Why is it so important?

[Raven Crowking]

"Vampiric Touch"-like melee attack abilities should be simlar to that one.

I was referring to the mention that some characters could attack and heal their allies as a single action.

And I think the per/day resources pretty much fit a 20% model.

Alrighty then.

Jackalope King, if this looks good to you, let's get to the encounters.

 

[gizmo33]

Fair enough. But in this sense of "threat of being killed", per-encounter seems to be no different from operational play - because in operational play I might make a mistake in encounter N (because the resource-rationing decisions are non-trivial), and then find myself in trouble as a result in encounter N+1. Both the 1st ed DMG and the 1st ed PHB emphasise that every encounter is a threat in this sense, and therefore has to be played with care.

Yea, exactly. *If* encounter N+1 is at a certain difficulty level then the N+1 encounter is not much different than the per-encounter situation. But that's one of my points, because there is no reason the N+1 encounter has to be like anything, whereas in order to make encounters interesting in a per-encounter resource situation that very encounter must be the one posing the risk of death.

In a per-day design, the looming N+1, N+2, etc. encounter that adds the tension and sense of vulnerability. In a per-encounter design it must be that very encounter (N) that the PCs are facing at that moment that poses the risk of death, because encounter N is nearly irrelevant to encounter N+1 unless there are plot elements that make it otherwise (and my assessment is that generally those plot elements are too delicate and contrived to be a reliable design plan for every adventure)

Also, in the per-day design, the options you have for mitigating the difficulty level of the N+1 are much greater than those you could have for a per-encounter design. Multiple weak cures, for instance, can actually help in the per-day design but are just too expensive to use in a per-encounter situation where every round counts.

Working operational details into an adventure design is something IME that takes some practice and a little work. Because of this my early DMing didn't do this as much. As a result my encounters were increased in difficulty because I wanted to add that sense of tension but I essentially had only one way of doing it. So some big powerful monster bursts through the door and the PCs face the fight of their lives. Exciting, except that you can only do this a few times before the razor's edge that you are balancing the probabilities on becomes noticable, and you either have to start cheating or become a killer DM.

I currently do have a per-encounter resource situation in my games - overland travel is an example of this. There's pretty much only one encounter for each couple of days. My options exist, as they would in a per-encounter design, but they're just more limited.

It's just that (as Jackelope King has been emphasising) once per-encounter resources are introduced the timeframe in which one discovers if one made a mistake is the encounter itself, rather than the encounter sequence.

Yes, but as I keep saying you really aren't going to care about your mistakes unless that very encounter is the one that stands a chance of killing you. Otherwise, who cares what spells/tactics you use when facing monsters that can't deal enough damage to threaten you?

So the timeframe for discovering mistakes is the encounter itself - I'm not sure if that's meant to be a good thing, but also, importantly, there's a much higher tolerance for mistakes in the per-encounter design, because while in the operational game a mistake costing me 10 hitpoints is significant, in the per-encounter design it's meaningless.

 

[shilsen]

Looks like I'm very late to the party, but for me, the per-encounter model (probably with some per-day abilities) is by far preferable and superior to a primarily per-day model. I don't run dungeon crawls and in my campaign PCs normally only have 1 encounter in a given game day, with sometimes 2 and very rarely 3 (twice or thrice in 60 sessions). Obviously this doesn't fit the supposed 3e/3.5e paradigm of multiple encounters daily, but it's never been much trouble for me to challenge my PCs nevertheless (even though they very rarely fight an enemy or enemies who combine to be equal in power to them), with an average of a PC going to -10 every second fight. Even so, it's clear to me that challenging them via multiple encounters is much easier than doing it via one. Having a model for PC abilities (i.e. the per encounter model) which works equally well whether there are multiple encounters a day or not just suits me significantly more as a DM (and also as a player). And I'm even more certain of it now that I've DMed for (and run as a PC) characters with the Bo9S system.

 

[shilsen]

Yes, but as I keep saying you really aren't going to care about your mistakes unless that very encounter is the one that stands a chance of killing you.

Wrong. See below.

Otherwise, who cares what spells/tactics you use when facing monsters that can't deal enough damage to threaten you?

An enemy doesn't have to threaten you with death (as the first sentence of yours I quoted above claims) for mistakes to matter. A mistake may mean the enemy survives long enough to escape. A mistake may mean the enemy delays you longer than you can afford (for whatever reason, whether you need to reach some place/thing/person in time, get away from some place/thing/person, etc). A mistake may mean that the enemy uses a magical item that you wanted for yourself. A mistake may mean that the enemy has time to cry an alarm and other enemies are alerted. A mistake may mean that the duration of a spell you're relying on for some reason expires. There are a myriad ways for a creative DM to make a mistake a problem, without death being on the line. If death is the only possible repercussion for mistakes in your DM's game, chances are he needs to think a little more about encounters.

So the timeframe for discovering mistakes is the encounter itself - I'm not sure if that's meant to be a good thing,

I'm pretty sure that it's a good thing. A model which focuses on every individual encounter rather than one which focuses on potential encounters in the future is significantly better for me, as both DM and player.

but also, importantly, there's a much higher tolerance for mistakes in the per-encounter design, because while in the operational game a mistake costing me 10 hitpoints is significant, in the per-encounter design it's meaningless.

As noted above, mistakes costing you a few hit points only have to be meaningless in the per-encounter design if the DM isn't exercising his creativity.

 

[gizmo33]

An enemy doesn't have to threaten you with death (as the first sentence of yours I quoted above claims) for mistakes to matter.

I've already been over this several times in this thread. I realize you are late to the party so I'll try an abbreviated version of my earlier arguments.

A mistake may mean the enemy survives long enough to escape. A mistake may mean the enemy delays you longer than you can afford (for whatever reason, whether you need to reach some place/thing/person in time, get away from some place/thing/person, etc). A mistake may mean that the enemy uses a magical item that you wanted for yourself. A mistake may mean that the enemy has time to cry an alarm and other enemies are alerted. A mistake may mean that the duration of a spell you're relying on for some reason expires. There are a myriad ways for a creative DM to make a mistake a problem, without death being on the line.

Some of these options already exist in the per-day scenario. Some of these options are too overly contrived to rely on. "Using a magic item you wanted for yourself" - must not be a per encounter resource, because then who cares if the enemy uses it? Alerting other enemies? Who cares about that unless those other enemies can kill you in which case you're back to the original situation of kill-or-be-killed. A spell that you are relying on is the one that was keeping you alive - again this is another case of a potentially deadly encounter. So death is on the line in two of these examples, although you stopped short of following the logic in that case to it's conclusion.

If death is the only possible repercussion for mistakes in your DM's game, chances are he needs to think a little more about encounters.

Ironic, considering that death was the possible repercussion in several of your above examples, so we all could stand to think about this, it seems. Furthermore there's a tiny window of time where any of the encounter choices has any significance. Go ahead and raise an alarm for example - if the help takes more than a minute to arrive the PCs are just going to have all of their powers back anyway and whatever they face is no difference than had they faced it on their own schedule.

Finally, it's a matter of DMing style but I'm not so manipulative or heavy handed that I can guarrantee that some of these more "delicate" situations will survive contact with the PCs. The "ticking timebomb" scenario is an example of that - while it makes for an interesting hypothetical on a messageboard, a realistic situation in a world of over-land travel that's going to have an impact on a game of 6-second melee rounds and 1-minute recovery times is hard to imagine no matter how much you think I should think about it.

As noted above, mistakes costing you a few hit points only have to be meaningless in the per-encounter design if the DM isn't exercising his creativity.

No one is going to raise an alarm if I take 10 more points of damage in a given encounter and fail to otherwise. So I don't see how your examples support your statement here. In fact, it's hard for me to see how many of these examples are the result of actual playing rather than a sort of quick arm-chair analysis. Are these examples really taken from your actual games?

 

[Jackelope King]

Alrighty then.

Jackalope King, if this looks good to you, let's get to the encounters.

By all means.

Finally, it's a matter of DMing style but I'm not so manipulative or heavy handed that I can guarrantee that some of these more "delicate" situations will survive contact with the PCs. The "ticking timebomb" scenario is an example of that - while it makes for an interesting hypothetical on a messageboard, a realistic situation in a world of over-land travel that's going to have an impact on a game of 6-second melee rounds and 1-minute recovery times is hard to imagine no matter how much you think I should think about it.

It's not "manipulative or heavy-handed" to attach context to an encounter any more than it's "repetitive and boring to go slogging through another dungeon and repeat the walking through the door litany for the millionth time".

 

[gizmo33]

It's not "manipulative or heavy-handed" to attach context to an encounter and more than it's "repetitive and boring to go slogging through another dungeon and repeat the walking through the door litany for the millionth time".

I'm confused by the grammar of this statement. Furthermore, "attaching context to an encounter" may very well be manipulative and heavy-handed - I can't really see where you are refuting this other than in your tone.

For example, I design an adventure so that *whenever* the PCs walk through the door to the final encounter area, the BBEG has some villager strapped to an altar and is 10 seconds away from sacrificing him. PCs must battle their way through the mooks and save the villager.

This sort of thing is extremely heavy-handed IMO, but that's a matter of gaming style I guess. I'm more of a simulationist, perhaps, than the average DM. I would be uncomfortable with the natural reaction that my players would have to this scenario, which would be "hey, what are the chances that we would stumble upon the BBEG *just* as he's about to sacrifice the villager? We spent *days* slogging through the wilderness just to get here, and we've back-tracked twice in the dungeon. All of this wasted time and yet the moment is just right for the maximum amount of dramatic tension?"

 

[gizmo33]

It's not "manipulative or heavy-handed" to attach context to an encounter any more than it's "repetitive and boring to go slogging through another dungeon and repeat the walking through the door litany for the millionth time".

Now that the grammar is cleared up this statement makes just as little sense to me. The two parts of the sentence seem unrelated. It *is* repetative and boring to slog through another dungeon (as the word choice "slog" would even lead one to conclude) so a logical reading of the sentence would indicate that you're demonstrating that attaching context is manipulative and heavy-handed. Which I'm pretty sure was not your intention. If you're going to ridicule dungeon-crawls it's probably best to do that in it's own context.

 

[Raven Crowking]

By all means.

OK then. We can assume that the prudent player will be saving his Arcane Mark power for between encounters. I.e., while there may be a sufficient reason to both AM & teleport to that area during an encounter, this will be a rare bird indeed.

We are given three appropriate monster groupings:

Minion (used in group size three to four times the party size): 10-20 hp, Average Damage 5 per round

Average Monster (used in group size equal to party size): 60-100 hp, Average Damage 10 per round

"Boss" Monster (used alone, possible augmented by a few minions): 400+ hp, Average Damage 20 per round​

To examine our encounters fairly, we must first see, IMHO, how the PCs stack up against these monster groupings. Let us start with minions. We must look at minions both 3 X and 4 X party size, so we need to select a party size. Let us say that we have a party of 4.

That means that each party member must deal 10-20 hp of damage to 3-4 squares. Looking at my schedule of abilities, I see that I can use Attack 1/Encounter 1 to deal 15 points of damage in 4 squares, leaving me with a chance of having to face another round of attacks, or Attack 1/Day 1, which ensures that I will kill all of my targets this round.

If I use my per-encounter power, I take 5 hp damage, and have a reasonable chance of taking another 5 hp damage, for a total of 10 hp damage. If I use my per-day, I take 5 hp damage.

Because each ability tree silos, if I use even one at-will attack, I can't use any other attack.

Assuming no other factors, I should use my per-day encounter every time.

If we can agree thus far, we can examine what factors might change this approach in a Minion encounter.


RC

 

[Jedi_Solo]

I would be uncomfortable with the natural reaction that my players would have to this scenario, which would be "hey, what are the chances that we would stumble upon the BBEG *just* as he's about to sacrifice the villager? We spent *days* slogging through the wilderness just to get here, and we've back-tracked twice in the dungeon. All of this wasted time and yet the moment is just right for the maximum amount of dramatic tension?"

Contrived? Maybe. But what's stopping the DM from saying the group has X amount of time from the moment they first enter the dungeon (say... 5 or 10 minutes. That'll cut down on the 1 Minute recovery uses) or from the time they first hear of the adventure ("Yeah, the temple is only ten minutes away but we're 1st level commoners and the entrance is guarded by a phalanx of Necromancers"). No chance to backtrack to town with this setup.

Overly convenmient timing for story purposes? Absolutely. And most DMs may not want to use it every single session, but if the heroes don't get there when the time pressure is on; what is the point of the adventure?