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

[Nifft]

The only way, IMO, to avoid the resting issue is to have all powers be at-will and have all combatants return to 100% after every battle.

Ugh.

That's my only complaint about the ToB:Bo9S classes. Because they return to 100%, and can do so even during a fight, every fight starts to look the same. Best powers get used first, then worse powers, until they refresh and start over.

D&D is (in part) a resource-management game.

I'm not saying 4e is perfect in this regard, but at least it has a resource-management aspect, and they've done a decent job in rewarding "pressing on" (thanks in no small part to Milestones, and particularly to how certain magic items get better after you hit one).

In previous editions, there's no mechanical reason to fight more than once per day.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Which, in my opinion, isn't all that bad a suggestion...

I'd almost go so far as to say that 4e's resource management, even as greatly relaxed as it is, is only there to be faithful to a sacred cow that escaped.

EDIT: A "return to 100% after every fight" style of game would feel even more like Champions (or any other supers game).

Ugh.

That's my only complaint about the ToB:Bo9S classes. Because they return to 100%, and can do so even during a fight, every fight starts to look the same. Best powers get used first, then worse powers, until they refresh and start over.

D&D is (in part) a resource-management game.

I'm not saying 4e is perfect in this regard, but at least it has a resource-management aspect, and they've done a decent job in rewarding "pressing on" (thanks in no small part to Milestones, and particularly to how certain magic items get better after you hit one).

In previous editions, there's no mechanical reason to fight more than once per day.

Cheers, -- N

I haven't tried th Bo9S classes, but I've played a Warlock, that is as "encounter power only" as you can get. I found it a little... boring sometimes. Always doing the same few things (of course, the Warlock is worse off then a 4E character with a few at-wills and encounter powers).
What I missed most, though, was the ability to pull out the big guns. There are encounters that are harder then others. There are encounters where you start with a string of bad luck. And that's where it would be great to have such a big gun - a limited resource that you won't use lightly, but if you do, you know it can make a difference.


Oh, and some blog stuff on extending the adventure day. (Focuses on 4E, but I added a small passage for 3E - some concepts can be used in 3E - or already have been...)

 

[Wyrmshadows]

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.

Same here. I have gamed with many, many folks over the last 25yrs and the 15min. adventuring day was never a problem. I have even asked my players about this issue and all I got was blank stares as if they never considered it a problem. However, having said that, I don't run combat centered campaigns. There are parts of my campaigns that are very heavy in combat and sessions where there may be no combat at all.

I think this "problem" is one encountered primarily by combat-centered groups.

I think that some of the issues 4e is designed to fix were issues to a certain segment of the gaming population. The 15 min adventuring day, the OMG wizards are God, fighters suxxors etc. have existed to one degree or another perhaps, but they were marketed strongly and promoted prior to the coming of 4e so as to show just how "broken" 3e was.

WoTC created the disease....poor pitiful 3/3.5e.....and the cure 4e. Good marketing concept even if the implementation and PR could have used some work.


Wyrmshadows

 

[Slife]

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.

Hmmmm? I think you're confusing the in-game and meta-game levels?

An analogy to your chess example would be the DM wandering off to get Cheetos in the middle of a battle.

If I say "each move in the chess game represents ten thousand million billion years", does that mean I'm not interacting with the game's rules for ten thousand million billion years every time I move a piece? I think not.

 

[Celtavian]

re

The 'prisoner' is called Ned Shakeshaft and he is a 3rd level assassin, though he will announce himself as a 2nd level thief if questioned..

Is the above quote for Sinister Secret of Staltmarsh?

 

[firesnakearies]

Whether it's a 15-minute adventure day, or a 2-hour one (see my thoughts here), or a 4-hour one even, the bottom line is that healing surges will run out and force the party to rest in a period of in-game time which I consider to be unreasonably short.

The problem isn't a mechanical one, for me. I think the mechanics of the 4E system are lovely and elegant. On paper. They work great . . . if you're not trying to tell/co-create a story that makes any kind of consistent sense.

So, my players want or need to rest after just a few hours in the dungeon, after only defeating 20-30% of the enemies within, perhaps. I know that if they proceed, they'll die. They know it too. So what do I do?

I can just let them take the 16-20 hours in-game and rest, unmolested and with no negative consequences, completely disregarding any kind of logic as well as ignoring the glaring inconsistency this presents in comparison with any fantasy story that I'm aware of. That makes the game work best, and a lot of DMs probably do it, and thus have no problem.

Or, I can apply some kind of logical ramifications of the PCs busting into some lair of villains, killing a couple dozen of them, leaving many others alive, and then deciding to hole up in or near the dungeon for a LOT of hours to sleep. Surely they'll be discovered, surely an alarm will be raised, no?

Do I send monsters to attack them in their camp? This would probably actually happen frequently given the situation, but if I do it, the party probably dies. And it feels like punishing them for just doing what the system forces them to. That's no fun for anyone.

Do I instead have the alerted foes rally and bolster their defenses, thus making the rest of the dungeon harder than it was meant to be? Again, punishing the PCs for playing the way they're supposed to.

Do I give the PCs a motivation for pressing onward by having some kind of time limit or urgent situation which will result in tragedy if they delay? This is probably going to get them killed, unless I just make the adventure really easy. And how fun is that?

Do I contrive every adventure setup to include just a perfect amount of encounters, just perfect places to rest without screwing themselves, just perfect layouts of location to be ideally convenient for an adventure using the 4th edition D&D ruleset? That's not only a lot of work for me, it's also very fake-feeling, and ties my hands creatively quite a lot.

What about published adventures? With the exception of the really short ones like Kobold Hall and the RPGA 4-hour modules, running any kind of published dungeon is going to be practically impossible without running afoul of this problem, changing the modules a lot, or contriving completely absurd rationales all the time. "No, for some reason, all of the rest of the bandits in this bandit compound just never bother to go over to the area you cleared out, and don't notice the pile of bodies you left, or wonder where George is. You rest for 20 hours and come back to find everything as normal."

In 3rd edition, at least the PCs had craploads of wands and scrolls after about 4th or 5th level. Every Tom, Dick, and bugbear barbarian had a backpack full of cure x wounds wands, so running out of healing was sort of a non-issue. There were problems with this, and actually I'm really glad that they did away with it in 4E. I think the game is measurably better without all of that.

But it leaves us with this hole now where the PCs just don't have the hit point/healing resources to get through a full day of adventuring, and there's absolutely no way within the system to circumvent that, not even at 30th level. All that one can do is either deliberately run the game in a stupid, immersion-breaking, story-killing way that everyone at the table can sense is a bit silly . . . OR change the rules themselves, which brings up the whole concern of "Am I breaking the balance of the game's design with this change?"

I don't think it's insurmountable, I just wish that this issue had already been taken into account by the framers of the new rules.

 

[Celtavian]

re

Did you ever play any 3e Necromancer Games modules?

Even discounting the psychology of some players to "go nova," there were A LOT of Necromancer modules-- indeed, any kind of "status quo" adventure-- where the players, through no fault of their own, were depleted after one or two rooms/encounters, such that continuing would be folly.

And so, they (wisely) retreat and replenish. That's just smart play.

And so when I personally talk about fixing the 15 minute adventuring day, that's primarily what I am talking about. I see no reason to "penalize" the PCs 23 hours for smart play that arises primarily from campaign verisimilitude!

I'd much rather give them some "quick rest" mechanic to get them back into the adventure in a reasonable and realistic way.

It's not about curtailing "go nova" behavior. It's about preserving verisimilitude. To me, it is more damaging to campaign verisimilitude to have the players rest for 23 hours than it would be to just "reset" the clock on their daily powers and let them continue with the story.

It only takes eight hours of rest for the mage to get his spells back. I always assumed adventurers work at night as well as day. When I did overland travel or daily time calculations, I calculated as though they would walk 8 or ten hours, eat quickly, rest 6 or 8 hours, travel, rinse and repeat. What do adventurers care if they are walking at night?

The only person that might have a problem is the cleric. The party started a fun to maintain wand and staff healing in 3.5 to offset the cleric's problem of spell depletion.

 

[Nifft]

I haven't tried th Bo9S classes, but I've played a Warlock, that is as "encounter power only" as you can get. I found it a little... boring sometimes. Always doing the same few things (of course, the Warlock is worse off then a 4E character with a few at-wills and encounter powers).

What I missed most, though, was the ability to pull out the big guns. There are encounters that are harder then others. There are encounters where you start with a string of bad luck. And that's where it would be great to have such a big gun - a limited resource that you won't use lightly, but if you do, you know it can make a difference.

I think you're right -- Warlocks share the same essential "always 100%" problem. They do get quite good at Use Magic Device, so in theory you could buy some big guns, but the ability to buy magic stuff may be limited in any given campaign.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Plane Sailing]

For me the 15MinuteDay is when the party sees a hallway with 2 doors to either side, and a set of double doors at the end. They clear the 4 side rooms, but since the monsters therein were all CR=PL, they are now underpowered to continue, so they retreat. When they are renewed again, they return to face whatever is behind the double doors and continue on.

In my experience CR was such a blunt instrument and the results of the combat are so dependent on the luck of the dice that in the above example the party could have been completely shagged after 2 side rooms or fresh as a daisy after completing all 4.

I would be surprised if the DMG "four encounters a day" idea actually worked in the real world in most cases

 

[Celtavian]

re

Whether it's a 15-minute adventure day, or a 2-hour one (see my thoughts here), or a 4-hour one even, the bottom line is that healing surges will run out and force the party to rest in a period of in-game time which I consider to be unreasonably short.

The problem isn't a mechanical one, for me. I think the mechanics of the 4E system are lovely and elegant. On paper. They work great . . . if you're not trying to tell/co-create a story that makes any kind of consistent sense.

So, my players want or need to rest after just a few hours in the dungeon, after only defeating 20-30% of the enemies within, perhaps. I know that if they proceed, they'll die. They know it too. So what do I do?

I can just let them take the 16-20 hours in-game and rest, unmolested and with no negative consequences, completely disregarding any kind of logic as well as ignoring the glaring inconsistency this presents in comparison with any fantasy story that I'm aware of. That makes the game work best, and a lot of DMs probably do it, and thus have no problem.

Remember they only have to rest 6 hours in 4th edition to replenish dailies and healing surges. Adventurers are the kind of people that operate like a special operations force. That means limited rest.

Do I contrive every adventure setup to include just a perfect amount of encounters, just perfect places to rest without screwing themselves, just perfect layouts of location to be ideally convenient for an adventure using the 4th edition D&D ruleset? That's not only a lot of work for me, it's also very fake-feeling, and ties my hands creatively quite a lot.

No. I think the PCs should be forced to find a place to set up a hidden camp. Think of it in terms of a special operations force operating behind enemy lines. Spec ops forces set up hidden camps that they operate from while doing their job behind enemy lines. They plan guard rotations and sleep schedules to get their team replenished for the day of work.

That's what the party should be doing. They should retreat when they want to rest pulling completely out of the dungeon to their hidden camp.

But it leaves us with this hole now where the PCs just don't have the hit point/healing resources to get through a full day of adventuring, and there's absolutely no way within the system to circumvent that, not even at 30th level. All that one can do is either deliberately run the game in a stupid, immersion-breaking, story-killing way that everyone at the table can sense is a bit silly . . . OR change the rules themselves, which brings up the whole concern of "Am I breaking the balance of the game's design with this change?"

I've been wondering about this myself. I haven't ran into the healing surge wall yet in 4E. I think once I have a feel for what the party can take as far as encounters go, I'll better be able to design encounters the way I like to design them. Right now I am a bit reticent about designing encounters using my old model because I know healing is limited.

I still do think about encounters in terms of intelligent tactics like pressing the monsters into a narrow space for handling numbers, separating them to lower group abilities, and just all around good tactics. I've always been of the opinion that parties that use poor tactics deserve to die.

But I don't want to start throwing waves of monsters at the PCs until I see how they handle a series of encounters. The monsters in 4E are much stronger than in 3E. I almost killed one of my party members with some Goblin Sharpshooters. That was the second encounter of the dungeon. The Goblin Sharpshooters had a better chance to hit than most of the party and did good damage, especially when they ambushed the lead characters.

These new 4E monsters are going to take getting used to. They are very dangerous for even level opponents with about the same chance to hit as the characters if not better. You can't throw waves of monsters at the PCs because they'll die.

I hope it scales better at higher level like 3E did. But I get the feeling the players won't become much stronger than what they are fighting. It seems the game wasn't designed for that to happen. But we shall see.