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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3793406" data-attributes="member: 42582">The second sentence strikes me as false. In a pure per-day resource system that choice exists only if the resources remain available. In an at-will systemt that choice is available every round. In a per-encounter system that choice becomes more interesting than in an at-will system, because it is there to be made in every encounter, but making the choice once then affects the dynamics of one's future choices for the encounter.To bring fighters and wizards into parity requires not only toning down spell power. It also requires giving wizards something to do every round - ie increasing their avaible resources. The most obvious way to do this is by giving wizards at-will abilities, or a suite of per-encounter abilities. So given the way wizards work at present, I just don't see how you can divorce the question of class design from that of resource management paradigm.There are a couple of differences. In the current system, it is the wizard who has to conserve the fireball, while the fighters plink away at the bandit with arrows, or mount their horses and ride after him, or whatever. The 4e designers take the view that this is not fun for the player of the wizard PC. They are therefore looking for a system in which the wizard also has something to do which will have a significant impact on the resolution of the encounter.A second difference is this: in a system which introduces per-encounter abilities, it is easier to design the time-bomb scenario, because the desinger does not need to worry that the encounters will deplete so many resources that the PCs have no chance of actually stopping the bomb when they find it. This is just a particular instance of the general proposition that a move away from per-day resources removes obstacles to the use of other thresholds of signficance.A related consequence is the converse: if the PCs manage to skip some of the intermediate encounters they do not arrive at the bomb so tanked that the encounter poses no challenge. For 1st-ed style play this is obviously anathema - clever operational play is not generating a reward for the players, of delivering them a walk-over encounter! But 4e play is obviously not interested in supporting that style of play. It wants the encounter to be interesting, regardless (mechanically) of what preceded it, or is to follow it. In this respect 4e is just continuing the trend of 3E.I do not believe that 4e will be able to do everything 1st ed could do. But I think it is equally false to claim that 1st ed (or 3E) can do everything that a system that includes per-encounter abilities can do.</blockquote>

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