15 Minute Workday Myth?

[Rechan]

Yes, he can. And?

And nothing. It would make his life "more exciting", which seems to be the criteria for disarming traps.

 

[Rechan]

Unless you live there, you don't know if the linen closet is used or not. Or if the toilet is. That's what makes for clever trapmaking, putting a mine under the loo is genius.

Which is great - until you invite someone over and they get splattered going to the toilet in the middle of the night.

If your enemies are just going to take 20 on every space, the clever trapmaker is SOL. He might as well just make his traps obvious but really hard to disarm.

 

[takasi]

It's walking really slow inside a building. Not the same as walking several miles in a day.

Employees at Walmart walk 8 hours around the store when they're on shift; should that be counted as a "forced march"?

If they work for more than 8 hours they could get fatigued, possibly taking a little "nonlethal damage" until they rest.

It's left to DM interpretation. If you interpret that players can search for weeks at a time and never rest, then more power to you and your group.

 

[takasi]

Which is great - until you invite someone over and they get splattered going to the toilet in the middle of the night.

If your enemies are just going to take 20 on every space, the clever trapmaker is SOL. He might as well just make his traps obvious but really hard to disarm.

No, as an enemy you want them taking 20 in every square. It gives you time to find them and plan how to remove them.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I'll agree that the 15-minute work day can be a result of play style, and there are things a DM can do to mitigate it, but the fact remains that 3E encourages the 15-minute play style by rewarding PC's who engage in it with more resources for the next fight. 4E seems to be doing away with the hard-wired reward of resting for 8 hours (or, the reward is there, but it's much reduced).

What I am curious about is how and how quickly 4E characters recover Hit Points, because that's the other piece of the 15-minute work day. Sometimes the Wizard has spells left over, but a couple bad rolls resulted in a warrior type being taken down to dangerously low HP. Some systems allow HP to regenerate at a rate of 1 / minute (which makes sense if you think of them as skill / luck / grace, rather than physical integrity), which encourages PC's to "stop and catch their breath" after a fight, but not set up camp. I like this, and I expect 4E will do something like it.

Well, so far as precedent we have Second Wind, which allows wounded PCs to get a one-time HP boost, and the Dragon Shaman's healing power, which only heals PCs up to 1/2 HP, but otherwise is unlimited.

I think that starting each combat at minimum 1/2 HP is totally fine. That's low enough that you're really going to think twice about entering a combat, because you're far more likely to outright die than if you went in with more.

 

[Rechan]

It's left to DM interpretation. If you interpret that players can search for weeks at a time and never rest, then more power to you and your group.

So you agree that it's not a set in stone rule.

 

[Rechan]

No, as an enemy you want them taking 20 in every square. It gives you time to find them and plan how to remove them.

So as an enemy, you're better off looking for the quickest route to the head guy, only searching the most traveled areas, and kill him first, rather than spending time taking 20 to search the toilet for traps.

 

[Rechan]

Well, so far as precedent we have Second Wind, which allows wounded PCs to get a one-time HP boost, and the Dragon Shaman's healing power, which only heals PCs up to 1/2 HP, but otherwise is unlimited.

Or Touch of Healing, for that matter.

 

[takasi]

So as an enemy, you're better off looking for the quickest route to the head guy, only searching the most traveled areas, and kill him first, rather than spending time taking 20 to search the linen closet.

Ah, but the enemy could be in the secret room BEHIND the linen closet. You never know.

 

[Rechan]

Ah, but the enemy could be in the secret room BEHIND the linen closet. You never know.

And unless he only goes into the linen closet when he knows that adventurers are in his lair, then he is always going into the linen closet into his spot, so it's going to be well traveled.