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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3782409" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't dispute that. There are, of course, different conceptions of meaningulness (not unlike thresholds of significance!). Even if we are confining ourselves, here, to "mechanically meaningful" we can distinguish between tactical meaningfulness, which I think the designers are trying to increase in 4e, and operational meaningfulness, which I think will decrease.I'm mostly interested in your opinion of the example I sketched in my post. The point of that example was to try to indicate how per-day resources can both be useful, but not necessarily the most rational first response to an encounter. For example, a "second wind" ability is very useful, but one would not use it at the start of an encounter, because one would still be at or near full hit points at that point. Likewise, a "teleport the party" or "heal all allies" ability is not one with which one would open.I also would dispute your claim that there is no consequence to using per-day resources. Assuming that they are not free actions, the consequence will be loss of an action in the round. Depending on the details of those per-day abilities, and their interaction with per-encounter abilties and the range of typical tactical situations, it may be quite common that leading with per-day resources is not rational even in an encounter that is obviously a dangerous one.I think I have addressed your reasoning. I have tried to give examples in which per-encounter and per-day resources are both available, and even though the encounter is challenging it is not rational to lead with one's per-day resources. The examples depend on the details (both in consequence, and activation cost) of the resources in question.You continue to assert, at a purely general level, "In a dangerous situation rational players will always lead with their characters' most powerful (ie typically per-day) abilities" without considering, in detail, for particular suites of abilities, whether this is likely to be true or not. It is because of your focus purely on the generality, without looking at the details, that I had supposed you to think there could be no interesting tactical questions about the deployment of per-encounter resources.Once one allows that such tactical questions can arise, and that they interact with the deployment of per-day abilities, it becomes (in my view) failry easy to envision suites of abilities which will not result in the rational choice always being to lead from the per-day abilities.This is an illustration of what I mean by putting your view forward in a purely general fashion. You appear to be treating the encounter as purely a case of the players deploying the resources against the monsters, with the amount deployed being equal to E + D (until D runs out), then stuck at E.If this were so, then you would be correct. My contention is that it is not so, and in particular that what the per-encounter system will endeavour to do will be to generate mechanical significance (but not in your sense of that term in earlier posts) by making the manner of deployment of E interesting and challenging (for example, by giving characters abilities with diverse trigger conditions and activation costs). Furthermore, I think it will make the deployment of E interact interestingly with the deployment of D (again, in terms of trigger conditions and activation costs).This is a type of mechanical significance that a pure per-day model cannot deliver to the same degree (unless the uses per day are increased to a practically unlimited degree - maybe some 3.5 sorcerers fit this model), because a pure per-day model is not one in which a resource is deployed every round.Thus, I do not agree with you when you say that "Clearly, if you are having an encounter, and have resources in that encounter, the way you use the resources can be tactically interesting.  There is no difference in this between the per-encounter and resource attrition paradigm." In a system which mixes per-encounter and per-day a mechanically and tactically meaningful choice of which resource to deploy (as opposed to whether or not to deploy a resource) gets made every round.But the mathematics is not simply R = E + D. One has to take account of questions to do with trigger conditions, activation costs and the consequences of resource deployment. I think the question at hand - that is, can an introduction of per-encounter resources resolve the 15 minute adventuring day issue by allowing for a larger number of mechanically interesting encounters to occur without rest being required - cannot be answered without thinking in detail about particular suites of character abilities, and the typical range of encounters they are to be used in.Does this mean that you agree that a move to incorporate per-encounter resources will remove certain obstacles to some playstyles that purely per-day resources give rise to?</blockquote>

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