Solutions to the 15 minute adventuring day: carrots and sticks.

[Tony Vargas]

Here it is discussed that WotC are choosing not to implement a mechanic to counter the 15mad. http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-ho...n-d-d/326541-five-minute-workday-article.html

More to the point, they're choosing to implement a mechanic (Vancian casting) that encourages the 15mad.

As you say, there are carrots and there are sticks. Vancian is a carrot - more like an all-you-can-eat buffet - that rewards the 5MWD. Rewards it lavishly /and/ causes radical class imbalance as a bonus (for people who love playing characters that are better than the next guys').

Yes, you could try to beat players away from all that with a stick, or offer them a carrot, but simply taking away the perverse incentive is a much better idea.

In other words, don't try to discourage the 15mwd, just don't encourage it to such an extreme degree.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I find carrots and sticks insufficiently motivating. I propose instead chocolate cake and cattle prods.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

More to the point, they're choosing to implement a mechanic (Vancian casting) that encourages the 15mad.

As you say, there are carrots and there are sticks. Vancian is a carrot - more like an all-you-can-eat buffet - that rewards the 5MWD. Rewards it lavishly /and/ causes radical class imbalance as a bonus (for people who love playing characters that are better than the next guys').

I find the opposite. Vancian casting discourages the 15md. Blow all your spells early in my games and you MAY be ok. But you might not. While you're resting, the rest of the world moves on. You may wake up to a fight wishing you had a few spells. OR you may not wake up at all. Not to mention being delegated to pack mule duty while the fighters and thieves continue adventuring.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I find the opposite. Vancian casting discourages the 15md. Blow all your spells early in my games and you MAY be ok. But you might not. While you're resting, the rest of the world moves on.

That's not Vancian casting discouraging the 15mwd, that's /you/ discouraging it by twisting your world around to punish meta-gaming. (Sure, sometimes the world moving on while the party rests will be to their disadvantage - other times it might be to their advantage as enemies become lax in their defenses or divide their strength to deal with other threats than the party.) Maybe that's not a terrible choice on your part, but the game'd be better if it didn't force that choice on you.

You may wake up to a fight wishing you had a few spells. OR you may not wake up at all. Not to mention being delegated to pack mule duty while the fighters and thieves continue adventuring.

All the more reason to rest early while you still have enough spells left to deal with any punitive gotchya encounters. The 'nova' scenario is just one possible 15MWD. It can also happen when hps & healing get exhausted very early in a 'day' - something that seemed endemic to low-level AD&D when I was playing back in the early 80s.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

More to the point, they're choosing to implement a mechanic (Vancian casting) that encourages the 15mad.

As you say, there are carrots and there are sticks. Vancian is a carrot - more like an all-you-can-eat buffet - that rewards the 5MWD. Rewards it lavishly /and/ causes radical class imbalance as a bonus (for people who love playing characters that are better than the next guys').

Yes, you could try to beat players away from all that with a stick, or offer them a carrot, but simply taking away the perverse incentive is a much better idea.

In other words, don't try to discourage the 15mwd, just don't encourage it to such an extreme degree.

That's not Vancian casting discouraging the 15mwd, that's /you/ discouraging it by twisting your world around to punish meta-gaming. (Sure, sometimes the world moving on while the party rests will be to their disadvantage - other times it might be to their advantage as enemies become lax in their defenses or divide their strength to deal with other threats than the party.) Maybe that's not a terrible choice on your part, but the game'd be better if it didn't force that choice on you.

All the more reason to rest early while you still have enough spells left to deal with any punitive gotchya encounters. The 'nova' scenario is just one possible 15MWD. It can also happen when hps & healing get exhausted very early in a 'day' - something that seemed endemic to low-level AD&D when I was playing back in the early 80s.

Ok, so "Remove Vancian Casting" is another option. If we're to do that, what module could we put in its place?

Alternatively, what ABOUT vancian casting is problematic...perhaps we can modify that aspect of it (as I"ve mentioned earlier by varying the availablility of spells or the rate of recharge) in some way to discourage the 15mad or encourage the full adventuring day.



****PLEASE NOTE: There are two other threads currently discussing the following:
If the 15mad exists, and if it is a problem
Vancian casting as related to, or the cause of, the 15mad

THIS thread is about finding solutions to the 15mad (whether it exists or not or is a problem or not) and for those who believe Vancian casting is the issue to contribute solutions, not complaints. As it stands, WotC is doing the same "add advice, but not mechanics" to work on the 15mad. That may be fine for some and not for others. In the interests of inclusion, and because of the potential of modular design, perhaps we can offer up something more than "advice" to WotC for those who have 15mad as an issue to utilize. Even better, maybe we just come up with a fun option or two that everyone can enjoy in their game whether they've ever had a 15mad or not.

Much appreciated!

 

[JRRNeiklot]

That's not Vancian casting discouraging the 15mwd, that's /you/ discouraging it by twisting your world around to punish meta-gaming. (Sure, sometimes the world moving on while the party rests will be to their disadvantage - other times it might be to their advantage as enemies become lax in their defenses or divide their strength to deal with other threats than the party.) Maybe that's not a terrible choice on your part, but the game'd be better if it didn't force that choice on you.

You misunderstand. I don't set assassins on the pcs juust because they chose to rest. I roll for wandering monsters every two turns (20 minutes) in a dungeon and every hour or two (depending on location) outdoors. These rolls happen whether or not the pcs rest. I'm not twisting anything. The pcs may clear an entire dungeon in 4 hours, they'll have to spend double that minimum resting, sans heavy armor and with only one or two people awake for a good portion of that. That adds up to a ton of rolls. And while they are sleeping, their enemies may not be. It's not just the monsters in the dungeon. Events set in motion weeks or months ago keep spinning. I don't stop these events or delay them just because the pcs chose to rest. Nor do I impose them on them because they chose to rest. There is an entire world out there and everything doesn't keep the same sleep schedule as the pcs.

All the more reason to rest early while you still have enough spells left to deal with any punitive gotchya encounters. The 'nova' scenario is just one possible 15MWD. It can also happen when hps & healing get exhausted very early in a 'day' - something that seemed endemic to low-level AD&D when I was playing back in the early 80s.

I don't consider resting after getting your ass kicked a 15md. That happens, and resting is the smart thing to do. The issue is resting to regain spells when the party is still in decent fighting shape. If the cleric and wizard is out of spells, they can suck it up or the party is wise to recruit another cleric and wizard.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I think of the cause of the 15MAD as being the probability, in the player's minds, that the next battle will kill them if they don't rest.

You can reduce that probability by:
- having most foes be "underlevelled", not seriously designed to push the party to the brink
- usually allowing an opportunity to rest shortly before the big climactic battle
- giving the players non-renewable magic items that can substitute for their innate resources in a pinch, if a battle turns out to be more challenging than expected
- giving the players a reasonable chance to run away from a battle that turns out to be more challenging than expected
- give most XP for goals other than killing, so it's not such a bad result to run away from or avoid a battle

Decrease the challenge of the average battle. Increase the overall adventure challenge by bringing back lethal puzzles and traps.

some good ideas here, but I found that throwing that brutal encounter at the PCs that pushes them to the brink almost always ensures that they need to rest & recover after that one encounter.

And, I usually give out XP for the PCs winning the encounter, be it killing the bad guys, getting them to surrender, or having them run away (or some combination of all three.)

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I elaborated in the other topic before I saw this one, but the basic idea is: Make higher level spells have sharply diminishing returns while still retaining their strong power when used. (This is directly opposite the thinking behind the normal D&D casting bit where as the caster's level goes up, he gets both more slots and more effectiveness out of the lower level ones.)

The basic mechanic to illustrate is that a spell slot loses its power when a spell is cast in it, and must be recharged by waiting one day per spell level. This means that after one day of rest, a 3rd level slot is effectively a 1st level slot. A caster, even a high level one, who manages to cast every single spell in a day has nothing but a huge host of 1st level slots the next day.

Obviously, you can do all kinds of variants off of that basic recharge idea. But the key bit is based on carrot and stick thinking. The stick is that a caster who casts a high level spell is without that slot for several days. So the higher the slot, the more he will hesitate. The carrot is that while he is waiting for it to come back, he's got a lesser slot that gets better every day--albeit one that he has a vested interest in not using if he can help it.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Here's another one. similar to the "earn part of a level" suggested fom 13th age.


Use the escalation die across encounters, resetting upon resting.


There is a great article in the current Kobold Quarterly about using the escalation die in an encounter. I'll translate that to the "day".


Give all monsters +1 to AC.
Encounter 1. Players get no bonus (it's harder than usual, but they have all of their resources)
Encounter 2. Players get a +1 to hit. (Breaking even)
Encounter 3. Players get +2 to hit (making it easier, but they have fewer resources).

Players get +1 more to hit all the way up to +6, and it remains at +6 for all additional encounters. At the end of the day, melee characters have +6 to hit everything, which is great for them for a BBEG fight. If caster classes have saved their spells, they'll also have +6 to hit.



The idea here is to save your dailies until they'll be most likely to be effective.
Call it a "(over)confidence versus desperation" mechanic.



NOTE, with spellcasting:
Another option in the article (for systems like Pathfinder and 3.x) is to also give spellcasters a bonus to the saving throws required by their spells. There were fewer details in this regard (as I remember), but I'd work this to the effect of all monsters getting +1 to all saves (as they do with AC) but only improving the save penalty by half of the attack bonus (rounding down). That'd be 2 rounds at a penalty, 2 rounds breaking even, and any rounds beyond that with bonuses from +1 to +3. (As we saw in 3.0 they overdid spell dc stacking is more dangerous than attack bonuses stacking).

 

[Umbran]

More to the point, they're choosing to implement a mechanic (Vancian casting) that encourages the 15mad.

That's one interpretation.

I'd say more that they're introducing a resource management mechanic that can be used in a 5MWD fashion. It isn't an issue with Vancian casting, specifically - you'd have the same issue with any resource that you can spend quickly and regained upon rest (like, say, a spell-point mechanic). The only way to never favor a "fast & furious, then run" approach is to have no resources to spend.

A lot of people really like resource management games, so you can't just toss them out without disappointing potential customers. And, not having resources to spend means the characters cannot "pull out all the stops" every once in a while when really pressed, because they have no stops to pull.

The questions are:

1) Does the GM understand the resource management mechanics in the game, and work with them? The article suggests they will take steps to make them clear to the GM.

2) Do the rules modules allow the GM to eliminate some of the resource management, if he or she desires? This remains to be seen.

Neither of these would be an explicit mechanical counter to the 5MWD, but would help you to create a game where it isn't much of a problem.