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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jackelope King" data-source="post: 3793985" data-attributes="member: 31454">Normally, I loathe the idea of posting a massive quote-for-quote, but since it seems I missed quite a bit last night after I turned on the Daily Show...So? The action is over. The PCs had their exciting encounter, where they had to manage resources to be successful. If there isn't another encounter in the day, or the only other encounter is 4 goblins versus a 10th level fighter, or the only other encounter is something else that doesn't consume resources, what does it matter how many per-day resources were consumed? The encounter was exciting, and the game moved forward.I'm making the claim that the more limited your resources are at any given moment, the more carefully you must micromanage them. If you have four fireballs per day, you also have 4 fireballs per encounter. If, on the other hand, you only have 1 fireball per encounter, the decision of when to use it is very significant. You seem to disagree that the decision of "when" is an important decision, and instead insist that it is only "if" that should be focused on. I disagree.Appendum: you spend resources because you are facing a significant chance of defeat. The parameters of each encounter define what "defeat" means, which could be anything from death to capture to the execution of a hostage to the loss of the MacGuffin to the explosion of the ticking time bomb to shame to missing the boat to just about anything else. If the players care about the outcome of the encounter, and they run a risk of suffering defeat, then they are more than likely concerned about how they're expending resources.My friend, please. Greatclubs rule, sledgehammers drool <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />But yes, nova-ing works very well, and it illustrates the disparity in power between casters and non-casters that comes with getting a deep bag of resources.In my experience, they're less cautious in a per-day scenario because, quite frankly, people are bad at planning for the unknown. When they do start to plan long term, they tend to be sacrificing their enjoyment for the current encounter for a later one that might not even happen. It's like passing up a slice of cake after dinner because you don't want to be full just in case someone decides to serve brownies later in the evening, and you have no real idea whether or not anyone even brought brownies this time.Because it doesn't. It merely requires that a DM who wants an encounter to feel significant to the group makes sure the PCs are invested in being victorious, which could mean any number of things.It's arbitrary because there is no logical reason why the system is based on the idea that the average encounter consumes 25% of your resources, so 4 average encounters per-day is the balancing point. An average encounter could just as easily be defined as an encounter which consumed 20% of your resources, so you could have 5 encounters in a day, or one which requires 50% of your resources, so you could only have 2 in a day.And casters get the amount of resources that they do because they're expected to ration them evenly over the course of a day. When they don't problems arise.You answer it yourself.Addition consideration are additional factors that must be put into designing an encounter. If the ticking time bomb is the last encounter, then I can't expect the PCs to be at full power during the fight, so I can't amek it a particularly challenging encounter, or they'll be wiped out.Under a per-day system, I have to factor in the attrition from earlier encounter when designing these sorts of encounters, or the encounter won't be as exciting. I have to be familiar with how my group functions at each tier of resource attrition to be able to make sure encounters are appropriate.Alternative, I can just say to splick with that, make encounters however I like, and let the PCs figure out for themselves when they should run away and when they should fight. But that leads to a lot of unsatisfying encounters, especially if victory and defeat carry with them significance within the context of the game-world itself.As someone who dislikes dungeon exploration (where the latter paradigm of "I just make the encounters... you guys need to decide when to retreat), the former paradigm works much better for me. I like my encounters to have both mechanical and story sigificance.You have my thanks then.However, you continue to ignore that, within a given encounter, the situation changes. Resource management within the encounter is important, because it impacts upon the success or failure of the party within that encounter.I appologize if I've failed to be clear enough, but there is a huge spectrum of outcomes for an encounter beyond "living/dead". So long as the PCs are invested in emerging from an encounter victorious, and if that victory can be denied if they are unwise in marshaling their resources, then the encounter is significant to the players. It's really just that simple. Death is one possible penatly for failure to achieve victory. So too is capture, losing the MacGuffin, the hostage being killed, the bad guys gaining ground, etc. etc. etc. I know you've handwaved these away before as insignificant, but in my experience over years of gaming, players who are invested in the outcome of an encounter will be invested in managing their resources effectively during an encounter to achieve their goal within the encounter.Plus, I think refering to 1e encounters as there being "very few that can kill you" is a little innaccurate in my experience. Then again, I freely admit that the DMs I played 1e games with held the Tomb of Horrors as the pinacle of all things D&D, so every freaking brick in the dungeon had a high probability of killing you <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />And myself and others (including apparently the designers who think that this system will benefit the game) argue that it will. If you have fewer spells to fling, then your nova-ing will be that much less impressive. It's really just that simple.Now, if you still believe that nova-ing is just as effective, I request that you show me how you can nova as effectively when you have a shallower per-encounter pool of resources as you can when you have a deep day-long pool of resources. If you truly believe that you can nova a caster (say a psion, for the ease of setting them to 25% resources) with a shallower pool of resources as well as you can one at 100% resources, prove it.Allow me to ammend this then. "A significant resource."However, RC, you are still failing to see that an individual encounter can be significant, and indeed, that is the only garunteed encounter within a given rest peroid. The only garunteed one. It's folly to sacrifice the excitement of this garunteed encounter for the potential excitement of a potential encounter. This is the fundamental disconnect between our points of view. I feel as though players should be encouarged to focus more heavily on this garunteed encounter, since it's the only one anyone can be certain the PCs will experience in that day, while you feel that losing focus and enjoyment in order to add an element of long-term resource management is a more than fair sacrifice. (To this end, I must also conclude that you dislike playing classes like Rogue and Fighter, who lack this long-term resource management, and consider them poorly designed for this very reason).I disagree that the long-term possible fun is a suitable substitute for short-term garunteed fun. And besides, for long term fun, that's what the overall adventure is for.</blockquote>

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