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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3818902" data-attributes="member: 18280">If 4e includes the possibility of the PCs losing against everything they face, then that will certainly make things different.  Do you expect a condition track in 4e?Yes.  If you go back upthread, you will see that I acknowledge this many, many times.  However, I also realize that death is the most common "defeat" used by average DMs.  In the attrition model, you are not facing a zero-sum game with encounters.  It is possible to win, but to have that win be so costly as to be worthless, damaging, mildly annoying, or to have no cost at all.  It is not either/or.In a per-encounter model, the encounter must answer all mechanical interests.  That means it can be, as Shilsen pointed out, a showcase easy encounter where you can show off and try tricky things that you'd hate to have fail in a significant encounter, or it can be an encounter where you can lose, or it can be an encounter that is not mechanically interesting.  Since the showcase encounter is unlikely to be mechanically interesting if done too often, that leaves the win/lose encounter.When addressing the problem of the 9-9:15 adventuring day, what you or I would do with the system is not IMHO important; what the average DM will do, and what the average players will do, is.  So the question becomes, what does the system reward?If the system rewards the DM when he puts in win/lose encounters (as seems the case), and if the most common "lose" in D&D is death (as has certainly been the case up until now), then it makes sense that the average DM will include more deadly encounters.If the average DM includes more deadly encounters, it seems more likely (to me at least) that the average players will use their per-day resources before someone dies.  Which means, sooner rather than later.  Why?  Because the PC experience a higher success ratio, which means they are rewarded.If the average players view their per-day resources as important for dealing with the common deadly encounters, they will want them available.  Why?  Because the PC experience a higher success ratio, which means they are rewarded.If nothing else prevents it, then, the PCs will use, rest, rinse, and repeat.  Exactly the same as with 3.X.  The only differenc might be that the frequency of win/lose encounters increases, in which case the adventuring day shortens.On average.  YMMV.RC</blockquote>

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