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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 3798801" data-attributes="member: 30001">Yea, exactly.  *If* encounter N+1 is at a certain difficulty level then the N+1 encounter is not much different than the per-encounter situation.  But that's one of my points, because there is no reason the N+1 encounter has to be like anything, whereas in order to make encounters interesting in a per-encounter resource situation that very encounter must be the one posing the risk of death.In a per-day design, the looming N+1, N+2, etc. encounter that adds the tension and sense of vulnerability.  In a per-encounter design it must be that very encounter (N) that the PCs are facing at that moment that poses the risk of death, because encounter N is nearly irrelevant to encounter N+1 unless there are plot elements that make it otherwise (and my assessment is that generally those plot elements are too delicate and contrived to be a reliable design plan for every adventure)Also, in the per-day design, the options you have for mitigating the difficulty level of the N+1 are much greater than those you could have for a per-encounter design.  Multiple weak cures, for instance, can actually help in the per-day design but are just too expensive to use in a per-encounter situation where every round counts.Working operational details into an adventure design is something IME that takes some practice and a little work.  Because of this my early DMing didn't do this as much.  As a result my encounters were increased in difficulty because I wanted to add that sense of tension but I essentially had only one way of doing it.  So some big powerful monster bursts through the door and the PCs face the fight of their lives.  Exciting, except that you can only do this a few times before the razor's edge that you are balancing the probabilities on becomes noticable, and you either have to start cheating or become a killer DM.I currently do have a per-encounter resource situation in my games - overland travel is an example of this.  There's pretty much only one encounter for each couple of days.  My options exist, as they would in a per-encounter design, but they're just more limited. Yes, but as I keep saying you really aren't going to care about your mistakes unless that very encounter is the one that stands a chance of killing you.  Otherwise, who cares what spells/tactics you use when facing monsters that can't deal enough damage to threaten you?  So the timeframe for discovering mistakes is the encounter itself - I'm not sure if that's meant to be a good thing, but also, importantly, there's a much higher tolerance for mistakes in the per-encounter design, because while in the operational game a mistake costing me 10 hitpoints is significant, in the per-encounter design it's meaningless.</blockquote>

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