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5 years ago ::
Jan 14, 2008 - 10:51AM
#101
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The "five-minute workday" is a problem whether you have to rest after one encounter, or four encounters, five minutes, or 8 hours. In all of these cases, the central problem is the same: you cannot survive without spells, and your spells will eventually run out. After that, your entire party is at a very very low power level. (Yes, your fighter and rogue can keep going all day and all night... but only if they never actually get hurt and require healing.)[/quote]
I think this hit the nail on the head. While I understand that certain strategies can be used by the DM in order to make rest difficult if not impossible, the fact remains that these are usable regardless of when the party chooses to rest. At this point, using these strategies no longer becomes a story-centric element, but rather a meta-strategy for the DM to railroad player options on a particular "work day," regardless of the "work day" length. It also creates some inconsistencies. Why shouldn't the BBEG send minions against the party during its rest period if the party tackles four encounters rather than one?
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5 years ago ::
Jan 14, 2008 - 2:58PM
#102
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Date Joined:
Oct 19, 2007
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Just my two cents.
I will start by saying that I started playing 2ed and when 3E\3.5 came out, I was all against it. Now, I shake my head at my own delusion and refuse to have that same outlook to 4E, I am really looking forward to it in a lot of respects.
having said that, the one thing I am not all that happy about is giving Wiz\Sorc\Cleric etc "per encounter" spells. To me, this is one of the biggest ways to make the fighter redundant, as he is no longer the one guy in the party that can play all day, now everyone can join in the fun.
The thing I love about wizards is the requirement to have good resource management skills and be able to correctly choose what and when to act. After 15 years of gaming, I will openly admit that i have only recently awoken to the joys that are scrolls, and the free scribe scroll feat, and I absolutley love it. Now I have to not only manage my spell list, but also pick and choose spell to scribe for those times when they are needed.
Maybe it's just me, but I also like the fact that the Wiz\Cleric etc must await for the fighter to create the right opening for a spell to be effective, and I also like the concept that hey, if your going to go around fighting big ugly (or nice) things, then guess what, you will get hurt. If you bypass the tension built up from having to rest in a hostile environment and just wander around all day because you never run out of spells\healing, where is the suspense, danger, tension, and mostly, the gratification of overcoming all obsticles and still coming out on top (or maybe that's just an aussie thing)?
But like i said earlier, although I am not a fan of per encounter abilities, I will await for the actual release of the product and after a thorough read through, will make my decision about the new edition. It's only fair.
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5 years ago ::
Jan 14, 2008 - 7:00PM
#103
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Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2001
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having said that, the one thing I am not all that happy about is giving Wiz\Sorc\Cleric etc "per encounter" spells. To me, this is one of the biggest ways to make the fighter redundant, as he is no longer the one guy in the party that can play all day, now everyone can join in the fun.
The fighter could never go all day. He went until he ran out of hit points or until the wizard ran out of spells. Having a fast resource spending method generally doesn't balance a class, because the group may just decide to rest so that it's at full strength. Yeah maybe the fighters are awful team players, but probably not. More than likely they realize they're better off if the wizards replenish spells.
And seriously, so what if it takes another day? I mean it's not like your characters are dying of old age or anything.
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5 years ago ::
Jan 14, 2008 - 7:35PM
#104
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Date Joined:
Oct 19, 2007
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And seriously, so what if it takes another day? I mean it's not like your characters are dying of old age or anything.
It might not matter in your game, but in nearly every game I play in, the world in which the character lives continues to exist outside of their own field of vision. The are not "believers in the source". If you chose to take path a, it could take you 3-4 months just to get there (we are not high enough for teleport yet, and if we were, there is sometimes benefit in the journey).
This has not been created to force the players to be as quick as possible or to give them time constraints on every encounter, but it does re-inforce the fact that there is a world out there.
So in summary, to your response, a day does mean something to me and my friends, but what that has to do with the subject is beyond me? Fighters CAN swing all day, there is no rules for combat fatigue, and everyone has hitpoints so that is an even ground in that argument. My point is, that to me, wizard should have limited resource, that is what makes them fun. I have yet to read any book\seen any movie where the wizard goes around all day casting this and that (outside of simple cantrips - imagine Saurumon if he could just walk about casting fireballs all day without any strain on his resource, treants ain't really a problem then are they?) and I think it takes away from there mystic if they could. Again, just my opinion and it probably won't concern me either way.
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5 years ago ::
Jan 14, 2008 - 9:56PM
#105
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Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2001
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So in summary, to your response, a day does mean something to me and my friends, but what that has to do with the subject is beyond me? Fighters CAN swing all day, there is no rules for combat fatigue, and everyone has hitpoints so that is an even ground in that argument. My point is, that to me, wizard should have limited resource, that is what makes them fun. I have yet to read any book\seen any movie where the wizard goes around all day casting this and that (outside of simple cantrips - imagine Saurumon if he could just walk about casting fireballs all day without any strain on his resource, treants ain't really a problem then are they?) and I think it takes away from there mystic if they could. Again, just my opinion and it probably won't concern me either way.
Well I have no problems with wizards having limited resources, it's just that X/day is a trivial limitation that most of the time probably doesn't even matter. Further, it encourages your PCs to just say "screw the plot, I'm resting anyway".
If you want a good resource to manage, try action points. There's a resource that you're forced into managing, and you can't just rest to make it all go away if you screwed it up.
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5 years ago ::
Jan 14, 2008 - 10:09PM
#106
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Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2004
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I have yet to read any book\seen any movie where the wizard goes around all day casting this and that (outside of simple cantrips - imagine Saurumon if he could just walk about casting fireballs all day without any strain on his resource, treants ain't really a problem then are they?) and I think it takes away from there mystic if they could.
Uh, really? The fictional wizards I'm familiar with are rarely more limited than martial characters. They get tired, but that's about it. Doctor Strange doesn't typically run out of teleports. Gandalf and the Balrog fought for days straight. And so on.
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5 years ago ::
Jan 14, 2008 - 11:56PM
#107
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I agree with the death of the 5 min workday... the scariest group I've ever been a part of could usually drag it on into a 50 minute workday but they would chose not to because of our cleric running out of heals by the end of the first 10 minutes she could heal for almost 30 hp/cure light wounds(house rules...i think)which is freakin' scary but she would still run out of juice before the rest of the party would (even at lvl 15) the biggest problem this brings is that player characters will waltz all the way through all but the longest of dungeons and they will have to pay more attention to the time otherwise the characters would end up looking less like adventurers and more like robots.
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5 years ago ::
Jan 15, 2008 - 7:17AM
#108
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Date Joined:
Jan 16, 2006
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…Doctor Strange doesn't typically run out of teleports.…
Except he's from the superhero genre and operates under different rules.
I like the new system. Previously I hated playing spellcasters because I'm way too conservative with any spendable resource that comes into my possession, but I love doing magical things. In the new system I'll get to play a spellcaster who doesn't have to be so restrained in what they do. I'll actually get to play a fun spellcaster for once! :D
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5 years ago ::
Jan 15, 2008 - 10:59AM
#109
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Date Joined:
Jun 21, 2004
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Except he's from the superhero genre and operates under different rules.
Does Ged run out of spells? Did Gandalf? Did Merlin?
I like the fatigue system best myself. Both hurling spells and fighting with weapons should tire you out. Resource management should be mostly limited to physical objects such as arrows.
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5 years ago ::
Jan 16, 2008 - 6:17AM
#110
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Your PCs can survive for FIVE MINUTES? That's 50 rounds. The problems that I see are that D&D combats are short and frequently in a row. If you travel for 8 hours in the dangerous wilderness and fight four encounters before running out of per-day powers, that's OK. If you instead fight 4 encounters in a dungeon, with a five minute rest in between, taking 21-24 minutes, then you have to go home and rest, that's absurd.
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