D&D 4E 4e Constitution - what a waste of time !

[HeirToPendragon]

Reg you are just... well you're wrong.

First off, blowing all your dailies on the first fight means that the DM has started the day off with a very weird scaling model.

Second, most people only get to use like, what, 4 surges on average during a battle? If you have more than one leader I'd say they have access to 5ish without using potions?

And you shouldn't even be using that many! My fighter player has like 16 because of his con and durability and items and he uses, at most, 4 an encounter. He's also a GOOD defender, so the other members use maybe 1 or 2 surges a battle.

So the typical day goes through about 4 encounters before anyone even comes close to needing serious down time.

I don't know why your party is doing so bad at this game but maybe you need to tone down the level of the enounters.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Could be the party isn't adventuring.
When you're going from A to B, or exploring ruins, or whatever, it's a matter of having to overcome multiple obstacles.

When you're in town and just want to bring down your arch-nemesis, you'll take an extended rest during the day, gank him (preferably alone and asleep), then go take another rest in preparation for the to hit the fan.

There is a reason to rest fight rest ... the dungeon crawl model is only one way to run a game.

 

[Legildur]

I'm playing the pregen artful dodger rogue from KotS - it has 13 Con, and I know I will be bumping that to 14 ASAP. As the sole striker in the group of 6, I'm getting through surges very quickly. The extra surge and the extra hps from each surge will be invaluable. I'm even eyeing off the feat that grants 2 extra surges per day... that's how much of an issue it is for me.

We often end up with the wizard and myself out of surges, and the rest of the party with 6+ leftover.

 

[DracoSuave]

4E HEAVILY promotes 1-fight-per-day, and surges are an impenetrable barrier that cap a day.

Actually it promotes x/s fights per day, where x is the number of surges you have total, and s is the number you use in an average fight. 1/day means x=s. However, given most parties can't use all their healing surges in a fight, even an entire all-leader group doesn't get to access ALL of them, then it's fairly safe to say that it isn't a 1/day mechanic.

Is there a limit? Yes. But it's not 1/day, and I'll wager it isn't even 2/day.

 

[HeirToPendragon]

If you're running out of surges that fast Legildur... you might want to look into defense instead of surges

 

[Danceofmasks]

Or offense.
The epic game I play in ... we often annihilate encounters before they can consider hurting us.

 

[RefinedBean]

here aren't dragon shamans with fast healing for the party, infinite healing feats or disposable wands of cure light wounds.

And in my opinion, thank goodness. "Stocking up" on wands of cure light wounds always left a bad taste in my mouth.

Add on top of that everyone having a very limited number of dailys and utilities so now every class is equivalent to a low-level vancian spell caster, and things just suck for adventuring without resting.

Well, yeah. Eventually, parties learn to take powers that work well with each other, and figure out a good way to keep fights in control by having certain members use dailies while others hold off. One of my groups has really come a long way with difficult, prolonged encounters or series of encounters: group resource management is key, as it's always been.

Toss on to the heap the fact that extended rest gives you an AP and it's foolish for adventurers NOT to do a 1-fight-per-day if they can get away with it.

4E HEAVILY promotes 1-fight-per-day, and surges are an impenetrable barrier that cap a day.

I just...I just don't understand this. It's foolish for adventurers to do a 1-fight-per-day because if they keep resting for 8 hours after fighting only once per day, they're probably going to fail at whatever goal they're trying to achieve.

Surges represent the toll of adventuring. If you're out of surges but you still need to rescue someone, well, you suck it up and stay out of harms way. Nobody said adventuring was going to be EASY.

 

[shadowoflameth]

When you're out of surges, the day ends, full stop. Healing potions don't even work, and some magic items won't even activate. How crazy is that? Healing surges put a VERY definite limit on how long a party can go for. There aren't dragon shamans with fast healing for the party, infinite healing feats or disposable wands of cure light wounds.

Add on top of that everyone having a very limited number of dailys and utilities so now every class is equivalent to a low-level vancian spell caster, and things just suck for adventuring without resting.

Toss on to the heap the fact that extended rest gives you an AP and it's foolish for adventurers NOT to do a 1-fight-per-day if they can get away with it.


4E HEAVILY promotes 1-fight-per-day, and surges are an impenetrable barrier that cap a day.

The key phrase there is "if they can get away with it." If you've been such a soft touch on resting whenever they want then the next time they do it at an inappropriate time, have more of the same kind of foe show up when they're sleeping.

If this is too harsh, you could just have it rain filthy water that smells like a sewer, and leave them to get up, miserable and figure out why.

As far as milestones, the DM has the leash there too. If the players aren't willing to go on because they spent theirs and haven't milestoned, it's a good time (occasionally) for an encounter that teaches them to make do without them. This is why encounter powers exist. You can't always count on getting your dailies back, but you have something special that you can try at least once in the fight.

In an extreme example, suppose the party is ineffective against their foe for several rounds and the wizard is in trouble, the paladin having the most surges spends one to lay hands, then gets in trouble himself and does second wind on his next, then a third round as the party fights on in vain, he downs a potion and uses martyr's retribution and has now spent 5 surges. less than half of his total number. If the rest of the party is burning through them like this, and not winning, it may be time to tuck tail either becasue you're in over your heads, or the DM thinks having you fight an illusion of a ranger trained balor riding the terrasque is funny
sol

 

[Danceofmasks]

I am so stealing that illusion of a ranger trained balor riding the tarrasque.
It's hilarious.

 

[Legildur]

If you're running out of surges that fast Legildur... you might want to look into defense instead of surges

The need to flank kind of leaves you exposed, especially when you dish out up to 40 hit points in a round (use of AP here!) at 2nd level. Even a defender's mark won't protect you from retribution in these circumstances.

I try and make sure that I carry at least 1 surge into a battle so that the Cleric can do something to stop me having to make death rolls.