Talk:Combat Detector (Legend Item)

Metagame Concepts

Since an encounter is an out-of-game concept that isn't inside the realm of the perception of creatures or items within the game for the most part, would this even be able to detect when an encounter or somesuch starts, as it's within the game while the concept of the encounter is outside the game? --Ghostwheel (talk) 21:50, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Furthermore, if you look at the definition of an encounter, its anytime you are facing a challenge. So, fairly minor things can fall under the [encounter] tag without involving combat, including social encounters, skill games, or more abstract obstacles. Mystify (talk) 21:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

You've hit on the thing I find most annoying about encounter durations, Ghostwheel. While leaving basic attributes of ones' abilities (like durations) vague and up to DM fiat is somewhat tragic, the idea that you could call this item metagaming is far more insidious. It's not like a character existing in this game would need it to scientifically determine that [encounters] are a real fundamental unit of time: they can see that all sorts of spells seem to end simultaneously. Effects like the Temporal Capacitor make it somewhat possible to also determine that [encounters] have some sort of defined start time.

If you can know something exists, what's metagaming about being able to detect it? Is building a particle collider metagaming?

Oh, and Mystify, that's interesting. Should this be renamed, or are combat [encounters] identifiable as such? --Foxwarrior (talk) 22:15, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

again, you are taking the abstraction of the system and treating it as a cold, hard reality. All [Encounter] spells don't arbitrarily cease to function simultaneously. All that [Encounter] duration specifies is that it will last till the end of the encounter, but its not going to hand around afterwards to be usable in the next encounter. If a new batch of enemies shows up immediately after the last encounter, that just means this encounter is longer and has multiple waves.

[Encounters] also work for things without specific time limits. A 1/[Encounter] ability may just imply you need to rest between uses of it, so even if one case is two encounters within a minute of each other, and another case is an encounter that lasts a couple minutes, doesn't mean that they allow you to use the ability the same number of times. A longer battle puts a drain on your resources, and you have to pace yourself better.

I also think calling it DM fiat is overstating things. It is generally really clear when an encounter has started and ended. This provides a much more balanced way to handle things than specific times. Consider these situations:

• You assault the enemy stronghold. This ends up taking place over the course of 10 minutes, with 3 discrete [Encounters] staged throughout the base
• You are traveling down the road. Over the course of this trip, you encounter 3 [Encounters] with bandit squads.

Trying to balance a fixed time ability to work properly in both situations is really hard. Anything that you intend to last for 1 encounter will do so in the later case, but in the first case could easily last for multiple encounters. It is hard to create balanced abilities when their in-game durations are in-determinant. And whatever gripes you may have with Legend, Legend holds balance as very important.

This approach completely gets rids of concept like the 15 minute adventuring day, trying to speed-run dungeons to squeeze every last drop from your buffs, and other similar things that occur in D&D. It means that the pace of the campaign can occur at whatever in-game speed is needed, be that a few encounters over several moths of travel or a intense frontal assault on the enemy stronghold- even both in the same campaign- without creating any issues. This in turn means that you aren't being shoehorned into a particular approach. You can take a slower, more methodical approach to raiding their base because you don't have to worry about the real time it takes you to do things.

Its also not as if time periods are free from DM fiat either. How long things take can be as arbitrary as anything else. "Oh, its been... 2 hours... since you encountered the other thing. So, your spells are gone"

As for why its metagaming:

[Encounters] are an abstraction of the game system. They have no literal meaning in the game world. Just because a system doesn't specify the finer details doesn't mean they aren't there. The game doesn't say how often you need to relieve yourself, that doesn't mean outhouses don't exist. Its just a detail that is abstracted away because its doesn't add much to the system. Hence, anything that brings it to the level of specificity that this does is metagaming. The game system isn't determining the rules of the world, it is providing a more abstract mechanism for representing it.

There isn't anything to distinguish a combat encounter from any other, except for what you are doing in it.

I guess your metagaming justification makes some sense, at least. The DM does have to do some on-the-spot rulings for situations like "I don't believe the battle's really over yet, so I'm keeping my effects running," but edge cases like that come up in all sorts of TTRPGs.

I generally prefer it when the game rules map a little bit more closely to the way things are supposed to actually work in the setting, though. --Foxwarrior (talk) 00:24, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Legend's approach is that level detail is unnecessary and slows down the game to handle it for no real gain. And after playing Legend, I find that I agree. Those details aren't really important, and skimming over them lets you get to the meat of the game. Mystify (talk) 00:56, 15 October 2012 (UTC)