Why did they say Vancian magic would be gone?

[Victim]

Our group has often unloaded dailies after we've already decided to stop at a certain point because of healing. Since the party needs to rest anyway, there's not much additional downside to cutting lose.

My character, at least, often ended the day with plenty of dailies anyway. Warlord Dailies tend to be rather situational - if there's no tough elite or solo to kill, then Lead the Attack is pretty lame. Similarly, Stand the Fallen is for pulling the group out of the fire.

 

[Thasmodious]

So for those of you who do find your groups pushing on when your dailies are spent - why? Is it because of your DM's influence? Machoism? Something else?

Dailies just aren't that big in comparison to encounters and item dailies and the like. You use up your dailies, you've only lost a small percentage of your overall power. Healing surges are just the natural stopping point because it represents your ability to recover all your resources except dailies (short rest + surges, back to full hp, all encounter powers, a milestone every 2, etc.). Dailies are nice, but they don't compare to a caster blowing his biggest spells in a fight. Not to mention, all characters have dailies and its quite rare that they all get used up in the same fight.

It's just not seen as "pushing on" just because your dailies are gone.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

To me, Dailies are more akin to 1/day spell-like/psi-like abilities than Vancian spells.

With Vancian spells, you have a choice of which spells to learn and how many times to learn it (within your limitations). The next day, you may choose to learn a different mix.

Correct me if my recollection is off, but this was technically the case with the actual Dying Earth stories, though we never see a character learn duplicates of any given spell, and we have no idea as to the relative power of any spell mentioned. We also have no idea as to how many spells any character knows at any one time, we only know what the characters explicitly memorize for this purpose or that.

For the purposes of D&D, they codified and expanded the system Vance created, making it explicitly possible for a PC to learn multiple copies of a given spell.

In contrast, with SLA/PLAs, you simply have an ability you can use X/day. It never changes.

With 4Ed Dailies, again, you simply have an ability you can use 1/day- not really Vancian magic.

 

[Dionysos]

Sweet Zombie Jesus, somebody is once again prattling on about how there is no reason not to rest after every fight! I guess I'll explain D&D again.

REASONS NOT TO REST AFTER EVERY ENCOUNTER

1) The cultists will complete their ritual at the stroke of midnight. They must be stopped before then.

2) If we kill some of his minions and then retreat, the dragon will retaliate against the defenseless village.

3) We have to rescue the princess. If we retreat, the bandits will probably kill her before we get back.

4) Monsters that we kill will be replaced by different monsters next time we enter the dungeon. Possibly bigger, nastier ones.

5) Once the denizens of the dungeon realize we are assaulting it, they may remove the treasure to a different place.

6) We are famous heroes, and retreating after every fight makes us look like wimps. We have reputations to think about.

7) The Mystical Artifact that will save the world is at the bottom of the dungeon. Every day that passes means more disasters occur in the world. We must recover it quickly.

8) Our buddy has lycanthropy.We must find the ritual that cures it before he goes completely feral.

9) If we leave, all of the horrible traps that were so difficult to disarm will be reset.

10) If we leave after showing the enemy our tactics and capabilities, they will develop countermeasures that will totally annihilate us next time we come here.


There, ten right off the top of my head. I could probably do a hundred or more.

Given a DM with half a brain, there are actually relatively few scenarios that can be won by taking on a combat, going back to town, and then coming back.

This is one of those things you learn when you play the game instead of just theorize about it.

Sorry, I just find this complaint tiresome.

 

[Tuft]

Sweet Zombie Jesus, somebody is once again prattling on about how there is no reason not to rest after every fight! I guess I'll explain D&D again.

REASONS NOT TO REST AFTER EVERY ENCOUNTER

[...]

There, ten right off the top of my head. I could probably do a hundred or more.

Given a DM with half a brain, there are actually relatively few scenarios that can be won by taking on a combat, going back to town, and then coming back.

What happens when you've announced one of these reasons with much fanfare, and then the group has a stroke of bad luck and one or more characters run out of healing surges?

 

[DracoSuave]

10) If we leave after showing the enemy our tactics and capabilities, they will develop countermeasures that will totally annihilate us next time we come here.

This reminds me of a game of 3.x I ran where the players found fighting kobolds to be a challenging experience. The kobolds would hit and run and otherwise do things the party wasn't really ready for, so the party would conclude 'Hmmm... lots of crossbows, time to buy a towershield' and then go back to town, rest up, then buy the items that would make them superior. So they'd trash a few kobols, and their survivors would then go off, and warn the main camp about the pcs.

So soon the pcs would encounter kobolds that would have a plan to counter them. So back to town....

....

It literally became a tactical arms race between the PCs and this kobold tribe.

And yes, it was awesome for all.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What happens when you've announced one of these reasons with much fanfare, and then the group has a stroke of bad luck and one or more characters run out of healing surges?

If I or the other DMs in my current game groups were to run 4Ed like we ran previous editions? Generally, the consequences alluded to would happen. Quite simply put, none of us put up with the "15 minute day" before, and we aren't going to start now.

Simply put: In-game actions (or inactions) have to have consequences.

If their luck were spectacularly bad, though, that's where DM fudging/Deus Ex Machina intervenes and some other force in the campaign averts/mitigates/delays the consequences alluded to.

However, the fudge is a rare thing, and the players have to know they can't depend upon it.

If they start abusing the DM's occasional leniency and try to force a "15 minute day" on a more regular basis...well, like I stated above, the consequences alluded to would occur, and in full force.

 

[Dionysos]

What happens when you've announced one of these reasons with much fanfare, and then the group has a stroke of bad luck and one or more characters run out of healing surges?

I think you'll find that some of those (or the principles behind them anyway) apply in nearly every adventure. Any assault, if aborted, is going to have negative consequences when it resumes. Reinforcements have been called in, or the bad guys took the good stuff and absconded, or ambushes have been set, or the surviving bad guys developed tactics/tricks to deal with the PCs when they come back, etc, etc. One of those is bound to apply.

About the only sort of situation where there would be no consequences for breaking off and then coming back would be if there was a dungeon filled with mindless automatons who literally don't notice that they are under sporadic assault.

So, if your argument is that there is no incentive not not rest after every encounter in an adventure populated by mindless automatons who literally don't notice that they are under sporadic assault, then I must agree with you. Somehow, it isn't something that gets me hot and bothered, though.

As for adventures where there is a real external time constraint (and I demonstrated above that you don't need these external factors to provide incentives, as almost all adventures will naturally provide several), then the PCs suffer the consequences of failure or even (gasp!) a character who has run out of healing surges ends up dying.

Naturally, if you find that you have accidentally made your adventure unfairly hard, you can adjust it on the fly. But if it was a balanced adventure and bad luck strikes, then I guess something bad happens.

But then, this is all pretty basic DMing stuff, right?

 

[Dionysos]

This reminds me of a game of 3.x I ran where the players found fighting kobolds to be a challenging experience. The kobolds would hit and run and otherwise do things the party wasn't really ready for, so the party would conclude 'Hmmm... lots of crossbows, time to buy a towershield' and then go back to town, rest up, then buy the items that would make them superior. So they'd trash a few kobols, and their survivors would then go off, and warn the main camp about the pcs.

So soon the pcs would encounter kobolds that would have a plan to counter them. So back to town....

....

It literally became a tactical arms race between the PCs and this kobold tribe.

And yes, it was awesome for all.

That game sounds freaking hilarious. Seriously, that must have been really fun.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I think you'll find that some of those (or the principles behind them anyway) apply in nearly every adventure. Any assault, if aborted, is going to have negative consequences when it resumes. Reinforcements have been called in, or the bad guys took the good stuff and absconded, or ambushes have been set, or the surviving bad guys developed tactics/tricks to deal with the PCs when they come back, etc, etc. One of those is bound to apply.

About the only sort of situation where there would be no consequences for breaking off and then coming back would be if there was a dungeon filled with mindless automatons who literally don't notice that they are under sporadic assault.

So, if your argument is that there is no incentive not not rest after every encounter in an adventure populated by mindless automatons who literally don't notice that they are under sporadic assault, then I must agree with you. Somehow, it isn't something that gets me hot and bothered, though.

As for adventures where there is a real external time constraint (and I demonstrated above that you don't need these external factors to provide incentives, as almost all adventures will naturally provide several), then the PCs suffer the consequences of failure or even (gasp!) a character who has run out of healing surges ends up dying.

Naturally, if you find that you have accidentally made your adventure unfairly hard, you can adjust it on the fly. But if it was a balanced adventure and bad luck strikes, then I guess something bad happens.

But then, this is all pretty basic DMing stuff, right?

So what you are saying is that the world does not in fact operate and revolve completely around the actions of the PC's.

It sounds like someone needs a refresher course in PC entitlement 101.

Just kidding, sounds like a great campaign. I would rather have my characters die in a world where my choices mattered than survive in one where they didn't.