Why is it so important?

[Raven Crowking]

And to yourself and RC, anything which doesn't reset within the framework of 1 day or more isn't a resource.

Please quote that or retract it.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Let's just stop there.

Lets.

Let's assume that your strawman paraphrase of my position earlier was merely error, and you were not attempting to drag me back into this morass where we all repeat the same things over and over again by forcing me to correct your gross mistatement of my point of view.

Likewise, your statement that I infer "because the players do not know, at time T, whether or not they will win or lose, it is therefore (objectively) a win/lose situation." Not what I said.

So, yes, let's just stop here.

If other people have anything new or interesting to say on the topic, then I'll be happy to respond. Anyone else wants to discuss that supposed inference, then I'll be happy to respond.

You and I are done, though.

RC

 

[gizmo33]

To give a parallel example: the claim "If I'm not facing a significant threat of divorce, then the effort I make in my marriage doesn't mean antyhing" is obviously false, for the obvious reason that the effort I am making in my marriage might be the reason why I am not facing a significant threat of divorce.

Strange analogy because marraige is a good example of a resource that is *NOT* per encounter. Unless your wife forgets everything that you do a minute after you do it. It's your aggregate behavior over weeks and years that determines the character of your marraige AFAIK and so I really see this analogy as making my case.

 

[gizmo33]

Another example from a different field. I often have philosophical and legal discussions with my undergraduate students. With some students, whatever argument I put, good or bad, they will not be able to engage with it in an interesting fashion. Those discussions can be classed as "mechanically uninteresting" for me. On the other hand, some discussion actually require me to put my intellectual skills to work, and require me to deploy my best arguments in an intelligent way in order to defend my position. In such discussions I am typically still in no danger of "losing": very few undergraduate students have sufficient mastery of the discipline (be it philosophy or law) to be able to knock down the arguments that I am able to put up. But such discussions are not "mechanically uninteresting" - I find them very interesting, and indeed they're one of the best parts of my job, precisely because in order for me to defend my position I have to do some interesting thinking.

This is a strange example to me. One reason is that you are the one deciding if you win or lose in this situation - I'm not really sure this is comparable to what goes on in DnD where there's more of an objective system exposed to the players that tells them whether they succeed or fail. You're "winning" these arguments AFAIK because you say that you do.

Another thing is that something is interesting for a variety of reasons and I can't tell what those are in your example. So if I were a 20th level fighter in real life and fighting 3 goblins I might find that interesting simply because of the sights and sounds that real life provides. But the game of DnD is not that interesting in that way to me because my powers of visualization wouldn't be that vivid unless I were on drugs.

Your students are also learning something, presumably, and seeing how they'll react might be interesting. As a player I'm not all that interested in how the 3 goblins conduct themselves during the battle - they get killed and the game moves on. I'm also not interested in how impressed the goblins are with my fighting ability.

Finally, in order to defend your position you have to do some "interesting thinking" but I don't see really why it's all that interesting. With a 0% chance (as you describe) of actually choosing an ineffective argument, how is it all that interesting? In my own experiences situations that have a 0% chance of failure don't seem to me to have the characteristics you describe.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Strange analogy because marraige is a good example of a resource that is *NOT* per encounter. Unless your wife forgets everything that you do a minute after you do it. It's your aggregate behavior over weeks and years that determines the character of your marraige AFAIK and so I really see this analogy as making my case.

the marriage is not the resource in question, I think. The marriage is the same as "survival or succeeding at the adventures goal".

 

[Raven Crowking]

the marriage is not the resource in question, I think. The marriage is the same as "survival or succeeding at the adventures goal".

If all of your resources in marriage "reset" after each encounter, then this would be an adequate analogy. However, they don't even "reset" per day.

 

[Jackelope King]

Normally, I loathe the idea of posting a massive quote-for-quote, but since it seems I missed quite a bit last night after I turned on the Daily Show...

This is sort of a "tree falls in the forest does it make a sound" situation. Why does it matter what resources a PC has when he's not fighting someone? It only matters if the encounter isn't over. Once it's "over", by definition, all those resources are back.

So? The action is over. The PCs had their exciting encounter, where they had to manage resources to be successful. If there isn't another encounter in the day, or the only other encounter is 4 goblins versus a 10th level fighter, or the only other encounter is something else that doesn't consume resources, what does it matter how many per-day resources were consumed? The encounter was exciting, and the game moved forward.

The premise here is insufficient IMO to establish your conclusion. I get two meteor strikes per day and I use one against a kobold. I'm down to one meteor strike but I don't think you'd call the kobold encounter significant. AFAICT you're making an unstated assumption here.

I'm making the claim that the more limited your resources are at any given moment, the more carefully you must micromanage them. If you have four fireballs per day, you also have 4 fireballs per encounter. If, on the other hand, you only have 1 fireball per encounter, the decision of when to use it is very significant. You seem to disagree that the decision of "when" is an important decision, and instead insist that it is only "if" that should be focused on. I disagree.

Why would it be? If I'm not facing a significant threat of death, then the depletion of my resources doesn't mean anything to me. If running out of resources means a significant chance of death, and you're running out of resources, then the logical conclusion is that you *are* facing a significant chance of death. It seems paradoxical to me to be otherwise.



It's significant only when not having them means you're going to die. Implicit in all of this reasoning is a significant chance of death at the per-encounter level. Without that, it's like a character with two fireballs, AC 1000, and 1000 hitpoints fighting 30 goblins. That's a situation where there's no significant chance of death and yet I'm probably going to use a fireball which is a 50% expenditure of my top resources. It's not an interesting encounter if my fireballs are going to reset themselves at the end of the encounter.

Appendum: you spend resources because you are facing a significant chance of defeat. The parameters of each encounter define what "defeat" means, which could be anything from death to capture to the execution of a hostage to the loss of the MacGuffin to the explosion of the ticking time bomb to shame to missing the boat to just about anything else. If the players care about the outcome of the encounter, and they run a risk of suffering defeat, then they are more than likely concerned about how they're expending resources.

The DMs complaining about nova-ing are actually implicitly recognizing that it works. The "sledgehammer to the skull" analogy carries with it an implication AFAICT that is not true. Nova-ing makes a lot of sense, and is a sensible tactic, that's why players keep doing it over and over. In fact, in a medieval fantasy game a "sledgehammer to the skull" is probably pretty effective too

They are careful, and least in the experience of those of us advocating for them. There is an important issue of wizards nova-ing in the per-day situation, only because of the mismatch between wizards and fighters - not because of the existence of the per-day paradigm.

My friend, please. Greatclubs rule, sledgehammers drool

But yes, nova-ing works very well, and it illustrates the disparity in power between casters and non-casters that comes with getting a deep bag of resources.

The reason that players are careful IME is that a day is a far longer, and more significant period of time to have to think about than a minute. A player's ability to forsee their resource needs, when an encounter is over, for the next 60 seconds, is far more accurate than it is to forecast it over a period of time hundreds of times as long. Without the uncertainty that the day-long time period provides, most of the uncertainty is going to come down to "is this encounter going to kill me", which has been one of my points from the beginning and seems to be at the core of every description of a per-encounter paradigm, often implicitly.

In my experience, they're less cautious in a per-day scenario because, quite frankly, people are bad at planning for the unknown. When they do start to plan long term, they tend to be sacrificing their enjoyment for the current encounter for a later one that might not even happen. It's like passing up a slice of cake after dinner because you don't want to be full just in case someone decides to serve brownies later in the evening, and you have no real idea whether or not anyone even brought brownies this time.

Yes, but if fear of death is not a significant part of the encounter than the expenditure of the tokens are meaningless. Consider - we wouldn't have as much to debate if you would agree that a per-encounter paradigm shifts the DMs encounter design focus to make sure that each encounter carries with it a measurable chance of PC death.

Because it doesn't. It merely requires that a DM who wants an encounter to feel significant to the group makes sure the PCs are invested in being victorious, which could mean any number of things.

Calling it 'arbitrary' here is unwarranted/misleading it seems. PCs have an arbitrary restriction on the speed at which they can move, for example.

It's arbitrary because there is no logical reason why the system is based on the idea that the average encounter consumes 25% of your resources, so 4 average encounters per-day is the balancing point. An average encounter could just as easily be defined as an encounter which consumed 20% of your resources, so you could have 5 encounters in a day, or one which requires 50% of your resources, so you could only have 2 in a day.

That disparity is not created by the existence of daily resources, but instead a disparity in the amount and power of the resources.

I agree with your goal. I just think that the per-day situation doesn't create this. It's like saying that one character class gets d2 for hitpoints and the other gets d100 for hitpoints, but the problem is the hitpoint mechanic. The problem is actually class design.

And casters get the amount of resources that they do because they're expected to ration them evenly over the course of a day. When they don't problems arise.

Oh, ok, I missed that. Your example is one of a class of "ticking timebomb" type situations. Your facing a kobold, who is not himself a significant threat but he has his finger on a button that can blow up the world. Or whatever.

These situations exist in both per-day and per-encounter. What I don't see is how a per-encounter situation enhances this, or makes it exclusive. Even with per-day resources I'm still choosing from those resources the tactically optimal way of keeping the bandits from running for help. There's no real fundemental difference in the decision at that level.

You answer it yourself.

The "per-day" resource situation though, carries with it the additional consideration of the fact that if I use a fireball against the fleeing bandits in order to keep them from raising an alarm, that I won't have it later. It's possible that it might actually make sense to let the bandits escape because saving the fireball and using it against bandits+BBEG might make more sense. In the per-encounter resource none of that matters - you blast away with whatever your tactically best option is and there are no consequences outside of making a wrong tactical decision (as you would in 3E as well).

Addition consideration are additional factors that must be put into designing an encounter. If the ticking time bomb is the last encounter, then I can't expect the PCs to be at full power during the fight, so I can't amek it a particularly challenging encounter, or they'll be wiped out.

Under a per-day system, I have to factor in the attrition from earlier encounter when designing these sorts of encounters, or the encounter won't be as exciting. I have to be familiar with how my group functions at each tier of resource attrition to be able to make sure encounters are appropriate.

Alternative, I can just say to splick with that, make encounters however I like, and let the PCs figure out for themselves when they should run away and when they should fight. But that leads to a lot of unsatisfying encounters, especially if victory and defeat carry with them significance within the context of the game-world itself.

As someone who dislikes dungeon exploration (where the latter paradigm of "I just make the encounters... you guys need to decide when to retreat), the former paradigm works much better for me. I like my encounters to have both mechanical and story sigificance.

I most specifically did not include you, JK, in that assessment. I believe that your contributions to this discussion have all been honest. However, when you say "If there is no attrition, then an encounter is simply irrelevant because it in no mechanical way impacts a later encounter" this is wrong.

If there is no mechanical effect that lasts beyond a given encounter, and the players reasonably know or suspect this going into the encounter, the encounter is insignificant because the players know that, regardless of what happens within the encounter, nothing has changed. An easy illustration of the same would be if, every time you landed on a property in Monopoly, you had to play a mini-game that had no effect on the game of Monopoly at all. Very, very quickly, many groups would stop playing the mini-game.

Conversely, given what I have seen of the setup of 4e, the only set of encounters where the players will not reasonably know or suspect that they are playing the "landed on the Monopoly property" mini-game are those encounters where there is a significant chance of loss. If there is no significant chance of loss, players will not use resources that do not reset after encounters. If there is no significant chance of loss, the encounter is unlikely to force the players to lose resources that do not reset after encounters.

So, if I handwave away arguments that do not address what I am saying, it is because they have been answered dozens of times in the past. 3e also has the "landed on the Monopoly property" mini-game within it -- as exampled by 4 goblins facing a 10th level fighter. If you can tell me why we are constantly told to simply ignore or handwave "4 goblins facing a 10th level fighter" encounters in 3e, you will also have answered both your and pemerton's quoted points. Or, you could go back to my analysis, which also answers those points.

RC

You have my thanks then.

However, you continue to ignore that, within a given encounter, the situation changes. Resource management within the encounter is important, because it impacts upon the success or failure of the party within that encounter.

For the first combat, sure. For the first 100 combats, maybe. For 1,000? For 10,000? How many of these battles where you'e down to the last Death From Above and Fireball do you have to have before you notice that you're always down to....but almost never cross...that threshold? How long does it take you to realize that the "down to the last" encounters are filler?

The obvious response is that, if you don't use your resources wisely in those encounters, you will cross the theshold.

But now we are talking about encounters that can kill you. And, yes, I agree that the narrow subset of encounters that can kill you are exciting. In fact, my analysis predicts that DMs will quickly respond to the 4e set-up by making sure that most encounters have a win/lose aspect.

IOW, we will go from 1e, in which few encounters by themselves could kill you, through 3e where maybe half the encounters you faced could kill you, to 4e where almost all the encounters you face can kill you.

I appologize if I've failed to be clear enough, but there is a huge spectrum of outcomes for an encounter beyond "living/dead". So long as the PCs are invested in emerging from an encounter victorious, and if that victory can be denied if they are unwise in marshaling their resources, then the encounter is significant to the players. It's really just that simple. Death is one possible penatly for failure to achieve victory. So too is capture, losing the MacGuffin, the hostage being killed, the bad guys gaining ground, etc. etc. etc. I know you've handwaved these away before as insignificant, but in my experience over years of gaming, players who are invested in the outcome of an encounter will be invested in managing their resources effectively during an encounter to achieve their goal within the encounter.

Plus, I think refering to 1e encounters as there being "very few that can kill you" is a little innaccurate in my experience. Then again, I freely admit that the DMs I played 1e games with held the Tomb of Horrors as the pinacle of all things D&D, so every freaking brick in the dungeon had a high probability of killing you

And this is because, as Gizmo33 and I have been trying to say over and over again, changing the resource struncture will not solve this problem. This problem is only solved by making a cost/risk associated with resetting resources (so that you have to consider whether or not to use them), or, as you said, taking resource renewal completely out of player hands.

If there is no cost/risk involved with using your strongest tactics/resources first, prudent players will always use them first.

And myself and others (including apparently the designers who think that this system will benefit the game) argue that it will. If you have fewer spells to fling, then your nova-ing will be that much less impressive. It's really just that simple.

Now, if you still believe that nova-ing is just as effective, I request that you show me how you can nova as effectively when you have a shallower per-encounter pool of resources as you can when you have a deep day-long pool of resources. If you truly believe that you can nova a caster (say a psion, for the ease of setting them to 25% resources) with a shallower pool of resources as well as you can one at 100% resources, prove it.

And to yourself and RC, anything which doesn't reset within the framework of 1 day or more isn't a resource.

Please quote that or retract it.

Allow me to ammend this then. "A significant resource."

However, RC, you are still failing to see that an individual encounter can be significant, and indeed, that is the only garunteed encounter within a given rest peroid. The only garunteed one. It's folly to sacrifice the excitement of this garunteed encounter for the potential excitement of a potential encounter. This is the fundamental disconnect between our points of view. I feel as though players should be encouarged to focus more heavily on this garunteed encounter, since it's the only one anyone can be certain the PCs will experience in that day, while you feel that losing focus and enjoyment in order to add an element of long-term resource management is a more than fair sacrifice. (To this end, I must also conclude that you dislike playing classes like Rogue and Fighter, who lack this long-term resource management, and consider them poorly designed for this very reason).

I disagree that the long-term possible fun is a suitable substitute for short-term garunteed fun. And besides, for long term fun, that's what the overall adventure is for.

 

[Raven Crowking]

JK, I'm going to be selective in answering because some of this would result in the same old back-n-forth, and I believe that we are both hoping to get actual insight into the other's viewpoint. Fair enough?

I'm making the claim that the more limited your resources are at any given moment, the more carefully you must micromanage them.

Well, we both agree as far as this goes.

However, the more frequently, and the greater ease, with which you can renew resources, it is also true that the less carefully you must micromanage them. As an easy example, you might have only one sword-swing per round (limited at any given moment), but because it can be done each round (easily and often renewed) you don't need to micromanage this resource very carefully.

If you have four fireballs per day, you also have 4 fireballs per encounter. If, on the other hand, you only have 1 fireball per encounter, the decision of when to use it is very significant.

I would rather say, "If you have four fireballs per day, you could potentially also have 4 fireballs per encounter. If, on the other hand, you only have 1 fireball per encounter, the decision of when to use it could be very significant."

Imagine that you have 4 fireballs per day. You are going into a dungeon that, thanks to your divination spells, you know has only one significant encounter, and you know that you can eliminate it with a single fireball. In this case, the decision of when to use any of the remaining fireballs, or even the final fireball, is relatively insignificant because you know the outcome.

Conversely, imagine that you have one fireball each encounter, and fireball is your most potent per-encounter ability. Unless there is a strong reason not to you will automatically lead with your fireball, because there is no cost associated with doing so. From a tactical standpoint, it is always better to lead with your best capabilities unless there is a reason not to.

So, the decision of when to use the one fireball per encounter could be "very significant" only insofar as there is some reason not to use it immediately. There is a difference between an effect being significant and a decision to use that effect being significant.

Simple illustration: I am playing a video game, and I unlock a cheat code that allows me to kill all enemies with a single blow. Once I have decided to use this cheat code, the ability is certainly significant. The decision to use it in all subsequent combats, however, is not. It requires no thought, no choice, no investment, nothing.

You seem to disagree that the decision of "when" is an important decision, and instead insist that it is only "if" that should be focused on.

The per-day paradigm is all about "when". "Should I use my potent spell now, or should I save it?" is as much a "when" question as an "if" question.

However, for a "when" question (or, for that matter, an "if" question) to arise, there must first be some reason that the immediate and obvious answer is not either "now/yes" or "not now/no".

A 3e wizard faces no "when" or "if" question re: fireball when the 10th level D&D party encounters a lone kobold. The answer is obviously "not now/no". This because the fireball is overkill for the encounter, and might be needed later. Likewise, if the fireball will automatically reset when the kobold is dead, there is no "might be needed later" and therefore no concern about overkill for the encounter. The answer is an obvious "now/yes".

I think it would be worth our while to confine, for the moment, our enquiry within the space of a single encounter.

Imagine, if you will, a party of four PCs, each of whom has 30 hit points. Despite their class, the each have a mixed bag of at-will, per-encounter, and per-day powers. Despite the fluff, each of these powers is roughly equal:

At-will: Needs an attack roll, hitting roughly 25% of the time on an APL encounter, does an average of 6 hp damage to a single target (analagous to the use of sword, bow, etc.).

Per-encounter 1: Special attack that does not require an attack roll, can do an average of 24 points of damage to a single target, or 6 points to 4 targets.

Per-encounter 2: Special abilitiy that allows you to use your at-will ability, and also heal all comrades 6 hp damage.

Per-encounter 3: Special ability that allows you to use your at-will ability, and also heal yourself 24 points damage.

Per-day 1: Special ability that allows you to do an average 50 points of damage to a single target. Using it also means that you can no longer use per-encounter ability 1.

Per-day 2: Special ability that allows you to do an average 25 points of damage to two targets. Using it also means that you can no longer use per-encounter ability 2.​

Note that I do not think that these are the abilities inherent in 4e. They are simply for illustrative purposes. Do feel able to discuss encounters using these as a guideline?

RC

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I would rather say, "If you have four fireballs per day, you could potentially also have 4 fireballs per encounter. If, on the other hand, you only have 1 fireball per encounter, the decision of when to use it could be very significant."

Imagine that you have 4 fireballs per day. You are going into a dungeon that, thanks to your divination spells, you know has only one significant encounter, and you know that you can eliminate it with a single fireball. In this case, the decision of when to use any of the remaining fireballs, or even the final fireball, is relatively insignificant because you know the outcome.

Conversely, imagine that you have one fireball each encounter, and fireball is your most potent per-encounter ability. Unless there is a strong reason not to you will automatically lead with your fireball, because there is no cost associated with doing so. From a tactical standpoint, it is always better to lead with your best capabilities unless there is a reason not to.

Just as in previous D&D, you will have more than a single fireball during an encounter.
Assume you also have a Dispel Magic spell, and also a powerful magic missile spell (deals more damage than a fireball, but only to a single target).
So, now you have a tactical challenging decision:
Do I throw the fireball, and damage most enemies in the area? Or do I concentrate on the big brute monster over there and hope I can get to killit with my magic missile spell?
Or do I use my dispel magic spell to dispel the Spellcasting Monster's defensive aura so the groups fighter can take him out quicker? Or should I better use the Dispel Magic to counterspell the enemies spell?
Basically, the flaw in your argument (to me) is this: You assume there is no meaningful choice during the encounter which resources to deploy. That would indeed lead to a "novaing"-like approach with little meaning. But I guess the designers noticed that, too (in fact, I think one of the blogs notes that they had a game situation where this was the case, and they found a way to fix it. I think the post was made with a title like "button pressing")

Now, imagine even further: Imagine in any given encounter, you could only use one or two of these abilities, not all? Which one is the better choice? Basically, it's the same question spellcasters face today each day: Which spells do I ready? I am theoretically capable of 4 fireballs per day, but then I won't be able to cast Fly or Dispel Magic. But if I prepare one of those, I don't have much fireballs left..
But instead of deciding only once per day, you decide for each encounter which ability is important. Over the course of an adventure, you are more flexible, but during each encounter, the decision is meaningful.

(Note: Siloing might change the examples a bit, because you might not need to decide between Dispel Magic and Fireball. But it's possible siloing works only on the "per day"-level - to ensure that you have Phantom Speed, Dispel Magic and Fireball ready, but during an individual encounter, you might only get to use one of these spells)

 

[Jackelope King]

JK, I'm going to be selective in answering because some of this would result in the same old back-n-forth, and I believe that we are both hoping to get actual insight into the other's viewpoint. Fair enough?

Not a problem.

Well, we both agree as far as this goes.

However, the more frequently, and the greater ease, with which you can renew resources, it is also true that the less carefully you must micromanage them. As an easy example, you might have only one sword-swing per round (limited at any given moment), but because it can be done each round (easily and often renewed) you don't need to micromanage this resource very carefully.

Agreed. However, per-encounter abilities cannot be reset during an encounter, just as per-day resources can't. That's where your analogy breaks down. Within the context of that one encounter, resources do deplete.

I would rather say, "If you have four fireballs per day, you could potentially also have 4 fireballs per encounter. If, on the other hand, you only have 1 fireball per encounter, the decision of when to use it could be very significant."

Imagine that you have 4 fireballs per day. You are going into a dungeon that, thanks to your divination spells, you know has only one significant encounter, and you know that you can eliminate it with a single fireball. In this case, the decision of when to use any of the remaining fireballs, or even the final fireball, is relatively insignificant because you know the outcome.

Conversely, imagine that you have one fireball each encounter, and fireball is your most potent per-encounter ability. Unless there is a strong reason not to you will automatically lead with your fireball, because there is no cost associated with doing so. From a tactical standpoint, it is always better to lead with your best capabilities unless there is a reason not to.

So, the decision of when to use the one fireball per encounter could be "very significant" only insofar as there is some reason not to use it immediately. There is a difference between an effect being significant and a decision to use that effect being significant.

Simple illustration: I am playing a video game, and I unlock a cheat code that allows me to kill all enemies with a single blow. Once I have decided to use this cheat code, the ability is certainly significant. The decision to use it in all subsequent combats, however, is not. It requires no thought, no choice, no investment, nothing.

That presupposes that your fireball is your most powerful choice. As I illustrated with IH, that isn't the choice in most per-encounter designs. You can't spam your biggest spell because you don't have a "biggest spell". You may have a handful of options that you have to choose between and decide when and if to deploy.

The per-day paradigm is all about "when". "Should I use my potent spell now, or should I save it?" is as much a "when" question as an "if" question.

It's only "when" if "when=which encounter". There is less emphasis on "which round".

However, for a "when" question (or, for that matter, an "if" question) to arise, there must first be some reason that the immediate and obvious answer is not either "now/yes" or "not now/no".

A 3e wizard faces no "when" or "if" question re: fireball when the 10th level D&D party encounters a lone kobold. The answer is obviously "not now/no". This because the fireball is overkill for the encounter, and might be needed later. Likewise, if the fireball will automatically reset when the kobold is dead, there is no "might be needed later" and therefore no concern about overkill for the encounter. The answer is an obvious "now/yes".

I'm afraid your hyperbole is showing. Yes, if you present your PCs with an obviously lop-sided encounter, then they won't have much of a choice with their per-encounter abilities. That doesn't speak to more appropriate challenges.

I think it would be worth our while to confine, for the moment, our enquiry within the space of a single encounter.

Imagine, if you will, a party of four PCs, each of whom has 30 hit points. Despite their class, the each have a mixed bag of at-will, per-encounter, and per-day powers. Despite the fluff, each of these powers is roughly equal:

At-will: Needs an attack roll, hitting roughly 25% of the time on an APL encounter, does an average of 6 hp damage to a single target (analagous to the use of sword, bow, etc.).

Per-encounter 1: Special attack that does not require an attack roll, can do an average of 24 points of damage to a single target, or 6 points to 4 targets.

Per-encounter 2: Special abilitiy that allows you to use your at-will ability, and also heal all comrades 6 hp damage.

Per-encounter 3: Special ability that allows you to use your at-will ability, and also heal yourself 24 points damage.

Per-day 1: Special ability that allows you to do an average 50 points of damage to a single target. Using it also means that you can no longer use per-encounter ability 1.

Per-day 2: Special ability that allows you to do an average 25 points of damage to two targets. Using it also means that you can no longer use per-encounter ability 2.​

Note that I do not think that these are the abilities inherent in 4e. They are simply for illustrative purposes. Do feel able to discuss encounters using these as a guideline?

RC

Honestly, I don't. While I greatly appreciate your willingness to discuss this within the context of a single encounter, I am not certain if this is really an adequate cross-section of abilities available to a reaslitic game. However, I am open to the possibility that I'm quite wrong in my initial impression here, and would invite you to continue with your example.