Quote from: dbm;810708I'm not saying every single fight was on a knife edge; the GMs did mix in some lower risk challenges to change the pace and keep things fresh. But every encounter could be challenging in an immediate sense if you wanted it that way. And the majority were tough.

And in "traditional (non-4e)" D&D there were plenty of risks to make the encounter challenging and intense: save-or-die, unknown or unexpected monsters or abilities (the second dragon is a spellcaster and is invisible; the ogre is an ogre mage; half the ghouls are ghasts), critical hits that could drop someone (if you have critical hits), etc. The threat (of unlikely bad stuff) is stronger than the execution, because the latter too quickly results in the execution of the player characters.

QuoteBut the main thrust of my point was that it's a mechanism where you can regularly feel like you are 'losing' but still pull things back.

Hmm, I remember feeling that way when the dungeon room [STRIKE]was[/STRIKE] seemed empty. My main thrust was that it's mostly an illusion or your characters would be dead. As I said, I like disparate resources, such as some only accessible between encounters or between adventures or recovered at different rates, and there's got to be a risk, but I don't want Hollywood-style dial-it-up fake intensity.

QuoteAnother interesting mechanism is the 13th Age Escalation dice which means that you always start off feeling like you are under powered in a combat encounter but by the third round the balance starts to shift and you begin to get the upper hand. Again, it make you sweat in every combat encounter.

Does this lead to delaying tactics on the side that gets stronger? Or do they only get stronger if they're fighting (or even succeeding) rather than parrying or whatever? My preference is that the side that starts it be at a disadvantage, to discourage a race for first attack and encourage talking to at least some of the enemies. But it seems like a shifting balance would be hard to balance (death spirals are usually discouraging), so I'd like to hear more about how 13th Age worked.

Quote from: rawma;810743Does this lead to delaying tactics on the side that gets stronger? Or do they only get stronger if they're fighting (or even succeeding) rather than parrying or whatever? My preference is that the side that starts it be at a disadvantage, to discourage a race for first attack and encourage talking to at least some of the enemies. But it seems like a shifting balance would be hard to balance (death spirals are usually discouraging), so I'd like to hear more about how 13th Age worked.

Only the PCs or certain monsters (for example Dragons) get the benefit of the escalation dice. You don't see people stalling in the early rounds, but they do hold back their 'big guns' until later in the fight when they are more likely to hit. It stops the round 1 nova and also stops fights from running on for ever (the dice starts at zero and counts up to six; I've never seen it get to six yet).

13th Age uses an evolution of the 4e ADEU power system, so most classes have a range of at will, encounter and daily abilities (though not all). So people hold back dailies until later in the fight and don't even use encounter powers until round 3 or so unless things are desperate. It works well as a pacing mechanism in our experience. It's the single biggest innovation in the system in my opinion.

ETA: another interesting factor is some powers interact with the Escalation dice. So, for example there are abilities which only work on an even value of die, or others which have additional benefits when the die is above a specific number.

Quote from: dbm;810756Only the PCs or certain monsters (for example Dragons) get the benefit of the escalation dice. You don't see people stalling in the early rounds, but they do hold back their 'big guns' until later in the fight when they are more likely to hit. It stops the round 1 nova and also stops fights from running on for ever (the dice starts at zero and counts up to six; I've never seen it get to six yet).

13th Age uses an evolution of the 4e ADEU power system, so most classes have a range of at will, encounter and daily abilities (though not all). So people hold back dailies until later in the fight and don't even use encounter powers until round 3 or so unless things are desperate. It works well as a pacing mechanism in our experience. It's the single biggest innovation in the system in my opinion.

ETA: another interesting factor is some powers interact with the Escalation dice. So, for example there are abilities which only work on an even value of die, or others which have additional benefits when the die is above a specific number.

I downloaded the SRD; a quick perusal finds "If the GM judges that the characters are avoiding conflict rather than bringing the fight to the bad guys, the escalation die doesn't advance. If combat virtually ceases, the escalation die resets to 0." I like it so far, given your report from actual play (this would probably be a case where whiteroom analysis would be untrustworthy). Further study planned, when I get through everything else that's already in the queue.

Quote from: rawma;810783I downloaded the SRD; a quick perusal finds "If the GM judges that the characters are avoiding conflict rather than bringing the fight to the bad guys, the escalation die doesn't advance. If combat virtually ceases, the escalation die resets to 0."

I think our GM threatened to decrement the dice once when we were prevaricating in a combat; we soon changed our approach.

I never do anything to diminish the chance of the PCs losing, and they know that in my games they are never guaranteed a win.  But still, more often than not, what I'm surprised about is just how often they do manage to win, and just how creative they are about doing it.

I can't help but assume that if they felt sure they'd 'win' no matter what, they wouldn't bother to be that creative.