A Discussion in Game Design: The 15 minute work day.

[Ariosto]

Why have them? In short, classes are useful for helping define a PC.

So are things that are not classes -- templates, packages and so on -- in which category I would put the so-called "classes" of WotC's 3e.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Here is the catch with the 15-minute workday. It is a minor flaw, which a DM can easily fix through environmental changes. The problem (the rest) is only there when it's not stopped (you say granted). But the flaw is in the game-mechanics. If the DM does not fix this constantly, every game and while designing every dungeon, it's gonna be there.

I think we probably draw the bar at what is a 'flaw' in game mechanics at different places - I think that a trick combination which allows someone to do 10000 damage is a flaw, but a whole lot of other stuff (including the nature of the issue under discussion) isn't a flaw in a game system but just a reflection of the flexibility of the system.

From 3e onwards there has been an increasing desire to 'balance' stuff, but I wonder whether it is chasing after hobgoblins (in the literary sense!) as more and more rules and more and more special cases get introduced which in turn introduce new corner cases... and the illusion of a system as perfectly balanced as, say, chess (or perhaps Magic the Gathering?) becomes the standard to be desired in itself.

Was there less mathematical balance in OD&D, BD&D, AD&D etc? Certainly. Was there less fun then? I don't think so; in fact some of my most fun times were playing all kinds of classes back in the 70's and early 80's, at all kind of levels. If the 15 minute workday was a real problem then you would have found it back then more than any other time - natural healing was sloooow and magical healing was much harder to come by, and wizards had fewer spells. It sounds like a classic recipe for 15 minute workday, but it still didn't happen back then.

Cheers

 

[I'm A Banana]

Really interesting, Stalker0!

I'm still having some difficulty wrapping my mind around what, exactly, the problem with the "15 minute adventuring day" is. I mean, if the PC's can go nova in every fight, and fight big, powerful, significant enemies, and risk total party kill in every fight, what does it matter how many fights there are? If there's only one big, significant battle per session, then the adventuring day is 15 minutes, and that's fine.

Even in 3e (but moreso in 4e), I have trouble with "filler combats," combats that are there basically to pad out levels to get to the "right XP." If the PC's victory is essentially a foregone conclusion (as it often is), why bother statting out the fight? If there's a challenge involved, what's wrong with "going nova" to confront a nova-level challenge?

I guess this is how I understand the problem of the 15 minute adventuring day: it's a problem when the party doesn't feel challenged, and, in D&D typically, the war of attrition and long-term resource management (LTRM) has been how the DM ramps up the challenge.

That's less true in 4e (though somewhat true: healing surges and dailies somewhat limit it).

I mean, in the 4e game I run now, we have one combat in a 3-hour session (partially because combats take quite a while, partially because that's just how it's laid out, partially because I have 6 PC's). Generally, this means that the party gets a "15 minute adventuring day" by default. There's no milestones, because there's not enough time in the session to have more than one combat.

I've got no real problem with that, as a DM, and I'm not sure if the players do (they haven't mentioned anything yet anyway). Each combat is still challenging and relevant (I usually ramp up the challenge level with a high per-encounter XP budget). As long as the heroes are challenged, they needn't be accosted over and over again by wave upon wave of "assumed victories" only hoping that Goblin #240 gets a lucky crit in simply with the law of averages.

Basically, LTRM, I've found, isn't a great way to measure a challenge.

That said, in FFZ, I find myself trying to add an element of it. Instead of milestones, FFZ characters get Limit Breaks if they keep going, and Limit Breaks are essential to beat some of the tougher monsters. I've also been thinking about using gil as an element of LTRM: that the party can fail their goal because they can't afford to "get supplies and training." Not sure if that's the best plan, though.

Of course, in FFZ, pacing is very important, and the combats go fairly quick, so the issue of "sameyness in combats" comes up more often than in 4e or 3e.

But I think, overall, D&D could benefit from taking a page from FFZ and Iron Heroes in controlling the pacing of when big powers are available. Some characters (some builds?) might not begin their day with dailies or encounter powers. They might have to "earn them," through milestones or through specific combat conditions.

A way to work in a Limit Break System into D&D4e, for instance, would be: "Once per encounter, when the character is bloodied, they gain a Crisis Level. Once they gain 3 Crisis Levels, they can use their Daily Power."

Essentially, that's how FFZ limit breaks work. In FFZ, different summons change when you get those levels (so a character with a healing summon might gain a Crisis Level when they heal an ally, or a character with a chocobo summon might gain a Crisis Level when they flee combat), but they "ramp up" to your big guns. You can't just wake up in the morning and start blasting things with your nuclear bomb.

I'm also debating making MP a resource that, like in FFTA-2 (and similar to FF13) charges up at the start of an encounter, meaning that powerful abilities take longer to use.

In fact, I might experiment a bit with such a system in D&D4e soon. But I'd probably just prefer to play some FFZ with some folks.

(BTW, another thing I like about FFZ's summon system is that it's a group resource: the party controls the summoned creature after it executes it's "nuclear bomb" power)

I'd also adore for WotC to take the good advice you gave about mechanics emphasizing archetype and apply it to skill challenges, because that's one space that frickin' needs it.

 

[Coldwyn]

I think the nova/15mins problem is related with (mishandling) the CR-System.
When an party encounetrs a critter of equal CR, that encounter should sap 25% of the availlable resources, right?
As a dm, I build quite a lot of encounters where the CR budget exceeded that limit by a huge amount, mainly because I don´t find 4-on-1 fights to be very interesting or cinematic. Ok, so here it is me forcing the players to use nova tactics b/c I mishandle the CR system.
As a player, I always hope for a ton of charged items and scrolls to burn through. I really had to force myself not to hoard items but to hoard spells for the appropriate moment.
Also, as a tangent, I think there´s a correlation why there used to be a large number of threads on gish-style casters in char-ops boards.

 

[Oldtimer]

Daily Powers instead become Awesome Powers. To use an awesome power you have to spend an action point. You get 1 action point at the start of the first encounter between extended rests, 2 at the start of the 2nd, 3 at the 3rd, and so on. You can't use the same 'awesome power' more than once in the same encounter.

Hmm, this got me thinking...

How about adding some more Action Points and just giving another use for them?
1. You gain an Action Point after every encounter.
2. You cannot spend more than one Action Point per round.
3. You can spend an Action Point to use an available Daily power without expending the use of that power.

That way you'll have more of an incentive to save Dailies for later when you have more Action Points. Right?

Obviously, this is a 4e solution, but something similar might work in 3.x as well. Weren't Reserve Feats giving a similar incentive for casters in 3.x?

 

[BlubSeabass]

I think we probably draw the bar at what is a 'flaw' in game mechanics at different places - I think that a trick combination which allows someone to do 10000 damage is a flaw, but a whole lot of other stuff (including the nature of the issue under discussion) isn't a flaw in a game system but just a reflection of the flexibility of the system.

From 3e onwards there has been an increasing desire to 'balance' stuff, but I wonder whether it is chasing after hobgoblins (in the literary sense!) as more and more rules and more and more special cases get introduced which in turn introduce new corner cases... and the illusion of a system as perfectly balanced as, say, chess (or perhaps Magic the Gathering?) becomes the standard to be desired in itself.

I see your points. I think you are right about more rules would easily lead to more more corner cases.

I'm relatively new to tabletop RPG. I started out (as DM) 2 years ago, using 3.5, and switched to pathfinder a bit more then half a year ago. I just played with the core books, so no modules or anything. And you're right, even with new people the 15-minute workday has never been a real problem. The players mostly prefered to move on (Though the druid hated to prepare spells, and the sorcerer mostly used debuffs-making him less novatastic, and we never got to high levels). The few times I did anticipate it would be a problem, I just changed the environment so resting was impossible. The social and DMing aspect of the game seemed to fix the problem by itself.

Now I did play neverwinter nights, which uses the same mechanics. And there I abused resting till I got bored with the game. There was no DM to stop me, and no fighter who didn't want to keep guard. Point is, that because of this, I do see it as a mechanical flaw, but one practicly solved. This and the idea of thoughening up after each encounter just appeals me. But I understand your point very well, and it will probably be the point of view from which I will DM.

 

[knightofround]

One suggestion I haven't seen in this thread yet would be replacing the Daily-power system with a combo system. So you'd still have three tiers of powers: at-will, encounter, and daily, however you could only use them on round 1/2/3 respectively. After using the 3rd tier you'd reset back to 1, and work your way back up. However, the key difference is that you never "run out" on your combos. You can't nova by dropping 6-8 dailies within 4 rounds like other classes, but you never "run out" of encounter and daily powers either.

Heck, you could even have higher level powers add additional levels to your combos. So you could eventually get 1/2/3/4, or 1/1.5/2/3 (where using the 1.5 power would be optional.) On turn one your attack would start off as a scorching burst, on turn two it would rush back towards you in the form of burning hands, and on the third turn it would coalesce into a flaming sphere.

Given what they've done with psionics and essentials, I don't think such a combat system is totally out of the realm of possibility. I think it makes more sense for the martial power source, whose vancian powers always felt a bit awkward.

I kinda like the idea of using healing surges as resources to limit how far the party can go each day. But this could be offset by giving incentives to continue onwards; like start with 0 action points after an extended rest, gain 1 AP per encounter that is of equal CR or higher (its important not to hand out AP for trivial combats), and you can spend multiple ap per encounter (but not per round). This way, players can still "nova"...but "nova"-ing requires a several hour workday instead of a 15 minute workday.

 

[Ariosto]

I'm still having some difficulty wrapping my mind around what, exactly, the problem with the "15 minute adventuring day" is.

Apparently, it's that many people don't like having that option as such an appealing one.

In changing the rules that facilitate it, the OP seemed to want to reduce decline in powers, while some others want to increase incentives to press on despite declining powers.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Apparently, it's that many people don't like having that option as such an appealing one.

Right, but why not? How does it create a negative effect at the table? What specifically happens to make it an issue? What's the deal with it? What does it cause that is negative? How is it un-fun?

In changing the rules that facilitate it, the OP seemed to want to reduce decline in powers, while some others want to increase incentives to press on despite declining powers.

I see that as more of a narrative issue, an issue of "rising action." In standard D&D for every edition, the rising action is often a form of attrition: the tension increases as the party gets closer and closer to true irrevocable death, as their LTRs depleted.

In the more modern editions, the pain and tension of death and LTRM has been lessened, so there's less "rising action" on the side of the DM. The action is now on the players' side, and they still have recharge mechanics that date back to the grey box, without the troubles that come along with running out of resources that that edition provided.

If the problem is one of lacking a rising action, you can basically do two things: put back in some resources that the party can almost never recover (like an idea I had of allowing extended rests only once per adventure), or ramp up the party's power so that they're doing more incredible things as time goes on (this is essentially how a lot of fighting anime works: they never just assemble Voltron right away).

 

[Ariosto]

Right, but why not?

If that is relevant to the matter at hand -- suggested "game design" to change the situation -- then I am sure that someone will point out how.