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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 4:36PM
#131
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Honestly I need to know where everybody's getting this "4E is designed with number of encounters in mind" bit, because I have not actually seen this happen in any of my 4E games.
It may have been talked about in a Design & Development in 2007 pre-4e release. It is more of a system design principle than a hard and fast adventure design rule.
So it's expected by the developers that, on average, assuming that everyone is doing stuff within given parameters and their daily resources eventually whittle down to a halt, there's a certain number of encounters that PCs can push through by default.
Which means that consecutively running encounters that are supposed to be very hard (level + 5 EXP budget, even if the monsters are same level, level +3, or level -2 in number) can result in less encounters per day -- sometimes even just one encounter per day, with the right group of monsters -- while consecutively running easy encounters can result in more encounters per day, perhaps even to the beat of 20 encounters in one day.
Is that really different from any other edition, including D&D Next? Because as far as I can tell, the harder an encounter is, the faster the daily resources run out**, and the more likely that the players will start wanting to recover their daily resources via extended/long 8-hour rests. Even encounter powers can be found in the later portions of 3.5E, especially with Tome of Battle, which means that those classes have less worry about expending their limited (encounter) resources due to the fact that their limited resources get back after every fight... which means that as long as the healing keeps them going, no real non-story reason to take long rests.
** with limited healing, hit points can easily be considered a daily resource. In 4E, healing surges are the daily resource. In all editions, daily abilities (including spells) are daily resources. And they can all run out faster because as the fight drags on, more resources are used [HP is lost because of damage, for instance], and even more have to be considered in order to end the fight sooner.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 06, 2012 - 3:12AM
#132
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I learn something new every day since I joined forums. Never knew 5MWD existed! When my friends and I play, I always wanted to take extended rest between encounters but then it just wasn't a good idea due to the location. We assumed extended rest was at the safety of an Inn or a good defensible camp site or when it's sleep time in game time.
Hm. If I may ask why would a DM allow players to assume that nothing will happen during their 12+ hours in-game rest after every encounter? I mean this is DnD after all, a world full of awesome monsters (3 books worth). A lot can happen to players sleeping 12 hours in weird locations during all hours after every encounter. Sheesh even Manhattan isn't safe to just sleep anywhere, and we got no fantasy monsters stalking the streets.
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