Home Game Culture Shock: LFR players vs the 15min workday

[delericho]

During the short rest, their benefactor tells them they need to go track the path of the demon that attacked them back to it's source and locate the summoner. Being made of mist, the trail is growing colder. So, they take thier rest.

I would have flat out told them that each short rest increased the DC by 2 (or whatever), and that once it reached DC 30 (or whatever) the trail was just gone. After that, other than noting the increased DC, let them make the call when to take the rests or not.

"What do you mean? It's an encounter!". I had to explain that short rests are a about 5 minutes, you get your powers recharged at the end of the 5 minutes. If you want to expend and recharge again, that is going to be yet another 5 minutes.

I remind them about the time crunch, and allow everyone a single surge and the recharge of 1 encounter.

You're more generous than I am. I would simply ban back-to-back short rests (you need to exert yourself to gain any benefit from a rest), and allow them to choose a 'full' short rest or nothing. (Note: the ban on back-to-back rests is my ruling, it is not RAW as far as I know.)

"Is the next encounter the last for the day?"

"So player x and player y will both take the boots of so-and-so...".

Heh.

 

[Dedekind]

I like the "1 healing surge, 1 encounter recharge" compromise for this chase scene.

My experience suggests managing players expectations for these types of rules. New groups don't necessarily all assume the same rigor of rules applications and I tend to be very explicit for the first few sessions.

Btw, this sounds like a local LFR problem, not a global LFR problem.

 

[keterys]

In my personal experience, LFR's strict adherence to skill challenges (every adventure has almost as many as they do combats) results in more skill optimization and breadth (ie, making sure you have a face, etc) than in play outside of LFR.

The "multiple rests" thing is something I've seen much more in home games than in LFR, where the action is often much more on rails - in a home game exploring a dungeon, they'll often go "Eh, we take 20 minutes so the shaman can let Vulnerable McRoguey avoid spending surges"

In one home game that never plays LFR, I actually just told them to assume that outside of combat their heals were their leader's granted heals with 4s rolled for the d6s. Stops the asking who needs it, trying to maximize use, etc dead in its tracks, and they move right on.

People get surprised the first time they can't get a rest (and sometimes even the 3rd or 4th), home or LFR or elsewise. And sometimes it's pretty darn funny to be the one to reap that surprise.

 

[Dolfan]

I'd agree with what I've seen some other saying, that I don't really think that the idea of having characters heal up with as many castings of healing word as they want is really an LFR thing, just a DM decision thing. I'm one of the DMs who, whether I'm DMing LFR or whether I'm DMing for a home game, will usually let my players take as many short rests between encounters as they want. My reasoning is simple - I don't want them to run out of surges before the final encounter and then be trying to find a way to take an extended rest. I'd rather have them at 2-3 surges and then put a final encounter in place for the day that challenges their healing so that they have trouble keeping everyone up.

I also think I view surge management as being partially the DMs responsibility. If my players run out of surges all the time before I get to the last encounter, it usually means I made things too hard. If it's just the defender running out of surges, maybe I'm not taking enough chances to attack the strikers, etc. There are lots of ways to get my monsters beaten down faster if I need to, and I always try to shoot for the feeling that the players are going to be in danger by the end of the day, even if I know that they'll probably be fine on surges by the end.

 

[Colmarr]

[sidetrack] Good to see someone playing the adventure from the back of the ECG [/sidetrack]

 

[jimmifett]

Short rests should be allowed after most combat encounters. That is one of the core assumptions of the design. A chase is fine, but that's an exception, not the rule.

It's not actually fun to force players to rely on at-wills for fear that they can't rely on the system as written working as it's expected to. They should be able to use their encouter and yes- daily powers.

Agreed, the players were never prevented from the option of a short rest, except during the chase scene. The chase scene itself is a full encounter. For thier first failure during the skill challenge, they were misdirected down an alley to 3 thugs looking to ambush some lost travelers. Once defeated, the encounter was still on going. The party still had the oppurtunity to fail more checks during the skill challenge leading to 2 other small battles. In sum, these 3 possible battles resulting from failure are the equivelent of a full, normal encounter. Since it was still part of the same encounter, it is functionally no different than additional enemies entering the fight 1 or 2 rounds after a combat is started, except that the earlier foes are already dead. I allowed the single surge and encounter restore during the whole skill challenge encounter, of which these small fights were a part of. After the challenge was over, they had oppurtunity to take a full short rest.

Before the skill challenge, after the fight with the solo, I also did not prevent the party from taking multiple short rests. I let them know that it's 5 minutes per rest, and that recharges for encounters occur at the end of the rest. If they wanted to use back to back shorts for healing, and not take a 3rd rest (a total of 15 minutes resting), then the healer would not have that encounter available during whatever the next encounter was. Also, they were informed that the trail would grow colder for each short rest after the first.

Also if you're requiring them to take on social skills, you should probably allow them a rebuild.

Requiring them to use a certain set of skills is an expectation that you're clearly adding after they built their pcs- you should have emphasised the issue before they built their pcs, but since you didn't, they should have the option of a full rebuild. After all, if they're going to be competitive with those skills in this new, toiugh game they're in, they may need a secondary stat at last in cha, and a few skills to capitalise on it.

Social skills are inherent of the game. I had let them know several times in advance of the campaign start that it was not going to be a hack-n-slash, that there was going to be a considerable amount of social oppurtunities. They built thier characters for combat and monster knowledge checks anyway. One of the players wanted a rebuild to not duplicate the checks of another, I allowed after the last session, but still ignored the social skills after I re-afirmed how important they are going to be. I recommended someone may wish to take skill training in a social during thier lvl 2 selection. If the party doesn't wish to invest in social skills, thats fine, they will just have to deal with that choice when it comes up and hope for good rolls.

You also have to be very clear with them what your expectations for the skills are- what exactly they can be used for, wether, as some gms use them, they're more of less interchangable, or wether, as some gms use them, they play the role very much as laid out in the book.

A good example of this: if a barbarian PC is warning an npc noble of a goblin horde soon to attack his lands, can they use their intimidate roll to, in good faith and without provocation, emphasise the threat the realm is under? Some gms will say 'sure thing', others will say 'no way!', it's up to you to make your views clear to the players.

I have no problem with players using intimidate. I have them describe how they wish to intimidate, through body language, spoken word, or action. The results of the intimidate are dependent on the NPC they are trying to use it against. Try it on a Darguul Hobgoblin, you gain some respect in thier eyes, try it on a gnome, you stand a good chance of it groveling at your feet (unless it's a member of The Trust, in which case the grovelling is a way to get closer to your ankles to inject poison...). Try it on the Daughters of Sora Kell and.. well.. I hope you have somebody ready to go to dolurrh and bring back your soul for ressurection (providing Sora Maenya hasn't bound it to your skull and kept it for 'safe' keeping...).

 

[jimmifett]

[sidetrack] Good to see someone playing the adventure from the back of the ECG [/sidetrack]

It turned out to be a pretty fun adventure, tho the players were a bit nervous during the skycoach scene, having been screwed over by an LFR game with a battle on a giant earthmote with 2/3rds of the map over open sky. I had to reassure them that there were tons of roofs to land on below, that they would only fall a max of 1d4+1 times 10 feet if they did fall, and that they could be back on a rooftop close enough to the combat with a double move action. I also added tower rooftops to the map at the level of battle as obstacles and blocking terrain for the skycoach and the soar sleds to navigate around. The tower rooftops had access hatches and stairs wrapping around the outside edges so they could jump onto the rooftops for safer terrain and have points to choose from if they need to find thier way back up into combat. This made the encounter much more fun, as the goblins manage to kill the sky coach pilot, forcing the players to take turns at the rudder, being able to control with strength checks as a move action to allow them maintain control, opening up the ability to use another move action to actually steer it. They turned just in time to avoid a head on collision with the biggest tower on the map, instead deflecting off it's side and focring everyone to make a moderate acrobatics check or fall prone from the impact. The goblins that had jumped onto the sky coach failed, while the PCs still on the coach maintained balance and got some easy kills on the prone goblins.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Social skills are inherent of the game. I had let them know several times in advance of the campaign start that it was not going to be a hack-n-slash, that there was going to be a considerable amount of social oppurtunities. They built thier characters for combat and monster knowledge checks anyway. One of the players wanted a rebuild to not duplicate the checks of another, I allowed after the last session, but still ignored the social skills after I re-afirmed how important they are going to be. I recommended someone may wish to take skill training in a social during thier lvl 2 selection. If the party doesn't wish to invest in social skills, thats fine, they will just have to deal with that choice when it comes up and hope for good rolls.

Exactly. It is up to the players to decide how to distribute their build resources. There's nothing wrong with the people at the table determining at the start what sort of play style they are going to focus on and build characters appropriate to that, but if all the players decide to totally ignore one aspect of play they are making a trade off and they will have to deal with the consequences of that trade off.

I mean, presumably, the party that has totally ignored social skills despite knowing that situations where they are potentially relevant and advantageous have made a conscious choice. They have reaped an advantage from this choice, being more combat effective. It behooves the DM to make that trade off meaningful. When the PCs can't deal with a situation they didn't prepare for they'll have to try to work out a way to make do or they'll have to rough it and use their other advantages to deal with the negative consequences. Overall they should come out OK. What I would generally figure is happening in a case like this is that the players are trying to push things in a specific direction. That's OK. The DM should be aware of that and make sure that the action at the table is of a type that is engaging to the players. However making their choices meaningless by simply avoiding putting in any situations that are avoiding their weak points isn't an answer. If a party takes all melee type powers you don't make every encounter a melee slug-fest either, you throw in some flying monsters and whatnot and make them sweat some. They'll figure out a way to deal with that and it will add to the fun.