Lalato
Adventurer
good stuff snipped for brevity
But doesn't that simply assume that the PCs have no access to magical healing? In my experience, the PCs usually have access to magical healing such that one night or day of rest is all that is needed anyway. Being down HP is rarely a setback in a long journey (unless that long journey is through the tomb of horrors, where the PCs won't be able to find a place to rest anyway).
In your example, a 10 day journey where the PCs are attacked on day 5, gives them ample time to use magic to heal up while still traveling. Heck, even if they lose HP on day 10, they still have time to setup their ambush while recovering the HP. Nothing seems to change by having a longer healing mechanic in this example.
Now, if you're playing in a campaign with little to no magical healing, then I can definitely see where the argument for longer "natural" healing can be made. I've played in games like that, and they can be fun when done right, but more often then not, they end in TPKs. If the group is OK with that, then I'm all for it. But this style of low-magic game hasn't been the default for D&D in a very long time.
I don't personally believe TPKs are a problem. I consider them to be more of a learning tool. If a party dies due to a TPK because they were low on healing resources and decided to rush into a fight anyway, the players should learn the lesson that maybe avoiding the fight is a better course of action. Or if they're going to get into a fight, maybe gaining some kind of advantage via ambush or something else would be better. Unfortunately, avoiding the fight or gaining an advantage like ambush requires a DM that is amenable to that sort of thing. Not all DMs are.
Anyway, good discussion. I'm still not sure I see daylight on the pacing thing if we're talking about a default setting with available magical healing. Other than the grim & gritty low magic campaign, are there any other types of stories where the pacing would be truly hampered by overnight rest?
And for the record, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind... I'm truly curious to learn about others experiences with regard to the types of stories they tell through D&D. I think we've sort of identified a type of story that can't be told with overnight healing (grim & gritty low magic campaign). Are there others?
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