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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jackelope King" data-source="post: 3783899" data-attributes="member: 31454">Thanks. I think you raise a good point as well on the expenditure of resources, specifically that some powerful abilities (especially the likes teleport) simply do not make sense if they're used at the beginning of all but the most dangerous of encounters.On the issue of nova-ing in particular, a very good analysis came up for it back after the release of the XPH on the Wizards of the Coast Psionics boards. The argument essentially pointed out that making your default setting "nova" (ie always using your most powerful, most damaging and most costly abilities first) has a poor cost-benefit ratio. The goal of fighting any particular enemy is to incapacitate that enemy with the smallest net loss in resources (ideally making a net gain from the treasure that the enemy drops). If you don't hit hard enough, you risk suffering HP damage in return from your enemy. You want to drop the enemy in the fewest number of rounds to avoid being dropped yourself.However, there's no real functional difference between an enemy at -1 HP and -1,000,000,000 HP, so far as an adventuring PC is concerned. The only question is whether or not the enemy is in good enough condition to remain a threat.So it's essentially a question of whether or not you'd be willing to use a firehose to fill your drinking glass, or if it'd be more efficient (cost-wise) to just use the faucet in the kitchen. Both will fill it, but 99% of what you used from the firehose will be wasted. It's often not worth the "wasted" resources to do it fast, unless the cost to regain the hit points you'll lose in the fight is greater than the cost to go nova. And from what we've heard about 4e so far with healing apparently being a more common thing, it sounds like it'll be cheaper to heal than it will be to use one of your handful of per-day abilities.</blockquote>

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