Talk:Combat Detector (Legend Item)

Ratings

	Tenno Seremel opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	I don't think this item is going to work in Legend. Something with Detecting enchantment would be close enough, IMO.

	Tarkisflux opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	Attempts to build a divination item off of an event that may not be directly observable except under trivial circumstances where such a notification would be redundant.

	Ghostwheel opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	Seems like a silly item that looks like a stab at the system rather than an attempt to bring something worthwhile into it.

	Mystify opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	This item does not fit within the intended scope of the rules, nor meets the balance requirements for a Legend item.

You can't have Legend items for divination? I certainly don't want this item to be unbalanced. --Foxwarrior (talk) 19:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

You misunderstand. Its too weak. Mystify (talk) 22:02, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Why so I did. --Foxwarrior (talk) 02:58, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

	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. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mystify (talk • contribs) at

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)

[Edit Conflict - I have not bothered editing my stuff to address anything in Mystify's new addition] This does not follow Surgo. Unless the magic fluff is that you should know exactly how long your spell lasts, it is not reasonable to expect that you know how long your spell lasts. Here's a few explanations that would have variable spell durations as an in-world consequence:

• Random imperfections and fluctuations in the casting process cause spells to last less than their maximum duration.
• Random differences in area quality cause spells to last less than their maximum duration.
• Magic tends to last for just as long as needed, but not much longer. No one knows why.
• Magic is controlled by an outside force, like an ancient super computer or meddling god, who judiciously controls the durations and availability of it. People are either aware of this, or not, because it controls magic and just hides from them if it wants to.

That aside, this item annoys me. It's not even a serious attempt at an item to improve the game, but just seems like a thing that was put up to poke fun at a system or express an individual complaint. Except this isn't the Den or a general board. It's a (largely) homebrew wiki where the goals are to make better homebrew, and nothing in this conversation is going to improve this item. If we want to continue to be open and accommodating to different styles and games, discussions like this probably belong on a project page about the game in general, and items like this should be flagged "April Fools" or just not done in the first place. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:07, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, some [encounter] durations claim to be nonmagical, I think. Don't they?

And I feel that this item improves the game, Tarkisflux: Once you accept that this item can exist because it's not metagaming, [encounter] durations are no longer a Stupid Metagame Rule^TM. --Foxwarrior (talk) 21:26, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh, and Mystify: "This is a system where you can fly for several rounds because you had a good jump check. Rigorous simulation is not its goal." is a non sequitur. --Foxwarrior (talk) 22:02, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

How so? I mentioned a basic fact of the system, used it to support my overall point that Legend is not even trying to make a rigourous simulation, and hence its failings as a simulatonist system are not important. You wouldn't hold the inaccuracies of monopoly in representing real world economics against it. Its not trying to simulate real world economics, it is providing a more abstract system that is roughly based on economics and using it to provide an engaging game. Legend is doing the same thing. It is not trying to simulate a artificial world. It is providing an abstract representation of such a world, and ignores many details of how things work in order to convey the basic concepts. "You can fly by jumping hard enough" is not a rule that is meant to model any physical reality, but instead to support the basic philosophy of "you can be awesome, even without magic." It doesn't say "You can jump so high you can hit flying creature, but you cannot change your direction in midair". It is full flight. This type of higher level abstraction is prevalant and expected in the system; its more about what is awesome and will provide good, balanced gameplay than what models reality. The [Encounter] system is no different. It removes the finer details in order to provide a better gameplay experience and maintain balance.Mystify (talk) 22:29, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok Fox, I think I finally see what you're getting at. While you may or may not be offended at the durations in general, I think your primary complaint is that characters in the game world would notice that their effects lasted variable amounts of time (under some specific circumstances that did not allow for temporal handwaving) but not have any way of detecting what the blocker was. That all the durations are basically of the "X time (where X need not be static), unless Y first" form, and this allows them to detect Y and boosts world coherence and versimilitude. That they would know these limits, even if they don't know why they are that way or how to easily exploit them.

If that's not your point with this, please correct me, but I'm going with that for now. But since I'm more ok with that I have removed my oppose. I will also be editing the base article to make it a bit more tongue-in-cheek and April Fools it, which you should revert if you don't like of course. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:40, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

That seems about right, Tarkisflux. Although it's more that recognizing the validity of this item ensures that you know X and Y can be observed; actually crafting this item and using it in the game might let you build a cool alarm system that only works in the Legend universe, but is otherwise unimportant.

Writing it as an April Fools article may actually be more antagonistic than I am now feeling (towards the rule), since April Fools implies that it's meant as a parody of a silly rule, rather than an elaboration that makes a rule less arbitrary.

Mystify: The ability to fly because you have a high jump check is a necessary rule if you want to simulate a world where people can fly by jumping really well. --Foxwarrior (talk) 23:24, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

It's difficult to respond directly to posts here. Reply to Tarkis: you're using the word "random" a lot, but it might not truly be random (or at least not very random). They'll still follow some sort of distribution which is doubtfully uniform (it's probably Poisson-like), which has some maximal level of entropy, so people can predict when and how their powers will work. This is all mathematics that can be done by anyone with a reasonable intelligence score in-game. I think it's unreasonable to assume that people in-universe whose lives depend on it haven't studied this in detail. The "Combat Detector" is something that could reasonably be the results of that study. There might be some other reasonable conclusion, but I can't think of one (nor could I think of this one until Fox posted the article).

For Mystify: You said: 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?. My answer is: the players might not, but the characters would. An in-game wizard could perform some statistical modeling on his spells and figure out exactly how long they lasted, if not necessarily why they lasted that way. That doubtlessly would have an in-game effect (and some pretty awesome fluff and worldbuilding, imo). Honestly this might seem like a ridiculous article, but it's the kind of in-game invention that makes the world very interesting. Surgo (talk) 23:40, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

(this was in response to the "simulate a world where people can fly" comment, bugt applies equally well here)

Legend makes no claim to trying to simulate such a world.

I still think this item is ridiculous. It is taking the innaccuracies of an abstract system and forcing it to become a hard reality. One of my major points has been that the existence of the [Encounter] duration does not necessitate an [Encounter] having any in-world meaning. The abstraction represents the world, the world doesn't mimic the abstraction.

Say I am talking about income bands. I look at all of the income, and I divide it up into discrete bands - dirt poor, impoverished, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, wealthy, megarich. each of these has an income band associated with it. I then do analysises of these bands, and I figure out the average obesity for each band. Does that mean that when somebody earns $1000 more in a year and shifts their income bracket, their chance of being obese jumps to a different number? No. My abstraction is making a bad estimate in that specific case, but its not meant to predict individual values. My abstraction does not imply that the underlying system works according my my abstraction. It just implies that my system does a decent job of estimating it. My abstraction is not creating any effects on the underlying system. The people can't notice that I am using htis abstraction, because the abstraction doesn't dictate how their world works.

The rule system, correspondingly, is not meant to imply that it simulates everything. Not even that it simulates every battle. It is a tool creating an approximation of how those battles would work. So, we have a simplification that says "spells normally last for 1 encounter". If the people of this world payeds attention and derived a property, it would be "spells tend to last for 1 battle". Nothing says they see side effects of the abstraction. Adding an item like this doesn't "remove a stupid metagame rule, it imposes an abstraction as hard reality. Mystify (talk) 23:51, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

The system you set up for income brackets does not correspond to reality, as you yourself mentioned (nor does it distinguish correlation from causation). However, this article does in fact correspond to the world's reality (and correlation/causation is unimportant for this; it is only used for its predictive power, which does not care about such things). It does not impose an abstraction as a hard reality: the abstraction itself has imposed the reality of spell durations and frequencies. This is merely an in-universe way of explaining why spells and other powers work the way they do -- a way that happens to exactly correspond to the reality of the situation.

If the item seems ridiculous, it's because the rule is ridiculous. It's not as if we can't implement rules that completely eliminate this. One such rule may be that power frequency is "per encounter or per minute" -- thus we no longer need to track anything as fine-grained as minutes, but we can answer the question of how long it takes to turn the sand dune into a glass statue with a fireball. Now that may not be the timescale you're looking for, but it is merely an example of how we can do better if the in-game consequence of such a rule is something undesirable.

Other systems have similar issues. Essence in Shadowrun comes to mind as an immediate one. It's not a damning issue (people still play Shadowrun and it's a reasonably good system), but it's one that's worth noting. Surgo (talk) 00:48, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't even think "how long it takes to turn the sand dune into a glass statue with a fireball" is something the system should be providing an answer for. Any answer you would glean from taking the results of a precise system literally are likely to be hilariously wrong in one way or the other. There is a reason you can find long threads devoted to pointing out the implications of such a rule when extended outside their typical scope. Simple things take an absurdly long amount of time, or monumental tasks are trivialized. This is because when you design an ability, you balance it around the combat, and the out of combat implications of that end up being wholly arbitrary. Legend gives an answer that is only relevant within the proper scope, and lets you figure out reasonable consequences outside of that.

Call it a flaw if you will, but it fixes more problems than it causes.

An item like this doesn't make sense. Not because the rule is ridiculous, but because it is putting a concrete measurement on an abstract concept. It would be like a class detector.(class as in school). Sure, classes often start near the hour marks and run for about an hour. You can refer to a class as a period of time, you can say where you were during class, it is pretty clear to those involved when it starts and ends. But that doesn't mean a class detector makes any sense. Does a father giving a lecture to his son set it off? does it go off if their is a substitute teacher who ignores the class while they goof off? Does it go off if the class is watching a video? What if the video is educational? Would watching that video on the history channel be a class?

An [Encounter] detector in Legend would imply that not being in an [Encounter] would have meaning. It doesn't. Nothing says "Nope, you can't use that ability, this is not an encounter, it fizzles." The most you could infer from the rules is the possibility of something that detects when encounters end, as that is the only time something changes. You can't even say "I have a 1/encounter ability that I keep trying to use, and when it goes off again I know there is a new encounter". Nothing says that there is a fixed time period between uses of the ability. Legend does say there are 3-5 encounters per scene. So, a per-encounter ability could just mean "about 5-ish uses per scene, but it has a cooldown". Now you can't use it multiple times per encounter, can use it each encounter, but can't actually spam it outside of the encounter. Which would mean that, even if you can use it whenever, people don't use it unless necessary. All of this complexity is very succinctly summed up as "once per encounter" without needing an encounter to have in-game meaning. Hence, detecting the start of an encounter doesn't work. An encounter starts whenever you realize you have a challenge, which isn't something that makes sense to have a detector for.

The spawn point of the idea that you could detect the start of an encounter was an ability I wrote. Basically, it let you store swift actions till the end of the encounter, which included a clause "you can't use this to start an encounter with multiple swifts stored". This was interpreted as "there is a physical quality that changes when the encounter starts that allows you to store up swift actions". That is the result of taking the written mechanics as the defining characteristic of how things function instead of the simplified representation of how it works. How it would actually work is that you can only store a certain number of points at once, and they expire after a time. Storing them also takes enough effort that it is infeasible to do indefinitely. Consequently, you can't walk around with stored points and use them at the beginning of the encounter, once combat starts you can store them at-will, and they will not last you beyond the encounter. Instead of creating a complex system to manage how you wear out from storing points, how long they last, their decay rates, etc. I can just write the simple rules focused on their behavior within an encounter. That in-encounter behavior does not imply that there is anything special about an [Encounter]. You can't use the ability to detect when an [Encounter] starts. This is not anything special about my ability. It is how the system functions. Instead of specifying the underlying mechanics in order to create the encounter-level behavior you want, you just specify the encounter level mechanics, and leave the specifics below that unstated. All designing the abilities at a lower level does is encourage people to find ways to game that system to produce encounter level effects you don't want and that disrupt the functioning of the game. Mystify (talk) 05:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

These are good points, especially the first paragraph. I'll take the issue I have with the stored swift-actions bit to the correct page for it. Surgo (talk) 18:07, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Mystify, since you still dislike it and it doesn't appear to be going anywhere, I suggest rating it to indicate such. On the article page at the bottom of the author block is a "Rate this article" link. Hit it, select how you feel about it from the drop down (favor, like, neutral, dislike, oppose), type a short description in, and hit submit. It will track that rating along with all the others on the article page, so that it's easier to see how the community feels about a particular piece of work. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 18:00, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Detection

After more ponderings, I'm not actually sure why you think this can be observed Fox. My previous duration comment wasn't particularly accurate, as the situation is more like "durations last / recharges take an average of X rounds, minimum 1" where sometimes a new encounter immediately follows that time and sometimes it doesn't. You might be able to construct a set of "encounters" that happen relatively quickly after each other (ignoring the system's advice on this matter for the moment) to try to show that you can artificially keep the time low, but it runs into semantic issues about whether the encounter ends if someone else is watching you and waiting to throw more creatures at you or not. And if they run it without looking to avoid the semantic issues, then you wind up back in the original case as the time differences between entrances are potentially large enough to not force reset in the way that you want.

It's rather like nuclear half-lives, zeno's paradox in QM, and other QM weirdness. You might be able to trigger it by forcing a new encounter in a shorter period than the average period (maybe, we'll ignore the semantic concerns for the moment), and you would know that you could trigger these things in such a way, but measuring or observing the triggering agent is not necessarily in the picture. So while it would be rational for people to know how things work and exploit them, I don't see how the item is itself necessarily workable. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 18:00, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Maybe it isn't really possible to detect the start of an encounter, even if [Encounter] durations mean that you should be able to notice the end. It's just that detecting the start makes for a cooler item. --Foxwarrior (talk) 19:05, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Or do you mean more like "just because you know that photons can interfere with theirselves doesn't mean that you can build a device to arbitrarily detect this phenomenon without having physical contact with it"? --Foxwarrior (talk) 19:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

The existence of [Encounter] durations does not mean that you should be able to notice its end unless that was the fluff associated with it. More likely, [encounter] durations are of the form "at least X" where X is however many rounds you have until the end of the encounter. They may well last longer than that, they just won't make it to the next for whatever reason. Alternately, they could easily be of the form "until healed / dealt with / recovered by spending some number of out of combat actions to do so" which just ignores the possibility of recovering from them in combat as unlikely or unworkable (fertile grounds for a variant rule possibly). The latter explanation runs into problems when encounters occur with insufficient time between for a recovery, but that just implies that an [encounter] can have a couple of rounds of dead time without terminating. Some purely beneficial encounter powers that you would never want to turn off to recover may well be a mix of both.

Basically, the only sort of detection that I could see would be detecting when you started an encounter. And that's not much on the detection front. It's also pretty similar to your second comment, in that you can't actually detect it without also being involved in it. So when you get hit by an invisible guy, your watch can flash to let you know what you already know - there's something out here trying to make you bleed. But much past that I'm not seeing. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:55, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, detecting things at a distance is a staple of Divination. --Foxwarrior (talk) 02:58, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, except divination is normally only detecting things that are actually detectable. This seems to ignore that line, and has a divination fluff mismatch despite a possibly reasonable effect as a result IMO. You could just as easily fluff it as "when a creature takes an offensive action" and get a similar effect without referring to something that is probably unmeasurable directly. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 03:36, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Maybe I see what you're getting at. Each time an [encounter] ability is used, it could end anywhere from X rounds (when the [encounter] ends) to X+Y rounds (when the next [encounter] starts) rounds) later. The X+Y round duration is a harder cutoff, so it's more plausible to detect that. I'm still not sure how Mystify got the idea that [encounter] powers didn't last precisely X rounds from RAW, but making it detect creatures when they start an encounter would let you notice the invisibility folks if they didn't cast it too early.

So why could you see it detecting when you started an encounter, but not when you at a distance (i.e. someone else) did, from a Divination perspective? --Foxwarrior (talk) 18:13, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Again, you seem to misunderstand what RAW means in Legend. It is not saying "the world functions precisely according to these rules". It is saying "The world does things that are best approximated by these rules". RAW, the Rage track makes you get angry and smash things. But all the mechanics say is that you activate the ability, you get a bunch of bonuses to stuff, and it wears out after so much time. It can model ANYTHING you want that corresponds to those mechanics. You could be a beserker, you could be Bane, you could be a werewolf, etc. The RAW only has weight in dictating mechanics, not in dictating what the mechanics represent.

You could equally say "I create a Rage detector that goes off when somebody activates the Rage ability". But that would also be metagaming, as the concept of Rage, while a perfectly sound and explicit game mechanic, has no set in-world meaning. You would be detecting a huge variety of things, whose only commonality is being based on the same track, a purely metagame concept. Mystify (talk) 18:45, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I'd like a page source on your claims about what RAW means in Legend, please.

And are you saying that you can only make a Rage detector that detects the anger fluff? --Foxwarrior (talk) 18:50, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not near my books right now so I can't point you at anythign specific.However, it does talk about how it is supposed to be refluffable, and I spend a lot of time hanging out on IRC with the devs, and it is quite clear how fundamental refluffing is to the system. If you say "We should be able to do X", the response is "You can refluff this, this and this, and you have the mechanics you need". The mechanics are hard and mostly immutable, but what they actually imply is meant to be very open-ended.

I'm saying that you can't make a Rage detector at all. Detecting the fluff would be a violation of core Legend principles, namely the divide between fluff and mechanics. You will not see a mechanical benefit from a fluff description. You will not see mechanics based on fluff to function. The mechanics may imply a certain type of fluff, but that is pretty inherent to the concept - you select the mechanics that support your fluff.

Another example is a [Throwing] weapon. Its a melee weapon that you can use to make ranged attacks. However, you can use it to represent a ranged weapon you can fire in melee equally well. You can't get hung up on the RAW descriptions of things. Mystify (talk) 19:07, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Buffed version

Do NPC encounters actually count as [encounters]? Also, since [encounters] count as ANYTHING that presents a challenge, you'll probably have red dots covering your entire vision constantly as worms struggle to escape badgers or whatever. --Ghostwheel (talk) 02:54, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'm sad to say that by RAW, NPC encounters don't actually count as [Encounters], so NPCs can't use [Encounter] powers when the players aren't watching.

Disregarding that, this only shows you creatures who used [encounter ends] abilities, which classless creatures like worms and badgers probably don't have. --Foxwarrior (talk) 02:56, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

What practical use do you think this has? The challenge has been defeated, so now you know where survivors are immediately after combat?

Besides that, it is way too specific about its functioning. As I've mentioned, Legend is a somewhat more abstract system. Specifying the details of the display is way too specific. Even specifying that it operates via a display is iffy. Items are typically some general fluff description Mystify (talk) 03:08, 18 October 2012 (UTC) and a mechanical benefit.

It's an essentially defensive item. If people are trying to sneak into your museum/secret base/whatever, you can position guards around it, and you'll be alerted when they've been bypassed by any means that involves [encounter ends] powers.

I'm not sure how this is much more specific than, say, the Map of the Master Strategist. --Foxwarrior (talk) 03:25, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

What an incredibly edge case thing to happen. Esp. since things like invisibily, the spell you would use for stuff like that, is not encounter.

Also, escaping would be part of the encounter, so it wouldn't help you detect them.

The functioning of the map is basically "it draws a map 250ft around you". Mystify (talk) 03:36, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

What's this all about?

Is is just me or this discussion page (and item itself by extension) is trying to change Legend itself because "encounters" seem dumb for some people? I'm pretty sure this isn't a place for this and I doubt it's going to change because Legend is based on it. Making an item to mock rules is not really that great of an idea. Don't like a system with encounters? Don't use them. Tenno Seremel (talk) 22:02, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Aww, you don't like it either? --Foxwarrior (talk) 22:07, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

What's there to like? Judging by “Stupid Metagame Rules” you are just crusading against Legend's choice of mechanics. Am I seeing things? Tenno Seremel (talk) 22:12, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Just to add, you might want to define encounter/scene in hard minutes/hours if you dislike it so much. Say, encounter is 15 minutes, always. And go from there. As for the feat itself, detecting such a broad metagame construct will not go well. Unless you want to get PINGed all the time whenever you are moving through the city :} Tenno Seremel (talk) 22:26, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

You are seeing things, and they vaguely resemble the actual things. Stupid Metagame Rules was when I realized that it was peoples' reactions to these rules that was so maddening, so I switched from crusading against Legend's mechanics to crusading for the appreciation of items like this one when those mechanics are being used. Maybe that's not obvious. --Foxwarrior (talk) 22:42, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Hmm… I don't think this one should be used like that. It's just doesn't work, IMO. There is, however, Detecting 1-point enchantment in point buy magic items, which seems close enough. Tenno Seremel (talk) 22:50, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

If its people's reactions to the rules that is maddening, then items like this would make it worse. Items like this take it from "people are interpreting the rules to mean something they don't like" to "The rules actually mean that thing now". You need to get people to appreciate what such a rule brings to the game and what the actual implications of it are, not solidify the implication of the rule that they dislike. I'm pretty sure "Encounter based effects are ok as long as you make sure that an encounter is a real, in-game, tangible thing" is a fairly rare stance to adopt. Mystify (talk) 22:56, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I never said I only like to adopt common stances, Mystify. --Foxwarrior (talk) 23:08, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

You just create items to address people's reaction to a system by pandering to an uncommon stance in a way that makes it worse for most people? Mystify (talk) 23:18, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Most people are wrong, and they need correcting. --Foxwarrior (talk) 23:44, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

There's a saying in Russian that doesn't translate well into English, but it goes something like this:

If one person tells you that you're drunk, laugh it off.

If two people tells you that you're drunk, start worrying.

If three people tell you that you're drunk, go to sleep.

In other words, it might not be other people... perhaps it's you? --Ghostwheel (talk) 23:48, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." (Mark Twain) --Foxwarrior (talk) 00:13, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

You should always stop and think. That quote doesn't meant the majority is wrong,it just means you shouldn't blindly follow them. Considering that you aren't familiar with the system, it is hard to beleive you have the nessecary information to have thought it through. Game mechanics don't exist in a vaccum. One works great for one game may be awful for another, and visa versa. You can certaintly be wary of a mechanic, but you shouldn't flat out dismiss it. If I recall correctly, you ran into some encounter based mechanics on my homebrew, reacted to them poorly, and have been crusading for this item ever since, since it somehow makes you feel better about the mechanic, even though it doesn't fit into the context of the game. I feel like you are flying on your gut reaction, instead of a reasoned analysis of the mechanic in context. Mystify (talk) 00:28, 20 October 2012 (UTC)