I'll put it this way -- I've lived an example of almost every one of these, in 3.5E D&D.
20 minute adventuring day? Seen it, and it's hard to argue "no, you can't rest here" or "you get attacked every time you rest" without players taking umbrage. Deadlines or hostile territory is fine once in a while, but it gets old when there's a deadline every other adventure.
In practice, even among friends, what usually happens is this: Players prefer carrots to sticks. If you give them an incentive for not resting, and trying to conserve their daily resources for "the next possible fight", then they'll gladly do it. however, forcing them to keep moving, through timetables, dangerous environments, etc. tends to make them dislike the scenario. Dislike it enough, and they'll stop you as DM by expressing dislike for the campaign, and move on to another person at the table DMing, or another game system altogether who doesn't have this problem.
What I think would solve it? Go TOTALLY metagame, and say spells, barbarian rages, etc. replenish "once per session, with "session length being defined by the game master, with the recommendation that it replenish after at least four or five hours of gameplay." Very few players in my experience are willing to stop playing two hours early because they "went nova" on someone who wasn't a major challenge. The stick of "limited time" is replaced by the carrot of "continuing your play"
I've seen many systems use resources per session, and I like the way it actually plays out at the table.
Caster/melee difference? I've seen a prepared 12th level caster (Artificer from Eberron, actually) teleport with improved invisibility into the corner of a room with five 10th level NPCs that he scryed ethereally beforehand (while using a ring that boosted his hide and move silently), then proceed to turn to stone, disintegrate, hold person, and generally lay waste to the 10th level party. A level 11 fighter or barbarian, of ANY stripe, could not do this. This problem, however, was laid firmly at the feet of WotC's Splatbooks such as Complete Arcane, Complete Divine, and Spell Compendium.
These were not combat-only games, filled with plenty of roleplay and exploration to make things fun, but they were mentally VERY draining to prepare for, and in the end I offered challenge by turning the tables on said caster by using many of his own tricks against him, and once he was feasibly well-known enough, sending threats against him tailored to defeat him by the BBEG. The players had a lot of fun with the tactical aspect of it still, but to prepare for the tactical portion was made more difficult by many of WotC's supplements that in the end I started restricting from later campaigns.
To be fair, Pathfinder (which I play now) ended up solving the problem by reigning in many "save or lose" magics like the scry-buff-teleport, insta-death spells, super-duper-invisibility, etc. that had really tough counters, and boosting some of the melee combatants' choices. They actually have done a pretty good job of it, but the one-to-two encounter adventure day is still annoying when it arises occasionally. I think personally this is a factor of making spells more common than under 1st edition AD&D, but not as common as under 4E. 3E occupies a middle ground of spell capacity that I think promotes the "go nova and rest" mentality I've seen.
The big one is the what... 20 minute adventure day ? Rules as written yes, this "theoretically" could be a problem. The thing is , I have been running campaigns for about 15 years now and I can honestly say I have never had this problem. This brings me to my question, does this ACTUALLY happen in your games? If so, why do you allow it?
The other thing is the so called "Caster / Melee" rift. Where wizards and other casters are basically much better than every one else. Has anyone ever actually encountered this in their games? I personally haven't, perhaps it's because my group isn't into min maxing or something. People who play fighters or monks or whatever, they have a fantastic time. They kill enemies just as much as any other character, and I personally have just never seen all of these horrible terrible game breaking elements that seem to be so rampant.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
