D&D 4E 4e and 1 combat a day

[Geoff Watson]

If you're only having one encounter per day for plot reasons, change "Daily" powers to "Weekly" powers (or "per X days" or "per adventure" etc).

Geoff.

 

[Cadfan]

A more efficient solution would be to make sure the players don't know there will be only one combat each day. If they expect several, they won't burn all their daily powers at once.

 

[hong]

If fights are boring because they take forever, use more minions.

If fights are boring because of the lack of narrative structure linking them, well, that's not a system issue.

The good thing about 4E is that it still all works, even with only one fight per day. Nobody gets overshadowed because everyone's nova-ing capacity is the same.

 

[Verdande]

(1) Make fights easier. The players need to feel "Hey, we can take another one like this!". If they don't, then they won't continue.

This is exactly what I'd do. Making the fights harder just reinforces the already existing notion that the party needs to stop and rest after each and every battle, because now they're even lower on HP and surges than they were over the much easier fight that they thought they needed to rest after.

You need to build their confidence. Show them that their characters are more than capable of fighting multiple enemies a day, perhaps by having a time-sensitive objective. That should help them see that their characters are capable of multiple encounters a day, and that they shouldn't use their dailies as soon as the whim strikes them.

 

[N0Man]

Well, I was about to post, and then Ingolf said it for me.

Ditto on that.

 

[Lauberfen]

I think the best approach would be to make daily powers weekly, as mentioned, or perhaps every 3 days. You could also say that healing surges refresh at one or two per day. I think that covers most of the per day stuff.

I suspect that the suggestions of make it harder/easier whatever to encourage more combats are missing the mark- sounds like this isn't a party who only do one combat then rest, this sounds more like a group who don't like combat much, and don't accept flimsy reasons for having lots of combats per day. Ultimately, if you write more combats per day, they will play more, but I think the whole group, including the DM are against that.

 

[JadeForlorn]

Simple

It seems to me as though only 1 battle a day is integrated into the story itself, which I understand. In realistic terms my characters can often go a few days without any combat, and then fight 1 combat, then continue on. This is especially common with city campaigns.

In 4e, to resolve this issue I give characters 1d4 chance every encounter to regenerate their daily abilities, with extended rests not automatically regenerating them.

I chose 1d4 specifically because it seems 4 encounters a day would be typical in the mechanics of 4e, while 6 would be a bit too rare. We're still tweaking the system a little, but for the moment this works well for my party.

 

[Evilhalfling]

The problem the OP has is not that the PCs demand a rest after every fight. It is that they are not doing dungeon crawls, and spending time on a story instead - investigation, diplomacy, roleplaying, travel, etc.
Fights only come up if they are important to the story, instead of fighting through 4 rooms to reach the mcGuffin there is only a single encounter.

If the players like to fight, then you need to figure out whats slowing them down in 4e. Too many choices/unfamiliartiy? too many enemies? dragons with 1000 hp?

If they prefer the current structure, then my suggestion is to limit dailies to 1 personal power per day (like magic item dalies are limited) and drop action points completely. (allowing feat retraining, if necessary)

I don't know what to do about lack on non-combat powers. Its really a style change, so that problems are solved with skills rather than magic.
If you try it a while and still dislike it, 3.x may be a better game for your group.

 

[bardolph]

Our group started playing 4e recently, and we're playing much as we did in 3.x. Namely, we're only having one (or maybe two) combats a day. Mostly cause combat takes forever, and there's little our group dislikes more than dungeon crawls with nonsensical (or even sensible) combats in every room. That's just our personal preference, not meant to start any flame wars.

I don't see any problem with this. One thing that might be fun is to have creatures run away, get reinforcements, and strike back in the same day. Or set up a multiple-day wilderness chase, where losing eight hours due to resting could spell failure. Or have an encounter that "sets up" another encounter that must be taken advantage of immediately. For example, if an evil priest has a guard rooms full of goblins, and the players take an extended rest after beating the guards, the priest can (a) find more guards, (b) hunt the players down while they're resting, or (c) escape while he still has the chance.

You just have to make the point that TIME is also a resource that the PCs must manage, and by losing time, they may lose the prize.

So of course we pull out all the stops every combat- daily powers, action points, weapon powers, all our healing, etc. Our DM has compensated by making the battles harder, while still trying to maintain that fine line between challenging and TPK. Any advice on how to make these single combats still challenging with the knowledge the PCs will use everything at their disposal every battle?

The best way is to start with "standard" encounters, evaluate each battle after it's over, and adjust accordingly.

Action points and Daily abilities will give the PCs an edge, but the edge isn't huge. Healing is mostly an encounter-based resource, until healing surges start running out. Magic items are the equivalent of action points (recharge daily or milestone), and it doesn't matter how many magic items a PC owns, since they all share a single recharge.

I imagine the amount of adjustment should be reasonably small. Probably one equal-level creature per encounter will be enough. Or you can not adjust at all, and throw in some time-sensitive quests that require pressing on in a day.

I'm wondering if the idea of multiple combats a day is so ingrained into the system that this style of play is going to cause major problems down the line. Thoughts?

The balance issues are minor, not major, since the number of daily powers available is pretty strictly regulated.

Also, has anyone created any good guides on how to make non-combat uses of combat only powers? Our group always tended to focus more on role-playing, and in 3.x many spells and skills lent themselves to non-combat uses (perhaps with a little ingenuity). This is more difficult in 4e where most every power requires an attack roll and a target. Has anyone else had this issue? And if so, how have they compensated?

I haven't seen any guides like this. I'd just wing it. If a character finds a clever non-combat use for a combat power, I'd probably grant a +2 circumstance bonus to their skill check, or something like that.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Yeah, I'm not sure this is even necessarily a problem. If there's plenty of time to rest, no pressure to continue the investigation right away, then they'll have access to their full power level for each encounter.

I can think of a half-dozen ways off the top of my head to apply time pressure to a situation without it just being a plain old dungeon crawl, though.