Discouraging the 15 minute adventuring day

[fba827]

one of the designers on a blog somewhere (i'm sorry, i don't have the original source handy) had offered an option that was something like:

* characters still need sleep every day to avoid exhaustion and also for disease tracking
* The full mechanical benefits of an extended rest (such as daily power and healing surge recharging, etc) do not actually kick in unless the party has reached at least 2 milestones (aka 4 encounters) since the last extended rest.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, Jonathan Tweet's campaign worked like that. Extended rest every 4 encounters, level up every 8. Plan accordingly

I'm a big fan of plot rests myself.

 

[fba827]

I'm a big fan of plot rests myself.

I have to admit, that's my preference as well. But I know that realistically that won't always lead to agreement at the game table with some other player preferences.

 

[Arlough]

I seem to recall that once a party has finished an extended rest, they cannot take another one for 12 hours.

Seems to me that this means that they have many hours in enemy territory ( in the one example, with 100 goblins less than half a mile away) and they would need to do something about it. The chance of them avoiding an encounter at that point would be small.

Admittedly, this is technically a "story reason", in that the assumption is the world is moving even if they aren't, and there is no mechanic for "what is happening out of the party's line of sight." But if you have a "unforeseen encounter" mechanic (a.k.a Random Encounter mechanic), it allows for the world to be moving around them in a predictable manner.

I still think it is a little silly to worry about a mechanic to formalize that, while the players are lounging around their campsite for 15 - 19 hours (1 hour for fight based things [30 minutes to find the fight, 5 minutes to fight, and 25 minutes to find a campsite or return to the old one] + 11 more hours until an extended rest can start + 4 hours rest uninterrupted by combat or difficult activity for all the eladrin in the party + 2 more hours rest uninterrupted by combat or difficult activity for any other races in the party {+ 2 optional hours per shift for each player as posted watch} 1 + 11 + 4 + 2 [+ 2] = 17 [19]) they may be attacked by all the hostile things around them. And, if there are no hostile things around them, how are they finding enemies to fight in the first place?

 

[andy3k]

Encounters are more fun when they are preplanned. The monsters are hand selected; the terrain is designed to match monster tactics and new challenges for the players; treasure is pre-placed, etc. Forcing the DM to continually develop ad-hoc attacks on over-rested parties leads creates the possibility for messy or uninteresting encounters. The game is more fun when the players run through the DM's pre-planned, carefully-designed encounters than random encounters. Sure, a random encounter or two is fine on occasion, but parties who nova and rest frequently are also going to force a higher than expected number of "random" encounters. I guess the DM can plan fewer "story" encounters and spend more time on the "random" encounters that he knows will happen because the party wants to nova and rest but even that is challenging because the DM does not know exactly where and when the party will decide to take their rest.

If the party is okay with random encounters that aren't pre-planned much, and have fun, then so be it. Otherwise, I agree that there must either be a mechanic to drive characters onward or there must be a DM/player contract where all parties agree on limiting the extended rests.

 

[Arlough]

Encounters are more fun when they are preplanned. The monsters are hand selected; the terrain is designed to match monster tactics and new challenges for the players; treasure is pre-placed, etc. Forcing the DM to continually develop ad-hoc attacks on over-rested parties leads creates the possibility for messy or uninteresting encounters. The game is more fun when the players run through the DM's pre-planned, carefully-designed encounters than random encounters. Sure, a random encounter or two is fine on occasion, but parties who nova and rest frequently are also going to force a higher than expected number of "random" encounters. I guess the DM can plan fewer "story" encounters and spend more time on the "random" encounters that he knows will happen because the party wants to nova and rest but even that is challenging because the DM does not know exactly where and when the party will decide to take their rest.

Assuming that the first half of your statement is as self evident as you propose, this does not lead to the conclusion at the end of your statement. If I build an encounter (with a map, chosen creatures, terrain effects and powers, etc.), I do not have to pick a place on the world this encounter is taking place. Wherever the party happens to be is where that piece of terrain fits. If it is an encounter in the forest, for example, and I had a field of deep grass already planned, then the party happens to come across a meadow in the forest. If it is a an ambush I had planned, and they set up camp for 17 hours, it is pretty easy to change the middle of the map to have their campsite. And, even if they somehow move so far in a day that instead of being in goblin territory they have moved into knoll territory, I can quickly reskin the goblins into knolls and use the same tactics.

But most of the time, if they are in a forest, and I plan an encounter for a forested area, they are not very likely to have moved out of that area. Especially if they have a tank who's speed is limited to, in most cases, 2.5 miles per hour. (25 miles a day is assuming they are marching, and not resting, for 10 hours).

Or, if everything needs to be completely planned out in advance or "so be it" (implying that fun will not occur, or at least if it does it will occur at an astoundingly suboptimal level), then I will just run a railroad adventure instead of a sandbox so when they say "we set up camp" I can say "you find no suitable place to set up camp, and are now continuing into the mountains where you find..."

While I am not as against creating a mechanic for this as you seem to be against a non-planned encounter or two, and I have contributed to the creation of a functioning mechanic to resolve the problem to the satisfaction of the people who would like a mechanic for this, I think we are solving a problem with additional rules that can easily be solved using the rules that are already in place.

Given all of that, how about this option?
Until the party reaches at least one milestone, they get no experience. Then, for each milestone reached, they get 50% xp. So pushing to that 6th battle has a high reward for the high risk involved (150% xp for the day). Additionally, make sure the party knows that in order to count toward a milestone, the encounter must be a threat. In other words, only encounters of L-2 or greater count toward your milestone for the day. This last rule should prevent them from milking the system by going nova on a dragon early on, and then battling squirrels the rest of the day to get 200% xp on the dragon.

 

[Haltherrion]

The XP bonus strikes me wrong. It seems like a clumsy, mechanical way to do it although you could argue that it does represent more XP for tougher battles (more tired == tougher). You'd also have to do XP straight by the book otherwise the players might likely suspect you'll doctor the XP so it all comes out the same in the end.

I don't find this too much of an issue in our 4E game. For one thing, on many game days, I just don't feel its appropriate to have all that many encounters. If a mid to high level party can't travel between two cities without multiple encounters per day then how could there be much trade in the world or even farmed land? Similar feeling holds for many combat situations for me: it's often a one off, or two off kind of thing per day anyway.

There are times when circumstances call for more encounters but in the end, in those circumstances you can usually bring the encounter to the PCs if they won't go to the encounter. (That is, camp in a monster infested dungeon and the monsters will find them, maybe more on the monsters' terms if they scout out the party).

If the party keeps running back to a safe place to camp, I'd be inclined to make it harder to do so (the monster-heavy part of the dungeon starts deep within and has a more gradual ramp- i.e., safe is a long way away). Or there are consequences for them pursuing a task too slowly: competitors beat them to the punch, new creatures move in, a foe realizes he is under attack and fortifies/reinforces.

But to be honest, my group hasn't had that issue. There are discussions about whether they should rest or move on but they tend to want to minimize rests just on general principle. Maybe its RP or just my group.

One thing occurs to me though: if every battle is a fight to the death forcing the players to pop their full load of dailies then I could see them wanting to overnight a lot. The thing to do there is mix up the battles, have a lot more easy battles, a few standards and just a very few hard ones. When I first started 4E I tended to go too heavy on the hard fights and found that backing off was far superior: got in more fights per session, the typical fight was a lot easier to run, the players were more thoughtful in the use of their abilities.

 

[eamon]

Why worry about it in the first place? If PC's are going to rest all the time, well, what's the problem? It just means combats can be a little tougher to challenge em; and in an dungeon crawl, that's a perfectly reasonable thing, no?

There's lots of reasons it might matter for the plot, however. And make sure you have intelligent opponents. If they keep on sleeping between combats, let escapees travel far and wide and ambushes be exceedingly well prepared. Rub it in how much the preparation time for the opponents mattered.

As a correction to some of the earlier posts on this thread, you don'tneed uninterrupted sleep for an extended rest, any interruptions merely make the rest take that much longer. It's rules-legal to go nova 5 minutes during a nightly ambush 5 minutes before the end of the rest, and regain all powers afterwards. And frankly, this rarely comes up, and shouldn't really matter: you still only get one use of dailies a day.

 

[MonkeyMage]

A DM shouldn't have to rely on narrative fixes to counter the built in mechanical benefits of going nova.

See and I think that you shouldn't need a mechanical reason to not stop and take a nap after every fight. Logic and the story should encourage you to continue on. I'm not necessarily opposed to adding a small mechanical bonus as well, but I don't think its needed, per say.

Also, I wanted to add that the XP bonus seems a bit clunky and hard to manage. I'd suggest granting some new kind of bonus at the milestones beyond an action point or magic item use. Perhaps an attack re-roll, or bonus healing surges?

 

[Nytmare]

See and I think that you shouldn't need a mechanical reason to not stop and take a nap after every fight. Logic and the story should encourage you to continue on. I'm not necessarily opposed to adding a small mechanical bonus as well, but I don't think its needed, per say.

That's not what I was saying. I was pointing out a quirk of the system and saying that that is what should change. The problem is that at it's base, you are mechanically encouraged to go nova. That is what should be addressed, and the DM shouldn't have to come up with a narrative reason or a post encounter mechanical patch to deal with that fact.