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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3779914" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree your position is clear. I deny that it is true. I have given arguments in support of my denial. One of those arguments is the (imagined) example at post <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3775131&postcount=1001" target="_blank">#1001</a>. You have not responded to that post.Frankly, I don't understand what you think the strawman is. But I also don't understand why you continue to insist that a party will always deploy its daily resources first, if it feels under threat, without considering in some detail what those resources, and their techniques of deployment, might be. It is this question that my example tries to investigate (drawing on the remarks made by other posters who play per-encounter systems, and the comments of the designers).As you probably know, "doublethink" is a term coined by George Orwell in 1984. It characterises the state of mind of an adherent of Ingsoc (and, by implication, a member of the British Communist Party of Orwell's time) to simultaneously believe inconsistent propositions (eg that Stalin is a great humanist, and that he murdered millions of people) as part of the system of ideological commitment.I don't see that the term has any application to any participant in the current thread, given that none of us is engaged in the defence of any controversial political doctrine by way of inconsistent assertions.This has nothing to do with doublethink. What you are alleging is contradiction. I have already tried to explain why there is no contradiction, particular in post <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3778002&postcount=1016" target="_blank"># 1016</a>. It is crucial to that explanation that the fight against the BBEG can be tactically challenging without necessarily leading to resource depletion (because it can threaten such depletion in an interesting manner, without leading to such depletion), and/or that the mop-up can be interesting even though it does not threaten resource depletion (because, for example, doing it in such a way that it is a success without per-day resources being used is itself an interesting tactical challenge).If you take the view that there can be no interesting tactical questions about the deployment of per-encounter resources, and these questions cannot implicate in an interesting fashion the possibility (without necessarily the actuality) of per-day encounter resource use, then you will not be persuaded that I have escaped contradiction. That is why I posted the example in post <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3775131&postcount=1001" target="_blank">#1001</a>, to try and show that these possibilities are real. It is also why I made the comment in post <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3778002&postcount=1016" target="_blank"># 1016</a>, that these possibilities are not real in core 3.5, because the only classes who get the relevant sorts of choices are spell users, and these choices are only whether or not to consume per-day resources.Or C, as I believe, per-encounter resources open up tactical possibilities that are simply not available in core 3.5.I have not asserted that per-day encounter resource attrition is bad. I have asserted, and still believe, that purely per-day encounter resource attrition places obstacles in the way of play based on thresholds of significance other than that of resource attrition or addition (which you have labelled "mechanical signficance").Naturally, I believe I have shown there to be errors in your reasoning, by showing that a particular type of mechanical interest can arise (but not mechanical signficance, in your sense, because it is an interest that depends on the threat of resource attrition, rather than the reality, and also on the interest in making effective resource-deployment choices within the context of an encounter), which at the moment is available only to spell users, and only if they choose to expend per-day resources.You apparently do not believe that this aspect of play is interesting. Perhaps you do not even believe that it is possible. I would be interested to see why you think these things, in light of my example at post <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3775131&postcount=1001" target="_blank">#1001</a>.I don't think that this remark has any bearing on my arguments about mechanical interest, which are predicated on the interest generated by a system which mixes per-encounter and per-day resources.It would be relevant to concerns about strictly non-mechanical thresholds of interest, like those of plot development or thematic exploration. I suspect that the 4e designers are going in the direction that they are going (mixing per-day and per-encounter) because this is the mix most likely to facilitat a wide range of playstyles (though not operational play as D&D has traditionally known it) whereas purely at-will abilities would remove a significant amount of tactical challenge from the game.</blockquote>

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