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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3754978" data-attributes="member: 4937">This returns us back to the way that I think Mr. Wyatt was looking at the problem wrong.First of all, a 'pointless encounter' is any encounter that doesn't advance the story in some way.  It's not 'pointless' because it is easy.  If the encounters are pointless, then its either because of bad dungeon design, bad dungeoneering by the PC's where they waste resources on unnecessary combats.  I don't ever recall wandering through the ToH and thinking, "This door with the spear trap is pointless."  Not every encounter needs to be "OMG!11!! That roxor."  Not every fight needs to be turned up to 11. Mr. Wyatt said that the reason that the game had evolved toward one big encounter per days was that according to the design the first three were boring, and only the fourth was challenging.  But that wasn't the problem at all.   The problem is as you say, that its almost impossible to get the PC's to try that fourth encounter in the first place.  If the fourth encounter per day is the only one with risk, then the tendancy for smart players is to avoid the fourth encounter per day.  As a result of being unable to challenge the players, DMs tend to ramp up the challenge, which results in the players taking on few challenges, and eventually you evolve to one ecounter per day (or really, however long it takes for the players to recouperate.  At low levels, this might take more than a day.)The thing is, the same thing is going to play out with a 'per encounter' design.  Yes, the players will recover more resources after every encounter, and that theoretically might compel them to move on.  But so long as ANY resources aren't recovered after one encounter, the smart players are going to choose to stop as soon as they lose any critical resource (even if only hit points).   Because, why risk it?  And the meta game problems of "lack of sentience, organisation, tracking, or the PC's base being too well hidden or defended" will continue as well so long as you don't design for them.  So long as the DM doesn't impose time limits and doesn't have long journeys between the PC's haven and thier goal, they are still going to stop and rest at every chance they get because that's tactically the smart decision.  It doesn't matter if they are 50% or 80% or 99% after an encounter, its still going to be smart to rest. Per encounter won't change that at all.  The only solution to this problem is good DMing.The hardest module TSR ever published wasn't Tomb of Horrors.  With the exception of the skull, theoretically an 'pointless' encounter, ToH is very beatable.  Just rest after every room.  Go slow.  Take your time.  A smart group of players with characters of the suggested level should do just fine because they aren't under a time constraint.  So long as they don't blunder into a TPK with no saving throw (and they shouldn't if they are smart), the module is 'easy'.  No, the hardest module TSR ever published was Ravenloft.   Ran by a ruthless DM and at the suggested character levels for the module it is simply impossible to win.  The reason is pretty simple.  Although it isn't made explicit, the PC's are under a really really harsh time limit.  Kill Straad between sunup and sundown, or die.  The reason that you have to do the main dungeon crawl in a single day is that Straad always always always wins the war of attrition.  He has regeneration.  He has level drain.  He has more spells per day than the PCs.  He has more information than the PC's.  He is proactive and will hunt them down and they have no where they can run.  He can play hit and run better than they can.  And the reason that the adventure is unwinable is that Ravenloft is simply too huge of a dungeon with too many potential distractions for the PC's to get through it in a day.  As soon as they do the 'smart thing' and rest to try to recover, its pretty much all over.I'm not at all suggesting that adventures be as hard as Ravenloft, but if your adventurers aren't up against some sort of clock, then it is ridiculous to expect that changing the mechanics of the game will encourage them to stop taking thier time, being cautious, and playing it safe.</blockquote>

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