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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3804718" data-attributes="member: 42582">Gizmo33, I have a sense that in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3798801&postcount=1192" target="_blank">your reply at post #1192</a> you may have missed my point (perhaps my post obscured it).What I was trying to say is this: if an encounter becomes win/lose not because the probabilities and die rolls make it such (ie it is not like a 10th lvl Fighter vs a Stone Giant), but rather because skilled tactical play is required to make the probabilities come out PC-friendly, then it is not very different from a resource attrition game, where a given encounter (#N) may not pose a very big risk to the party (eg 10th lvl PC vs kobolds) but if poorly handled can deplete resources which result in the party facing risks later on (encounter #N+1).In particular, you said:My point is that, if bad play never leads to a risk of death in the attrition game - ie if every encounter is one which, however poorly the players have managed their resources, they can succeed at - then the attrition game will also be mechanically meaningless. Assuming that non-mechanical thresholds of significance are put to one side for the moment, for the attrition game to be of interest there must be consequences to the players of consuming resources, and I don't see what else those consequences would be but the chance of losing (ie, in the last analysis, PCs dying in) an encounter.But if that sense of vulnerability never actualises - if there are never encounters which are dangerous to take on in a resource-depleted state - then the tension will eventually evaporate. And if there are such encounters, then it turns out that poor play earlier on makes the PCs vulnerable to death.So, as I said, it seems to me that the only crucial difference, in this respect, between per-encounter and pure per-day, is that per-encounter loads all this unfolding of the vulnerability, and the potentially fatal consequences for the PCs of poor choices by their players, into a single encounter rather than stretching it over multiple encounters. I don't see why this is generically a bad thing (it is of course a different thing - the skill of good play changes, from resource management to what I have been calling "tactical decision making" - but I see this as an issue more of taste than of quality).Yes.As I said, I think it's a different thing. I think it makes for a game that's plausibly enjoyable to a wide audience (eg I can envisage me an my fellow players enjoying it, and I have no reason to think we're terribly unrepresentative). I wouldn't expect it to appeal to all gamers.  I expect that WoTC have done market research to try and gauge the tastes of RPGers.I'm not entirely sure if your first and second examples point in the same direction. You seem to be saying both that operational play allows for mitigation of mistakes, and that per-encounter is more tolerant of mistakes. I don't understand what you mean - these claims seem to me to be in tension.Turning to the particular issue of healing, it seems to me that in the per-encounter game a 10 hitpoint mistake might well be fatal if healing can't be brought to bear, whereas (as you note in your first example) in an operational game minor cures can handle it easily.As far as healing goes, I suspect that the designers will find ways to compensate for the phenomenon you note in your first example eg via abilities which let a Cleric simultaneously attack and rally (ie heal). These options will be different. I'm not enough of a designer to say that they will obviously be adequate. But nor am I inclined to believe that they will obviously be inferior to the possibilities that operational play allows for.</blockquote>

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