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Taking the Nova Fallacy out to die once and for all.

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 2:17 pm
by Roy
The Nova Fallacy goes something like this:

Characters with limited resources (spells, power points, whatever) can blow their full load in one fight and be considerably more powerful within that fight, after which they're out of power and have to rest because they can't fight anymore. Alternately, NPC characters under the same stipulations do it since they only live for one fight anyways and end up considerably stronger than their level indicates accordingly.

Allow me to be the first to say...

Stop lying, you fucking fucker.

See, there's this neat thing called the Action Economy. And even when you use the ways to bypass it, you still are limited in the number of actions you can take, just less so. Long before you've ran out of resources either you're dead, they're dead, or using any more resources would be pointless since everything is under control. The last one is most common at the lowest levels where using more than one Color Spray per battle would cause this, except that it's unnecessary to do so since there's around an 80% chance anything in the area is gone, and if one saves you have three buddies there who also have save or die attacks (physical attacks are a save or die, targeting AC at this level) so don't worry about it. The other two are more common a bit later where you have a dozen or more spells, but still only need one or two to win the fucking encounter.

So no, you don't fucking nova because using even a fraction of your resources wins the battle before you get to that point. And the enemies don't either for the same reason combined with their lower durability as a direct result of less wealth.

And the game will not become more or less balanced as a result of a nova because it doesn't fucking happen.

Full stop.

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 2:55 pm
by Roy
One more thing, an addendum if you will. The characters who you think do not have limited resources still do. Hit Points are extremely finite, and are replenished by spells. So the characters who those that don't know any better think could keep going can... but only for about one or two rounds, at which point they're dead. Which means they have as much, or more incentive to stop as the other guys, since the limited resources of spells/power points/whatever affects them at least as much as it affects those that have them directly. If anything they start suffering sooner, since when and if resources do get low they start going towards winning the fucking encounter more so as to ensure survival... sucks to be you if you get auto attacked and expect less efficient uses such as healing of HP damage.

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 2:59 pm
by RobbyPants
Well, you're certainly right at high levels in that an NPC probably won't live long enough to blow their whole wad, so they really can't nova. At lower level though, it is more of an issue, especially because of low level PCs being fragile.

As for the whole Color Spray thing, that also depends on initiative. If your three buddies go after the monster that made its save, you're going to wish you weren't fifteen feet away from it.

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 3:06 pm
by Roy
RobbyPants wrote:Well, you're certainly right at high levels in that an NPC probably won't live long enough to blow their whole wad, so they really can't nova. At lower level though, it is more of an issue, especially because of low level PCs being fragile.

As for the whole Color Spray thing, that also depends on initiative. If your three buddies go after the monster that made its save, you're going to wish you weren't fifteen feet away from it.
No, at low levels it isn't a problem because one shot is enough. Seriously, even a divine caster has a decent chance of failing a will save at this level. Everyone risks a OHKO by save or dies targeting AC (aka, physical attacks). But the point is, even though there is a second and a third and a fourth in there, just getting off one is enough.

The second part of your statement doesn't make any sense. Did you mean to say something else there?

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 3:11 pm
by RobbyPants
Actually, the two go quite well together.

Even with a good chance of success, it's very likely at least one opponent will succeed in their Will save. If even one is left standing, they're going to get to act before you and you're standing 15 feet away from them. You'd better have some friends handy with a higher Init count than the guy who made is save or you're fucked.

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 3:13 pm
by Roy
RobbyPants wrote:Actually, the two go quite well together.

Even with a good chance of success, it's very likely at least one opponent will succeed in their Will save. If even one is left standing, they're going to get to act before you and you're standing 15 feet away from them. You'd better have some friends handy with a higher Init count than the guy who made is save or you're fucked.
Isn't that the point of your three buddies going after them? I mean, why bother if you can't get first strikes, given how critically important they are?

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 5:22 pm
by virgil
What, you mean you can't prep all of your effort for the short term? When you know you're going to be fighting in the next couple minutes, you can layer 1 min/level buffs (or shorter) in place of 1 hour/level (or longer), giving yourself more power for a shorter period of time.

The real novas happen when you obtain many different 1/day abilities (such as sudden metamagics or some of the trigger-based magic items), and use only them, as they're balanced for only being able to be used once for that day, thus giving you more effect than a similar item that can be used thrice a day. Depending on your build, you could very easily be quite below your level in effectiveness by the end of your first or second fight for the day.

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 6:14 pm
by mean_liar
The term 'nova' as I've seen it only really applies to v3.5 psionics and similar wad-dumping - namely, you can drop a powerful and large-area SoD effect with one action.

I have no idea what the hell else you're talking about Roy.

The whole point of a Nova is that it occurs in compressed time - namely, one round. The idea of Action Economy is action-over-time and how you use resources over that time, and has nothing to do with one-round dumping.

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 6:25 pm
by virgil
I was under the impression that Nova was the tactic of expending enough resources in as small amount of time that you screw over your ability to meaningfully contribute in more than one or two fights before needing a refresh (either buying/making more gear or resting for a day).

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 6:34 pm
by Ice9
It's funny how people always think of the Psion as being especially nova-prone, when they're the same as any spellcaster during the first 1-2 battles of the day. Each round they can blow a maxed-out power ... and the spellcaster can cast a top-level spell. It's not until around the third fight of the day that a spellcaster has to resort to lower-level spells, and by that point the Psion is starting to run low on power points. So there's only a narrow window when the Psion can nova any better.

Now this doesn't take into account mostly theoretical stuff like stacked Temporal Acceleration loops - but hey, casters can do that too.

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 7:25 pm
by Roy
virgileso wrote:What, you mean you can't prep all of your effort for the short term? When you know you're going to be fighting in the next couple minutes, you can layer 1 min/level buffs (or shorter) in place of 1 hour/level (or longer), giving yourself more power for a shorter period of time.

The real novas happen when you obtain many different 1/day abilities (such as sudden metamagics or some of the trigger-based magic items), and use only them, as they're balanced for only being able to be used once for that day, thus giving you more effect than a similar item that can be used thrice a day. Depending on your build, you could very easily be quite below your level in effectiveness by the end of your first or second fight for the day.
At which point you'd have to have prepared a bunch of short buffs at the beginning of the day, or taken them at the start of the level or earlier. Scry and die is about the closest, but then you have a countdown to awesome ticking down and most certainly could go kill more than one encounter before it wears off... in fact doing this tends to result in the most endurance as you can take a dozen or more fights if you do it right before your buff timers expire. Which is not a nova, because you aren't worn out after fight 1.

As for the metamagics, let's see...

Is there a such thing as Sudden Extend? Even if there is, you either took the normal feat, are using one or more rods, or both because it's cheap.

Empower is mainly for... blasting for piddly shit.

Maximize, same.

There is no Sudden Heighten, and if there was simply casting an at level win spell works just as well.

Exactly what metamagics are helping you here?

A psionic or anyone else is not going to nova with one action. While they could nova to manifest many powers and use all their PP in many actions within a single round via some time tricks, since just one or two powers would win the fucking encounter what was the point of wasting the rest?

'What the hell else I'm talking about' is that casters would have a very hard if not impossible time blowing all their resources in 1 combat if they tried and even if they could they shouldn't because a much lesser amount is sufficient and non casters do not have unlimited resources as their very finite HP inhibit their ability to swing implements of varying degrees of pointyness.

Which given there's a fair number of people around here wanking off to both lies...

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 10:08 pm
by RandomCasualty2
Don't think that "nova" means casting all your spells. It doesn't. Nobody expects that you'll be tapped out on 1st level crap.

However, it does mean casting your most powerful shit.

Lets take a 7th level wizard.

He's got two 4th level spells: Evard's black tentacles and stoneskin.

Now, you can very easily go nova and blow your entire load of 4th level spells with this character. You can do it in fact in one round, because you can prebuff the stoneskin.

Nobody gives a fuck if this guy dumps all his magic missiles and color sprays.

Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 10:18 pm
by virgil
I will say that using Sudden Maximize on ray of clumsiness isn't exactly a piddly thing to see.

I never said it was a good idea to use nova-tactics, you're either going overkill or using inefficient methods to get the same effect (then you need to go overkill in resource expenditure), such as evocation. But the strategy exists.

Using a wand of lesser vigor or three does make the fighter HP go much farther than casters' spell endurance, so I don't know where you get off on that comparison.

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 12:53 am
by RobbyPants
Ice9 wrote:It's funny how people always think of the Psion as being especially nova-prone, when they're the same as any spellcaster during the first 1-2 battles of the day.
My impression is that this is the reminents of a knee-jerk reaction that psions are somehow better blasters (which is false, but people new to the system get that idea). So, they're probably used to their players spending half of their spell slots on blasting and the other half on Mage Armor, Invisibility, and Fly. Then, when someone rolls a psion and spends all their points on direct damage, they associate nova with that class.

Also, straight blasting will lead to novas more than casting other spells because it's one of your least efficient uses of resources. You could probably lock down an entire combat with one or two crowd control spells, but it might take four or five blasting spells to kill the same monsters. So, if you blast as a primary strategy, you are more likely to cast a lot more spells per encounter.

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 3:32 am
by RandomCasualty2
Psions are good at buff novas especially when they get temporal acceleration which basically lets you spam Vigor, defensive prescience and a bunch of other buffs. They really can dump a shitload of points fast. It's not actually more effective than most wizard novas, but it lets them deplete the fastest of any class.

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 7:50 am
by schpeelah
A long time ago there was a thread on WotC optimisation forum about novas. IIRC most of it relies on Delay Spell and Maximized Timestop. Hence Psions, since they can have their 5+ rounds of actions in the first round of combat be all highest level powers.

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 11:11 am
by Roy
RandomCasualty2 wrote:Don't think that "nova" means casting all your spells. It doesn't. Nobody expects that you'll be tapped out on 1st level crap.

However, it does mean casting your most powerful shit.

Lets take a 7th level wizard.

He's got two 4th level spells: Evard's black tentacles and stoneskin.

Now, you can very easily go nova and blow your entire load of 4th level spells with this character. You can do it in fact in one round, because you can prebuff the stoneskin.

Nobody gives a fuck if this guy dumps all his magic missiles and color sprays.
Fail. Using two spells is not a nova even if it's his best two.

Sudden Maximize on Ray of Clumsiness means you get... 11 instead of 8.5.

Given that one wand is gone after 2-3 fights when you just have plenty lying around, no it doesn't, and he still only gets them in two round doses at a time at most.

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 11:44 am
by Username17
I really have no idea what this thread is even about. But the question of expendable resources making expendable NPCs disproportionately more dangerous is a very real one.

Let's say for the moment that we had a brain dead simple to dissect system like 4e D&D. Everyone gets one "Daily" ability that is just like their normal attack but better (hits more enemies, does more damage, has a nastier stunlock, is more likely to land, or some combination thereof). Each player character is going to be in one or more encounters between their extended rests, and each monster is going to be in exactly one. So if you give all the PCs and NPCs "the same" access to a Daily power each, you are giving disproportionate bonuses to the NPCs versus the PCs. 3rd edition works like that at low levels as well. A 1st level Wizard gets 3 Color Sprays "per day" and that's not a meaningful limit in a single battle and it's a severe limit in 2 or 3 battles.

Now any timeframe limited power is going to basically work like that. With a sufficiently 15 minute workday centered mindset you may not notice, but it still works like that. A 3rd edition party can jolly well rest after they run low on Charm Monster, a 4th edition party can rest after every battle, and so on. But even if your daily limited resources are 15 battles worth, a character going through 16 or 17 battles in a day is going to notice themselves at a profound disadvantage relative to a one battle NPC.

-Username17

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 11:50 am
by virgil
Fine, Sudden Maximize can never be used in a manner that matters to you, therefore the tactic doesn't exist.

One wand of vigor is gone after 2-3 fights? That implies some kind of equitable damage-sharing program which runs counter to every fight description you've ever given just to even work, which still won't work below level 5.

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 12:01 pm
by PhoneLobster
FrankTrollman wrote:So if you give all the PCs and NPCs "the same" access to a Daily power each, you are giving disproportionate bonuses to the NPCs versus the PCs.
Only if you define "the same" as in fact "different".

Which you do because you are defining NPCs as getting full refreshed daily abilities per encounter and PCs not.

It's a silly argument. Especially for a guy who wanks on endlessly about what off screen NPC economies look like due to their use of PC game rules.

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 8:25 pm
by RandomCasualty2
PhoneLobster wrote: Only if you define "the same" as in fact "different".

Which you do because you are defining NPCs as getting full refreshed daily abilities per encounter and PCs not.
The ability text is the same. The difference is however that NPCs and PCs are playing different games.

NPCs fight exactly one battle per day. Those guards in the fortress of doom are going to wake up, fight your PCs and then die. That's what's expected. Your PCs on the other hand may have fought through the ghoul tunnels before getting to those guards.

The point is that NPC resource management actually needs to use a different system to make it feel similar to PC management.

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 9:14 pm
by Username17
Sometimes you will be in a "Fighting Tournament" situation where it is logical to assume that if you are in the semi-finals that this is your opponent's fourth confrontation as well. Most of the time you will be doing some kind of "Dungeon Raid" where no matter how many confrontations you have had today, this is your current opponent's first.

-Username17

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 9:48 pm
by virgil
I was going to say that it might be easier to change the paradigm for encounter design rather than to try and alter NPC resource management. Although I'm also a proponent for simplified NPC creation & stat blocks (with obvious 'modules' to turn them into fully fleshed ones, depending on story needs).

Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 11:02 pm
by PhoneLobster
RandomCasualty2 wrote:NPCs fight exactly one battle per day.
That is just something you made up.

No, really.

It is, and I'm sick of you banging on about it.

If NPCs step into a fight without expended resources it is as much a choice of the controlling player or the vagaries of in game events as if PCs took the time out to do the same.

Even Frank who's rather a fan of similar ideas has said, yeah sometimes NPCs have expended resources too (though he missed the bit where sometimes NPCs have expended resources and PCs haven't, but whatever).

Daily abilities remains a pretty sucky mechanical choice. But if you are giving them out and expecting characters to be in various combinations of expended status then your game had better have at least some flex to balance those combinations. If either side is expected to walk into combats all full or all empty compared to the opposite at the other side of the table then that had better somehow work.

And if it doesn't that is just plain a failure of the resource system in general not a failure of the fact one side took a quick nap first.

General rule. If taking a nap breaks your resource system. YOUR RESOURCE SYSTEM SUCKS.

Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2009 6:44 am
by RandomCasualty2
PhoneLobster wrote:
RandomCasualty2 wrote:NPCs fight exactly one battle per day.
That is just something you made up.
No it's not. That's the general case in like over 95% of encounters. There just aren't many scenarios when the evil necromancer at the center of the castle of Doom has had another encounter prior to the PCs showing up. In fact, it's likely that never has come up.
General rule. If taking a nap breaks your resource system. YOUR RESOURCE SYSTEM SUCKS.
That much is actually true. One step towards fixing this is to ditch the X per day paradigm, because resting is a far too inconsistent resource mechanism. Many times you have no idea how many encounters PCs will go through before they rest, which makes encounter building very difficult, because you have to assume they either rested or didn't rest. And if you guess wrong, bad shit happens.