[3.x/4e] Encounter XPs are not a reward, they are a pacing mechanism
JMendes:
Hey, :)
Jasper, you and I, totally aligned. Totally. :) You'd have fun in my upcoming 4e thingie.
Quote from: Jasper Flick on July 03, 2009, 02:27:15 AM
This kind of reward falls completely flat if encounters aren't mandatory.
[...]
in D&D, the reward for efficiency manifests from the insistence on a sequence of encounters. It's the last encounter of the day that's the real test. Suviving that last fight, when all becomes desperate, is the reward.
Indeed. I plan to hold a tight grip on the daily pacing, for exactly this reason. The trick is finding the balance. The 4e DMG is very explicit about how many encounters you need to face per level and about the encounter difficulty mix, but then, there's this whole array of daily effects and the significance of the extended rest is monumental, and yet, the DMG is eerily silent on a recommended number of encounters per day... :| It's one of the major flaws in the game balance as written, AFAICT...
Quote from: Jasper Flick on July 03, 2009, 02:27:15 AM
As GM, you can insert stuff that has more teeth, like:
Finish the encounter within four rounds, or the ship departs without you!
If you damage anything in the room you invoke the duke's wrath!
If anyone gets bloodied in this fight, you're met with scorn.
Ah, yes, exactly! :) And, even though those are second-layer rewards (i.e. fiction rewards), they're still highly significant and they can be mode more significant, by tying that stuff in with what 4e calls minor quests. (Naturally, they still won't trump top-layer social rewards, but yeah, I know what I mean.)
Coolness. :)
Cheers,
J.
Jasper Flick:
:) Well then you better write some AP posts about it when it happens!
Quote from: JMendes on July 03, 2009, 03:08:25 AM
I plan to hold a tight grip on the daily pacing, for exactly this reason. The trick is finding the balance. The 4e DMG is very explicit about how many encounters you need to face per level and about the encounter difficulty mix, but then, there's this whole array of daily effects and the significance of the extended rest is monumental, and yet, the DMG is eerily silent on a recommended number of encounters per day... :| It's one of the major flaws in the game balance as written, AFAICT...
It appears to me that everything written in the 4e DMG about pacing deals with pacing at the story or entertainment level, not the challenge level. It's all about keeping the players hooked to what is happenening, but not a word about survivability. It's just assumed that, with the ample opportunity to rest, challenge isn't an issue. The book appears to be all about crafting an entertaining railroad, and not about stepping up at all. For this reason I don't like the 4e DMG much. It basically tries to let you mimic an MMORPG, you let the players grind for the sake of grinding and throw in some story. Failure isn't a functional part of that. The players will at some point just say 'that's enough for today' and that's the end of it.
The 3e DMG was far more explicit in this regard. The whole thing was written with four level-appropriate encounters per day in mind, giving you a strict framework for challenge. In 4e, you're left to figure it out yourself.
In a way though, 4e is more honest about it, because really, 3e didn't have anything to enforce four encounters per day anyway. Perhaps they thought it best to let people figure it out for themselves.
Personally, I think it's all workable as long as you're upfront about your approach. Set your own standards as a group, evaluate them, and adjust if neccesary.
The most fun 3e play I had was a series of games I GMed where people were allowed to create any legal 10th level character, from a list of books specified by me. Then I would run them through four level-appropriate encounters and do my best to kill as many characters as possible. There was a fun story to it, but that wasn't the point, it was all about survival. The real challenge was for me, the GM, to actually kill any of those optimized PCs, with a budget designed to be survivable, playing by the rules. Everyone's boundaries were solid. That produced some real, desperate battles.
NN:
Im having difficulty squaring the following circle:
i) D&D - in any incarnation - needs the PCs in a party to be relatively equal level
ii) Meaningful xp rewards would mean having PCs at different levels
NN:
The more i think about it, the more i feel that "increased character effectiveness" isnt much of a "Reward".
For the group, effectiveness brings on more powerful foes. But, while new challenges may be fun, is bringing them on quicker more fun? Why not take the scenic route to power?
And then, within the party, different character effectiveness opens a whole can of worms.
Callan S.:
Quote from: JMendes on July 03, 2009, 03:08:25 AM
Indeed. I plan to hold a tight grip on the daily pacing, for exactly this reason. The trick is finding the balance. The 4e DMG is very explicit about how many encounters you need to face per level and about the encounter difficulty mix, but then, there's this whole array of daily effects and the significance of the extended rest is monumental, and yet, the DMG is eerily silent on a recommended number of encounters per day... :| It's one of the major flaws in the game balance as written, AFAICT...
It's funny - when diablo 2 came out it and many of it's clones had slowly regenerating health. And I thought this was great, because I essentially treated it as an authorship tool - rush on after getting real hurt, or let a bit grow back then rush on. You weren't reliant on what health packs the game designer had left around the place, for a change (like in Doom, for instance) - you could decide healing in part, yourself. (and speaking of doom, much latter halo had a regenerating forcefield)
Being able to rest pretty much at any time, is similar. But having watched the D&D 'whats a DM to do' boards, it seems it can cease to be treated as an authorship tool by players and instead you get posts by GM's complaining about resting players and 'what to do?'. I've even said this to my friend Daniel, that we could usually just rest after every encounter, and he's hastily tried to say he would stop us if we did, with monsters. He didn't even see it as a player choice/authorship tool and instead the whole job of challenging us was on his shoulders, not partly on our shoulders as well by us declining to rest after every single encounter.
Mind you, textually it's not treated as any sort of player authorship tool. Which either makes it a glaring challenge wrecker, or people who are just playing (no authorship) and aren't resting after every encounter, are being scrub players (and learning bad habits in terms of how to win things)
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