Why is it so important?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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.



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.

Okay, to clarify (maybe I was a bit blind to the fact that people couldn't read my thought processes when writing down the ability examples ):
The Silos only apply within a given "time scale".
So, using something from the silo for the "At Will" power does not affect the same silo type in the Per Encounter or Per Day frame.

Also note that the Silos limitations also only apply to their time frame - the At Will powers can thus be used each round, but you can't use two abilities from the same silo (though it is implied, but not stated - until this post - that each ability use will require a partial action and thus you can only take a move, not activate a second power each round, anyway. But some abilities might require different # of actions.)

(For the "vampiric-touch"-like ability I assumed that you can actually touch your enemy and your ally at the same time, at least for the purposes of this power. The main point of the ability is that the caster has to get into melee range...)

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I actually agree with the bulk of your analysis, but this part is where we differ - or you might be implying something here that isn't true IMO. The battle is interesting because you have used 2 fireballs in a situation where you might need one later for the BBEG. Now, absent all other factors and context that in itself is not very interesting, but that is the dimension of interest that resource management adds to this encounter. The fact is that the player could have considered using a lesser weapon instead of fireball if he really thought the battle were all that conclusive, and the bearing that the choice is going to have on future encounters makes it a meaningful choice.

It wasn't that interesting because you knew the 2 fireballs would win. Take, for example, an encounter with 5 enemies, each of which does an average damage of 5 damage per round and have 20 hitpoints. Let's simplify it by saying it is just you against the 6 enemies. It works out the same with more PCs, but it's just more complicated. You have 40 hitpoints.

If they win initiative, you won't die since they won't do over your hitpoints in damage. If you average 20 damage with a fireball you know that it will take you, at most 2 rounds to defeat them with 2 fireballs(the second one only to take out those who made their save the first time). After the fight, you'll need a bit of healing. Mechanically uninteresting because it was a forgone conclusion that you'd win with the resources you had.

You can't choose to use lesser abilities since, your magic missile might only do 15 damage and two rounds of hits from those enemies will kill you. So, you need to use better resources in order to win, but the better resources turn the battle into a non-event which ONLY matters in the game of resources attrition.

The battle itself was uninteresting, but it's consequences later might be. But the resource attrition game doesn't matter a large amount of the time since it can be bypassed by resting. You might fight 3 of these uninteresting battles, then rest so that you can recover your lost resources.

The other possiblity here is that you're implying that it's undesireable to have something uninteresting happen for 2 rounds. Frankly, since it is only taking two rounds to resolve, a combat system that is fairly streamlined will not make this much of a problem IMO. The combat will be quickly resolved and it's *outcome*, in terms of remaining resources, will be far more relevant to the overall adventure than the details of the actual encounter.

Well, the designers so far have said battle takes about the same amount of time to run, just with a couple of more enemies. I don't think combat is going to be that streamlined.

Most 2 round combats (or 3 or 4 assuming a couple of rounds of maneuvering with no actual damage or negligible damage taking place) still take a good 30-60 minutes to resolve once you go through the process of everyone rolling init, writing it all down, explaining the layout of the encounter area to the players, placing the minis on the mat, having each player decide their actions each round(discussing it amongst themselves and such), the inevitable out of game joking around, etc.

Anything that is going to take that much time to run needs to be interesting and significant.

 

[IanArgent]

Note though: I actually would prefer 4E to have a mix of per-encounter and per-day resources for all classes, so once these examples move into this area I don't have an issue.

This has been confirmed directly. "All classes will have a mix of at-will, per-encounter, and per day resources". (I'm looking for the source, but it was a Dev - I want to say Andy Chambers.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Doing something wizardly each round isn't really the cause of the 15 minute day. That's a different problem altogether.

I agree; but please recall that I am answering a very specific counter-proposal for the source of the problem.

You said

Even if you have some of your best resources left, it doesn't mean you have ENOUGH resources to continue, so you rest.

and

The problem as described by Wyatt is that is is possible to run a game where people don't rest after every combat. However, to do this one needs to run combats where each one doesn't use up too many resources so that the party feels "safe" enough to continue.

Of course, as I pointed out, it is possible in 3.x to run a game where people don't rest after every combat. The question is, does the system as presented encourage or discourage resting after every combat?

"Safe" is a relative term. In general, I would say that a party will continue so long as it is safer/more beneficial to continue than it is to rest. Those parties who have 15-minute adventuring days do so because no amount of attrition is safter than 0 attrition. Therefore, "safe enough" is 0 attrition.

Resolving the problem requires altering the safety levels of attrition and rest. For example, consider the following:

party believes:

resting safer than continuing - party rests

continuing safer than resting - party continues​

The constant mention of timelines is to add a condition where the party is forced to believe that there are potentially dire consequences to resting.

 

[gizmo33]

It works out the same with more PCs, but it's just more complicated.

The battle itself was uninteresting, but it's consequences later might be. But the resource attrition game doesn't matter a large amount of the time since it can be bypassed by resting.

My first point: it's somewhat misleading (not intentionally) to remove, from the example, the dice rolling, other PCs, and so on, basically simplifying the encounter and then say that the expected result was uninteresting. I would agree - having monsters do an average amount of damage is uninteresting. Giving a wizard a choice of just two different combat spells to cast is uninteresting. And reducing the options you have in terms of resource expenditure, by taking the other PCs out of the equation, also makes it uninteresting. I may have missed the point of your example, but the example's simplifications AFAICT seemed to create a situation that doesn't really exist in a typical DnD game. It also removes most all of the interesting aspects from an operational standpoint.

Secondly, the resource attrition game is not "bypassed" by resting. Resting is one of the options in a resource attrition game. That's like saying that killing a monster "bypasses" the DnD monster encounter. Resting is one of the ways that you deal with low resources. Now people have complained about resting for two reasons IIRC - one is that they think it hurts the "story", the second is that they think it's a 100% certain situation and thus a formality and tedious, or unreasonably frustrating and deadly if it's not a 100% certain situation. I've tried to address each of these objections in detail in previous posts.

You might fight 3 of these uninteresting battles, then rest so that you can recover your lost resources.

Shilsen why trying to get me to understand how encounter-contexts can make an encounter interesting in spite of the fact that it poses no risk of death. Although you both may not be of the same mind, don't you think his reasoning would apply here? (I actually disagree with him on some key points, but I don't think those affect this particular situation.)

Your statement here does what Wyatt's did originally AFAICT - it seems to discount the fact that there are often consequences for resting, and thus the events that lead up to you being forced to rest (the three "uninteresting" battles) are actually very interesting to players that aren't naive/uninterested about resource issues in the game. Granted, if resource issues aren't a party of the playing style then this is probably the case. But if they are, then weathering the first three encounters with enough resources intact that you can continue with the adventure is an important part of the challenge of those three encounters.

Failing to do so is a kind of non-deadly failure that I like to have in the game. It also vaguely mimmics reality where resource depletion is often a reason for failure. The alternative, with an "all-per-encounter" resource design is that the PCs just keep fighting until everything else is dead or they're dead.

An earlier discussion got to the point where folks suggested restoring some sort of "fatigue rules" to the system, but this results in either a hefty dose of DM fiat, or a system that just restores the original set of problems. If a simple set of fatigue rules were otherwise compatible with an "all-per-encounter resources" design, then both parties could be happy though.

Well, the designers so far have said battle takes about the same amount of time to run, just with a couple of more enemies. I don't think combat is going to be that streamlined.

That's a shame. I'm starting to get a little tired of how long combat takes in DnD - even the life-and-death ones - 4 hours of dice rolling for a two minute stretch of time where things are exciting. I had seen blurbs where the designers seemed to be trying to shorten this.

Anything that is going to take that much time to run needs to be interesting and significant.

Agreed. IME my players develop a pretty good sense of the impact that resource usage is having on their success during the overall adventure because there are often consequences to resting. Without these sorts of experiences that allows players to put things in this context, I can start to see how the battles are just tedious.

 

[gizmo33]

This has been confirmed directly. "All classes will have a mix of at-will, per-encounter, and per day resources". (I'm looking for the source, but it was a Dev - I want to say Andy Chambers.

Yes, and I've already tried to make it clear that this conversation has stemmed from folks saying "all-per encounter resource game isn't that bad" in which case that is what the discussion has been about for me (mostly) for the last 1,000 posts. Granted, it's only relevant to 4E to the degree that this design choice is not set in stone, and perhaps it's just an interesting topic in it's own right. For example, I might be finding out that I can be more creative with my encounter designs.

 

[gizmo33]

The constant mention of timelines is to add a condition where the party is forced to believe that there are potentially dire consequences to resting.

I'll add - it seems pretty natural to me to imagine that the combination of an intelligent, aggressive BBEG with a dynamic environment and a 24-hour (or close) rest period will almost certainly produce a very natural seeming set of consequences, many of them dire.

Contrast this with (arguably, granted) the more contrived examples of "how you keep the party moving" in an all per-encounter design.

 

[Jackelope King]

Since you seemed to miss my post earlier, gizmo, I'll post it again.

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"?

I'll add - it seems pretty natural to me to imagine that the combination of an intelligent, aggressive BBEG with a dynamic environment and a 24-hour (or close) rest period will almost certainly produce a very natural seeming set of consequences, many of them dire.

Contrast this with (arguably, granted) the more contrived examples of "how you keep the party moving" in an all per-encounter design.

Are you refering to the aforementioned time restrictions as "the more contrived exampels of "how you keep the party moving" in an all per-encounter design." ?

 

[gizmo33]

Since you seemed to miss my post earlier, gizmo, I'll post it again.

I guess I did. In fact I just scanned the page again and I still don't see it. Sorry, didn't mean to be rude.

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

In the process of breaking down arguments into manageable chunks, I'm often having to provide a specific example or counter-example to a point. This is not intended to be a replacement/proxy for the original argument but instead a building block, and hence, is not a strawman argument. With that in mind -

You never said "could never" but if I say "A is B", in certain contexts that means the same thing (ie. "B can never be C"). In the context of what you were saying, you were suggesting that placing an encounter in context was sufficient. What I actually was trying to point out with my example was that it wasn't sufficient. The next step was to show that as you try to avoid heavy-handedness, you're increasingly relying on a narrower set of circumstances that might not fit the encounter, ie. it becomes more and more difficult. Contrast this with my statements about the resource management issues being a more natural fit for the game (and easier to engineer). Regardless, my main point here is that my counter-example was never intended to be a strawman argument for the overall (and more complicated) issue.

Are you refering to the aforementioned time restrictions as "the more contrived exampels of "how you keep the party moving" in an all per-encounter design." ?

? I don't know what you mean here. My statement that you quoted was saying something else, related to the "time restrictions" issue only in the ways that the arguments are connected. Time restrictions in themselves are not contrived, is that what you're trying to say here?

 

[Jackelope King]

I guess I did. In fact I just scanned the page again and I still don't see it. Sorry, didn't mean to be rude.

Not a problem at all

In the process of breaking down arguments into manageable chunks, I'm often having to provide a specific example or counter-example to a point. This is not intended to be a replacement/proxy for the original argument but instead a building block, and hence, is not a strawman argument. With that in mind -

You never said "could never" but if I say "A is B", in certain contexts that means the same thing (ie. "B can never be C"). In the context of what you were saying, you were suggesting that placing an encounter in context was sufficient. What I actually was trying to point out with my example was that it wasn't sufficient. The next step was to show that as you try to avoid heavy-handedness, you're increasingly relying on a narrower set of circumstances that might not fit the encounter, ie. it becomes more and more difficult. Contrast this with my statements about the resource management issues being a more natural fit for the game (and easier to engineer). Regardless, my main point here is that my counter-example was never intended to be a strawman argument for the overall (and more complicated) issue.

It came across as one, but I thank you for your reply. I still think that no encounter is meaningful out-of-context, and neither do I think that putting an encounter into the context of the world as a whole means that you're being heavy handed.

Can it mean that? Certainly. "And once again, you swoop in to save the princess just as the dragon is about to eat her!" "What is that, like, the tenth time?" "Eleventh, by my count." "You two! Shaddup and listen to my story or both of your PCs are getting the plague!"

However, the other extreme is even more distatesful. The idea of just going from room to room in a dungeon where nothing that happened in the other room matters beyond the spells I cast and the hit points I lost and the loot I collected? *shudder* And yes, I'm fully aware that this is an extreme and I'm 99.99% sure that this isn't what you're advocating.

? I don't know what you mean here. My statement that you quoted was saying something else, related to the "time restrictions" issue only in the ways that the arguments are connected. Time restrictions in themselves are not contrived, is that what you're trying to say here?

No, I'm not. I was just trying to recieve clarification on what you were saying there. I honestly don't know what you mean when you're talking about "the more contrived exampels of "how you keep the party moving" in an all per-encounter design."?