Is the 15 minute adventuring day now the 90 minute adventuring day?

[Brown Jenkin]

There has been talk about how 4E gets rid of the 15 minute adventuring day. While I grant it will likely be somewhat longer from what I can see so far it strikes me as being still very similar. With 4E there are two daily resources that can be expended. There are Powers and there are Healing Surges.

With the power if the dailies are used they won’t weaken the character quite as much as if a 3.x spellcaster goes nova and uses up their powerful spells for the day and the party might press on. Once several party members in 4E have used dailies though I can see more cautious parties still stopping for the 6 hour rest before going on if they are not sure what they might run into.

With Healing Surges though I can’t see parties pushing on if they run out. With the pre-gens we see the number of Surges running from 6-13 depending on the characters. In order for a battle to be at least somewhat challenging I would think that each character would likely have to use at least one if not two or three Surges to either get though the battle or heal up completely after the battle. If characters don’t take at least some damage it probably wasn’t that challenging (in 3.x characters could go all day if the challenges never did much damage either). Given the number of Surges it would seem to me like after 3-4 battles most characters would be out of Healing Surges and need to take the 6 hour rest to recharge Surges.

So it would seem to me like most adventuring days would go:
8:00am - 8:30am adventure
8:30am - 2:30pm rest
2:30pm - 3:00pm adventure
3:00pm - 9:00pm rest
9:00pm - 9:30pm adventure
9:30pm - 8am rest

While this does give more adventures per 24 periods it still creates similar problems to before where the characters face a few things then retreat and camp for awhile and then go back in.

So am I looking at this wrong? I am writing this thread not to complain but in hopes that someone can point out to me what I am missing here.

 

[Incenjucar]

It's a requirement of appeasing Vancian Casting fans.

 

[Bayonet_Chris]

From the 5-page handout

Another thread posted the 5-page handout that went over the basic rules, etc.

In it is this, with my highlights:

Extended Rest. Once per day, you can take an extended rest. It must last at least 6 hours to gain the benefits. You have to rest or sleep during this period. At the end of the rest, you regain any hit points you lost and healing surges you spent, your daily powers are renewed, and you lose any unspent action points and gain 1 fresh action point.

I would imagine it introduces the 18-hour adventuring day. At least, that's how I read it.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Well, first of all, you only gain the benefits of an extended rest ONCE per day.

So the "dailies" are, in fact, Daily.

But you're right, the adventuring day is only extended by so much.

(Which is fine, if you ask me, otherwise you'd have the opposite problem of "Level 2 by Lunch!"

Fitz

 

[Sammael]

I've never, EVER seen the so-called 15-minute adventuring day in actual play, and I've gamed with some fairly diverse groups.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Another thread posted the 5-page handout that went over the basic rules, etc.

In it is this, with my highlights:

Extended Rest. Once per day, you can take an extended rest. It must last at least 6 hours to gain the benefits. You have to rest or sleep during this period. At the end of the rest, you regain any hit points you lost and healing surges you spent, your daily powers are renewed, and you lose any unspent action points and gain 1 fresh action point.

I would imagine it introduces the 18-hour adventuring day. At least, that's how I read it.

Oops I missed that. That means that the adventuring day is now 30 minutes instead of three 30 minute blocks spread across the day like I thought. So there seems to be even less of a difference than I thought.

edit: included subquote

 

[keterys]

Yep, with only being able to rest once a day and not gaining a ton, you can try to hide from the world but it won't stop your enemies from doing stuff while you gain literally no benefit... so not much help.

The sad thing is that some DMs will do far more difficult combats to encourage people to burn more surges and dailies, which will in turn convince people to sleep more, etc. Though, it's difficult to burn more than a couple surges per combat, max.

 

[kennew142]

I've never, EVER seen the so-called 15-minute adventuring day in actual play, and I've gamed with some fairly diverse groups.

I've seen it many times.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Though, it's difficult to burn more than a couple surges per combat, max.

Yes, it might be only 1-2 in combat but characters are allowed to use as many as needed during the short 5 minute rest period to fully recover their health. That is why I figure 2-3 per combat.

 

[Victim]

A 90 minute adventuring day covers an action movie pretty well. A 15 minute adventuring day requires 'padding' to fill out a half hour (but really 22 min) show.