[3.x/4e] Encounter XPs are not a reward, they are a pacing mechanism
JMendes:
Ahey, :)
Yeah, that sounds solid for 3.0. Would work even better for 4E, as characters simply recover all their hit points and healing surges after resting.
Quote from: Christoph Boeckle on July 05, 2009, 12:06:24 PM
Spells would then work as a more convenient way to get characters back fighting
I don't understand what that bit means.
Also:
Quote from: Christoph Boeckle on July 05, 2009, 12:06:24 PM
Another important aspect was that the GM had to bring in strategic choices in his adventure design: sometimes the party would be face with mutually exclusive choices, which would be weighed out in terms of risk and profit.
How did this work, exactly, meaning, how much information were the players given regarding the potiential risks and potential profit for each of the options?
Cheers,
J.
Christoph Boeckle:
Hi João
I really need to play some D&D 4.0 (and Tunnels & Trolls à la sauce Eero) then!
Yeah, what I was saying regarding the spells, was that in other incarnations of D&D, the priest would spend whole days just healing people... with this tweak, healing was rather used for gaining an edge in combat (and D&D 4.0 seems to go farther still, which is cool in my opinion).
An example of a strategic choice given by adventure design! Two paths: one dangerous because of monsters (combat!), the other because of the bad conditions of the path itself (find a good idea to pass the chasm!) The party has to assess it's strength and weaknesses before going ahead. Kind of. In practice, it wasn't that revolutionary: in the end, it all came down to HP anyway. It was very basic, but interesting nonetheless. It doubles the prep though, so to speak.
Most dungeons I had used before would go along the lines of "go in, visit all the rooms, clean them out and don't leave a single thing behind." This design brings in some strategical dilemma.
But I don't want to derail from the central idea of the thread! I'm really interested to read more about your experiences on this topic, to better understand to which extent XPs are a pacing mechanism and/or a reward mechanism.
JMendes:
Hoy, :)
Quote from: Christoph Boeckle on July 06, 2009, 02:29:47 PM
Two paths: one dangerous because of monsters (combat!), the other because of the bad conditions of the path itself (find a good idea to pass the chasm!)
Hmmmm, interesting. I have a strong feeling that, if I did that in my groups, they would simply go looking for the monsters right off the bat, not because of a strategic decision, but because the game is about Killing Things and Taking Their Stuff... :)
Quote from: Christoph Boeckle on July 06, 2009, 02:29:47 PM
I'm really interested to read more about your experiences on this topic, to better understand to which extent XPs are a pacing mechanism and/or a reward mechanism.
Heh! Well, regarding actual play, I've written all I have to write on that particular insight. :) You can see where a friend and I are taking the idea here, thuogh.
Cheers,
J.
AzaLiN:
First of all, excellent post.
Quote
The hard route: detach encounter level from character level.
You might find that lower level encounters cannot harm the party at all, and that higher level encounters are either impossible, or extremely tedious for the players and DM: its just how the encounters are scaled, unfortunately.
Level in 4e seems to best describe a slope of effectiveness against a set group of enemies as a gauge of player growth- for example, the players see how the 'hard' group of orcs becomes normal, then easy, and then they can take down some crazy big groups of orcs before moving on to the next monster set.
However, put a lv5 party against lv9 trolls and the fight will just take freaking forever and suck for everyone, just like my when the level 1 party fought the lv4 orcs- it took forever, and the satisfaction of killing them was significantly diluted by the tedium of it.
AzaLiN:
I guess I should also add that, in my experience, when the PCs died and I had them remake characters more than 1 level below the rest of the group, they were unusually fragile and ineffective compared with other game systems. They hardly contributed to combat compared to the others and had to go to lengths to avoid dying in simple fights... after a few weeks of this, I made sure the PCs were within a level of each other, since the system became dysfunctional when they split apart. Again, if someone was 3 levels higher, which happened once, they were a relative god compared to the others, and it either became boring for them, or sucky for the others being who seemed unnecessary at times.
Using xp as a reward system may cause problems with the party in this system, since the scaling is so particular.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page