Rule of Three 2/28

[pemerton]

It might. But I imagine it wouldn't be the same resources (e.g.: not hit points or daily attacks).

Who said it wouldn't? A talking encounter might consume a charm spell, cash or food used as a bribe, political capital, reputation, time, etc.

But unless you're making payoffs with combat critical magic items, it's not going to consume the same pool of resources as combat.

Have they indicated yet that there will be this sort of silo-ing?

It's not obvious or inherent that the different pillars will draw on different resources. In AD&D, for example, a Charm or Suggestion spell can be either a combat or a non-combat resource. So might gold, because you can either use it to bribe people, or to distract pursuing monsters. In spell-point systems, both combat and non-combat spell draw on the same resourc pool. In some systems with metagame resources (Fate Points, Hero Points or the idea I've seen in some threads around of redubbing Healing Surges "Heroic Surges" and making them into a more versatile resource; pre-Essentials 4e has a distinctive version of this sort of thing with its daily magic item limit.)

Because talking consumes nothing other than air?

Having no action resolution mechanics for interaction would be an especially extreme form of siloing!

 

[am181d]

My preferred approach would be to skew more towards Encounter-Based abilities, with heroes recovering most of their HP automatically after a short (5 minute) rest.

Daily powers should be rare and awesome.

 

[hanez]

WHenever my players did the 10 minute workday I simply had one kobold figure they were there and if the players failed there listen check he would quietly wake all the other kobolds up, and they'd all attack at once. I would also make sure to add about 20 kobolds for good measure. Great way to end the adventure early, didn't punish the party too much (unless they died) and the party might learn this isn't the smartest tactic to do in an enemy lair.

 

[Hussar]

WHenever my players did the 10 minute workday I simply had one kobold figure they were there and if the players failed there listen check he would quietly wake all the other kobolds up, and they'd all attack at once. I would also make sure to add about 20 kobolds for good measure. Great way to end the adventure early, didn't punish the party too much (unless they died) and the party might learn this isn't the smartest tactic to do in an enemy lair.

So much for the sandbox approach to adventure design. Hrmm, how is this extremely hamfisted punishing the players for not playing the way you want to play? Adding 20 kobolds for good measure? The kobold just happens to "find" the party?

Yeah, no thanks.

 

[Endur]

"Entire day" encounters? Strategic resource management (he says over the course of a day, which still seems short to me, but eh, it's a step in the right direction!.

I think 10 minute adventure days are a story thing. Sure, you can do it in a computer game if the game does not have a timer.

But in a role-playing game like AD&D, wandering monster tables exist for a reason. And if you rest for no reason, the odds of a wandering monster showing up will increase.

Not to mention that Kobolds and other intelligent enemies will setup all kinds of traps in the six hours or longer that you are resting.

If you are using rope trick or some other alternative dimension magic to rest without interference from wandering monsters... well that is a good thing, you should get value from your magic. But if you use it too often, some monster will figure out what you are doing. Or they will do it to you.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

To any GMs who've had a problem preventing the 15-minute workday in the past: how did the characters get away with it? Why wasn't the artifact long gone by the time they woke up?

The one campaign where it became a REALLY big problem I ran 2 different purchased adventures: Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and Return to Maure Castle from a Dungeon magazine.

There will be spoilers about these adventures if anyone doesn't want to be spoiled, don't read further.






In RttToEE, most of the adventure takes place in a super mega dungeon divided into 5 pieces(or more depending on how you look at it), there are 4 temples for each of the 4 elements. Most of their "temples" are separated by areas of underground tunnel where neutral monsters live. There is then the Inner Fane where the leaders of the bad guys live.

The temples are mostly at war with each other. So, they would just as soon see the other temples be wiped out as help them. Also, they've been living here undiscovered by the world for many years. Their religion is banned and probably would have them hunted down in any country in the world if anyone found out about them. Plus, this location is a holy site to their god.

So, the PCs would teleport in and attack one of the temples. They'd fight 1 or 2 encounters, then teleport or run out. The temple in question would lose half their fighting power, given that most of the temples only had about 30-40 members, and each fight had 5-10 of the members in it. They didn't warn the other temples because they didn't want to seem weak.

The neutral monsters never found out about the attacks because they weren't affiliated with any of the temples and most of them had animal intelligence.

The Inner Fane explicitly didn't care about what happened to the temples since they were pitting all of their followers against each other on purpose and wanted to use the temples as a buffer to keep the PCs occupied while they completed their ritual to free their imprisoned god, who would then destroy the world and remake it in his image. He was the most powerful of all the gods and likely would be able to do it.

You may ask, if the PCs kept teleporting out after each encounter, why didn't the ritual finish, thus destroying the world? Twofold: The adventure didn't specify how much time the ritual took to complete, but implied that seasons might change over the course of the game while the ritual is performed. It basically said "It's not a good idea to destroy the whole game world, so it takes as long as it needs to for the adventurers to complete their mission." Plus, with the PCs having no way to know how long the ritual would take to complete, just having the world end one day and saying "So sorry, the world ended since it took you over 2 months to stop the bad guys" wouldn't have been fun for anyone, even me.

Then, after completing that adventure, they went on to Return to Castle Maure. This adventure is a matter of exploring a strange dungeon that has been abandoned for over 100 years. There's no particular goal. I just told the PCs to find an item somewhere inside of it, but it wasn't life or death, just someone paying them to find the item because it was rare.

All of the monsters were either insane, undead without intelligence, or golems without intelligence. With a couple of monsters that had some intelligence on the bottom levels of the dungeons who never went above their levels...some of which who hadn't left their rooms in over 100 years.

The PCs teleported in, killed one room of monsters, and teleported out. They explored a room or two a day.

I've found that 90% or more of the adventures I've run don't have a hard and fast time limit on them. Partially because it's more fun for me if the PCs arrive in the nick of time to stop the villain so I don't set hard and fast times for things. I know a lot of other people say they put a lot of time limits on things...but I don't.

 

[tlantl]

Personally, I'm interested in seeing a better system.

Such as?

I imagine they could give spell casters even more power. Unlimited use of spells that just break the game, maybe?

I think the best they can do short of tossing out the wizard class altogether is to advise players and dungeon masters how to maximize the players spells.

I guess if people are going to waste resources and then retreat to rest until tomorrow then they represent the problem. Until they learn to play better there is no way to fix it.

A dungeon master should know before the game even starts where the party is going to use up all or most of their spells and other resources. If he can't then maybe he should find a seat on the other side of the screen and let someone more capable do the work.

I place the stuff in the dungeon. I plan out each and every encounter. I know where to expect the group to use up most of their stuff. I intentionally place encounters with the expectation that they will deplete the casters hoard of spells. Then I make them worry about getting out of the place so they can rest. It really isn't that hard.

Perhaps if the mage wasn't trying to blow everything up all the time then she might not have to lament being out of spells when the party could really use one.

 

[Argyle King]

To any GMs who've had a problem preventing the 15-minute workday in the past: how did the characters get away with it? Why wasn't the artifact long gone by the time they woke up?

As a player, I've seen it mostly become a problem in two games.

In the one game which comes to mind, the party was less-than-good (some were evil); as such, they didn't have many of the concerns a normal party would have. "The local village will be destroyed? I don't know anyone there."

In the second game which comes to mind, the party just got tired of always running to save the day. Sometimes I call this the 'Superman problem.' Superman is so powerful that many stories revolve around Superman needing to run to the rescue of Lois Lane and the various other people he cares about. Two powers which Superman has (though is not stated to have) must be super-patience and super-understanding because a lot of people I know would feel as though Lois should probably take a few self defense classes after being abducted for the Nth time. This happened in a game I played in where the party was constantly rushing to save a village or NPC; eventually, a few members of the party got numb to the needs of the local village because they felt as though the village didn't show enough of an effort to want to help themselves not be constantly assaulted.

There is also a third way I have seen it become a problem; this is not unique to any specific game. It is something I have seen in both 3rd Edition and 4th, and I have seen it in multiple games. Things such as magic circle, rope trick, dimensional daggers, and various other powers, spells, rituals, and items make it fairly easy to rest. Many of those options are very cheap and easy to acquire.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I place the stuff in the dungeon. I plan out each and every encounter. I know where to expect the group to use up most of their stuff. I intentionally place encounters with the expectation that they will deplete the casters hoard of spells. Then I make them worry about getting out of the place so they can rest. It really isn't that hard.

I disagree. That is hard. Back when I ran 2e/3e/3.5e, I didn't even keep a copy of the PCs characters sheets. I couldn't tell you how many spells they had or what they were. I didn't know what spells they had in their spellbooks.

I concentrated on my side of the screen and left their side to them. I concentrated on asking questions like "Why is this tribe of Orcs living in this cave?", "How many members do they have?", "What is their levels?", "What spells do they have prepared?", "Where do they keep their treasure?", "Would it make more sense for their bedrooms to be in the back or front of the cave?", "How many of them are sleeping at any one time?", "Where would they hide the item the PCs will be looking for?"

When I got to running 3e/3.5e instead of 2e, I started considering CRs and "fair and balanced" groups of enemies instead. I came up with reasons why the first room contains only 2 Orcs, each of which is CR 8 so that there is an EL 10 encounter. Then came up with reasons why the rest of the cave doesn't attack since I've seen what a EL 15 or 20 encounter can do to a group of level 8 PCs.

But, I've never created encounters around how many spells it'll take them to solve it. Even if I did try that, there's no way to predict it. I've used an EL10 encounter against level 8 PCs, which I expect to use up 30-40% of their resources for the day(as per the DMG) and assume that 3 of them will use up all their spells. More often they use 1 spell each encounter and can fight 10 more of them.

 

[tlantl]

[MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION];

I learned early on that there are those sitting across the table who are less than honest. even the trustworthy ones would feel pressured and fudge a roll or conveniently find just the right piece of equipment to save their bacon, so I usually kept a current copy of everyone's character. Was a time I held them between games to keep tabs on them but it felt wrong so I stopped. Regardless I always had a list of their treasure and spells.

In 3e combat took three times as long as it did with the other systems so we got way less done on sunday. Since we only got two or three fights in before our time was up there was never a problem with resource management. Besides I was the only one using a spell caster in the two groups I ran.

Makes it easier to keep a reserve of spells if you know what you need to cast. I usually had a ton of cure spells ready.