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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6094775" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, I'm looking for encounters to produce some narrative movement. They will help develop and define a character, advance some element of the plot, and/or perhaps establish something (which could be facts, tone, etc). There will also be a flow of tension and 'story velocity', which are hard to pin down but are definitely pretty well-established concepts.So, it is true that not every encounter must have the sort of 'go to the edge' type of tension that I talked about earlier the encounters that don't have such things are probably not there to be challenges at all, or have a secondary function of burning some PC resources as part of the setup (and tension/velocity management) for later serious challenges. In other words I might do things like have a group of low level thug lackeys in the tavern when the PCs get there who take a shot at them. These would be mooks, maybe some minions and a couple standard bad guys, say a full up level - 1 encounter. I'll set it up so that it goes quickly, give the players something to take their attention away as the thugs run off after a couple quick rounds of combat, maybe that will cause a bit of attrition, an HS or two, and the players will be sucked in, the ground is set. Now the players can be offered an info-gathering scene, etc. They'll find out what is going on, the town must be rescued and the bad guys rooted out of the monastery! This would go on, some encounters will be hard fights, when the HS type mechanics will be useful, and others might be trivial as combats, in which case it doesn't matter. The point is that the players will decide what scenes they are going to engage with, how much importance to put on them, etc. Often a lot of this is shaped by how the DM offers scenes, when he ups the ante, etc. For instance the DM might decide that things could be ramped up, it is a critical juncture, the PCs are about to learn the weakness of the bad guy. They show up at the maiden's house, but just as they are about to enter and learn what they need some thugs show up. The PCs lay on them, but then the bad guy's main henchman shows up! Do they engage him in a major battle now, or do they avoid this fight and carry out their plan? The DM has upped the ante! Either the team dukes it out with the bad guy or they run off and figure out some other plan, maybe using the fact that the henchman is in town to sneak up to the temple, etc.Hero points can work here, and maybe they could be also hit points. The party can decide to burn some points and up the ante themselves against the evil henchman, big wire fu scene! They could also spend some points to decline, sneaking away before the bad guy sees them. They could just fight it out and hope they use less points that way than by upping the ante. They could turn the whole adventure into an attrition battle that way perhaps, though the DM will probably foil that. Like I said before though, the question is if there's going to be some way to add danger when the hit points are full at the start of the adventure. Given that hit points both absorb damage and serve as plot coupons it could create some problems like a weakened party can't up the ante, which isn't really conducive to good story telling. I don't know for sure, but I think I'd maybe rather have something like HS/AP to use for plot coupons that are at least one step removed from hit points. It seems like that would be more likely to evoke the "down but not out, we reached deep and..." thing. Still, I am no pro developer, I'm not at all sure how it would all come out.</blockquote>

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