I guess my confusion is there are two different things being talked about here, and while I can see them as related, I don't see them as interconnected:

Non-Renewable Resources
Non-renewable resources (I use this term to mean not automatically renewable in a day. If people are talking non-renewable over long periods: gold, gear, etc. that's different) generally affect "how many fights" your character can partake in before they become unable to really take on another fight with hopes of survival. It's at that point that the characters usually 'rest' to recover. In a lot of games these resources that control that are: "Hit Points", "Magic Points", "Spell Slots", "Healing Surges", or "Wounds". Because these 'run out' it controls how many encounters characters can have in a day. In a four-hour event for most game systems, it's not possible to get a 'full rest' and recover these, so you need to manage them throughout the event in order to make it to the end and succeed.

Arcanis really only has 2 of these: Fate Expenditure and Wounds. Fate Expenditure is probably the only one, since you can spend a maximum of your Fate Score (even if you have more) in an event, no matter how long it lasts in-game. Wounds are a non-renewable resource in Tiers I/II since there's few (if any) ways to recover Wounds other than 'rest'. This seems to be a design decision by the PCI team to not have artificial 'limits' on what the characters can do in an adventuring day. A group that doesn't take a lot of wounds could theoretically do a lot of things in a day, since after most fights, they can heal back up.

in non-combat situations, there are a lot of

Challenging Combats
I heard people saying, because you start each 'encounter' at full Stamina, it's not challenging. I think there are a lot of good ideas about how to challenge characters in an encounter. For my "Expert" character, some of the things that make for a challenging and enjoyable fight are having multiple goals. D&D 4e actually started doing some of this at one point. In a fight, there can be a number of things going on at once. The more of these that an encounter has, the more complex and more potentially more challenging it is.
1) Defeating creatures
2) Achieving a combat objective (retrieve an item, rescue an NPC, protect someone, make it through a tunnel, etc.)
3) Dealing with objects (disarm a trap, open a lock, search a book for information, etc.)
4) Survive the environment (flooding room, climbing up a mountain, underwater combat, etc.)

An encounter that's just "defeat the creatures" is less challenging because all the party's resources go to that one goal. In a group of 6-7 that can be formidable. By adding other elements, you start taking the party's resources and splitting them.

Example: If, while the fight is going on, there's a door that the party needs to get through to escape (They will be overwhelmed otherwise), then at least one character needs to be devoted to that. If at the same time, there's a an important NPC that needs protecting, one character would likely be assigned to that. Finally, if this entire encounter takes place in a room that is slowly filling with poisonous smoke, then some resources must go to healing/delaying that and not to killing creatures. This makes the combat much more challenging and has a nice by-product of giving 'non combat optimized' characters things to do.

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My personal opinion is that we don't need to mess much with the non-renewable resources. The game mechanics are set to allow in most cases starting each encounter with full resources. Some 'back to back' encounters aside (in BI's or special situations), every encounter is 'fresh'. I feel we should concentrate more on making encounters challenging by requiring out of the box thinking, multiple goals, and different situations.

I know Pedro's talked about the Wound system. Most characters are likely going to have 2-3 Wounds. Taking a wound is a *bad thing* in the system because there are so few. If the system had been setup to have 4-5 Wounds on average, and they were easier to take ("Gritty Rules" always in place for instance), then they become more of those non-renewable resource.

John

This is the topic that I'm taking to the podium. if you have full resources every combat, its going to be harder and harder to keep combats challenging AND keep them under a reasonable time and manageable (in terms of number/ abilities) of enemies, it also makes traditional traps nearly useless in terms of spending resources.

There are many resources that are not stats, and are not renewable under certain circumstances.
For example, "Loshnek wants you to go to the citadel of Silence to get his hat for him (for its a shiny hat) He know the Big Bad Evil Guys(BBEGS) can be defeated with a Holy hand grenade, so he gives you a bag of them. you now have 10 holy hand grenades and an unknown number of BBEGs and a mission. GO!"
Holy hand grenades are a perfect example of a limited resource that is certainly not renewable.

It could be that you and I fundamentally disagree on this topic, that's fine we can discuss it in private (my preference instead of derailing this thread more).

I think it's a disagreement on terms. I've PM'ed you.

Your example is a perfect example of what I'm talking about in terms of a "Challenging Encounter". I think having a list of these available for Module Writers to pull from is a great idea. I think if you modify your original post or create a new one in the Chronicler's area, that would be a great start.

A lot of systems have 'snippets' of ideas for this, and having some general ideas that authors can take forward into their adventures is smart. Here's some ideas on the format and would welcome some feedback:

For each 'challenge' provide the following:

Encounter Type: Social, Combat, Discovery, Transport, etc.
Setting: City, Wilderness, Building, Underground, Ruins, etc. (Could be 'general') as well
Goal: Kill the bad guys, Convince someone, Locate object, Protect something
Obstacles/Hazards: Locked door, Enemy combatants, Darkness, Freezing temperatures, Trap to disarm (these take away characters, cause penalties, or otherwise stand in the way of success)
Limited Resources: Only X tries before setting off trap (limiting attempts), Only X torches to see while traveling, Only hold breath for X minutes (time limiting), Only achieve 1 of X objectives (objective limiting), etc.
Failure: What happens if the resource runs out or the obstacles are not overcome. Death? Delays? Bad guys get more powerful? Failed mission?
Description: Any short description or hints that help a GM work this type of challenge into their adventure.

So to use Josh's example in this format if he were presenting this as a "Challenge"

Encounter Type: Combat
Setting: Any
Goal: Retrieve Hat
Obstacles/Hazards: 20 Big Bad Guys (combatants)
Limited Resources: Big Bad Guys are only hurt by Holy Hand Grenades. The Party has 10.
Failure: If the party doesn't retrieve the hat, they earn the ire of Loshnek. If they use all the holy hand grenades before reaching the hat, they can't hurt the bad guys and need new tactics.
Description: Loshnek needs his hat and asks the players to retrieve it. He warns there are a lot of BBG's and they are only hurt by Holy Hand Grenades. he only has 10 to spare, so he tells the characters to use them wisely.

What do you think?

This is a really good point. Some 4e LFR modules handle things like this very well (others are poorly written and feel artificial). 4e has much less limited resources than previous versions of D&D (similar to Arcanis, you heal between fights (except you have a limited number of healing surges but I've rarely run out on any of my characters) and get most (but not daily) abilities back) so they have started looking for other ways to make combats challenging. This can also help make a non-combat (or less combat-oriented) character feel much more useful (rather than effectively standing around not doing much).

Have multiple encounters in the same scene if you are worried about resources. Push things to the other side of the curve if you are worried about direct challenge (raising defenses by 2-3)

I think the goal is to find ways to increase the challenge without increasing the 'grind' or 'frustration' of the combat. Increasing miss chance from 50% to 75% of the time due to higher defenses doesn't make the fight an enjoyable challenge for players unfortunately, it just makes it take longer and causes frustration for those players who aren't 'combat specialized'.

John

I'll be experimenting with some of these ideas while building the ArcaniCon events. Keep them coming, you guys have inspired some (hopefully) really fun and challenging situations.

Burning library Scenario:

You were told to secure a book from an Abbey (Sciptorium, or anywhere else). Some acolyte runs up before you can start looking and blathers at you. Then some screams fire. You have to race up to the library, kick in the door, find the book, maybe rescue someone, avoid or eat some fire damage ... and get jumped by the arsonists. What the heck?!?

Encounter Type: Exploration/Combat
Setting: Urban
Goal: Retrieve Rare Book
Obstacles/Hazards: Fire, Smoke, victims, Bad Guys
Limited Resources: Time.
Description: No everyone wants you to find the book. Either because other parties want it or because other parties want the material in the book to remain unreported.
Failure: a separate set of encounters to track down the assailants or an unsavory deal with someone the PCs would normally consider an enemy to get another copy of the text.

I've created a thread in the Chronicle's Quarter and moved Eric's suggestion there

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=288

Another example of use of limited resources are the opponents with either Leadership or a Fate point. Rallying Cry for bringing minions back seems like a good way of doing it.

Related question: What do people think about allowing Rallying Cry as a "counter spell" Push action per se to keep minions from falling down perhaps with a cost to the receiver of Push 2? The push would be equivalent to standing up from prone but without the inherent issues of everyone falling down and then standing back up. Cinematically the caster drops an area of effect fire blast which staggers the opposition, but though possibly dropping to a knee the the words of their leader keep them from giving up.

With a sweep of his...

Hat