Of all the complaints about 3.x systems... do you people actually allow this stuff ?

[Number48]

4E dailies were a huge headache for me when I was running 4E. My game had less combat than the standard defined game, so characters could reasonably use their daily power in the first combat and have to by the second combat or it might be wasted. IOW, having less combat in a game means that the characters get more dailies per, say, 12 combats than the standard. This made them comparatively more powerful. Manageable, but a headache and I don't believe it was ever addressed in the books. So, let's get rid of powers based upon a variable recharge.

 

[Hussar]

On the topic of the 15 MAD and Pacing:

Ok, I've seen this go back and forth a few times and I really have to ask - just how much time do you think the 15 MAD adds to an adventure? Do you honestly think it adds enough to matter in the long run? If it does, you're basically running a fantasy version of 24.

Break it down. Take two groups, Fast Group and Slow Group. Fast Group averages 8 encounters per adventuring day, Slow Group averages 1 (it's a REALLY slow group).

Now, they both enter a 15 encounter dungeon. Fast Group finishes in 2 game days, Slow Group in 15. 13 day difference right? Extend that over 20 levels. That's a total difference of 260 days of TWENTY levels. Less than one year - just about 9 months total spread over 20 levels. How long does a 20 level campaign last in game time? 3 years? 5 years? The difference between Fast Group and Slow Group is negligible at the outside.

And that's presuming a lot. For one, Slow Group will die a lot less. After all, it's bringing maximum firepower to every encounter. Fast group can only afford to use about 10% of resources per encounter. So, Fast Group dies more often, meaning that it levels up slower, reducing that 260 day spread. Secondly, this presumes that Fast Group can actually face that many encounters on average. There are numerous scenarios where you only have 1-4 encounters on that game day - a lair, a random encounter, set piece battle, what have you. Every time that happens, the spread between Fast Group and Slow Group gets narrower.

Realistically, the spread is probably closer to 100 days, maybe 150 at the outside. Over twenty levels, the difference between the two groups is probably only a few months.

The idea that "The world keeps on moving" doesn't work. It demonstrably doesn't work. Unless your game world is so frenetically fast that four or five months spread over twenty levels makes a difference, it just doesn't matter.

It's not about "good DM" or "bad DM". It really isn't. The 15 MAD, to me, is just D&D. It always has been D&D. We did this since pretty much day 1 in D&D. The cleric runs out of spells, you stop. If you don't stop, you die. I've never seen a very good explanation for how groups manage to do 5-8 encounters without dying. The only way it could work is if the encounters were well below the PC's weight class since the math doesn't work otherwise. That or you have some very seriously generous DM fudging going on.

Either way, it's not something I'm interested in engaging in in my games.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The idea that "The world keeps on moving" doesn't work. It demonstrably doesn't work.

That's your POV.

There are others whose experience is 180 degrees from that; that it demonstrably DOES work. Like mine.

I've never seen a very good explanation for how groups manage to do 5-8 encounters without dying. The only way it could work is if the encounters were well below the PC's weight class since the math doesn't work otherwise. That or you have some very seriously generous DM fudging going on.

You mean you haven't seen an explanation you accept.

You and I have gone round and round on this: my experience as a DM and player says otherwise- I've seen no systematic fudging, no difference in the softness of encounters.

 

[Number48]

I've never seen a very good explanation for how groups manage to do 5-8 encounters without dying. The only way it could work is if the encounters were well below the PC's weight class since the math doesn't work otherwise. That or you have some very seriously generous DM fudging going on.

You've never seen my dice rolling. My groups can theoretically handle infinite encounters in a row, since I can't hit them. And, no, it isn't that the monsters aren't appropriate. The rat dragon I sent at them was far above their level and only managed to minorly inconvenience them.

 

[pemerton]

If you rest after every encounter or two then you always have your best resources and HP, regardless of what edition or game you are playing.

The 15 minute workday applies to 4e as well. Your dudes could go in blow their dailies rest and do it again. There is nothing in the rules preventing them from doing so and it would provide a huge tactical advantage.

Not that huge, for a couple of reasons.

Most important is the change in the healing mechanics. PCs can be expected to be at or very near to full hit points at the start of each combat encounter (because they will have spent healing surges during their short rest), and the constraint on in-combat healing is not healing surges per se, but the capacity to access them (via spells, items, second wind etc). The fighter in my game has 14 healing surges. In a typical combat he will use 3 or 4 of them. From the healing point of view, then, he is no worse off going into a combat with 4 surges remaining than with 14. This is very different from earlier versions of D&D, where the player of the fighter may well be wary of entering combat with only 25% or 30% of hit points remaining - in those circumstances, one or two good hits from the enemies might kill you!

A second change is that daily powers are not as superior to encounter or at will powers, as are traditional D&D spells compared to mundane attacks by a wizard (low level clerics are good mundane combatants at low levels, but in classic D&D they also start to weaken a bit at mid-to-high levels). This is in part just a reduction in scaling between at-will, encounter and daily powers, and also because (at least for my group) the daily powers are often somewhat conditional in their utility, and so won't be pulled out for certain sorts of fights (for example, a daily which is strong because it allows three targets to be attacked typically won't be used in a combat with fewer than three dangerous foes).

It may be that my group is very idiosyncratic, but these changes have been enough to make the 15-minute day all but go away, whereas in our Rolemaster game - which, like pre-4e D&D, does not have a "reserves" approach to healing, and like pre-4e D&D has daily resources being much stronger than mundane/at-will ones - it was the norm. In Rolemaster, the players would rest once all spell points were spent, and that could easily be after an encounter or two. In 4e they rest once all healing surges are spent, and that genrally takes 4 or more encounters.

You say you have a problem with the 15 MWD, yet you encourage its use. My sympathies are limited by the fact that it is your choice.

If you are having fun playing that way, then you have no grounds for complaint. If you aren't having fun, then there are things that you could do to handle the problem, but choose not to.

That is not a problem with the rules, that is a problem with the GM and/or players. If you do not enjoy the 15 MAD then don't reward it!

*EDIT* I will agree that some advice on handling the 15 MAD should be in any 5e DMG. I just don't think that there should be rules about it. Just guidelines.

I have not had the problem beyond that one time, and then the problem fixed itself because I did nothing to make it a useful tactic. The bad guys weren't idiots, and took advantage of the fact that the 'heroes' decided to hide out for a little while.

As I mentioned earlier, this seems to be somewhat scenario-specific. In particular, it seems to posit the PCs tackling an active opposition, rather than something more passive. It also seems to require a willingness to have the PCs fail off-stage.

For those who (i) want the passive "opponent" option (eg ruins exploration), and/or (ii) want the "failures only happen onstage" option, then the 15-minute day is a rules problem, given that - with changes to the rules - those sorts of scenarios and approaches can be made eminently playable.

Unless your game world is so frenetically fast that four or five months spread over twenty levels makes a difference, it just doesn't matter.

The ingame time for my group has always tended to be ridiculously short. For example, in the current 15 level campaign about two months of game time has passed - the party has only just finished rescuing some prisoners that they started trying to help at 2nd level, and they still haven't raided the mountain stronghold of the cultists and armies that they have been fighting since 1st level.

The actual maths of this works out pretty sensibly for a 4e game - 2 months equals about 60 days, or about 4 days per level, or an average of 2 to 3 encounters per day - many days would have more than that, and others fewer due to travelling, scouting, resting, etc. The frenetic pace has nothing to do with suffering or avoiding 15 minute days, nor with players or PCs being lazy or energetic. It's a consequence of the mechanics.

My group actually handles this tendency to freneticness through a type of "cognitive dissonance" between real time and game time: because those 15 levels of play have taken about 3 years, it doesn't feel as frenetic as it in fact is in the fiction.

But given that the game is about as frenetic as it could be (and my Rolemaster games were no different) it's not as if I could, or would want to, add in furthert ime pressures to change the incentives for resting.

 

[hanez]

For those who want the "failures only happen onstage" option

How is that a realistic option for DMs? Are you suggesting you only want to throw challenges at your players where time is not a factor? Can the onstage descision to rest have consequences while the players are carrying out that action?

 

[LostSoul]

The 20-minute adventuring day only exists if the player characters operate in a vacuum. If the world around them changes and responds to their tactics, then they'll soon learn that it's often much better not to give the enemies another day to prepare.

And yes, the enemies also have powerful spells at their disposal. Ones that allow them to learn more about the PCs, their headquarters, favorite watering places, families and loved ones.

This is, I think, a good solution to the 15-minute adventuring day.

(Wandering monsters don't work in 3E because it's usually a good thing to fight them if you're up against a timeline or reactive scenario - the XP gain you get is going to make you level up faster. When I played Red Hand of Doom we tried to attract wandering monsters.)

However, how much of this is part of 3E's system in the way that, say, the Caves of Chaos were restocked in Keep on the Borderlands? I think it's easy to write advice that tells DMs to do the above, but without guidelines that detail how it should happen, I think it's an oversight of an important feature of the game.

For one thing, how do the players base their decisions when the information they have is so slight? "If we rest, bad things will happen." What bad things? Maybe that cost is worth it. Maybe not. How do you judge? How do you get information to inform that decision? (How do you get information to inform the decision that you should spend time - spells or gather information checks - gathering that information? eg. Should I spend the evening Gathering Information to see how much time we have or will that cause me to fail in my goal?)

For another, I've found it much more difficult to develop this sort of thing - you have to make massive judgement calls that will shape the game - without guidelines. Guidelines make it much easier to referee the game.

An then, sometimes you want to have a 15-minute adventuring day. Sometimes the PCs should be able to "go nova" and rest, especially if it's due to their own smart choices.

I play a 4E hack and I don't concern myself with the 15-minute adventuring day. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one is that I wrote a system to handle NPC growth and actions. These take place on a long enough time scale that I don't have to worry about NPC reactions much during a session (unless, you know, they're assaulting a bandit lair). If the players choose to rest after every encounter, I know the game will still work. That may be a foolish decision (or a smart one), but that's not my concern.

 

[Phaezen]

How is that a realistic option for DMs? Are you suggesting you only want to throw challenges at your players where time is not a factor? Can the onstage descision to rest have consequences while the players are carrying out that action?

While time is a factor challenges help mitigate the problem, you can only throw them at the party so many times before it starts becoming stale.

 

[FireLance]

4E dailies were a huge headache for me when I was running 4E. My game had less combat than the standard defined game, so characters could reasonably use their daily power in the first combat and have to by the second combat or it might be wasted. IOW, having less combat in a game means that the characters get more dailies per, say, 12 combats than the standard. This made them comparatively more powerful. Manageable, but a headache and I don't believe it was ever addressed in the books. So, let's get rid of powers based upon a variable recharge.

It seems to me that the solution would be to simply run 4e without the daily powers. Since most characters have the same number of daily powers, it's a change that will affect them equally.

If you're running a previous edition, you might need to do something more drastic, such as reducing all spells per day of the spellcasters and other per day abilities (3e barbarian rage, 3e paladin smites) by 75% or so (on the assumption of a 4-encounter adventuring day).

 

[Siberys]

Another possibility is to space extended rests narratively; which is to say, either put an encounter "quota" in effect (only take an extended rest after x encounters), or only allow them at planned points throughout the adventure, as per required by the story or by the combat pacing.