Beyond the encounter: rules for pacing and downtime.

[Aberzanzorax]

Many of the concerns of balance and flavor etc seem to be on the encounter level. It's my contention that this is a somewhat boring level on which to focus in terms of storytelling.

The encounter level is a fragment of the game, and I'd like to see more of a focus on the whole of an experience rather than a collection of fragments piled together.


[MENTION=10021]kamikaze[/MENTION]-midget has several excellent posts on Adventure design over Encounter design. I'd personally like to see more of this from WotC for 5e.


In the past, dailies (including vancian magic and 1/day magic item use) were not balanced if the DM "allowed" the 15 minute adventuring day. I'll certainly concede that. I actually dislike dailies for that reason, and I think that classes who have them (wizard, cleric, druid, etc) are unbalanced when allowed to have a 15 min adventuring day.

But how do you design for the adventure when the pcs define the timing?

In my opinion there's something that D&D has always needed rules for, and has never (to my knowledge) had rules for.

I want rules for pacing and downtime. This breaks down into two things:
1. During the adventure
2. Outside the adventure

I want rules for enemy "recharges" or perhaps rules within players that encourage pushing forward rather than resting. I liked the action points in 4e that could be accrued, and think that might help people from resting (especially if more than one could be used in an encounter). I'd like to see strong guidelines of how many encounters should occur per day. I'd like to see rules for enemy powerups if players attack and flee.

Basically, and quite simply, if there are daily abilities, I want rules that help define the day and its penalties and benefits for pcs and the enemy.

Outside the adventure, I'd like to see rules for activity. If the wizard is making scrolls or magic items, what is the rogue doing? What's the fighter doing? Perhaps rules of "pickpocket per day/week" with an income for downtime would be appropriate? I think that level based incomes could be acheivable, especially if they were lower than the wealth per level guidelines and lower than what can be done via adventuring.



Which brings me to penalties/costs. What stops players from simply saying "we take a year off of adventuring to make money"? This falls under the same heading as "we take a nap after each encounter". At low levels I don't see this as much of a problem...so I wonder if there might not be some daily recharge cost/upkeep of magic items? I see this as a rate of return issue. Maybe the simplest and least "rod" versus "carrot" method is to charge players an amount every day to maintain the quality of their magic items? 1 encounter and then resting would lead to an actual loss of money. 2 encounters might break even at maintenance level, and more would encourage greater and greater profit.


I'm not sure I like the actual flavor of that limitation, and perhaps you all could come up with a much better mechanic. However, I'm a huge fan of the idea that players have a built up cost that accrues over time and is offset by doing more and more awesome things...and stretching themselves to the limit.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Separately, and not to derail the thread, but does anyone know how to do a "@" mention for usernames with spaces? I can't figure it out.

 

[Ramaster]

There is an income system, sort of, on the Craft and the Profession skills...

To avoid the "We take a year off to make money" problem, we could penalise the PCs XP. "You take a year off? Ok, you get a little rusty when you return to your adventuring career, so I say -100 x Lvl xp" or something on those lines.

 

[Minigiant]

I was going to make a thread about downtime yesterday but sports came on.

Anyway.

1) Pacing During Adventure. I really hope there is more than a few pages in the MM and DMG of what monsters and enemies do on their offtime and what they do upon spotting and losing PCs.

2) Pacing During PC Downtime. I always hope for rules or at least guidelines of what PCs can do when not killing monsters, traveling the wilderness, and conversing with kings. I'd like rules for

Doing unskilled labor
Performing a skilled profession
Performing music or dance for money
Crafting masterwork armor and weapons
Crafting nonmagical chemical, biological, or alchemical items
Crafting magic items and tools
Ordering goods
Gathering favors and contacts
Gathering herbs and poisons from the wild
Training apprentices and squires
Rearing and training animals
COLLECTING YOUR BEAR ARMY TO READY SWIFT URSA DEATH ON YOUR ENEMIES!

 

[the Jester]

Separately, and not to derail the thread, but does anyone know how to do a "@" mention for usernames with spaces? I can't figure it out.

EXPERIMENT TIME!

A: [MENTION=1210]the Jester[/MENTION]
B: @"the Jester"
C: [MENTION=82555]the[/MENTION]_Jester
D: [MENTION=82555]the[/MENTION]Jester

EDIT: The answer is A. Just type "@" followed by the name ("the Jester") with the space intact.

 

[haakon1]

1) Pacing During Adventure. I really hope there is more than a few pages in the MM and DMG of what monsters and enemies do on their offtime and what they do upon spotting and losing PCs.

This would be useful advice, I think, but then I LOVE doing this stuff as a DM.

Some DM's seem to prefer "the static dungeon", I think just because it's less work for them. I guess that's OK.

 

[Minigiant]

This would be useful advice, I think, but then I LOVE doing this stuff as a DM.

Some DM's seem to prefer "the static dungeon", I think just because it's less work for them. I guess that's OK.

That is precisely why I want there to be advice, charts, and rules in the book. So you can flip a few pages and change the game when you feel lazy.

"When dungeon humanoids, like kobolds and goblins, suspect intruders in their area; they often pull out countermeasures to tip any possible combat in their favor. They might place 3d6 snare and bear trap. They might grab the better armor out of storage (+2 to AC). Some even pull out their good weapons (+2 to attack and damage rolls). A scared bunch might even equip the magic items they were sworn to protect to their best warriors
(1in 20 kobolds and goblins gain a magic weapon)."

"Rangers and characters trained in Nature can spend a day in the plant filled wilderness to pick herbs that aid in healing.. blah blah check roll XYZ rules suggestion restrictions blah blah fluff."

 

[jshaft37]

Also, what would be good are rules/suggestions for the DM regarding adventurers that leave dungeons/adventure in order to rest (the 5 min work day).

With intelligent creatures I tend to reinforce the dungeons defenses or add some new traps, and with creatures that can travel into urban settings, they may attack (physically or their reputations) where they are resting.

But I'm always looking for more suggestions or ideas.

 

[LostSoul]

I put some work into this in my hack of 4E.

Basically you want to make time a resource that the players have to spend. How can they spend it? Work, training, new powers & rituals, retraining, crafting, magic items, technological research, influencing towns, clearing hexes... I think that's it. Well, adventure costs time too, I guess.

The cost is that NPCs are supposed to be proactive. I have some rules for NPC organizations called "Lairs" that grow over time. Or wither and die. NPCs can also steal treasure from adventure sites and create new Lairs (if they are powerful enough).

For example, the PCs currently want to loot a dungeon (to get GP; they are feeling cash-strapped at the moment) but ran across some NPCs from a duergar Lair up to no good. I think some PCs are busy levelling up at the moment, too; they also want to build some fortifications, make magic items, rituals, etc. but don't have the time for it.

That's one approach. I don't know how it would work for an adventure path. I don't think it matters since the adventure path is heavily scripted anyway; it's up to the DM to handle.

Other thoughts:

Increased monster activity is not a bad thing for PCs if you get XP for defeating monsters. A low-level dungeon can become a safe XP generator; you don't want to give players a good reason to "grind for XP."

Having low-level monsters leave - and take their treasure with them - will make the game more difficult; you could, however, run into a situation where the PCs are too weak to deal with anything left. Then they'll probably be stuck grinding for XP via wandering monsters in a relatively safe location.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Basically you want to make time a resource that the players have to spend. How can they spend it? Work, training, new powers & rituals, retraining, crafting, magic items, technological research, influencing towns, clearing hexes... I think that's it. Well, adventure costs time too, I guess.

This. I think that's half of it, the "carrot" part, all opportunity costs on going after some good things that you want. Then there is the "stick" part, which can include things like monsters getting tougher over time.

However, if I'm going to go for that level of detail on the carrot, I want some stick built into those same mechanisms. For example, let's say that to craft a magic item, the enchanter needs access to a "wizard lab". You can rent one or use one as a guild or as a favor, but maintaining those ties all have (somewhat different) costs. Or you can make your own, and craft more efficiently, but now maintaining that lab has its own costs. No free lunch.

The same kind of thing can work with fighter training, rogue training, clerical duties, etc. That buddy you spar with to get your training is cheap in money, but he gets into trouble, and that eats in your time. Or you join a guild, and they have fees and obligations. Maybe then taking the gang out for ale and a good time is critical relationship building, and a good use of your funds.

D&D has had a tendency to impose one way of handling such things. That begins to chafe, and people start watering it down or even ignoring it completely. Yet, if you have several different ways to handle it, it becomes an interesting choice with downstream consequences. If you only want to scribe a few scrolls occasionally, then renting a room at the mage guild library for a few weeks a year is a good idea. If you start crafting like mad, you want your own tower. Once you have the tower, then you need to craft to justify maintaining it.