Ending TNE Work Stoppage

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 3:36 pm

Who are we kidding? If there exists a mechanic for resource replemishment, a player will do whatever it takes to begin a life or death situation at full strength.

D+D: Wands of Cure Light Wounds are cheap as free, and a command word amulet that casts cure minor wounds as a standard action all day long is only 900 gold, rings of sustinance and a scroll of rope trick means that the spellcasters are good to go in under two and a half hours, Lesser restoration cures all fatigue with a single casting, teleporting out of the dungeon to rest inside your own fortified wizard tower, or plane shift to your own mord's magnificent mansion or private genisis'd demiplane.

Shadowrun is even worse: 33 seconds, 33 God Damned Seconds, to go from near grease stain zero to ass kicking hero. First Aid check + Heal untill permanent. Ammunition and weapons can just be picked up from your fallen foes, cars can be stolen right off the street.

Why make the PCs jump through hoops? If you want to have the PCs fight the guardian golem, storm the skeletal defenders, and crack the undead lich in half without getting rest, sage a huge running battle at the heels of the guardian's death where you stagger foe introduction with a running chase minigame where the PCs chase the lich while the skeletal archers chase the PCs, and all of them run through the secluded necroplois laden with traps. And then give them their HP back. Give them their Spells back. Loot the inner sepulture, piss on the alter of evil, and call that an adventuring day.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:55 pm

Because other systems have failed, any attempt MUST fail?

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:15 pm

Hicks wrote:Who are we kidding? If there exists a mechanic for resource replemishment, a player will do whatever it takes to begin a life or death situation at full strength.

The paradigm that D&D and Champions (and all the myriad games spun off from those two) use, where you begin a fight with all your numbers at max, and gradually losing staying power and effectiveness as you go, is certainly prevalent. But it's just as certainly not the only model. Games like Sorcerer and With Great Power... and so forth actually provide room for characters who are injured to be more effective than uninjured ones.

Which is good, because I'll take the Die Hard narrative over the Naruto narrative any day.

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 7:11 pm

It feels to me that if a 3e group kills 4 groups of 10 orcs over the course of a day, they should get more experience than a group that kills the same orcs over the course of four days.

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 9:05 pm

Hicks wrote:33 seconds, 33 God Damned Seconds

SR4 Pg. 195: "the time it takes to make a spell's effect permenant is equal to twice the Drain Value in Combat Turns" or 8 rounds to heal 10 Physical.

SR4 Pg. 242: "Using first aid takes a number of complex actions equal to the ammount of damage the character is attempting to heal. Each net hit over the threshold reduces 1 box of damage." 10 initiative passes to heal 10 damage (about 3 turns with 4 initiative passes per turn)

Less than 30 seconds. It seems I misremembered when I was at work, oh well.

Any system that ignores the 2 minute work day is destened to FAIL. You must have an answer to it. In Shadowrun, you need 30 seconds, or 10 combat rounds. In Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 it takes 2 1/2 hours. In Sorcerer and With Great Power it evidentily taket the length of a combat (I am not aware of the mechanics of either of these games, taking Angel at his word). Just have an answer and make it internally consistant.

I gotta go.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 9:16 pm

You could just have everyone have the same number of limited resources (and have those be of same overall importance), and have a kind of damage that isn't readily curable. Then you can just make the number of daily encounters arbitrary, and have a share of time-constrained missions. Gone are those problems, right?

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:09 pm

For Giggles, lets examine that.

Bigode wrote:You could just have everyone have the same number of limited resources (and have those be of same overall importance)

That sounds suspiciously like 4th edition D&D, and the 1 or One Billion per encounter power/day powers is retarded as it is insulting to the metagame.

and have a kind of damage that isn't readily curable.

I am leery of this statement, but as long as you mean "out of combat" when you say "isn't readily curable" I'm game to this possibility as long as it is explicitly stated and explained in the rules.

Then you can just make the number of daily encounters arbitrary,

This is a No-Fly Zone. Arbitrary Numbers of powers, yes, as long as that number is sufficiently high that I won't get bored by either (A. running out of cool things to do or (B. become frustrated by not having a lasting impact on the game world. IF A = True or B = True Then set Hicks_Action ( play F-Zero X on my N64 ). Care must be made to make these "daily" powers show stoppers and jaw droppers that interact with the enviroment, and not D&D the 4th's "you feel kinda irritated for a round if you fail a save."

and have a share of time-constrained missions.

My agreement level is over NINE-THOUSAAAAAAAND!

Gone are those problems, right?

Gonna go with a resounding maybe.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 5:05 pm

Bigode wrote:You could just have everyone have the same number of limited resources (and have those be of same overall importance), and have a kind of damage that isn't readily curable. Then you can just make the number of daily encounters arbitrary, and have a share of time-constrained missions. Gone are those problems, right?

I'm thinking the same.
We have abilities which should be considered an unlimited resource, and some form of defense-from-death such as stamina, wounds, or HP which are NOT renewable (barring of course healing HP as by ability, and even that should cost a character something limited)
In D&D right now (3e and 4e) we have, by default, all resources limited except for special subpar circumstances such as Warlocks or warrior melee attacks.

So between each encounter you have the same effectiveness but if one continues to push onward in a day they come closer to death. Injuries may or may not make the characters worse in function with every further wound depending on system.
Then again, it's that same discouraging trend of fighting with wounds at all that drives players to fight once a day.
They simply don't want to die, and fighting wounded of half-cocked puts you more at risk of death. Of course then again, if even death can be easily remedied...

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 9:32 pm

Hicks wrote:That sounds suspiciously like 4th edition D&D, and the 1 or One Billion per encounter power/day powers is retarded as it is insulting to the metagame.

Yeah, I know how it sounds. Putting everyone on the same paradigm was the single thing that ever called my attention to 4E through all previews. I hold that one doesn't need to fvck up everything to achieve it, and while I might be caught using 3.5 per-encounter rules at a point of other (e.g. ToB disciplines), I have no particular reason to advocate per-encounter resources: either abilities are sufficiently varied that you might wanna rotate them anyway, or the game has a problem that something this superficial won't solve. What I'd intend to limit and hand out to everyone's the stuff that actually needs limits: transportation, divination, creation, possibly some others.

Hicks wrote:I am leery of this statement, but as long as you mean "out of combat" when you say "isn't readily curable" I'm game to this possibility as long as it is explicitly stated and explained in the rules.

I might mean even actual downtime, not just out of combat.

Hicks wrote:This is a No-Fly Zone. Arbitrary Numbers of powers, yes, as long as that number is sufficiently high that I won't get bored by either (A. running out of cool things to do or (B. become frustrated by not having a lasting impact on the game world. IF A = True or B = True Then set Hicks_Action ( play F-Zero X on my N64 ). Care must be made to make these "daily" powers show stoppers and jaw droppers that interact with the enviroment, and not D&D the 4th's "you feel kinda irritated for a round if you fail a save."

It seems the biggest paragraph doesn't show an actual disagreement ...

Hicks wrote:Gonna go with a resounding maybe.

Better now?

---

Oh, and, in talks about a new game, I'd always favor no ressurrection at all, ever. (BTW, we're already ahead of the times when losing a character had any consequence beyond putting an end to their story.)

zeruslord · Post by **zeruslord** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 6:17 am

Oh, and, in talks about a new game, I'd always favor no ressurrection at all, ever.

Resurrection of various forms is a classic mythological element. Restricting resurrections blocks Hercules, Gilgamesh, Orpheus, and many other stories. This is really a decision that we shouldn't get to make, except in specific settings or even campaigns.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:56 pm

zeruslord wrote:
Oh, and, in talks about a new game, I'd always favor no ressurrection at all, ever.
Resurrection of various forms is a classic mythological element. Restricting resurrections blocks Hercules, Gilgamesh, Orpheus, and many other stories. This is really a decision that we shouldn't get to make, except in specific settings or even campaigns.

In most of those, ressurrection isn't reliable (much less easy). That's more what I actually meant.