Why is it so important?

[gizmo33]

Because some people's taste didn't change.

Actual "people" were absent in the statement about "tastes", I wasn't really sure what you meant by that.

It's fine to state a preference for Gygaxian-style play, but infering that you're a superior player because of that preference is absurd.

I agree.

See, it is that simple.

No, I don't see. Recasting what you said is not any simpler than the situation either.

Does it really look like that to you?

What you said looked like that to me. What you were advocating looked like you were defending change simply by virtue that it was change (again, I do find "tastes change" to be cryptic as an isolated sentence, but in the context of the rest of what you wrote it had the meaning to me that I've described). What I *wasn't* addressing was the motives of WotC, which I'm pretty sure are not change for the sake of change. I think making money and making an interesting game would be two huge (and related) motives for 4E, but that wasn't my original point.

WotC has been collecting data on what sells/works.

None of James Wyatt's blog entries make any reference to this data. It's a combination of his personal game experiences with some general cause-and-effect reasoning. I don't know of any evidence that what you're saying here is happening, much less that it is a significant part of the design process though I wouldn't be surprised if it were there somewhere.

Try this: the predominant mode of play has changed significantly since 1st edition. One cannot infer the growing stupidity of the D&D playing audience from this.

I agree, the people playing now are basically the same as those that played then - I'm not a grognard in that way. However, one of the logical corrollaries of that is that 4E is going to have problems, just like 1E had, and I'm just speaking out to try to avoid as many of those as possible.

Clearer, yes? I'm really not a cryptic person.

I never meant to make a statement about you personally and i don't have an opinion about whether or not you are cryptic. I would assume that what you are saying about yourself as a person is correct. I found what you wrote to be cryptic, which is not the same thing.

 

[pemerton]

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?

I'm not sure to what extent your questions are rhetorical. But if, in fact, it takes 10000 encounters before the game becomes a mechanical chore rather than an exciting (for a game player) suite of choices, then that is about 40 years of play (assuming 5 encounters per week at 50 playing weeks per year). A game which can maintain interest for that long, at that intensity of play, would be a major design achievement, I would think.

It is absolutely true, especially as one grows used to a new system (i.e., the aforementioned "shine" period) that a player might not know, within a given circumstance, which of his powers is most significant. If you believe that, after playing the game for a year or so, players will not know which powers are most significant in any normal circumstance, then, yes, this is a valid criticism of my position.

OK, well I have suggested exactly this, namely, that players won't know. And I have suggested that this is so for two reasons:

(1) They may be ignorant of the encounter parameters (at least at the start of the encounter) - this has been suggested by the several comments from designers about the variability of monster roles, meaning that inferences to role cannot be drawn just from creature type.

(2) In my view the more important reason, that in a system of per-encounter abilities the player's choices, over the course of the encounter, determine whether or not it is "mere filler." So, until those choices become purely automatic, it will be interesting for the players to have to make decisions to bring it about that the encounter poses little threat.​

I do assume that the average player, however, in any given situation is automatically going to choose whichever resource seems most significant within that context, except as using that resource has repercussions.

I agree, except that I dispute the adverb "automatically". If the assessment of significance is difficult - because the options are broad, the mathematics subtle, the context uncertain (both mechanically and perhaps in other respects) and the interactions between the choices of multiple party members important - then making the optimal choice can itself be an interesting and satisfying experience. I see this every time I GM my games. It's possible that my players are unique, but I've got no reason to think there are not others like them.

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.

I don't accept this as true in general. For example, my bank account is neither easily nor frequently renewed. But I don't micromanage it, and have little interest in doing so. My pay goes in, my mortgage and other bills come out - and that's about it.

On the other hand, when I cook I can easily renew my resources, and I can always start again - and indeed I do, every evening or two. But I still micromanage my cooking in a way that I do not my finances. One reason is that I enjoy cooking more than banking. But another is that I can make meaningful choices about cooking, whereas I can't with my finances - all my money is already allocated for me by the overheads of life.

Now, these examples are not drawn from gaming. So how relevant are they? Dunno. But they show the general claim is not true. And I have no real reason to suppose the claim is true in respect of RPGs - for example, during an encounter most of my RM players micromanage their Adrenal Move choices (per-encounter) at least as closely as their spell point choices (per-day), because they know that the former is at least as important as the latter to their success in an encounter, and they care about the encounter they are in.

An additional complicating factor here is that while per-encounter abilities renew more frequently and with greater ease than do per-day abilities in game, it is an open question whether or not they do so in real life, which is where the players are experiencing their interest and their pleasure. If succeeding at encounters becomes a tactically more engaging process with the new mechanics, it may well be that the abilities reset with more frequency but less ease, because winning encounters is a greater mental challenge (but not, necessarily, because of a greater in-game threat to the PCs).

"Imagine in any given encounter, you could only use one or two of these abilities, not all? Which one is the better choice?" is a repercussion. Repercussions are, IMHO, a good thing. It is perfectly possible to have repercussions within a given encounter; the effects of Haste in 1e are a good example of this. However, nothnig I have seen from WotC yet indicates that "repercussions = fun" is in their lexicon.

In 1st ed AD&D haste ages the caster 3 years - generally insiginficant, at least within the context of an encounter - but as far as I recall does not trigger a system shock roll. I'm pretty sure the latter is a 2nd ed innovation. (A quick scan of OSRIC suggests that the aging is 2 years, but there is still no mention of system shock.)

The sorts of repercussions that Jackelope King has in mind are, I think, opportunity costs. These are real repercussions which take effect immediately.

I also assume that, while individual encounters might be fun, the context of those encounters lends them a large part of their meaning.

<snip>

I feel that it is self-evident that actions that are relevant to the overarching game are inherently more interesting than actions that are not. Indeed, if this was not the case, the game might as well be DDM, where you stage various skirmishes that are unrelated -- or tangentially related -- to each other.

I don't think this is disputed. What is disputed is the following: (i) that context can give players an incentive to play encounters well, where "playing well" means "deploying one's per-encounter resources so as to win without depleting one's per-day resources"; (ii) that purely per-day resources are an obstacle to generating compelling contexts for encounters.

I find it rather telling that, while you might have to make the same sort of decisions fighting 4 goblins at 10th level as you do fighting something that can hurt you, a great many people suggest that the 4 goblins should be handwaved, while the other fight should not. And I find it rather telling that, although this parallel has been brought up again and again, it hasn't exactly been addressed by those claiming that fights which have tactical decisions, but no repercussions beyond the encounter, are as interesting as those which have both.

Under the current rules, in the fight vs goblins the fighter has nothing interesting to do except move into the middle of the goblins, and then full attack and cleave; while the magic-user has nothing interesting to do except either waste spells, or declare each turn "I do nothing". Thus it is uninteresting.

With the introduction of per-encounter resources it becomes marginally more interesting, because the magic-user at least has something to do. However, if the goblins really pose no threat then it is still relatively uninteresting.

Supppose, however, that the goblins have a chance of winning the encounter if the players are tactically sloppy - for example, they might be able to swarm the fighter and overbear her. In core 3E this is still relatively uninteresting, because the tactical choices are rather limited - for example, the fighter's only trade-off is between moving (which on its own is not that spectacular) and full attack, while the wizard's only trade-off is between expending resources and doing nothing. The goal of a properly-designed suite of per-encounter abilities is to make these trade-offs and optimisations interesting and pleasurable as a play experience. Each encounter is like a mini-adventure, in which decisions are taken so as to maximise the likelihood of success, and minimise the emergence of a real chance of failure.

Thus, as I have frequently said, the outcome all depends on the good design of the suite of character abilities. Luckily, WoTC seems to have employed some good designers.

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

I have already noted that if per-day abilities are designed so that they are simply the optimal choices for winning a typical encounter, then your prediction of a failure to solve the 15-minute day problem becomes highly plausible.

For me, this is a reason to suppose that per-day abilities will be things like "second wind" and "teleport".

My argument, at its basic level, is that preventing a 15-minute adventuring day is a function of repercussions for using resources indiscriminately. The per-day/per-encounter paradigm will not solve it without significant repercussions, and AFAICT, actually removes existing repercussions from play.

I posted a long list of reasons for disagreeing with this, based on a different diagnosis from yours of the causes of the 15-minute day. You have not responded, but I'll post them again in case others are interested:

Mechanically, I see the problem this way. To have a meaningful effect on an encounter, a wizard typically has to cast a spell of somewhere near his/her maximum spell level. A wizard does not have more than 4 to 8 such spells. Therefore, the first encounter of the day is either one in which the wizard goes nova, thus overshadowing the fighters in that encounter, or is one in which the wizard does nothing for one or more rounds. The 4e designers clearly take the view that the latter is an option that provides a poor play experience for the wizard's player - and I assume that the typical play experience bears this out, with the players of wizards opting to do something each round, and thus nova-ing.

After 1 or 2 encounters, then, the wizard has nothing left to do. Thus the party rests. Furthermore, to make those encounters interesting in the face of the wizard's nova-ing, the GM ramps up the EL to somewhere above that of the party - and in these encounters, the overshadowing of the fighter by the wizard only increases.

One solution to this state of affairs is the 1st ed one. The players of wizards are encouraged to hold back, not acting in many rounds, conserving their resources for when they are crucial. Wandering monsters and other constraints on resting support this solution. It is a solution which 3E has obviously abandoned and which 4e will not embrace.

An alternative solution is to make all abilities at-will. In such a system, a wizard would use a wizard's blast every round just as a fighter swings his/her sword every round. This solution, in order to generate mechanically interesting challenges, has to go to win/lose encounters (and presumably this is how 3E is playing once one embraces the one-encounter-per-day paradigm). As an alternative, of course, it might look to other thresholds of signficance - and at this point a genuine at-will mechanic is preferable to a one-encounter-per-day mechanic, because the latter just imposes a pointless constraint on those other thresholds of significance.

A variant of the at-will solution is one which throws per-encounter abilities into the mix. These are then able to generate the sort of mechanical interest that I described above in relation to Adrenal Moves in RM and HARP, but also do not get in the way of other thresholds of significance.

4e seems to be going for a mix of this, plus per-day resources. As I've already acknowledged, if this model is to avoid the one-encounter-per-day problem, then it will be crucial that it not always be rational to lead with per-day resources. This is, as I have noted above, in part a question of design.

But it is not only a question of design. Because the availability of a wide range of non-per-day resources means that a wider range of alternative thresholds of significance become viable, it also becomes possible to introduce a wider range of reasons, derived from those other thresholds of significance, as to why it may be rational to conserve per-day resources. For example, it is obvious that a party which conserves per-day resources may be better able to proceed with the adventure, if the adventure is one in which time matters. And the presence of non-per-day resources makes such adventures more viable, by giving the wizard player something to do other than conserve resources for the adventure climax. (My reply to Gizmo33, post #1117, elaborates on this.)

Similarly, a party which conserves per-day resources may be better able to handle an encounter that comes unexpectedly, or turns out to be more difficult than was expected, or is one in which a player makes a mistaken choice which leads to the encounter really becoming a win/lose situation. These considerations all become important if the adventure is one in which the players cannot predict the likely number and sequence of encounters. And such an adventure becomes easier to design and to run when per-day resources are not the only resources to which a significant number of players have access.

 

[pemerton]

Make up your own schedule of abilities, then.

Remember that the purpose is illustrative only. You do not need (and in all likelihood, cannot obtain!) a 1:1 map of what 4e will be. All you need is something illustrative of the types of choices that are possible. We will look at that schedule of abilities, then, as a subset of possible designs, not to be conflated with the actual design.

I did this in post #1001. In a later post you answered my request for a comment on my example with the statement that it did not require a response. If you're now interested in considering it, I've reposted the relvant example below:

For example: it does not follow, from the fact that the players are not confident in any given round that they will win using per-encounter resources, that they will switch to per-day resources. This depends entirely on what the per-day resources are.

Suppose, for example, that a Figher's main per-day resource is a "second wind", which allows her to regain all her lost hit points via a swift action. Suppose also that a Fighter has an at-will ability, to use a swift action to add her level to her damage on a successful hit. Then as long as the player believes that the PC has enough hits left to survive another round's combat, and given that it is crucial to deliver as much damage per round as possible, that player will not use the "second wind". It is quite conceivable that this state of affairs can continue all the way to the end of the combat. What we then have is an exciting combat, which was significant because meaningful choices about resource deployment had to be made in every round, but no per-day resource was consumed.

Similar sorts of possibilities exist for a Wizard. Suppose the per-day resource is teleport, for example: then, until the Fighter has used her "second wind", the Wizard does not have to open the escape hatch because victory is still posible. But the Wizards still knows that this might be needed. And suppose, furthermore, that the teleport can be used as an immediate action - in any given round, the Wizard's player has to decide whether to use a swift action on his turn, thus ruling out the possibility of an immediate action until his next turn but making it less likely that it will be needed, because less likely that the Fighter will have to use her second wind (I may have mucked up the action sequencing rules there, but I think the general point still makes sense).

Or, suppose that the Wizard's per-day resource is a big area attack spell. Using this effectively requires the Fighter and Rogue to withdraw from the combat, thus (let's say) exposing the Wizard herself to attack. In any given round it may not make the most tactical sense to deploy that spell, because the martial characters might be (barely) holding their own, and the Cleric still has a per-day "heal all allies" ability left. But the Wizard, while making non-per-day attacks, might be manoeuvring into a position where, if the big gun does have to be used, it effectiveness will be maximised, the risk to him will be minimised and the possibility of safe withdrawal by the martial characters will be achieved.

What all of these examples have in common is (i) that the acquisition of relevant information about the encounter by the players is dynamic - in the sense that it occurs over time during the encounter - and (ii) that the interaction of each PC's abilities, and of the abilities of each with the abilities of the others, means that knowledge of a genuine risk to the party does not make the deployment of per-day resources the automatic solution.​

 

[Mallus]

Maybe there's some way of making DnD combat aesthetically pleasing by itself, like I allude to in my first paragraph.

Bingo! (that's certainly another locus of interest)

I'd describe most of combats in my current game as 'aesthetically pleasing' rather that 'overtly challenging', and the players keep coming back after 3 years.

Requisite plug: you can read all about it in the Story Hour in my sig.

I'm not familiar with a game or game system that has ever done this, though I haven't played many outside of DnD. Those games that I've played that have focus on aethetically pleasing elements have, IME, avoided combat altogether.

Try playing M&M. It's still D20, still plenty crunchy, but it's pretty much a given that you won't die and virtually all powers are at-will. And it's a blast; sometimes just using a character's abilities in creative ways is enough. Well, that and saving the world...

 

[Mallus]

Actual "people" were absent in the statement about "tastes", I wasn't really sure what you meant by that.

The 'people' part was implied.

What you said looked like that to me. What you were advocating looked like you were defending change simply by virtue that it was change...

I think you're mistaking me for someone else. My positions in this thread can be summed up as:

1) D&D doesn't need to rely on resource attrition to provide player challenge.

2) Other successful systems do not use resource attrition, or use it in a much more limited fashion.

3) The attrition model doesn't suit my preferred style of play.

4) No ones offered a concrete reason why such an attrition-less/lite model works for some games, but not D&D.

5) Mistaking your preferred play style for 'smarter play' is vain. Also dumb.

That's it. Wait, for the sake of discussion, I'll add something new...

D&D's per-day class abilities (ie spells) have traditionally been too decisive (though 3.0 was a step in the right direction). It's bad design, IMHO, to give a few classes the really decisive abilities, then try and balance things by giving limited uses. It creates mutually incompatible play imperatives('charge!','camp!), it means casters either 'win' the fight or basically sit idle.

I think the design goal should be to define the class abilities in such a way that every class can meaningfully contribute each round of an encounter. Or at least closer to that.

None of James Wyatt's blog entries make any reference to this data.

And? Why is his blog so important?

My point was simply that new rules systems that first appeared in popular 3.5 supplements will be part of 4e. Do you think this is a coincidence?

 

[pemerton]

your analogy speaks more for what I'd call, maybe, "aesthetic pleasure" or something.

I think you're probably right here - it's something in the neighbourhood of aesthetics. It's the pleaure of doing a complex activity well. If I understand Aristotle properly, he held this to be the highest form of pleasure. Whether or not that's right, I think it is a genuine form of pleasure for many people.

Maybe there's some way of making DnD combat aesthetically pleasing by itself.

<snip>

I've seen wordsmith-type DMs try to salvage a boring combat encounter by lots of flavor text - "that lone wolverine is really scary and you 10th level PCs should be shaking in your boots" kind of thing.

I don't know about you, but I find this GM-ing style a bit lame (at least in D&D-type games - it has a place in Call of Cthulhu).

So here is where I think I have to insist that the pleasure is not aesthetic in any narrow sense, ie does not result from the experience. Because, as you said in your post, I am not actually fighting a goblin - I'm sittting at a table rolling dice and doing maths. The pleasure I have in mind is that of doing the maths right, so that the PCs survive the encounter and can go on to do whatever it is they have to do.

This sort of play depends, to my mind, on two things: the players have to enjoy the optimisation problem - I think this can be taken for granted as true of many game players, but not necessarily all; and the players have to have a reason to care about the PCs surviving the encounter. The latter is provided by non-mechanical thresholds of significance.

If the non-mechanical threshold of significance is lacking, then the game will degenerate into a series of disjointed encounters, like a miniatures tournament (as RC suggested above). The analogue, in classic D&D, is a game which is just a sequence of mindless dungeon crawls. Because the dungeon crawls typically take longer, the alleged mindlessness may take longer to become apparent. So a game with per-encounter resources but without other thresholds of significance will become more tired more quickly, I think.

What you describe AFAICT is interesting in the abstract, I'm not that much of a hack-and-slasher that I would/do pass up chances to add other elements to the game other than win/loss. The bottom line though is that based on my (perhaps limited, mortal that I am) experience, there's no real advantage to a per-encounter resource situation that enhances any of those things, they're all possible in the 3E system.

This is where I disagree. The 3E system (in its core) does not give fighters a wide range of choices - the only trade off is between move and full attack. And when spell-casters choose, it is typically between casting devastating spells or else doing nothing. What is needed, to get the sort of play I am describing, is to give fighters more choices, and to give wizards more choices that are less impactful on play. The per-encounter model achieves this.

No, wizard's don't have a *deep* bag of resources - remember the 9:00-9:15 adventuring problem?

But you would agree, wouldn't you, that they have a *shallow* bag of *very big* resources? - and that this combination is part of what can give rise to a 15-minute day. The per-encounter system is meant to smooth this out, I believe, in the way I've tried to explain in the paragraph above.

One thing I will acknowledge is that any given "dimension of interest" of an encounter has the chance to interfere with the other dimensions. Resource management can interfere with the story (or vice versa). Then again death can interfere with the story. Pretty much anything can beside the story.

But some things interfere more than others, I think. Pure per-day resource place constraints on adventure design that some (perhaps many?) gaming groups experience as signficant.

Turning now to a slightly different topic:

IMO PCs don't have to manage resources with any great effort unless one of two things is true: the encounter poses a significant chance of killing a PC, or, there are long time-period (per-day, for example) ramifications for using a resource.

What about the following scenario: the encounter does not pose a significant chance of killing a PC, provided that the players manage their resources well within the scope of the encounter?

If you think this makes no sense, then you will have to reject my arguments, and I think those of Jackelope King (but obviously he can speak for himself if I've got him wrong).

But to me it is a real scenario, that I see quite frequently in games I GM, and I get the impression (from remarks on monster design, encounter design, character build rules, etc) that it is the sort of scenario the 4e designers are trying to support.

The "archer with the tokens for various combat actions" is an example of the sort of design that I think supports this type of play. Another example I gave earlier was that of Adrenal Moves in RM and HARP.

So, a thousand posts later, I'm starting to make a short list of things that I think that the per-encounter side of this argument could acknowledge and get us closer to agreeing to disagree. One is that the per-encounter resource game will be more dangerous - although from your arguments above we're some ways from that.

I don't agree that it has to be like this, because of the argument that I just gave. But what we can agree to disagree on, I think, is whether or not it is possible to get sustained playing enjoyment out of encounters where the risk is low, provided the players play well, and where playing well requires complex and contextually-sensitive decision-making.

The other is that per-encounter reduces the "dimensions of interest" of encounters by one, in order to facilitate story-based play. Maybe we're close to agreeing on that?

I would prefer to say, swaps one dimension of interest - operational play - to open up a new one - the sort of tactical play I've described above, and which I argue core 3E does not provide for because of its overly narrow range of choices for both fighters and wizards.

But I do agree that per-encounter abilities make operational play difficult if not impossible (it all becomes about equipment, rather than inherent abilities). And I do agree it thereby removes a constraint on "story-based" play (while, for the reasons I have given, still allowing encounters to have mechanical interest). And as I said above, I think that without significant non-mechanical thresholds of signficance per-encounter play will become tired more quickly than operational, per-day driven, play.

So we do agree that per-encounter resources take something away, namely, the possibility of satisfying operational play (again, I am assuming that equipment-management doesn't really cut it).

But I don't agree that it will have to make encounters more dangerous, and I don't agree that it reduces the mechanical dimensions of interest - and for both of these my reason is the same, namely, that it makes possible a new dimension of interest that 3E, in its core form, does not really facilitate. If I'm wrong about this - either conceptually, or if 4e doesn't deliver on the concept, then obviously my position falls down in a screaming heap.

I've posted links from two blogs, one from a WotC designer and one from a former one, and both seem to recognize and appreciate the inherent benefits of retaining some per-day resource management in the game. My guess is that 4E will include this as well, and the increase in per-encounter resources for certain classes will get us the best of both worlds. My guess is that this debate about "per-encounter" resources is largely an excercise in logic because I really don't think 4E is going to go this direction. Wyatt indicated in his blog that "early versions of 4E" had gone this route, but the implication was that it was found to be undesireable.

Here is what I take to be the key passage from Wyatt's blog:

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?"​

In defending the rationality of per-encounter design, and especially its capacity to solve the 15-minute problem, I have been emphasising what Wyatt calls "strong power design", which means that there is no automatic answer to the question of what to do. Without this, there can be little mechanical interest in per-encounter play - it is just a question of starting from the top, rolling the dice, and hope you get lucky.

I agree that mixing in per-day resources helps in some ways. Obviously it creates the problem RC sees, of just re-opening the prospects of a 15 minute day. Strong power design is crucial to avoiding that. But provided one has a reason to conserve resources, it introduces additional complexity, and therefore additional mechanical interest, into the play of an encounter.

That need to conserve resources will come from non-mechanical thresholds of significance - as has always been the case (if there are no plot constraints - like honour or guards or wanderers or time bombs or whatever - then there is no reason not to rest and regain resources). What I think is interesting is that the introduction of per-encounter resources, by freeing up certain constraints on these other thresholds of significance, might make it easier to introduce a wider range of reasons for wanting to conserve resources.

I should add, Gizmo33, that I don't feel we are that far apart in terms of the way we are looking at the pieces. But it may be that we do have different views about what can make for an interesting RPG experience.

 

[pemerton]

Wait, for the sake of discussion, I'll add something new...

D&D's per-day class abilities (ie spells) have traditionally been too decisive (though 3.0 was a step in the right direction). It's bad design, IMHO, to give a few classes the really decisive abilities, then try and balance things by giving limited uses. It creates mutually incompatible play imperatives('charge!','camp!), it means casters either 'win' the fight or basically sit idle.

I think the design goal should be to define the class abilities in such a way that every class can meaningfully contribute each round of an encounter. Or at least closer to that.

Allow me to disagree - this point is not new to the discussion - and to agree - I have been trying to explain just this thing (although less concisely than you did) for multiple posts now.

I think the rest of your post (ie points 1 to 5) is pretty much true also.

 

[gizmo33]

I'm sittting at a table rolling dice and doing maths. The pleasure I have in mind is that of doing the maths right, so that the PCs survive the encounter and can go on to do whatever it is they have to do.

What you're saying in the "so that the PCs survive the encounter" statement demonstrates to me AFAICT, as has been the case time and time again, that the real fall-back position for this per-encounter design is to really make each encounter have a significant chance of PC death. The protests against this so far IMO have been highly abstract, and I find again and again when the conversation and examples get more practical and natural (ie. not designed to refute this specific point), we're back to the fatality thing.

What is needed, to get the sort of play I am describing, is to give fighters more choices, and to give wizards more choices that are less impactful on play. The per-encounter model achieves this.

A mixed model also achieves this (and still retains operational dimension) and this is what I'm advocating. I agree with your basic idea that fighters need a little help. I'm much less enthusiastic about fighter powers that are cartoonish in their effect - super whirlwind attacks and that sort of thing.

But you would agree, wouldn't you, that they have a *shallow* bag of *very big* resources? - and that this combination is part of what can give rise to a 15-minute day. The per-encounter system is meant to smooth this out, I believe, in the way I've tried to explain in the paragraph above.

Yes, I agree that wizard powers (as is historically the case in prior editions) are few and powerful. And I should be clear that I actually support the idea of wizards getting a mixed bag of per-day and per-encounter. However, I don't think it will solve the problems that many people on your side of the argument have identified, so I ultimately feel that logically what your reasoning will lead to will be an *all per-encounter resource* situation - the kind that Wyatt is suspicious of.

So *some* per-encounter resources and per-day resources among the classes will mitigate the 9-9:15 problem as well as the "wizard nova" problem, but ultimately there will still be per-day management, which leads to the line of reasoning that RC has pursued (though I have differences that are probably minor).

But some things interfere more than others, I think. Pure per-day resource place constraints on adventure design that some (perhaps many?) gaming groups experience as signficant.

I find the limitations on PCs not being able to fight 50 non-trivial encounters in a day to be a comfortable limitation that doesn't interfere with my stories. PC death, according to *numerous* posts on this board, interferes with story development, and I'm pretty sure that will be the next thing to go if this idea becomes influential since I don't see the difference.

What about the following scenario: the encounter does not pose a significant chance of killing a PC, provided that the players manage their resources well within the scope of the encounter?

There's that basic idea again: manage your resources well (ie. non-trivial, and thus possibily unsuccessful) or die.

The "archer with the tokens for various combat actions" is an example of the sort of design that I think supports this type of play. Another example I gave earlier was that of Adrenal Moves in RM and HARP.

As I said, IME my players (and me as a player) wouldn't think much of making these choices Kill the mooks or the bandit leader? Who really cares how you do it since it's inevitable (the premise that the encounter is not deadly, unless they are trying to escape, in which case they'll bring more insignificant forces, or forces that *can* kill the PCs, and so it really is a potentially deadly encounter after all).

This basic tactical situation already exists in 3E, although I think such mechanics might be more interesting if added to the game, they won't fundementally make things more interesting once their novelty wears off IMO.

(Here is what I take to be the key passage from Wyatt's blog:

Depends on what you mean by "key". He's saying alot of other stuff. In order of "most concrete" to "most speculative", his most concrete statements are that "button mashing" is the basic experience of playing a warlock-style character in WoW. He *speculates* that the problem can be solved by what he nebulously says is something more restrictive than per-encounter, and also "strong power design" but then doesn't follow it up with any experience-based evidence.

Unanswered by this statement are questions like: if I'm always asking the question "is this the right round to use this power" then it is highly possible that I will *never* use the given power, in which case we're back to the situation of the "barbarian not having any fun because he's not raging because he waited the whole encounter for the right time and it never came".

 

[IanArgent]

Tossed in as food for thought.

I ran, from roughly 92-'93 through '99, a shadowrun game that varied from 2-12 PCs at various times. SR has no resource management as D&D would understand the term (there is some grand-strategy level resource management, I suppose) and I had an explicit policy of never killing PCs. And somehow I was able, on next to no prep time spent on mechanics (I would think up plot in the shower, throw it at PCs and see what happened) to challegne the players mentally and the PCs in every way possible. Now, I will admit to having players who were capable of not metagaming their PCs reactions to possible death - but I had neither limited resources nor threats of random death in my toolbox - and any session of that game has been much better from both a player point of view and a GM point of view (the players I have now in my D&D game that were in the SR game would rather I ran that).

The key? Forcing the players to think. They had to deploy their assets and resources cleverly to accomplish goals. I could always challenge the players at the level of adventure goals.

I find I'm fighting the system when I run D&D these days - I have no margin of error. And one of the biggest problems I fight is the abitrariness of "availability" of caster abilities - the PCs don't always know when it is appropriate to use resources, so they get underused. I have this same problem when I'm playing in a friend's game - should I use my spells now or hold off? (Its not helping that my character is deep in the valley of multi-class suck on his way to arcane trickster after a change in career path at 4th level - but that's another rant). It is almost always a better choice for me to attack or use a charge off a wand, because I need to sav ethe good stuff for the "next encounter" (which may or may not happen - we're not in a dungeon right now and have a certain amount of freedom in pacing and encounter chaining.)

 

[Stalker0]

It is almost always a better choice for me to attack or use a charge off a wand, because I need to sav ethe good stuff for the "next encounter" (which may or may not happen - we're not in a dungeon right now and have a certain amount of freedom in pacing and encounter chaining.)

This is the insurance mindset. When buying most kinds of insurance, people forget that they are gambling not just on them needing the insurance, but that they will be alive to benefit from it.