Numbuk wrote:
Yeah, encounter powers are refreshed after a short rest, which is 5 minutes of little-to-no exertion.
This is rather a non-issue in 4th edition D&D, because there really aren't any abilities that aren't combat super moves. There's a few, but they're rare. However, there is another game that uses this model and it reveals some flaws.
Okay, I take a breather and get my Force powers back. What about other things that are encounter-based? Suppose I have an ability that returns one Force point spent during an encounter. Does that mean that outside of combat I can burn through a Force point every five minutes? Unlike in 4th edition, Saga has abilities that your characters will want to use outside of combat. A lot of them require Force points to be spent. There are a lot of racial abilities that function once per encounter. Can characters use those abilities with impunity so long as they're outside of combat? If so, what's the point of setting that limitation in the first place? Many of those racial abilities that are limited to once per encounter don't have much of a use in combat to begin with.
The mechanic for encounter-based powers is very poorly defined. What it boils down to is making the game work like WoW. Your encounter powers are any WoW skill with a 1-10 minute cooldown. Daily powers are the skills that have a cooldown of around an hour. Alternatively, it could be an attempt to emulate White Wolf's "scene" duration on certain abilities, except that White Wolf takes the time to define what a scene is outside of combat.
Exalted Second Edition wrote:
Scene: A segment of narrative action and events played out as the protagonists interact with the setting and supporting characters of the game. Theatrically, this is the action that happens “onstage.” A scene encompasses the time necessary to play it, which can be a three-minute fight or 10 hours spent mingling at a party.
Scion: Hero wrote:
Scene: A period of game time characterized by a common theme or a single important event. One long night spent club-hopping with friends and rivals could be a single scene, even though the game’s focus cuts between characters and might skip hours at a time. One combat is usually one scene.
The rules leave it up to the GM where exactly you leave one scene and enter the next, but they do give you a definition to use. It's very concise and it can be applied to a wide range of scenarios beyond a battle. Scion's definition is more clear than Exalted, which stands to reason because Scion was published two years later using the same rules set. Saga defines an encounter as follows:
Quote:
An obstacle, situation, or threat (whether it be an opponent, several opponents, or a hazard) that prevents the heroes from achieving a specific goal important to the adventure.
This is defined in the GM section, where the players are unlikely to read, as compared to White Wolf's decision to define a scene at the beginning of the general rules section so that the players have some idea how long they can expect their abilities to work. You will note that the clarifying statement inparentheses is limited combat and traps. Furthermore, the examples cited for an encounter in Saga Edition would encompass multiple fights, and a few non-combat scenarios of sneaking around trying to crack security systems (things that would be divided up into multiple scenes in a WW game). In fourth edition, I do not see an encounter defined for the players at all. The rulebook then proceeds to explain how to determine a difficulty level so as to award experience. So an encounter is something I receive experience for. Well what about all of those non-combat abilities that are usable once per encounter? If I use them, do I have to wait until a fight breaks out, my group of adventurers falls into a trash compactor, or winds up in some other situation that yields an experience reward before they refresh? WotC's answer was to remove non-combat abilities when Saga Edition went "gold" and was launched as fourth edition D&D. This is perhaps just as well, because while third edition D&D was the third edition of AD&D (they just decided to drop the A from the title), fourth edition is actually the second edition of your basic red box D&D.
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