Adding time to gain surges in-game

[TheClone]

I wouldn't wanna use a certain skill for that. Regaining surges and HP is very important and that would put heavy emphasis on that skill. CON seems to be a little bit underrated according to my gut feeling, but maybe that's just coming from 3e experience. Unless you got powers relying on CON surely.

I personally would opt to only dampen the regeneration speed a little, but not much, because it would rip the game flow apart, I think. But the idea of using the failed death saves sounds appealing. But I wouldn't make reducing the surge max permanent. Think about the following idea:

A usual extended rest in a non-secure area (like roadside, dungeon, etc.) lets you regain [edit]two healing surges of HP (adding to your current)[/edit]. You surges go to max (maybe minus 1 per battle during rest). If you camp in a secure location where you do not set up guard shifts and don't sleep in any armor (city, tavern, etc.) you regain your full HP and all surges to current max. So you are screwed if you are attacked, but even heroes are vulnerable sometimes.
For each failed death save your surge max drops by 1 (adds up over days). You can regain one point of surge max by spending a full day resting in a secure location (see above, no guard, etc.). This means 24h in a city or something doing not much besides shopping, sightseeing, maybe gathering intel, but nothing which may put you in danger or is strenuous activity.

 

[Pistonrage]

I think the idea is just an arbitrary "downtime generator" which will just be DM: "A week later everyone is well rested enough for another FULL (4-6 encounters) adventuring day."

But I though I'd point something out, about the OP, if the game were very poorly structured time wise (no epic travels, all teleportation, one epically huge dungeon) the PC's could EASILY hit 30 in two months if they have 5 appropriate level combats a day. A little bit faster if they pushed to 6 a day.

 

[NexH]

What I do to avoid fast leveling is promote downtime between adventures, principally by telling the players off-game that I was thinking of letting certain time pass (e.g., "around 3 weeks" or "around a year"). In many cases I suggest why that would be a good idea: to accept various invitations from important people from the city they have saved, or because they can greatly help the kingdom to rebuild after the rampaging orc horde was finally defeated. In other cases I just say, basically, "here is downtime, use it as you wish".
What this "semi-forced" downtime accomplishes for the players is to reduce or eliminate the fear that their inaction (that is, not being in violent adventures) will have negative repercussions, since they trust I won't suggest-enforce downtime in crucial times.

I also require a minimum time to level up (beyond attaining the necessary experience), and this minimum greatly increases with the tier. In my currently epic tier campaign this minimum is 1 year, but we have plenty of global and godly politics going on, so it goes well with the time-scale of the campaign.


Finally, I try to scale all aspects of the adventures with the tiers, including time. So concluding an epic adventure may take weeks or months: protecting a nation from an invading army of hundred thousands, or journeying through the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos in search of an ancient primordial prison from the Dawn War.

 

[TheClone]

I think the idea is just an arbitrary "downtime generator" which will just be DM: "A week later everyone is well rested enough for another FULL (4-6 encounters) adventuring day."

If you combine it with all grindy adventures and just dungeon crawls: Yes, true. But my adventures tend not to be grindy at all. So that won't matter, I think. But it will add a more immersive feel to gameplay.

What I do to avoid fast leveling is promote downtime between adventures, principally by telling the players off-game that I was thinking of letting certain time pass (e.g., "around 3 weeks" or "around a year"). In many cases I suggest why that would be a good idea: to accept various invitations from important people from the city they have saved, or because they can greatly help the kingdom to rebuild after the rampaging orc horde was finally defeated. In other cases I just say, basically, "here is downtime, use it as you wish".
What this "semi-forced" downtime accomplishes for the players is to reduce or eliminate the fear that their inaction (that is, not being in violent adventures) will have negative repercussions, since they trust I won't suggest-enforce downtime in crucial times.

I don't know whether I'll handle it that way, by setting up some downtime, but you could play it you. At least if your players enjoy visiting parties and stuff. But your idea is what I'd do if I felt that downtime could be longer. But you have to balance between your and your players wishes for grindy vs. immersive gameplay.

 

[Odysseus]

I've been using a houserule where you get an extended rest with only one hours uninterupted rest, without any problems.
However I also have the PC train for leveling, which usually takes a least a day. And use wound cards inflicting various penalties that require days/weeks to heal.
If you think of hitpoints as more exhaustion, than actual physical damage. And broken bones, punctured lungs etc as conditions rather than hit points, it makes sense.

 

[TheClone]

I've been using a houserule where you get an extended rest with only one hours uninterupted rest, without any problems.
However I also have the PC train for leveling, which usually takes a least a day. And use wound cards inflicting various penalties that require days/weeks to heal.
If you think of hitpoints as more exhaustion, than actual physical damage. And broken bones, punctured lungs etc as conditions rather than hit points, it makes sense.

Which reminds me of: You can do only one extended rest per 24h period of time. Maybe that knowledge is enough to lengthen the adventure day? If the group does not plunder the dungeon any further after 2hrs of combat, then you have 22hrs to roll for random encounters. Might kill one player or another.

 

[Frankie1969]

From a simulationist point of view, healing surges are clearly a kluge to make the game flow more smoothly. However, complaining your PCs can level too quickly sounds like a campaign design problem, not a rule system problem. Don't just have your monsters standing there in a nice neat line waiting to be killed for experience.

Read any fantasy novels. Most of them involve months of trekking across the wilderness and/or wandering around cities in between major encounters.

Or don't let your characters rest in one room while the baddies in the next room blithely ignore them. There are plenty of ways to increase expenditure of in-game time that don't require rule changes.

 

[Alasomorph]

I use the following house rule:

Healing Surge Recovery

Fatigued and bruised from the previous day the party of brave adventurers continued the search.

An extended rest in dangerous surroundings restores your Con bonus +1 healing surges (minimum 1). Environmental conditions (an inn, stormy sea, desert, etc) may further affect your recovery of healing surges.