15 Minute Adventuring Day

[KarinsDad]

With the increase in monster damage last year, I've noticed a trend back towards the "15 minute adventuring day".

Our PCs got so efficient that we would probably average about 7 encounters (give or take depending on how difficult they were) because each PC was averaging approximately 1 healing surge per encounter. If a given PC, even a Defender was running low on healing surges, we would rotate that PC further back in the group for an encounter or two (alternatively, one could use Comrade's Succor, but our group only recently started doing that).


Now, our group averages about 4 encounters per day. There are usually three PCs that use up 2 to 4 healing surges each either during the encounter, or during short rests afterwards (the Leader and Controller in our group tend to hang back, so that doesn't happen as often for them). It's possible that our DM is also throwing more difficult encounters at us in order to challenge us, but the extra and more consistent damage of the NPCs is also taking its toll.


What are other people's recent experiences with this?

 

[Aegeri]

About the same, I am absolutely hammering my parties surges into the dirt with the updated damage numbers (and the fact I tend to make pretty difficult tactical combats anyway). This doesn't really bother me though, because I am not into designing a lot of sequential "room clearing" encounters. Usually there is travel time between each encounter, so it doesn't quite feel like clearing 4 rooms and then needing to hide from everything else for eight hours.

 

[delericho]

In our last campaign, we rather neatly found we got through about 3 encounters per session (with a little bit of exploration and/or roleplay), and also got through about 3 encounters before needing an Extended Rest.

I have no idea how that ties into the new damage numbers, though.

 

[Stumblewyk]

Well...our only "post MM3 numbers" party is definitely getting beat up. We're running "The White Fields" currently, and despite my DM complaining about the fact that my Cavalier and the party Fighter have a 27 and 26 AC respectively, I'm sitting at 1 remaining healing surge and about 10 HP below max, going into the final encounter of the module. Our wizard is at 1 surge, and our cleric is out of them. And short of DM intervention, there's no way we're getting an extended rest in.

Prior parties? We'd all be sitting pretty with plenty of surges, full HP, and not a care in the world.

Whether this is due to new damage numbers, or whether it's just bad rolls on our part (our tactics have actually been pretty sound, but our wizard is a little weak), I don't know. But I'd bet it's at least partially to do with new damage expressions. Which I'm okay with. I like the danger of "will we or won't we make it?"

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I guess 15 min adventuring day is a bit of an exaggeration:

You should however consider using slightly lower encounters now, to have your balance back. An equal level encounter or 1 level lower is now a normal challenge. So monsters hit players a little bit less, but harder, monsters are easier to hit and have lower hp. (And give a little bit less xp) Combats are a bt more swingy now.

I guess, your DM just tries to use equal hard challenges (some levels above your party) which was the prime source of grind (7 encounters in a single day with only 1 surge per encounter spent sound exactly like that... monsters seem to have literally no chance.)

I don´t want to make estimations about your party composition, but the new monster math makes characters, that focus on defense more viable, as monsters of a medium difficult encounter hit worse and are easier to hit. And focussing on defense gets really worthwhile if monsters have hard times hitting.

Oh, and of course: an average of 4 encounters is what the system assumes. On a 7 encounter average day, classes without dailies are a little bit favoured.

 

[Mengu]

Yup, adventuring days have been shortened significantly, and skill challenges, traps, and certain undead that eat up surges shorten them even more.

3-4 encounters is the max I can do with the current MM3 damage expressions. I hammer their surges even with level equivalent encounters, and a single hard encounter can easily cost half the surges of a defender.

Recently I ran a nonlethal arena fight that was level+1, when the group was fresh, and they lost.

The brutality makes it fun, but also very swingy, and chews up a whole lot of surges. I started a similar thread a few months back, pretty much got the impression most people enjoy the higher damage expressions, and find the 3-4 encounters a day to be reasonable.

I think the encounter design guidelines need to be rewritten. I've been doing some trial and error, and can't really find a sweet spot. I think maybe encounter levels and their difficulty ratings need to be rearranged a bit.

Easy: Level-3, Level-2
Standard: Level-1
Hard: Level, Level+1
Beware this encounter will tap out resources: Level+2
Beware this encounter may TPK: Level+3

I also think the guidelines for what's appropriate in an encounter of a given difficulty need to be adjusted. According to the DMG, a level+5 threat is acceptable in a hard encounter. If I stick two level+5 brutes in an encounter, and sprinkle a controller and some lower level skirmishers, they will mop the floor with the PC's. The problem is especially evident at lower levels.

Also with the new damage expressions, back to back encounters without short rest, or the accidental triggering of two encounters at the same time is lethal. If that happens, I pretty much immediately have to pull some monsters and reduce one of the encounters to a Level-3. If I want the good old 7 encounter days, I think I now have to stick with Level-2 encounters for the majority.

Another solution to possibly try is to give defenders 3-5 extra surges, everyone else 2-3 extra surges, and after every 3 encounters recover the lowest level expended daily attack power. This would likely extend the adventuring day by 1-2 encounters, leaving difficulties as is.

 

[KarinsDad]

I don´t want to make estimations about your party composition, but the new monster math makes characters, that focus on defense more viable, as monsters of a medium difficult encounter hit worse and are easier to hit. And focussing on defense gets really worthwhile if monsters have hard times hitting.

The problem is that the game is not designed to allow focusing on defense too much for most classes, especially at heroic level.

Sure, a melee PC could go from two weapon or two handed weapon to sword and heavy shield, but then he does less damage as well which means a few more NPC attacks against him in a given day (because the NPCs don't die quite as fast). It's almost a wash.

A given PC could take Improved Defenses (+1 to 3 different defenses), but with a 50% NPC chance to hit dropping to 45% (for example) on half of the attacks (since at least the other half of attacks target AC), that saves at most approximately 1 healing surge in 22 for that PC (i.e. with criticals, that's ~1/11 / 2 or 4.5% of all damage). That saves a single healing surge every 2.5 to 3 adventuring days (it probably saves slightly better than that because NADs also result in rider effects).

In the changing from two handed to sword and heavy shield example, we're talking a 50% NPC chance to hit dropping to 40% on half of the attacks, that saves at most approximately 1 healing surge in 11 for that PC (i.e. with criticals, that's ~2/11 / 2 or 9% of all damage). For Defenders, that would save a healing surge per day, but would also be offset somewhat by the fact that foes that would die due to the greater damage of two weapon or a two handed weapon sometimes won't.

A Fighter taking the feat to go from Scale Mail to Plate Mail might be better off taking Durable because Durable gives him 2 healing surges per day whereas +1 AC gives him an extra healing surge per 2+ days.

 

[Riastlin]

Yeah the damage numbers have definitely jumped up and caused the party to take notice. Getting hit for 20-30 damage (at 11th level) is really not all that unusual anymore.

Personally though, I think that there are several solutions for keeping the 3 - 6 encounter/day setup viable. First, as others have said, you can reduce the encounter levels and still threaten the party. For a while there, if the encounter wasn't at least a couple levels above the party's level, there really wasn't any challenge. Now, a level 11 challenge is perfectly challenging, particularly if you use terrain, tactics, etc. that can give the monsters an edge. This also has the advantage of enabling more encounters per level for those groups that track XP. I think this can be fairly important, particular as the party starts heading toward paragon as they learn how to use their characters better.

Second, consider using minions more now. Minions even do more damage as well, but will of course, still only require one hit to bring down. A couple of brutes or an artillery, etc., will still provide enough of a challenge, particularly if they are getting some sort of assistance from the minions (whether its acting as a meat shield, aiding the attacks of others, setting up flanks, or just distracting the attention of the party, etc.).

Next, encourage the party to think about tactics a little more. Before the MM3 update, tactics didn't really make a huge deal (other than maybe focusing fire) as the damage output of the monsters combined with the healing abilities of the PCs, made for pretty easy encounters unless you were at the aforementioned level +3 or 4, etc. Tactics include not only in-combat decisions, but feat/power selection as well. As stated, there's a much bigger incentive to concentrate on defense now for the PCs. Sure, the numbers may seem negligible on paper, but I think they are actually bigger than that in practice.

For instance, while Improved defenses is nice, I think the Great (and especially Superior) Fort/Reflex/Will feats are even better. Let's face it, my dwarf who has nothing but 1/2 bonus to his Reflex, is pretty much always gonna get hit by an attack targetting reflex (even with a +1). But give him another +2 to his Fort (and combine that with a resist to ongoing damage to boot) and suddenly he's saving a lot more damage on him. Just like that same dwarf is probably better off taking Shield the Fallen (which can help all of his teammates from time to time), than say a small damage boosting feat.

Additionally, particularly once the party hits 5th level, they need to realize that they don't simply save their dailies for the big bad boss fight. Even at 5th level, a party of 5 has 10 dailies, meaning if they use two per fight they can still get through 5 fights. Sure, they might not need the daily to win the fight, but using that daily in an easier fight might save the party a few surges. This only increases as the party levels up. By 11th level (where my party is now), they have 15 dailies (mine actually has 18 being a 6th PC party) which means that really, there isn't any fight in which they shouldn't be using at least 1 or 2 dailies.

Of course, none of this stops the fact that monsters absolutely are a lot deadlier now. I think most groups will have to take some time to adjust to this fact. I remember some of my players use to intentionally provoke OA's in order to allow the fighter to punish the monster. They won't be doing that now though as provoking might mean getting tagged for 30 or more damage. Plus, seeing the ranger take 114 points of damage on the first turn of the combat (admittedly it involved an elite using an action point), was just fun.

Edit to add: BTW, my group in their first set of fights at paragon have so far triggered two fights back to back, and seen the ranger take 114 points of damage at once with no fatalities and enough steam to still push on to the 4th encounter in the day. They'll be starting that encounter at the beginning of the next session so we'll see how it goes. Admittedly, being that they are paragon tier, its a bit easier for them to adapt, but I certainly think even a heroic tier group could handle several encounters in a day if they are careful.

 

[Ryujin]

The group, that I'm DMing, thought that they could get away with a 5 minute day after they've been doing up to 6 encounters, at a shot, up until now. I then informed them that there there was a group, that had invaded the city they had just arrived in, that was trying to take out the city's defences from within. The response was, "Well I'm sure we can find a safe place to hide, and rest for 8 hours." To this I said, "Sure, and it'll be your tomb because there will be an entire army sitting on top of you, when you try to come out."

They're in no danger of a TPK, as they have plenty of surges and a Pacifist Cleric, but I'm sure that they'll be all whiny about having already tossed out their Dailies.

 

[the-golem]

The group, that I'm DMing, thought that they could get away with a 5 minute day after they've been doing up to 6 encounters, at a shot, up until now. I then informed them that there there was a group, that had invaded the city they had just arrived in, that was trying to take out the city's defences from within. The response was, "Well I'm sure we can find a safe place to hide, and rest for 8 hours." To this I said, "Sure, and it'll be your tomb because there will be an entire army sitting on top of you, when you try to come out."

They're in no danger of a TPK, as they have plenty of surges and a Pacifist Cleric, but I'm sure that they'll be all whiny about having already tossed out their Dailies.

I had a player try and pull this on me during my run as a DM. He saw fit to blow all his encounter/daily abilities after an encounter or two (which isn't that hard to do at level two), and was practically begging for an extended rest.

To which I answered, "Really? You want to crash already? It's only been an hour since sunup, you're characters have been on the road for only part of that."

Of course, I play fast and loose with the rules on short and extended rests. Sometimes the PCs can go a week without a good solid rest. Overland travel through a desert experiencing heavy winds, could be an example. Othertimes, say if they're in a dark cave somewhere, a place they'd logically only take a couple hours to go through, I might handwave the extended rest as an hour half our break.

Besides, there's nothing in "the rules" that says you cannot interrupt they're "extended rest"