[D&D4E] Some WOTC encounters
Callan S.:
Quote from: Chris
You asked about yardsticks to measure what kind of challenge is being faced beyond TPKs. Then you added the qualifier that the book must explicitly explain to you that doing something faster, better, with less resource costs is better than doing it slower, worse, with more costs.
No one seems to require soccer teams to explain winning by 5 goals is way better than barely winning by 1 goal in overtime.
Those aren't the same things? In D&D you HAVE to expend resources - you have to lose some amount of HP, or use up a encounter power, or some amount healing surges. Therefore if you HAVE to expend some, how do you judge how much is too much? You can't compare a system where you can keep adding on goals with no limit, to a system where you start with a number of goals then you HAVE to lose some amount of goals! Unless your arguing for a perfect encounter (somewhat like Gareth's street fighter 'Perfect' result) - no HP loss on anyone, no encounter powers used, etc etc?
Or what about the 1/4 the parties resouces you mentioned? Like if you can beat an encounter and to the extent you can do it underneath that 1/4 resources (ie, under budget), the better you've done (in personal skill and/or ballsy luck)?
That goal isn't exactly spelled out in the books, but it could be used as a metric to judge player performance by. Surely that's both an example that shows I'm not just already deciding what my feelings are here (I am putting effort into looking) and also an example that even if you used the 1/4th thing to try beat the designers at their own game (literally), it's still not actually a spelled out player skill judgement method, in the book. Certainly nowhere does it tell players to add up all their PC hitpoints added together, for example, even though to work out this 1/4th thing you'd have to do that and other stuff. So I could agree there's a metric there - just one that the designers certainly aren't talking about.
I wont argue other posts, as my estimates of the situation are rough and slightly off topic and the above post might be sufficient for this topic/thread. Thanks for the input anyway, guys :)
Balesir:
Hi,
I think Callan makes a very good point from the point of view of gamist 4E, in fact. Our games thrive pretty well on the "kudos yardstick", in that players are handing out kudos for good tactical combos (and that is one area 4E really makes sing!), but really functional gamist measures are really not realised, in my view.
I think there is a "near miss", though, in milestones. Milestones happen every two encounters (or maybe more or fewer, at GM discretion, based on encounter level). At each milestone you get some extra resources (an action point and, until recently, the capability to use a daily magic item power one more time). If you want a real gamist measure that can work with a longer campaign (i.e. isn't a binary TPK/live), the number of milestones reached before taking an extended rest is pretty fair. Maximum in one day and average over time both make sense - sort of like a batting score/batting average in cricket or baseball.
Callan S.:
How are the milestones counted? I'm not too well read in encounter construction, but as I understand it it's like 3E - ie, party level plus or minus a number of levels.
The thing is, if you can get to a milestone or X amount of milestones with party level-2 encounter(s), as an example, then that makes milestones a meaningless measure.
Anders Gabrielsson:
The default is that you reach one milestone after every two encounters.
Balesir:
Quote from: Callan S. on July 24, 2011, 12:03:43 AM
How are the milestones counted? I'm not too well read in encounter construction, but as I understand it it's like 3E - ie, party level plus or minus a number of levels.
The thing is, if you can get to a milestone or X amount of milestones with party level-2 encounter(s), as an example, then that makes milestones a meaningless measure.
Milestones are counted from Extended Rest to Extended Rest, in other words they are a measure of how much "encounter meat" you get through before replenishing your resources.
The number of encounters to reach a milestone is "two, or more or less at DM discretion for encounters that are above or below the party's level". That's what I mean with it being a "near miss"; if they had been a bit more explicit and made a bit bigger a thing of it, it could have fitted the role nicely. But they didn't.
An individual DM can still standardise things a bit, though.
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