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Jan 4, 2010 -- 12:28PM, CarlT wrote:

Card that are unused do not impact the game and thus you cannot say that you are suffering from having too many cards on the table.

Cards that are unused do actually impact the game in a number of tactically significant ways.

First, they change the value of certain build options.
For example, a fighter/warlord with the fey charge feat might specifically choose the inevitable wave at-will power because it enables him to use daring exploit to re-roll his charges and thus keep using fey-charge on a miss. (Heck, I thought about inevitable wave for my inspiring warlord because it would enable her to re-roll a missed charge when she is using her vanguard weapon daily and that's about as much use as she's likely to get out of a 3rd at will). Whether the player ended the mod with three daring exploits remaining or one, it still made the power more attractive.
Likewise, snap out of it enables an invoker to avoid the negative effects of silent malediction. If he still has a snap out of it card remaining at the end of the adventure, it doesn't change the fact that the mere possibility of snap out of it makes silent malediction a more attractive choice than it would otherwise be.

Second, they change the expected result of certain tactical options. Three examples:
1. You are playing a rogue and you are next to a monster that you are pretty sure is on its last legs. You really really really want to kill it this round. Ordinarily, the obvious choice is to use a daily half-damage on a miss power like pommel smash. If you hit, you WILL kill the monster. If you miss, you may well kill the monster anyway. (Let's figure that there's a 50% chance to hit and a 50% chance that miss damage kills the monster anyway. That's a 75% chance to kill the monster). On the other hand, if you have two daring exploits, you can use an at-will attack instead. You have a 50% chance to kill the monster with no resource expenditure, a 25% chance to kill the monster with one daring exploit used, and a 12.5% chance to kill the monster after using two daring exploits. That's an 87.5% chance of killing the monster, making your at-will attack a better choice. This is true before you have spent any of the cards and will remain true whether or not you end up using them.
2. You are a ranger in a party with a bravura warlord and are about to spend an action point. You are have no special action point benefits, so ordinarily, it makes no difference wether you attack with jaws of the wolf then action point to twin strike or if you action point for jaws of the wolf then use your standard action for twin strike. If you have a daring exploit card, however, you can use that to reroll a miss if you spend the action point for twin strike, thus taking you from a 75% chance of earning that bravura presence free attack to an 87.5% chance and taking you from a 50% chance of granting combat advantage to a 25% chance. This is true before you have spent any of your cards and will remain true even if you end up hitting with both twin strike attacks and still have the card left unspent at the end of the mod.
3. You are a charisma paladin with a +0 athletics check and a that'll do card. The monster you want to attack is on the other side of a 10 foot wide and 20 foot deep pit. If you go around the pit, you will not be able to attack the monster. If you try to jump over the pit, you will be able to attack the monster this round, but you have a 45% chance of failing the athletics check, taking 2d10 damage, being unable to even mark the monster this round and probably taking 2 or three rounds to stand up, get a rope and grappling hook out of your pack and climb up the wall. Ordinarily, it is not a good idea to try to jump the pit. You risk far more than you will gain from a single attack and the bad result is almost as likely as the good result. On the other hand, you have a that'll do card, so the choice is obvious: you jump the pit. You have a 55% chance of coming out one attack ahead with no resource expenditure and a 45% chance of getting that attack at the cost of your that'll do card. That'll do still got you an extra attack even the 55% of the time that you didn't have to spend it.

The idea that unspent cards do not impact the game is simply wrong. And the more cards that you have available to you, the more likely unspent cards are to actually impact the game. (Because you can take enough of them that risk mitigation selections are less likely to conflict with the ordinary use of cards and because the ability to take multiple cards allows you to layer risk your risk mitigation--what are the odds that you will fail two fey charge attacks in the course of a module (or that you will fail, re-roll and still fail)? Pretty good really; one at-will re-roll won't transform fey charge into a genuine at-will strategy. On the other hand, the odds that you will fail four such attack rolls over the course of a module are a lot lower. If you are willing to pack four daring exploits, it really is pretty much at-will ability).