Talk:Combat Detector (Legend Item)

Ratings

	Surgo favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!
	A fabulous and hilarious example of why encounter-based durations are so problematic for anything that could feasably have an out-of-encounter effect.

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)

But wait! The existence of finer details does not remove the big picture! Perhaps some people get tired, while others simply have their spell effects wink out in a seemingly arbitrary fashion, but concealing the fact that [encounter] durations exist doesn't mean that they aren't there for a clever enough person to see. --Foxwarrior (talk) 02:44, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Much like quarks, really. --Foxwarrior (talk) 02:45, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Now that just sounds silly. Sure, you might face an owlbear, and look it up in the MM to see its stats and CR, but your character who's never seen one has no clue what it can do. Sure, a barbarian knows that he has 200 HP and that a 200' fall will deal precisely 20d6 damage and have no chance of killing him--in fact, it'll on average only put a 1/3 dent in his HP at an average of 70 damage. But in game he's not supposed to be nonchalant about a fall like that and fall down a cliff three times with a decent surety that it won't kill him. And lots of other examples. So yes, you obfuscate the precise in-game effects with happenstance and relativity, but that's necessary for half the game to even work and for suspension of disbelief to take hold. These are very basic tenets of RPGs, and if you have a problem with encounter abilities, you probably hate any semblance of realism that counters mechanics in RPGs, right? If that's the case, a gamist system (D&D, Legend, etc) might not be for you. I mean, if the previous barbarian, after dropping down 3 cliffs and having a single point of HP can get right up and run for a few miles without breaking a sweat despite being a pinprick away from death, the system isn't realistic--and that's a much more basic thing than encounter-based powers. --Ghostwheel (talk) 03:01, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

How are "I (the player) have read the MM and thus know that Owlbears are CR 4 and have 52 HP, so my barbarian will fight them accordingly, despite never having seen one before" and "I (the player) know that falling from great heights can kill you, so my barbarian will avoid them even more than they avoid Wizards (who are only human, lol), despite having personally experienced such falls before and not even been half dead" not both metagaming? --Foxwarrior (talk) 03:41, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Again, you are translating the abstraction into the reality. The abstraction makes 0 claims about what it actually means, as long as it fits the mechanics. The separation of fluff and mechanics is a central tenant of Legend. If the track says "This is rage. You go into a mindless frenzy and get attack and damage bonuses", then all that is really import is "you have an activated ability that gives attack and damage bonuses". You could say "I enter a serene trance" or "I transform into a werewolf" or "I channel my ancestral spirits", or whatever else you want to say about it.

Similarly, the mechanics say "These will last for the entire encounter, but won't be relevant for the next or" or "You can only use this once in a battle". This could mean "my ability only lasts for ~1 minute, and hence is only useful within the span of a single encounter". it could mean "Spells are based on the energy of their user/person they are cast on. This is higher in battle, and hence spells work, but after the fighting is done and you have cooled down, this energy dies down and the spells wear off". Or whatever else you feel like it should mean. Interpreting that rules as "Spells end at the end of a metagame construct" doesn't make any sense and isn't with the intent of the rules. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mystify (talk • contribs) at

Each of those interpretations has different edge cases that would make entertaining stories when abused properly. I suppose you can say "the players determine the fluff, if it becomes relevant" but once fluff has been fully accepted into the game, most DMs I've seen would let it override the more general mechanics, so all that does is make every group have a different set of rules.

It's possible to get people to ignore such fluff completely, but then there wasn't really any point in making your Berserker serene in the first place, other than some sort of aesthetic sensibility (or roleplaying opportunity, I suppose). --Foxwarrior (talk) 08:01, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Mechanically, all of those cases are identical. Period. The entire system is designed to function like that.The mechanics of a character are locked in, refluffing it doesn't change that. Legend is designed to allow you to combine several tracks to define your character mechanically, and then allow you to describe the result however you want. It works perfectly fine.

Fluff has nothing to do with the mechancis. The entire point of fluff is the roleplaying implications.

Stupid Metagame Rules

These discussions have led me to a clearer understanding of why I hate Encounter durations so much. For illustrative purposes, I provide you with the following definition:

Stupid Metagame Rule (noun): Any rule which makes the intelligent decision into one that a character isn't allowed to make, despite having sufficient experiential data to make it. Generally speaking, this is when a rule is supposed to handle a real-life situation, but does so in an unrealistic manner. However, no rule is a Stupid Metagame Rule unless the players in a given group say it is, and it's certainly possible for a given character to be unaware of some of the rules they could be aware of. Here are some examples:

• Falling Damage: A level 20 Barbarian should say "Heck no, I'm not fighting that Wizard, even if I have to jump off this space station to get away from him."
• [Encounters]: A Legend character should say "Since all our spells have ended, we've got a couple of seconds at least to search the room before reinforcements arrive"
• Magic: The scientist who finds himself running away from vampires for a while should say "I wonder what property of sunlight makes vampires catch fire" not (or at least as well as) "Vampires aren't real, these must be some sort of cyborg robots and a mass hallucination."

[Encounters] are a stupider metagame rule than Falling Damage only because I find it easier to convince people that "barbarians can know they're tough" than "people can recognize subtle patterns in timing". --Foxwarrior (talk) 05:31, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Your scenario for Legend will never occur. As I've said, Its not"Spells conk out after combat" its "Spells last for the rest of the encounter but not till the next". This means that after the encounter, the spells my linger for 5 minutes, then wear out before reinforcements arrive. So, if you say "Oh, my spell wore out, I should have time before the next encounter", it is a completely fallacious statement. The next encounter could be arriving soon. All it says is that the spell will end sometime in that gap.

All your "people can recognize subtle patterns in timing" means is "People who design spells know how long a fight will typically last and design spells to efficiently last for that period of time". Lasting for a shorter time and your spell ends too early, and is being wasted. Last for a longer time, and you are spending magical energy for no good reason. In fact, if you assume that there are more precise magical energy costs below the scope of the rules, not running spells for extra time makes a lot of sense.

Why do you find it hard to accept that "Rules are an abstraction, meant to represent a complex system" not "Rules are a blow-by-blow description of every single movement and occurrence that ever takes place in the word". There are inaccuracies. There are imprecisions. That is ALWAYS going to be true of ANY system. You are taking these specific inaccuracies and making a big deal out of it when it would be rare when it creates an actual inconsistency and even in those cases is a minor thing.

and even if, hypothetically, your scenarios did occur, it would be a rare edge case where a difference would arise, and the extra complexity of determining when those edge cases would be is an unneeded toll on the system. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mystify (talk • contribs) at

What I still find hard to understand is why someone would go to so much effort to make their characters ignorant.

"Spells last for the rest of the encounter but not till the next" is still a pattern, so it can still be observed. Although the Legend rules that you've forced me to look at seem to favor "spells conk out after combat": "A duration of [Encounter] lasts until the specific challenge or threat that the player characters are facing has been overcome, neutralized, or escaped." (page 112) Doesn't sound ambiguous to me. Well, unless it escapes with the intent of returning later. --Foxwarrior (talk) 08:01, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

"Spells last for 2 minutes" is also a pattern. One with 0 metagame implications, but the same effective mechanics. But maybe a 2 minute duration doesn't make sense for everyone. Its it only specified to the level of "1 encounter, but not the next". That does itself implies patterns. "We don't tend to fight multiple groups of enemies with a 5 minute timespan" is also a hypothetical pattern you can see. Would it imply "There is some abstract game concept spacing encounters at least 5 minutes apart", or does it imply "Battle are not so common that you are fighting every minute of the day". Even if you are in a time period where you should have 2 very close encounters, there will either

• A. be a gap in time in between
• B. not be a gap in between

If it is the latter, then that is really 1 encounter. Hence, "all encounters have a gap of time in between" is a perfectly valid statement, based purely on dynamics of combat. You could observe this, but it doesn't tell you anything about [Encounters].

I challenge you to name a place where a discrepancy would actually occur in a real game. At the level of misrepresentation you create from a system like that, practically every other aspect of any system is producing bigger absurdities. Why? Because its a game. It is not a perfect simulation of a reality, or even a reality operating under different rules like "magic exists". No game can be. No game even should be.

Every game can be, even if some probably shouldn't.

Okay, a discrepancy: In the morning, you fight a 4 round encounter, followed by a 1 minute break, followed by a 4 round encounter. In the evening, you run up against a healing, teleporting archer with really wimpy arrows, and he harasses you for 15 minutes before you trick him to death. A long scooby-doo chase with a pair of lumbering behemoths, or a heated conversation, would work too. --Foxwarrior (talk) 19:13, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I defy you to name any game that has 0 inconsistencies with the real world.

Those are both extreme edge cases. In the first example, both should probably be one encounter. For the latter, a full minute battle is extremely long, a multi-minute battle is absurd. I would say that basic damage mechanics are more inconsistent. A rogue's sneak attack could do 10 damage, or 60 damage, given the exact same set of conditions. Or skills. A person jumping in D&D could trip over his feet and not get anywhere one moment, then spring forward 20ft the next roll. All systems have absurdities like this. Why is "the precise duration of a spell is unknown, and could potentially lead to somewhat inconsitent durations" such a crime in comparison? Esp. since nothing says the spells even operate based on time in the first place, or even if they do, nothing says the time is perfectly consistent and free of external influence. If you must insist on the mechanics being a representation of reality, take any of the explanations I have already stated. For instance "spells sustain themselves on the energy of combat". Bam. Combat is over in 1 round, the spells fade and stop, light a fire without fuel. Or a combat lasts for 10 years, and the spells sustains itself for that entire time. Now you have a perfectly reasonable spell model, and it follows the system even in the most ludicrous examples you can come up with.

As for your other examples, Legend has rules for both occurances. Neither of which has any indication of time, nor even the implication that the times for things are consistent. A social encounter could be as breif as bribing a guard, or a long negotiation session lasting all evening. A chase could be a short dash across a busy street, or a long marathon across the country. This lets the system represent a huge variety of things by operating at a more abstract level. Trying to assign specific times to it would take out that flexibility, and all you would gain is more bookkeeping.

Gameplay wise, the [Encounter]duration is far more useful than time limits. It frees you from having to micromange every last second. It removes the overwhelming pressure to take battle's as fast as you can, instead of being more tactical. It allows you to represent things with varying timescales without being concerned if it will mess up the dynamics of times durations and the relations between them. What is the cost? A few edge cases where its not clear how a single fixed spell duration would match up? Why does that actually matter? I will take the game with functionaMystify (talk) 19:54, 16 October 2012 (UTC)l mechanics over the game that creates absurdities like a 15 minute adventuring day anytime. Mystify (talk) 19:54, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Or you could give up the false dilemma, and have a rule that actually makes sense. Not having one is a failure of imagination and design, not a necessity that makes the game work. There are plenty of games that have perfectly functional mechanics without a fifteen-minute workday (HERO comes to mind, for one). This should be used as an opportunity to improve the game, not staunchly defend a very clear flaw. Surgo (talk) 20:17, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

The fuck, dude? That scenario 100% can occur. "Ends before the next encounter" can mean pretty much any arbitrary unit of time. It doesn't even need a reducto ad absurdem, as done above, to come up. If I am playing a wizard, I should know exactly how long my spells last. If the system cannot handle basic scientific reasoning in-game, it has a serious problem. Your response of "these are edge cases" does not change the fact that it is a problem. Surgo (talk) 20:16, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

You do know how long it will last. 1 enounter. A game shouldn't drastically change in nature because the rate at which you encoutner enemies changes. I consider "if I throw these 3 encoutner at you within a 10 minute time span you will easily smash them all on leftover buffs" a much bigger issue than "We don't pay attention to time". Some Legend games put you through a grinder where you are fighting things in rapid succession. Other have an encoutner rate closer to 1/month. Both work equally well in Legend. That is not a system flaw.

This complaint basically comes down to "Details below the level of detail of the system don't make sense". This is a system where you can fly for severeal rounds because you had a good jump check. Rigorous simulation is not its goal. It doesn't even attempt to do that, and instead focuses on more abstract mechanics that can represent what you need to, and remain balanced in extreme situations. saying "You need to figure out how many minutes there were between each event so everyone can determine if their spells are still up, and maybe even how many seconds so they know if their buffs will end in the middle of combat" is not something that lends itself to a smooth gameplay experience. You shouldn't need to care how many minutes it took to walk from town A to town B. You should not need a sheet of paper specifying when each of your 2 dozen spells is going to wear out. If the durations were instead "1 minute" for encounter duration spells, and "1 day" for scene duration spells, you would get something that functions identically 95% of the time. You can the scene duration spells once, and they are a semi-permament effect that you refresh each time you prepare spells. Just liek a day duration spell, only you don't habe to shoehorn your campaign into dealing with day timespans. A 1 minute spell will last you all the way through practically every single encounter in the campaign, even if you cast it first thing on the first turn. That same spell is also essentially never going to last till the next encounter. Are there cases where that 1 minute spell runs out mid-combat? Maybe. Is it really worth the extra complexity to keep track of every spell to figure out if it is going to wear out if the battle drags on for over twice as long as a long combat? Is that extra precision in the system really that important? Why do you think it is that big a deal?

If you said "magic is mysterious", and filed the durations off all the spells, so only the DM knew what they were, would you as a player notice the difference? You cast the spell, it lasts all combat then afterwards he says "and your spell wears off". Does it matter if it wears off the instant combat is over or lingered for 5 rounds? It would be the same thing the vast majority of the time.

Is it a simplification? yes. Does it sometimes yeild inconsistencies? sure. Is that a problem? not really. Does it make the game easier and faster to play? yes. Does it result in good gameplay? Yes.

The only thing a specific spell duration would add is neing able to micromanage the spells to squeeze out every last drop of utility. That isn't something that fits with Legend. The basic element of challenge in Legend is the encounter. You aren't dealing with a war of attrition over your resources over the course of the entire day. There are longer term resources, but you aren't going to flail around and drown if they run out. Enemies don't inflict permament conditions that will persist to the next encounter. You are easily able to heal fully between encounters for essentially no cost. That encounter is a complete challenge in and of itself. Its not a road-bump meant to slow you down and burn your resources. It is its own challenge, its own obstable to overcome, and is individually relvant. Having your actions be relevant to the current encounter is normal. Having your actions be relevant for the current encounter, and some unknown number of encounters past that is contrary to that design, and makes the balance ambigous. You now have a party that starts out as a CR 5, then may operate as a CR 7 for the next several battles. This can occur randomly, based on what they decide to activate, or ven if they have a spellcaster. Legend doesn't even assume you have a spellcaster, it is not a neccesity by any stretch. You can balance a buff around "I spend an action and someone is stronger for the rest of the encounter, which is probably 3-5 rounds". You can't balance it around "I spend an action and someone is stronger for the rest of the encounter.... and will continue to be stronger for an unknown number of encounters past this point."

[Encounter] durations solve far more problems than they create. Mystify (talk) 20:57, 16 October 2012 (UTC)