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<blockquote data-quote="IanArgent" data-source="post: 3785914" data-attributes="member: 21673">Waitasec. You don't get to conflate my statements on 3.5 (&quot;cannot know what the party's capabilities are&quot;) with my expectations for 4ed (&quot;can know what the party has available because most abilities are per-encounter or at will&quot;).To restate; in 3.5, the adventure designer cannot know with any certainty what resources the party can deploy in the encounter they are in. This is because some classes are entirely at-will/per-encounter, some are a mix of at-will/per-encounter and per-day, and some classes are entirely per-day. The decisions made as the party makes its way through the adventure are entirely unpredictable, and can result in party's that are at any point able willing to deploy in the encounter between 100% and 0% of their core class abilities in that encounter.With the 4ed design as we have seen, in particular that 80% of a character's abilities will be available in every encounter, the designer can start with the assumption that the party will be willing and able to deploy between 80% and 100% of their core class abilities in each encounter.I assume from your previous statement that you would prefer to design around the per-adventure paradigm. How do you balance resources in that paradigm without dropping resource management entirely? And remember you have to meet the goal of being able to run, unprepared and inexperienced, for 5 of your friends, after reading the PHB once, and the adventure once. Per day is an even worse paradigm for resource management in a per-adventure design paradigm; unless you as the GM control when the &quot;day&quot; ends and can prevent the players from both stopping too early and running too far. An experienced GM can do this, but it takes experience how to handle this, and is a lot harder to judge.resource management and adventure design quanta should be aligned; and all classes should be aligned as well - otherwise there will be trouble.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="IanArgent, post: 3785914, member: 21673"] Waitasec. You don't get to conflate my statements on 3.5 ("cannot know what the party's capabilities are") with my expectations for 4ed ("can know what the party has available because most abilities are per-encounter or at will"). To restate; in 3.5, the adventure designer cannot know with any certainty what resources the party can deploy in the encounter they are in. This is because some classes are entirely at-will/per-encounter, some are a mix of at-will/per-encounter and per-day, and some classes are entirely per-day. The decisions made as the party makes its way through the adventure are entirely unpredictable, and can result in party's that are at any point able willing to deploy in the encounter between 100% and 0% of their core class abilities in that encounter. With the 4ed design as we have seen, in particular that 80% of a character's abilities will be available in every encounter, the designer can start with the assumption that the party will be willing and able to deploy between 80% and 100% of their core class abilities in each encounter. I assume from your previous statement that you would prefer to design around the per-adventure paradigm. How do you balance resources in that paradigm without dropping resource management entirely? And remember you have to meet the goal of being able to run, unprepared and inexperienced, for 5 of your friends, after reading the PHB once, and the adventure once. Per day is an even [i]worse[/i] paradigm for resource management in a per-adventure design paradigm; unless you as the GM control when the "day" ends and can prevent the players from both stopping too early and running too far. An experienced GM can do this, but it takes experience how to handle this, and is a [i]lot[/i] harder to judge. resource management and adventure design quanta should be aligned; and all classes should be aligned as well - otherwise there will be trouble. [/QUOTE]

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