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6 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2007 - 9:22AM
#31
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Date Joined:
Jan 21, 2005
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Excuse my ignorance, but what is a "nova party?" Anyone?
I took it as old time power gamers. In my case of the TPK. A player 10 years older and 8 year longer as a gamer. If you read knights ... A Brian.
As to the "story"
Sadly, I could tell you better then write it. I need/use a timeline -- NOT a story. Story GMs tend to already made they mind on what is going to happen. Also my players have fun. A to easy game is not a fun game. There is a middle ground to all of this. I think others have put it better on this thread.
I learn by running and reading, having players that GMed helps. No system I have seen is going to do that for you. All I can say about it.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2007 - 10:14AM
#32
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Date Joined:
Dec 13, 2003
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Excuse my ignorance, but what is a "nova party?" Anyone?
To "nova" means to use up a lot of limited resources in a short period of time, usually dealing out lots of damage (or other effects) but leaving yourself relatively powerless afterwards. Often used for wizards, but other sorts of classes could potentially have this problem.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2007 - 1:15PM
#33
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Date Joined:
Nov 29, 2001
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Excuse my ignorance, but what is a "nova party?" Anyone?
As Draschasor said, "nova" means to use all your highest levels spells and per-day abilities in a single combat. A "nova party" would do this consistently, and rest after every single combat. If they're allowed to do this, then they can take on challenges much higher than a similar party that doesn't rest after every combat.
The thing about D&D is there's no actual rule anywhere saying you can't rest every five minutes or after every battle. Most DM's and parties just agree it seems sort of unheroic and unrealistic, so they sort of work around it and try, in a vague sort of way, to only rest every two or three battles instead.
You can only really force non-resting if you make an adventure time-sensitive (and it would be annoying to make every single adventure a race against the clock), or if you make lots of long dungeons where it's unsafe to rest (this is unrealistic too, and once you reach mid levels, players have lots of tricks to rest in even the craziest environments, from rope trick to Mordenkainen's Mansion to just teleporting out and back.)
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6 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2007 - 4:22PM
#34
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Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2001
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The thing about D&D is there's no actual rule anywhere saying you can't rest every five minutes or after every battle. Most DM's and parties just agree it seems sort of unheroic and unrealistic, so they sort of work around it and try, in a vague sort of way, to only rest every two or three battles instead.
You can only really force non-resting if you make an adventure time-sensitive (and it would be annoying to make every single adventure a race against the clock), or if you make lots of long dungeons where it's unsafe to rest (this is unrealistic too, and once you reach mid levels, players have lots of tricks to rest in even the craziest environments, from rope trick to Mordenkainen's Mansion to just teleporting out and back.)
Yeah it's rather pointless trying to stop people from resting. There are so many easy ways in D&D to hide or disengage your foes. It's alot easier to just treat the disease rather than the symptoms.
If resting doesn't help the PCs, then you don't have this problem.
Just don't have per day abilities and you're fine.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2007 - 4:38PM
#35
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Date Joined:
Dec 13, 2003
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No per day abilities can be a bit boring though. You want the PCs to have some reason to rest now and then, otherwise they never will.
I think if you make resting not give you that much, then it will be rare. So there's a middle ground where resting will give you some abilities back, but not enough to be worth stopping the adventure instead of continuing on. Especially true if you might encounter monsters that interrupt resting. Just keep resting from giving you so much power relative to your current levels that it is insane not to rest, and you should be fine.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2007 - 6:15PM
#36
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Date Joined:
Nov 16, 2004
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I played under "Good" GMs that after a time .. I would never play under again if I can help it. They had the talent and the rules down. Sadly ... Some favored some players over others. Some could not let themselves "lose" to the players.
Those aren't good GMs. Let me repeat that: Those aren't good GMs.
Rules knowledge and roleplaying ability are only two characteristics of good GMs. Frankly, with knowledgeable players, rules knowledge becomes the least important. Fairness and a dedication to everyone having fun is far more important.
IMO, YMMV, etc.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2007 - 7:02PM
#37
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Date Joined:
Aug 31, 2004
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By all appearances I think the per day will be limited in scope to the more fantastic abilities of a spellcasters potential. This is good, and shouldn't continue the old cycle of the 5 minute workday.
Per Encounter will be the most used tactical spells in the casters arsenal, likely buffs and high damage magic ala fireball. These will likely resemble the Force Powers abilities in scope, modifiable by Action Points and the like.
Hopefully the can achieve their goal...
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6 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2007 - 8:23PM
#38
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Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2001
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No per day abilities can be a bit boring though. You want the PCs to have some reason to rest now and then, otherwise they never will.
Yeah, you want some special abilities the PCs can bust out when things are tough. But these are what per adventure abilities are for. And it really doesn't matter how long you rest or what, the adventure doesn't progress until you progress it, so you can't get your abilities back that way.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2007 - 9:08PM
#39
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2004
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2) Don't rely on a particular idea of needing to rest each day; instead have powerful actions have a chance of causing some harm that will eventually build up and require down time. For example, systems where you can cast spells all day long without ever running out, but each time there's a chance you might injure yourself or get Paradox (Mage: The Ascension) or something similar. In this case you go much longer without absolutely needing rest, and usually just recover when the adventure-segment is over and you're back in a safe town for a few days.
Ultimately, this is the same fundamental mechanic with a different veneer.
Once we get to adventure scale, D&D is a game of attrition. You win when you attrit your opponent's resources below some critical threshold. These resources are most obviously hp, but they can also be X/day or global abilities (global abilities are items such as potions and wands that aren't specifically limited in quantity).
Attrition can also be nested. I have a concept of "attrition cycles", which are points at which your attritionable resources reset. At the lowest level, one can consider a round to be an attrition cycle: you have a certain number of actions and non-action activities in a round, and they reset every round. However, running out of "per round" resources usually doesn't signal defeat, so we'll move up to the next level, the encounter.
Even without Tome of Battle, encounters are an attrition contest in D&D. hp can be refreshed during an encounter (usually by trading on higher level resources), but for the most part an encounter runs hit points down and then you repair everyone up at the end with slower spells and effects like neutralise poison and the ubiquitous wand of cure light wounds. A few other abilities are per-encounter.
At the top is the daily attrition cycle, where all the per-day abilties reset. Sometimes, this is synonymous with per-adventure, although a multi-day adventure might be its own attrition cycle when consumables are considered.
There's not fundamentally a difference between having X uses of an ability and having indefinite uses, each of which confers a penalty Y. In either case, the important question is "when does it reset?". Though the incrementing penalties model is more flexible in that the user has a more interesting tradeoff. A slight exception is "all or nothing" penalties - you can do this indefinitely but there's a 30% chance of losing it permanently for the rest of the cycle. If significant enough, these are a pain to balance, since they are highly luck-sensitive.
3) Balance things around consumables or points of some sort instead of rest cycles.
Non-cyclic stuff has a bunch of problems of its own. Either it's cheap enough that it's effectively unlimited (wand of cure light wounds), or its expensive enough that it's "emergencies only". It's hard to get a meaningful value equation on such resources.
Let me jump in and say that I believe moving more stuff per-encounter is a good thing. But I also believe that it's important to have those higher level attrition cycles, for three reasons:
(1) Encounters are more tactically interesting when there is a strategic cost to them. The existence of limited resources that you can pull in to tip a specific encounter in your favour rewards efficient play - if you can pass one encounter without calling on those resources then the next is potentially easier.
(2) Without strategic resources, encounter scaling is completely outside the player's control. Every encounter becomes independent, and PCs with their sandboxed resource set can't devote more or less resources to scale with difficulty.
(3) Encounters become episodic. If an easy and a nail-biting victory leave me in exactly the same state once my resources refresh, I lose any sense of continuity in the adventure. It becomes a series of encounters, not a unified whole.
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6 years ago ::
Sep 16, 2007 - 10:22PM
#40
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Date Joined:
Nov 29, 2001
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Ultimately, this is the same fundamental mechanic with a different veneer.
I agree they can be similar, but I think there is an important difference. With a known per-day ability, like "You can cast fireball 4 times a day", the player knows he can cast it exactly 4 times, and if he thinks he has a good chance to rest after the given combat, he has no incentive to not cast all 4 fireballs. With a system like "Every time you cast a fireball, you have to roll to see if you take damage", the player doesn't know exactly how many times he can cast it. He might be able to cast it a hundred times without ever taking damage, or he might injure himself so severely after two castings that daring for a third might just kill him. It makes it so that something that is currently very predictable (There's almost no reason not to blow all your high level spells if you think you're going to go to sleep soon) to something dangerous; which means you won't casually throw them around if you don't really need to. Of course, if you have ubiquitous Cure Light Wounds wands then the HP damage example doesn't work so well, but there are ways to make a system that is balanced around the idea of possible danger instead of set numbers.
There's also a more subtle psychological feel between the two. For something like "You have 4 fireballs per day", it seems wasteful if you don't cast all 4 fireballs every day. Players feel as if they have to use those abilities they leveled up for or they're not realizing their full potential. In something like "Fireball might damage you", players don't really feel the need to cast it as much, in fact, they might feel psychologically compelled to not casually cast it even if they know they'll probably get healed soon, just because the idea of doing something that will probably backfire without having a good reason goes against intuition.
Non-cyclic stuff has a bunch of problems of its own. Either it's cheap enough that it's effectively unlimited (wand of cure light wounds), or its expensive enough that it's "emergencies only". It's hard to get a meaningful value equation on such resources.
It's hard, I'll agree, but so is almost any sort of game balance. I don't think per-day abilities is necessarily any easier, and a trip to the Char Op boards will show that 3.5 is easily broken even without any equipment.
(1) Encounters are more tactically interesting when there is a strategic cost to them. The existence of limited resources that you can pull in to tip a specific encounter in your favour rewards efficient play - if you can pass one encounter without calling on those resources then the next is potentially easier.
(2) Without strategic resources, encounter scaling is completely outside the player's control. Every encounter becomes independent, and PCs with their sandboxed resource set can't devote more or less resources to scale with difficulty.
I agree, but I don't think "per-day" is a good way to present a limited resource. It is only limited in a few cases: when the PC's are on a race against the clock (which you can't do all the time), or they're in a dangerous place with no way to safely rest (which is hard to do once they get to mid levels). I think consumables are easier to handle and make more sense to many players.
(3) Encounters become episodic. If an easy and a nail-biting victory leave me in exactly the same state once my resources refresh, I lose any sense of continuity in the adventure. It becomes a series of encounters, not a unified whole.
This is true, but I think if I wanted to stress the idea of attrition I'd want more of an overhaul to D&D than would be acceptable. I like the idea of someone getting wounded and the party needing to retreat, but D&D handles almost every wound as something you just cure instantly with your CLW wand. I feel like the idea of being exhausted or battered or severely wounded all make literary sense, but D&D makes all of that a simple per-encounter problem, and makes "attrition" almost entirely the result of a party's wizard running out of prepared high level spells for the day, which still feels slightly ridiculous and uninteresting to me, despite the years of playing D&D.
So, I'm with you on trying to implement a system that allows a lot of per-encounter balance while still allowing the possibility to wear the party down by attrition, but I don't like the flavor of attrition being almost entirely based around spells or other abilities that for mostly unexplained reasons can only be used a set number of times per day.
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