piss-poor assumptions to build into the system in the first place. However, whereas you see the 4e design notes as pointing away from those assumptions, I see them walking even farther along that path.

They're aligning character design assumptions with encounter design assumptions; and each class's design is being aligned with the other class's design.

Incidentally, in my experience with Shadowrun, it does unitary adventure design - the encounter is not the quantum of design; adventures are designed as tack/goal. Do this task, achieve this goal. "Encounter" design is much more fluid. And there is no resource management in the D&D sense. Everything is "at-will" or "expendable"; there is nothing in between. I would love to be able to run something like this in D&D; but 3.5 has several legacy D&Disms that mit very hard. 4ed, IMHO, will make it easier to do so, because I can set up encounters that do not necessarily depend on a previous encounter to strip resources from the party, but at the same time be able to run the same encounter if they did hit the previous encounter.

Per day inherently means that in a day that has multiple encounters, the party is not able to use all its resources in one encounter. I would rather have this defined in the system and be able to anticipate what power level is available in every encounter with a high degree of certainty than the alternative.

 

[IanArgent]

Easy to explain and design around? While at the same time making part of the designer's job impossible?

Color me unconvinced.

RC

Waitasec. You don't get to conflate my statements on 3.5 ("cannot know what the party's capabilities are") with my expectations for 4ed ("can know what the party has available because most abilities are per-encounter or at will").

To restate; in 3.5, the adventure designer cannot know with any certainty what resources the party can deploy in the encounter they are in. This is because some classes are entirely at-will/per-encounter, some are a mix of at-will/per-encounter and per-day, and some classes are entirely per-day. The decisions made as the party makes its way through the adventure are entirely unpredictable, and can result in party's that are at any point able willing to deploy in the encounter between 100% and 0% of their core class abilities in that encounter.

With the 4ed design as we have seen, in particular that 80% of a character's abilities will be available in every encounter, the designer can start with the assumption that the party will be willing and able to deploy between 80% and 100% of their core class abilities in each encounter.

I assume from your previous statement that you would prefer to design around the per-adventure paradigm. How do you balance resources in that paradigm without dropping resource management entirely? And remember you have to meet the goal of being able to run, unprepared and inexperienced, for 5 of your friends, after reading the PHB once, and the adventure once. Per day is an even worse paradigm for resource management in a per-adventure design paradigm; unless you as the GM control when the "day" ends and can prevent the players from both stopping too early and running too far. An experienced GM can do this, but it takes experience how to handle this, and is a lot harder to judge.

resource management and adventure design quanta should be aligned; and all classes should be aligned as well - otherwise there will be trouble.

 

[pemerton]

For someone who is well versed in logic and philosophy, you seem at a loss when confronted by an IF/THEN statement.

It depends on what you mean by "at a loss". Some of your comments appear to suggest that the issue at hand is one of logical form and burdens of proof. I don't see those as an issue.

Consider the following sentence "If he is an Englishman, then he is brave." Confronted with such a sentence I am not at a loss as to its logical form. Nor am I puzzled about standards of proof. I am at a loss as to why its asserter believes it to be true. It is obviously not an analytic truth. I therefore look around for ancilliary premises that might support its truth - such as "All Englishmen are brave." If I don't believe that these ancilliary premises are true, then I don't belive the original sentence.

As I will try to illustrate, I believe we are in a similar position. Your reasoning depends (as far as I can tell) upon a particular presupposition which I believe to be false. Previously, I think this presupposition was unarticulated, but one of your recent posts makes it explicit.

it doesn't matter which round you use your abilities in; merely that you either use them or do not. Either an opponent is one who damages you enough where using "second wind" becomes prudent, or he is not. If he is, the fight passes the mechanical threshold of significance. If he is not, players will soon realize that these fights are mechanically meaningless. Unless the average DM uses a theshold of significance other then the mechanical, this means that in the average game these fights are meaningless.

There is a lot going on in this paragraph. I'm going to unpack it. I'm also going to substitute the general case or per-day resources in place of "second wind".

* If an encounter is one in which using per-day resources becomes prudent, the encounter passes the mechanical threshold of significance.​

This is uncontroversial as between us. So I'll move on.

* If an encounter is one in which using per-day resources does not become prudent, the encounter does not pass the mechanical threshold of significance.​

This is true (analytically true) if "to pass mechanical threshold of significance" is defined to mean "to have an effect (attrition or accretion) on available resources." And I don't dispute analytic truths. But as I have noted, mechanical significance in this sense may not be the only sort of mechanical interest that an encounter can have.

So let me consider this alternative assertion:

* If an encounter is one in which using per-day resources does not become prudent, the encounter is not of mechanical interest.​

Is this claim true? Suppose that, as you assert, "It doesn't matter which round you use your abilities in; merely that you either use them or do not." Then we can see something like the following chain of reasoning:

* What is interesting about an ability is its use (its round of use doesn't matter).

Therefore,

* An encounter in which an ability is not used (or in which only abilities whose use has no cost, like per-encounter abilities, are used) is not mechanically interesting.

Therefore,

* If an encounter is one in which using per-day resources does not become prudent (and therefore they are not used), the encounter is not of mechanical interest.​

The above chain of reasoning obviously is not formally valid, but I think it has a degree of plausibility. And I take it to be a fair semi-formal presentation of your reasoning.

Accepting this inference as valid, then, its soundness (ie its capacity to prove the truth of its conclusion) depends entirely upon the truth of the claim that it doesn't matter in what round an ability is used. And as far as I can tell that claim is entirely false. I will explain why I think this below, after considering some further parts of your post.

Again, IF there is no risk/reward consideration involved THEN it is always prudent to use your best resources in any given encounter.

<snip>

it doesn't matter whether or not one leads the encounter with one's per-day resources (as I have said or tried to say multiple times in multiple posts), only that an encounter is or is not challenging enough to make a party use their per-day resources, and that there is or is not a cost/risk associated with doing so.

Once again, this seems to depend upon the claim that it doesn't matter in what round an ability is used. Which I still think is entirely false. I still owe you an explanation of why I think this - it's coming.

BTW, I have said, repeatedly, that ensuring that tehre is a cost/risk associated with doing so is one obvious method of dealing with the 9-9:15 adventuring day problem. In 1e, there were the following obvious costs/risks associated with using resources:

(1) Some resources were intrinsically hazardous to use. This includes spells that age you, System Shock, and the way potions mixed if you attempted to use two at once.

(2) Wandering monsters were intended to create a time constraint. If you sat around camping, or spent too much time searching an area, you ran a risk of encountering something else that might sap (or overwhelm!) your resources.

(3) Limitations to what one can do within a round. You can attack or cast a healing spell, for example.

I know you said these things. I also agree with you that these are techniques for controlling the expenditure and the recovery of resources.

Well, we know that 3.X gutted (1) from the game, with very few exceptions. Those sort of cost/risk assessments were apparently "unfun". We know that the WotC site has run an adventure design article, widely discussed on this forum at one time, about cutting (2) from games because, again, they are "unfun".

I agree that there is no doubt that (1) and (2) are not part of 3E. That is why I have said repeatedly, on this and other threads, that 3E already exemplified the trend that 4e is continuing, of moving away from operational play to other modes of play.

We also know that 4e is designed to ensure that you can attack while, say, healing your companions because the types of decisions required by (3) are "unfun".

Here is a substantial point of disagreement. Not about your particular example - I also have read the dragon fight summary. But in fact the rationing of actions per round will be crucial to 4e design. That is part of the rationale of going from per-day to per-encounter - by increasing the number of options available to each character in a given round, the intention is to make the choice of which action to take in any given round a more interesting one. At present, fighters have an unlimited supply of actions (assuming they do not run out of hit points) but virtually no choice of actions - they move and attack until the foe stands still, and then they full attack every round. Casters, on the other hand, have much choice of action but an extremely finite supply of actions (ie once they use all their spells they have no meaningful choices left).

(You may say that casters always have the choice to do nothing, that is, to conserve a spell for a later time. While true, I think the 4e designers deliberately exclude this from the list of viable choices, for the simple reason that most people do not find it a virtue in a game to have to skip a turn. I suspect you disagree with the 4e designers here - I will return to that below.)

Once we accept that the goal is to give each character meaningful choices of actions in a round - thus giving players meaningful choices in each round - it seems obvious to me that it matters hugely, from the point of view of mechanical interest, in which round a given ability is used.

Suppose, for example, that in round N I choose to defer use of my "second wind", because I believe that (i) I have enough hits to survive into round N+1, and therefore that (ii) I should instead this round use my per-encounter ability to add my level to damage as a swift action - thereby perhaps killing the foe and allowing me to conserve my "second wind" because the party healer can heal me without consuming resources. In such a situation something of mechanical interest has happened although it never became prudent to use my per-day resource. The interest is a result not of resource consumption, but of the need to make a decision about resource consumption.

This also shows that mixing per-day resources with other, non-reducing resources adds a new dimension of interest to the game that is missing at present, namely, the capacity to have interesting decisions about resource use that do not deplete resources.

It is true that, after the encounter, the players will look back and say "That didn't consume our per-day resources." They may even look back and say "On reflection that was never going to consume our per-day resources." But as long as they do not know that those things are true during the encounter itself, the encounter will be of mechanical interest (and so quite unlike the much-derided 10th level fighter vs 4 kobolds).

To link this back to the key premise in your argument: it is true that, once the fight is over, if per-day resouces were used it does not matter in which round they were used. Likewise, once the fight is over, if they were not used it does not matter in which rounds their use was or was not contemplated by the players. But the interest of an encounter is not something which is determined by reflection on it after it is over. It is something which unfolds within the very encounter itself - and during the encounter (i) the players do not know whether or not their per-day resources will end up being consumed or not and (ii) are able to determine whether or not they will be through their own mechanically interesting choices.

Just as you are puzzled by my failure to believe you, so I am puzzled by your seeming inability to appreciate the dynamic epistemic situation that a player is in during an encounter, and which is (to me) a very obvious and rich source of mechanical interest, even if there is (at the end of it all) no mechanical significance in the sense of resource attrition or accretion.

You can have any number of encounters in any system that may be significant using non-mechanical thresholds of significance, because you need not take the mechanics into account. Thus per-day resources don't give rise to this problem, nor do per-encounter abilities cause this problem, nor does any mechanical system.

Just as a postscript, this claim is false if one assumes that the PCs use their abilities during encounters. You cannot have any number of encounters per day in a system of purely per-day resources, even if using a non-mechanical threshold of significance, because the PCs run out of the resources needed to participate in those encounters.

I say this from experience. I GM a lot in a system of per-day resources, namely, Rolemaster. My players like to play spell-users. A high-level RM spell-user (in RMSS, without spell bonus items) can cast 6 or so highest-level spells before having to rest. In a typical encounter such a spell-user will cast at least 1 such spell, and frequently more. And the 9-9.15 day therefore is a big issue in our group.

Of course, it is always possible to have any number of encounters in which the PCs don't use their abilities. But such encounters are unlikely to satisfy any threshold of signicance.

BTW, I consider spellcasters looking towards long-term ramifications to be a good thing, that enhances the game experience. Obviously we differ here.

As a second postscript, I think you also differ from the 4e (and 3E) designers. I refer again to BTW, I consider spellcasters looking towards long-term ramifications to be a good thing, that enhances the game experience. Obviously we differ here.[/QUOTE]]Monte Cook's column discussing this very issue. He observes that it was a deliberate design goal of 3E to make wizards just as playable, for new players, as fighters. I added above the thought that "look on and do nothing" is not regarded as a viable player option by the 4e designers. These two considerations mean that 4e will depart even further, in respect of the way wizards play, from your desired style.

I'm not saying that this is a good thing, nor that it's a bad thing. But I'm very confident that it is a thing that will happen.

A game rewards players who know how to tip the scales towards their characters by limiting themselves to the smallest number of encounters in a row possible, so that they can approach each encounter at full-power. So long as there is a goodie bag intended to last all day, a crafty player will use the bag as if there's only one encounter and then go rest and recover right away. So rather than use that goodie bag that was meant to be spread out over a day's worth of encounters, the character uses all the best stuff in the first one, goes off to rest, and then repeats later.

That you believe that it is impossible for a module designer in 3.X to present fair-yet-challenging encounters throughout the course of an adventure, whereas this was very, very simple in earlier editions, can be taken as evidence.

As a third postscript, I think the first of the above two quotes captures very well the playstyle of 1st ed AD&D. I don't agree with the second quote entirely - just as an example, I think that Keep on the Borderlands is potentially too hard for 1st level characters. But to the extent to which it is true, it is made true because of the approach to play described in your first post. That is, 1st ed play assumes that players will act cautiously, gather information, carefully marshall their resources and so on.

Modules are written with this in mind - for example, the situations are often internally dynamic, but externally static (thus the GD series assumes that the PCs, if they leave the Steading and retreat to their cave, or if they leave the Underdark and retreat to the surface, are not subject to retribution). Wandering monsters are an essentially random disruption device, but in most modules do not interact with one another, or with the placed encounters, to plan or conspire against the PCs.

Dungeons contain empty rooms, and PCs who hole up in them, using spikes to wedge the door shut, can expect to avoid the bulk of wanderers and rest up without losing the chance to complete the module.

3E is pretty clearly not aimed at this sort of play. It is obvious (at least to me) that neither is 4e. In my view the zeitgeist has changed, and many roleplayers (and potential roleplayers) are looking for something different in a game. It is this mix of different metagame priorities with pure per-day resources that produces the problem of the 15 minute adventuring day. For the reasons I have given, I think that the introduction of per-encounter resources has the potential to better-align the play experience with those metagame priorities.