From all my experience with video and tabletop games I've learned that players have an instinct to rest when they can and continue if they feel they don't have to.
If you add a consequence to resting/heading back, players are less likely to do so. Many DMs are good at this and are adept at organically creating time sensitive quests and organically removing safe places to rest. Some DMs aren't. And even then it does get silly if every quest is time sensitive to the day, there are no moderately safe places rest, or every monster has the upgradable daily resources to bulk up after seeing adventurers' handiwork.
But if you go the other route and mechanically give players a reason to continue, they are more likely to do so.
so.
Look at video games where dead enemies drop health potions/orbs at a noticeable rate. Players will gravitate to crazy treasure hunting bersekers if they feel that their resources can be restored a bit it the next room.
4E tried this a little with their milestone rule. As characters went through encounters, they were rewarded with action points and magic item recharges. It was a method to encourage characters to continue even when their daily resources dwindle. But the main limiter in that edition was healing surges, so when that ran low DMs had to force players to continue if they wanted them to.
I'd like to see it come back as a module and be expanded to directly restore spent resources.
After X% of XP or Y hours of adventuring, characters get a milestone. Character can then spend milestones to:
Regain an hit die
Regain X levels of spells
Regain Y spell point
Regain daily based class features
This way if the group chooses to, the system can take some of the strain off of the DM and encouraging players to have their characters continue.
What do you think?
If you add a consequence to resting/heading back, players are less likely to do so. Many DMs are good at this and are adept at organically creating time sensitive quests and organically removing safe places to rest. Some DMs aren't. And even then it does get silly if every quest is time sensitive to the day, there are no moderately safe places rest, or every monster has the upgradable daily resources to bulk up after seeing adventurers' handiwork.
But if you go the other route and mechanically give players a reason to continue, they are more likely to do so.
so.
Look at video games where dead enemies drop health potions/orbs at a noticeable rate. Players will gravitate to crazy treasure hunting bersekers if they feel that their resources can be restored a bit it the next room.
4E tried this a little with their milestone rule. As characters went through encounters, they were rewarded with action points and magic item recharges. It was a method to encourage characters to continue even when their daily resources dwindle. But the main limiter in that edition was healing surges, so when that ran low DMs had to force players to continue if they wanted them to.
I'd like to see it come back as a module and be expanded to directly restore spent resources.
After X% of XP or Y hours of adventuring, characters get a milestone. Character can then spend milestones to:
Regain an hit die
Regain X levels of spells
Regain Y spell point
Regain daily based class features
This way if the group chooses to, the system can take some of the strain off of the DM and encouraging players to have their characters continue.
What do you think?
