Regain Daily powers on a Milestone

[Herobizkit]

In an effort to reduce Rest time, I thought it might be interesting to allow Daily powers to reset on a Milestone, either in addition to, or in exchange for, an action point.

Discuss... because I'm curious how others would feel if such a rule existed in their campaigns, DM or Player.

 

[Nichwee]

In a campaign I co-DM we have a similar idea.

As we wanted to encourage "long" days we added the following:
Every milestone the party rolls 2 saving throws.

If the first passes the character regains a Healing Surge, and if they pass with 20+ they regain 2 surges.

The second saving throw has more grades:
10+: You may refresh an Encounter Utility or Attack Power during your next encounter today.
15+: You may instead choose to regain an expended Daily Utility.
19+: You may instead choose to regain an expended Daily Attack Power.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I actually go the other way. An extended rest is extended. It's a long weekend back at base in nice soft beds with access to a library and a temple. That reduces rest time because it makes it a higher burden to rest.

 

[Nichwee]

I actually go the other way. An extended rest is extended. It's a long weekend back at base in nice soft beds with access to a library and a temple. That reduces rest time because it makes it a higher burden to rest.

Doesn't this lead to a lot of grind fights tho.?

I would expect that once the party is out of Dailies entirely (both Attack Powers and Utilities) and low on surges every fight becomes a drawn out attempt to run from damage (so the lack of surges is mitigated) which then leads to players having nothing but At-Wills left to finish the fights with.
Or the players draw out every fight, a little, as they try to make their Dalies last throughout 10-15 encounter days and only ever use them when forced to, just to survive.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I actually go the other way. An extended rest is extended. It's a long weekend back at base in nice soft beds with access to a library and a temple. That reduces rest time because it makes it a higher burden to rest.

I've been experimenting with this as well, and I have to say that I like the result so far, though I should point out that I have some extensive houserules to support it.

First, I altered the way Action Points are gained, accumulated, and used. I never have them reset to 1 - players can accumulate them indefinitely, but, when they're gone, they're gone. This encourages the players to press on without resting if they can. They also earn one per tier each time they level up. They can also gain an AP via group nomination, DM fiat (usually for doing something cool, in character, etc), or by opting-in to the Enhanced Critical Hits program(tm).

The Enhanced Critical Hits system I cooked up is an encounter power that allows a PC to have one of their criticals "enhanced" based on the keywords of the power used. This usually includes, damaging enemy defences, adding conditions, forced movement, ongoing damage, or similar. The flipside is that they can choose for a critical hit that I rolled against their character to be enhanced as well. Why would anyone do this? Because I give them an AP for it. Likewise, the enhanced crit card can be refreshed by spending an AP. Some of my players always go for it, some never do, and the others base it on the situation. Overall, I'd say a success.

APs can also be used to recharge a power, or spent in lieu of healing surges, with a few conditions. We used to use a "bonus token" system as well, which after saving up 5, you could cash in for an AP, but I found nobody was using them, and just saving for APs. I just decided to scrap it in favour of just using APs as the carrot instead.

Additionally, we use healing surges to fuel rituals instead of money, and we allow the spending of healing surges to refresh powers during encounters. We have experimented with spending surges before an attack to add a bonus (jury's still out on this one). I also require the expenditure of surges to refresh Daily Attack powers (highest level one costs 4, next highest 3, etc). Costly? Yes, but I should also explain my game's pacing a bit too.

I typically only do fights if it's one that matters. No random encounters (usually), few minor skirmishes (unless I'm trying to put pressure, or deplete resources), with set piece fights for the most part. This means that typically, the characters go into these "boss fights" fully charged, or if they've already blown their Dailies since the last extended rest, low on healing surges.

Oh, and healing during an extended rest costs healing surges just as it would during a short rest. You do recover all your surges, but if you were down some Dailies and damaged, it will take more than one rest to recover fully.

Essentials classes without Dailies are at a distinct advantage, but they don't have the spike damage capability, so I find it balances out.

This might be more information than the OP was asking for, but I wanted to share my experience and I can't adequately do that without explaining all the underlying changes I've made. Hope this is helpful

 

[Rune]

Can't XP Nemesis Destiny right now, but that all looks cool to me.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Doesn't this lead to a lot of grind fights tho.?

The party currently has three strikers out of four PCs. Two are Essentials so don't lose so much on the dailies. Grind? What grind?

I would expect that once the party is out of Dailies entirely (both Attack Powers and Utilities) and low on surges every fight becomes a drawn out attempt to run from damage (so the lack of surges is mitigated) which then leads to players having nothing but At-Wills left to finish the fights with.
Or the players draw out every fight, a little, as they try to make their Dalies last throughout 10-15 encounter days and only ever use them when forced to, just to survive.

They are hexcrawling (or were for a while). Most of the fights aren't that big. And almost out of surges is one reason to head back to base camp. And for the next leg the challenge may well be making it to base camp; massacring the patrols is easy but costs precious resources.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Nothing wrong with it... heck, you could refresh Daily powers with every short rest too if you wanted. All it comes down to is perception and how difficult you feel you need to make the enemies.

When players use up their Dailies, the perception to themselves is that they are not at a strength necessary to possibly deal with encounters you might have upcoming. Thus they want to rest to get them back so that they have the capability to "go nova" if at some point the encounter requires it. Your solution to combat this perception is one of two ways-- either you reduce the danger of all your encounters enough so that players who don't have Dailies available still think they are capable enough to deal with whatever you throw at them... or you let them always regain their Dailies and be at full strength every encounter and then just up the difficulty of all the fights to match.

It's the fear of having "guessed wrong" on which encounters they should have used their Dailies is what causes players to want to take extended rests.

 

[SensoryThought]

Whatever suits your game. I prefer to not do that but it could be a good was to discourage the 15min workday if that is a problem for your group.

 

[Dan'L]

I think that as long as all your encounters are combat encounters, it should work fine. If you count skill challenges or similar as encounters towards milestones, then it might make it too elementary to regain dailies.

-Dan'L