The 15 min. adventuring day... does 4e solve it?

[Gort]

Well... if a party is spending close to month or more clearing out a dungeon then they're certainly going to earn less during their adventuring careers... at least by my reckonin'. Not a bad tactical decision, but then neither is hiring a legion of soldiers to accompany the PC's while they adventure. Does it make a ton of sense? Not really, but is it better tactically to establish a wall of fodder that will allow the PC's to rain death on their enemies... yes.

I'd assume that a cautious party that likes to be at full healing surges/daily powers/etc would rationalise that they're going to enjoy their earnings far less if they're dead.

Hiring a legion of soldiers requires that there IS a legion of soldiers to hire, that they're willing to fight for money alone, that the local power players are fine with this new force appearing more-or-less out of nowhere, that the characters have the money to hire said legion, and that they are facing threats that the likely low-level legionnaires are capable of effectively combating.

The "one-day rest after every encounter" strategy only requires a cautious party that places less emphasis on milestone bonuses and time constraints than they do on the availability of daily powers. Which is pretty much how it was in 3e.

 

[Dave Turner]

I also disagree with your implication that a party that blows all its dailies every fight and then rests to get them back is "deciding to stop playing the game". They are playing the game, they're just taking their time about it to ensure that they are maximally effective in each encounter. And in the absence of a good reason to take their time about it, why is that a bad tactic?

This standard sets the bar far too low and doesn't properly come to grips with my criticism.

In the strictest standard, and by extension the lowest standard, players who embrace the 15-minute adventuring day are playing the game. There's no rule that explicitly forbids the 15-minute adventuring day. In that sense, 4e is a failure in preventing the 15-minute day. There is no explicit rule which states, for example, that the DM must triple the difficulty of subsequent encounters if the players adopt this strategy more than twice in a row. As you say:

Unless the GM puts in a time-limit for each adventure, there isn't anything to stop a party that wants to rest for 24 hours after each encounter to get their dailies back from doing so.

So players are still "playing the game" in the sense that what they're doing is legal within the rules of the game. But that's a threadbare standard to invoke when we talk about playing the game.

In chess, there's no rule that states that a player must move his piece within a specified time. Chess games are often timed by common consent of the participants, but there's no official rule in chess about how long a player has to make a move. If I walk away from the game for 50 years, are we still playing chess during that period? If I do not meaningfully engage with the rules and the game during that time, most would agree that I'm not playing chess in anything but the most semantic sense.

The 15-minute party is effectively doing the same thing, except that they (hopefully) aren't away from the game table for 50 years. The 15-minute party has no desire to interact with the rules of the game until they are at full strength. They completely isolate themselves (both in-game and in the rules), just like the chess player who steps away from the board. In effect, they want to freeze the game world until they are ready to engage with it again through the rules. When I pause a video game, I'm not playing during that pause except in a frivolous way. When I save my progress in a video game and return to it next week, I haven't been playing the game during the intervening week.

For the sake of consistency, I will also say that any party who takes an extended rest after a long series of encounters has also stopped playing the game. If you've exhausted your dailies and surges, in addition to having blown through a few milestones, you're ready to pause the game to refresh the characters. You're stopping play, in a legal way. D&D is unique in the sense that the players have the power to control the flow of play like this.

 

[Mercule]

never saw it in any edition of d&d or any RPG ive played.

I've played many editions of (A)D&D and 3e is the only place I've seen it. I actually watched a group of players move from the "conserve and push on" mentality to the 15 minute day mentality over the course of a couple of years. It was painful.

 

[frankthedm]

Decoupling XP from "creatures killed" is needed to stop the 15-minute adventuring day. Even with story awards, if defeating creatures is worth XP, the party still profits from stopping to rest. If instead the party will receive the same XP reward whether they press on and clear the dungeon in one day or repeatedly camp and allow the enemy to reinforce their numbers, you’ll see the party be far more likely top get the job done ASAP.

 

[CleverNickName]

Like a lot of 'problems' 4e proclaims to fix, it's something I'd never encountered before in an actual game, nor heard talked about as a problem till the past few months.

Shemeska is good, Shemeska is wise.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Shemeska is good, Shemeska is wise.

I wonder if people that haven't run into at least some of the problems did ever play stuff like the Adventure Paths from Dungeon. Because I know I experienced this "15 minute work-day" mostly in these scenarios. I can't really say if it happened earlier... Memory can be so incredibly fuzzy...

 

[Raven Crowking]

In my experience, unless your players also dislike the "15 minute adventuring day", there's really nothing to stop them from having an encounter, blowing all their powers starting with the dailies and working down, then resting for the rest of the day.

If only someone had realized that the fix WotC was offering wouldn't fix this problem, and then posted about it (and why it would not fix the problem) at length before 4e was released........

Oh, wait. That happened.


RC

 

[AllisterH]

There _IS_ a difference with 4E frankly.

The fact that as a DM, I don't feel like I'm screwing over the players if I send more enemies after they've unloaded their dailies and yet those encounters won't be total cakewalks but neither will they be TPKs.

 

[Ahglock]

If only someone had realized that the fix WotC was offering wouldn't fix this problem, and then posted about it (and why it would not fix the problem) at length before 4e was released........

Oh, wait. That happened.


RC

Yeah. apparently it is widespread enough in order for WOTC to address the issue. But for those who do this, 4e at best gives the DM some leeway in when he has the enemies perform a retaliatory strike the PCs aren't totally tapped.

Personally I'm not sure how people tapped out there goods in 3e, fights seemed to last like 3 rounds no one is blowing through too many expendables other than HP in 3 rounds. And unless some expansions really layered the buff spells how many buff spells can you have up that items don't already handle.

Still if you like to nova in 3e, in 4e the nova resources are dailies and healing surges so have at it.

If WOTC wanted to get rid of the 15 minute workday they should have removed dailies and let people heal up to full out of combat with a short rest and no other resource expenditure.

 

[Fenes]

I wonder if people that haven't run into at least some of the problems did ever play stuff like the Adventure Paths from Dungeon. Because I know I experienced this "15 minute work-day" mostly in these scenarios. I can't really say if it happened earlier... Memory can be so incredibly fuzzy...

Those adventure paths have about 90% too much combat for my taste.