Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3794343" data-attributes="member: 18280">It is absolutely true, especially as one grows used to a new system (i.e., the aforementioned "shine" period) that a player might not know, within a given circumstance, which of his powers is most significant.  If you believe that, after playing the game for a year or so, players will not know which powers are most significant in any normal circumstance, then, yes, this is a valid criticism of my position.In 1e, there were a few module encounters that nerfed obvious spells so that it wasn't obvious which powers were significant within that encounter.  4e could go this way.  However, I do not assume there can be no meaningful choice during the encounter, within the context of the encounter.  I do assume that the average player, however, in any given situation is automatically going to choose whichever resource seems most significant within that context, except as using that resource has repercussions."Imagine in any given encounter, you could only use one or two of these abilities, not all? Which one is the better choice?" is a repercussion.   Repercussions are, IMHO, a good thing.  It is perfectly possible to have repercussions within a given encounter; the effects of Haste in 1e are a good example of this.  However, nothnig I have seen from WotC yet indicates that "repercussions = fun" is in their lexicon.My argument, at its basic level, is that preventing a 15-minute adventuring day is a function of repercussions for using resources indiscriminately.  The per-day/per-encounter paradigm will not solve it without significant repercussions, and AFAICT, actually removes existing repercussions from play.Players act carefully when there are repercussions to not acting carefully.  Win/lose situations have repercussions.  Spells that might turn on you have repercussions.  Resource attrition is a repercussion.I also assume that, while individual encounters might be fun, the context of those encounters lends them a large part of their meaning.  This is, again, analogous to my "land on property in Monopoly" mini-game.  If every time you landed on owned property in Monopoly, the rules called for you to play a game of chess before paying up, I doubt very many people would have included this aspect of the game within their own play for long.  Chess is a wonderfully tactical game, and is by itself interesting to play.  However, because the chess game doesn't impact the Monopoly game, it is much ado about nothing.  Most players are sitting at the table, IMHO, to play the overarching Monopoly.If, OTOH, a quick game of scissors/rock/paper determined whether or not you had to pay, more people would include that in their game.  It is less tactically challenging, but far more relevant to the overarching game.I feel that it is self-evident that actions that are relevant to the overarching game are inherently more interesting than actions that are not.  Indeed, if this was not the case, the game might as well be DDM, where you stage various skirmishes that are unrelated -- or tangentially related -- to each other.I find it rather telling that, while you might have to make the same sort of decisions fighting 4 goblins at 10th level as you do fighting something that can hurt you, a great many people suggest that the 4 goblins should be handwaved, while the other fight should not.  And I find it rather telling that, although this parallel has been brought up again and again, it hasn't exactly been addressed by those claiming that fights which have tactical decisions, but no repercussions beyond the encounter, are as interesting as those which have both.RC</blockquote>

Verification