Why is it so important?

[Jackelope King]

Attack, Defense, and Utility designate "silos". In each encounter, you may use only one ability per silo (and only use it once).

If your Attack doesn't do enough damage to kill your foe, you have no further attack.

That doesn't seem accurate, based on what we know about silos. If an ability is "at will", you're limited to only using it once per encounter? And further, ability 1 clearly states it deals 20 points of damage to a minion with only 10 hit points.

You said that Gizmo33's example (where the BBEG is always 10 seconds away from sacrificing the villager) was a strawman; I demonstrated that it was not.

I'm not claiming that it's never been done. I'm claiming that it's innaccurate to suggest that all context-based encounters are like this and then suggest that this is why context is "manipulative or heavy-handed".

 

[Raven Crowking]

That doesn't seem accurate, based on what we know about silos. If an ability is "at will", you're limited to only using it once per encounter? And further, ability 1 clearly states it deals 20 points of damage to a minion with only 10 hit points.

I concede that the description of abilities will probably need some revision; but as I did not write them, I have to work with what I have. Ability 1 clearly states it deals 20 points of damage to a minion with only 10 hit points, but you are only allowed to use it once.

Perhaps a revision is in order, and then we can re-examine this problem?

I'm not claiming that it's never been done. I'm claiming that it's innaccurate to suggest that all context-based encounters are like this and then suggest that this is why context is "manipulative or heavy-handed".

What Gizmo33 was trying to say, as I understand it, is that if everything resets after 1 minute, it seems likely that whatever context the counter has must occur within that 1 minute timeframe. If so, then his players would not accept that they always arrive within that crucial timefrime to stop a "ticking clock".

(Gizmo33, please correct me if I have misunderstood you.)


RC

 

[Mallus]

Looks like I'm very late to the party...

It's not just a party, it's a party with a clown. And the clown is John Wayne Gacy.

And I'm even more certain of it now that I've DMed for (and run as a PC) characters with the Bo9S system.

Not to mention an 'attrition and death'-free system like M&M.

 

[gizmo33]

Your example is a strawman.

I think that "strawman" gets misused on this board all of the time to mean something that the reader doesn't agree with and this is not it's definition.

My argument was not intended to be a proxy argument. Proving my example as valid does not prove my case, but it was a counter-example to your blanket statement that placing encounters in context could never be heavy-handed/manipulative. That's all I was trying to do there, not change the nature of the argument or create a strawman.

What I thought you guys needed to do, rather than just respond with uninformative objections of "wrong" and it's various synonyms, was develop your argument to show exactly what you were meaning.

For example, if someone said "all wheeled transportation is fast", responding with "what about tricycles" is *not* a strawman argument. It's an example that disproves the overly-general statement and encourges the person originally making the statement to clarify.

 

[Jackelope King]

I concede that the description of abilities will probably need some revision; but as I did not write them, I have to work with what I have. Ability 1 clearly states it deals 20 points of damage to a minion with only 10 hit points, but you are only allowed to use it once.

Perhaps a revision is in order, and then we can re-examine this problem?

Probably. I don't think the description of how silos work from the original suggested list of abilities is written quite clearly enough, because I interpreted it to just mean that you were locked in to a particular Attack OR Defense OR Utility ability from a given silo after you've chosen it.

What Gizmo33 was trying to say, as I understand it, is that if everything resets after 1 minute, it seems likely that whatever context the counter has must occur within that 1 minute timeframe. If so, then his players would not accept that they always arrive within that crucial timefrime to stop a "ticking clock".

(Gizmo33, please correct me if I have misunderstood you.)


RC

Abilities might reset, but the world doesn't.

 

[Jackelope King]

I think that "strawman" gets misused on this board all of the time to mean something that the reader doesn't agree with and this is not it's definition.

My argument was not intended to be a proxy argument. Proving my example as valid does not prove my case, but it was a counter-example to your blanket statement that placing encounters in context could never be heavy-handed/manipulative. That's all I was trying to do there, not change the nature of the argument or create a strawman.

When did I say "placing encounters in context could never be heavy-handed/manipulative"?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Probably. I don't think the description of how silos work from the original suggested list of abilities is written quite clearly enough, because I interpreted it to just mean that you were locked in to a particular Attack OR Defense OR Utility ability from a given silo after you've chosen it.

The text as presented reads

Attack, Defense, and Utility designate "silos". In each encounter, you may use only one ability per silo (and only use it once).​

This means, if your Attack doesn't do enough damage to kill your foe, you have no further attack.

I agree that this is probably not what was intended, but I'd rather the writer changes the rules, for fear that I'll get called out on "altering the circumstances" or somesuch later on.

Abilities might reset, but the world doesn't.

That is true, and there are some contexts that cause problems because the world doesn't reset. Indeed, that there is continuity of the world is the only thing, AFAIK, that actually resolves the 15-minute adventuring day problem.

RC

 

[shilsen]

I argue that combat is only meaningful when there is context and consequence.

I'd agree, while noting that all of these terms rely heavily on the user. For example, if someone includes "entertaining" under the category of "meaningful," then a group of high-level PCs reveling in their power as they kick the snot out of a bunch of mooks who could never challenge them is "meaningful" too.

The 15-minute adventuring day is obviously not a problem for you, because you only have one combat per day, and like it that way. You use a mix of per-encounter and per-day abilities, and it hasn't changed this for you. Wyatt's blog would seem to indicate that using this mix will make you have more encounters per day. It is this claim which I dispute.

Having DMed and run multiple PCs in a system using per-encounter and per-day abilities, and in a system (M&M) with always usable abilities, I have to say that I think James Wyatt is bang on target on this subject. When I and/or the players/PCs want to have multiple encounters in a day, it's been significantly easier to do so with a mix of per-encounter and per-day abilities.

I will also agree with you that resource attrition is manipulative. IMHO, every game has rules that attempt to manipulate its players into approaching the game a certain way.

I think you're right about that.

Solving a problem within a game often means (1) determining why the problem exists (i.e., what factors manipulate the players to act in the problematic manner) and then (2) changing those factors and/or adding new factors to alter what the players are being manipulated to do.

True. Unlike you, however, I think WotC has determined (1) on the subject of the 15 minute adventuring day and is seeking to achieve (2) in a reasonable way, though naturally I can't be certain about (2) till I actually see 4e. But I'm absolutely certain that a primarily per-encounter model is significantly superior to a significantly per-day model for avoiding the 15 minute adventuring day. And just as certain that the per-encounter model is better suited for a variety of approaches (whether the attrition model, the one big fight a day, multiple big battles which test one to the limit in a day, etc.) than the primarily per-day model. None of the arguments I've seen in this thread thus far persuade me otherwise.

It's not just a party, it's a party with a clown. And the clown is John Wayne Gacy.

Abilities might reset, but the world doesn't.

Bingo. And much more elegantly and succinctly put than I could. Nicely done, JK.

 

[gizmo33]

A spell you're relying on may be doing all sorts of things besides keeping you alive. It might be a Fly spell, without which you won't be able to reach location X. It might be an Arcane Sight, without which you won't be able to detect the magical portal the BBEG escaped through. And so on. As I mentioned before, death is only on the line if you're not thinking through the various possibilities, as you clearly aren't.

(The only thing that's clear to you is that we don't agree. The rest of it is speculative and argumentative on your part. "It seems like you're not thinking about this" is more polite.)

A combat that lasts long enough to effect the duration of a Fly spell is a strange one to me. I'm assuming something close to the 6 second combat round would be in place for a DnD type system (a reasonable assumption IMO for reasons given in 3E). Same thing with Arcane Sight. Unless the DM has somehow mapped out the dungeon after consulting the particular party member's Fly spell duration (heavy handed). It's just basically not clear to me how the details of combat are going to really matter that much in terms of time - 3 melee rounds is a long time in terms of success/failure, but it's only 18 seconds in terms of plot development, impact on spell durations, etc. Again, with the information I have this particular example seems overly theoretical.

Oh, you're right, I did skip over the "calling/running for help" example of the possible "encounter contexts". That example works in my game.

As noted above, a DM's failure to imagine beyond a limited area doesn't mean the system is to blame.

Right. The same thing can be said for those who can't deal with the impact that resource management has on their delicate story lines, except that it would be as rude in that case as it is here. It seems to me that we're talking about different gaming styles.

Some of them, yes. My game actually literally has no death in it, since I allow PCs to use action pts and swashbuckling cards to survive attacks and effects that kill or take them to -10. And, as noted above, I only usually have 1 encounter a day. Both of which combined should mean (according to the arguments I've seen from RC and yourself) that combat is meaningless in my game.

That's not what I've been trying to show. What it means is combat would be meaningless in *my game*. I don't know what your players or your own expectations are, or what other combinations of factors are mitigating the problems I've described (action points and all of that). Saying "wrong" all of the time to what I'm saying isn't helping me understand it any better - it seems like a waste of my time to expect that from this conversation. I didn't mean to insult your gaming style, only to suggest that AFAICT elements of it weren't appropriate for my game as far as I could see.

As noted by Jackelope King above, attaching context to a combat is hardly heavy-handed or manipulative.

As I said, I thought this statement was an over-generalization.

By definition, the attrition model is also attaching context to a combat by making it relevant in the context of the future combats that the PCs are supposed to have. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

An *important* difference though is that the attrition model is understood upfront by the players involved, so that it's affect on the events is not nearly as arbitrary and contrived as many of the other examples of "encounter contexts" could be.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

A combat that lasts long enough to effect the duration of a Fly spell is a strange one to me.

It might also be dispelled.