Beyond the encounter: rules for pacing and downtime.

[Doug McCrae]

If a DM doesn't want to run a campaign where the players completely dictate the pace of the game and take their sweet time to be carefully prepared for everything, then he shouldn't focus on littering the landscape with abandoned dungeons populated with undead, traps, and magical constructs.

So, what you're saying is that D&D doesn't work?

If you are, then I agree with you, because these two features - sandbox play and ancient tombs filled with traps and undead - are both important parts of the traditional D&D experience. Sandbox play and Vancian magic (and its concomitant 15 min days) don't work well together, imo.

I agree that BBEGs with evil schemes and a calendar is one solution. However adventure-based design, NPCs who can go down in one round to a Save-or-Die, are not a good fit for such BBEGs. A DM could put all this work into a bad guy's plans, only for him to drop dead the first time the PCs meet him.

Alternatively there could be parties of NPC adventurers, as featured in the 1e DMG encounter tables. OD&D was supposed to play a lot like World of Warcraft in the sense that there is a very high ratio of players to DMs - 20:1 is the recommendation. Only a few players, maybe between one and a half-dozen, are involved in any given adventure. The other players are the competition. OD&D was very gamist, very competitive, like WoW. So instead of BBEGs being the threat, other adventurers are. If the PCs don't loot the ancient tomb, within, say, a month of rumours of its existence becoming known in the City of Greyhawk, then a party of NPC adventurers will loot it.

I guess one problem with this approach may be that competition between adventurers devolves into warfare, with multiple gangs of treasure-crazed bastards lurking around outside every dungeon, waiting for a heavily wounded, spell-depleted, treasure-laden party to exit.

 

[I'm A Banana]

However adventure-based design, NPCs who can go down in one round to a Save-or-Die, are not a good fit for such BBEGs.

You can actually pretty easily have BBEGs in adventure-based design, you just need to make sure they're "an encounter in and of themselves." If hit with a Save-Or-Die, they don't die, they just loose HP. If the Wizard Sleeps them, they might take a lesser effect (such as slow). More robust "Solo" rules should handle this just fine.

 

[Doug McCrae]

You can actually pretty easily have BBEGs in adventure-based design, you just need to make sure they're "an encounter in and of themselves." If hit with a Save-Or-Die, they don't die, they just loose HP. If the Wizard Sleeps them, they might take a lesser effect (such as slow). More robust "Solo" rules should handle this just fine.

I thought that with adventure-based design, you don't care about individual encounters - it doesn't matter if one encounter is ended with, say, a finger of death. Would this be a hybrid adventure/encounter-based design?

 

[I'm A Banana]

I thought that with adventure-based design, you don't care about individual encounters - it doesn't matter if one encounter is ended with, say, a finger of death. Would this be a hybrid adventure/encounter-based design?

You don't HAVE to have BBEGs in adventure-based design. The game works normally without it, and lets people snipe all the goblins they want.

You CAN have a BBEG in adventure-based design by rolling a bunch of goblins together into one creature.

Say, an Assassin has a Death Attack that deals, on average, enough damage to kill an enemy (8 times normal damage in 4e). Most encounters can be ended with that death attack before they even begin. One-hit-kills.

But the BBEG counts as two or three or four normal enemies, so he has two or three or four times the normal HP, so the assassin's death attack only deals half or a third or a fourth of the creature's HP (which is only enough to kill it after a while...)

You can set similar effects to a similar threshold. Say, Sleep works by knocking unconscious any critter below X hp, and creatures it doesn't knock out it still renders drowsy (next hit deals 8 times normal damage). It might knock out a goblin, but it only makes the Goblin King a little woozy -- woozy enough for the fighter to bean him good.

You could hypothetically make the entire adventure just one creature, if you wanted. You wouldn't "nerf" Save-or-Die effects, but neither would you have the creature die outright, if they were powerful enough...and weaker creatures could still doe outright (or functionally die outright, like with Sleep).

Gives you a lot more flexibility, there.

 

[Doug McCrae]

You could hypothetically make the entire adventure just one creature, if you wanted. You wouldn't "nerf" Save-or-Die effects, but neither would you have the creature die outright, if they were powerful enough...and weaker creatures could still doe outright (or functionally die outright, like with Sleep).

I think I get the picture. In the same way that 4e grants an xp budget for each encounter, giving the DM the freedom to use a mix of minion, normal, and elite monsters, or a single solo, this system instead has a budget for the whole adventure.

The PCs have a fixed amount of resources to use over the course of the adventure. The wizard's sleep spell alone might deal with 1000xp worth of monsters, which would often be one encounter, but if he faces 5000xp worth of monsters at once (which might be half the adventure's worth) then he's only handled a fifth of the encounter. The giants' feast hall in steading of the Hill Giant Chief would be the classic example of this sort of encounter.

One question I have, if I'm on the right lines, is how do you balance the increased damage of five times as many monsters? 5000xp worth of monsters, in five units of 1000xp each, are a lot less dangerous than 5000xp worth of monsters all at once, because they are doing damage at five times the rate.

 

[Lwaxy]

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.

[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] should have worked. It just needs to be spelled exactly the same... I hope.

As for the topic, a few guidelines for downtime can't hurt, less for making money but more for taking time off for other things. Family in trouble, dad needs help with farm, such kind of things. Including how many professional levels they are supposed to get in farming in that case

OK, not absolutely needed but it would make sense in many cases.

For the monsters, yes I'd love to have at least a table I could look up how much they have regenerated/improved etc. I can make it up of course but showing that I've not made it up and there are rules for it would help in some cases.

 

[Keldryn]

So, what you're saying is that D&D doesn't work?

If you are, then I agree with you, because these two features - sandbox play and ancient tombs filled with traps and undead - are both important parts of the traditional D&D experience. Sandbox play and Vancian magic (and its concomitant 15 min days) don't work well together, imo.

I'm not saying that D&D doesn't work. I agree that sandbox play and ancient tombs filled with traps and undead are both important parts of the traditional D&D experience. I'm just saying that if a DM builds a setting mostly populated by abandoned tombs just waiting to be plundered by the PCs and runs it as a "go anywhere you want, when you want" sandbox, then he should expect the players to adopt a strategy resembling the 15-minute adventuring day. It's an effective strategy that minimizes risk to their PCs.

Ultimately, the key to overcoming the 15-minute adventuring day is to make it clear that the rest of the world isn't stopping to wait while the PCs explore a dungeon one or two rooms a day. Any monsters in the dungeon with a hint of intelligence will adapt and respond after a couple of incursions. Wandering monsters will still ... wander. Rival adventurers and villains will continue to pursue their goals. Maybe one of them will take advantage of the path cleared by the overly-cautious PCs and enter the dungeon while the PCs are sleeping or traveling to and from town.

The key to making it work is to think about how others will logically respond to what the PCs do. Planning it out beforehand (even in broad strokes) helps to avoid the feeling that you're just doing it to screw with the players.

I agree that BBEGs with evil schemes and a calendar is one solution. However adventure-based design, NPCs who can go down in one round to a Save-or-Die, are not a good fit for such BBEGs. A DM could put all this work into a bad guy's plans, only for him to drop dead the first time the PCs meet him.

If it's vital that a BBEG not go down on the first round, then the DM should give him some sort of protection spells or items. Or simply make it difficult to reach him that quickly. Attrition through encounters with the BBEG's underlings helps keep the PCs from fighting the BBEG at full strength.

If the DM puts a lot of work into a BBEG's plans and the PCs dispatch him easily, then the BBEG's protege takes over. Somebody steps in to fill the void. Or, with the BBEG out of the picture, his underlings become disorganized and end up attacking merchant caravans and villages. Or the underlings look to the PCs to lead them. When the BBEG is taken down unexpectedly or anticlimactically, turn it into a new adventure hook.

And again, if it takes me 15 minutes to stat up a BBEG and not 2 hours, I don't care if the PCs take him down quickly. If I've put a lot of detail into his plans and his organization, I'll find a way to keep using them.

I guess one problem with this approach may be that competition between adventurers devolves into warfare, with multiple gangs of treasure-crazed bastards lurking around outside every dungeon, waiting for a heavily wounded, spell-depleted, treasure-laden party to exit.

Sounds like the early days of Ultima Online (late 1997).

 

[I'm A Banana]

One question I have, if I'm on the right lines, is how do you balance the increased damage of five times as many monsters? 5000xp worth of monsters, in five units of 1000xp each, are a lot less dangerous than 5000xp worth of monsters all at once, because they are doing damage at five times the rate.

Yeah, you're on the right lines!

For that, you can go a few different ways. The easiest is probably is similar to how they do minions, elites, and solos in 4e: there's 4 times as many minions as there are standard monsters, but each one deals less damage. There's one-quarters as many solos as there are standard monsters, but each one deals more damage. You can bake this into monster stats and do something like a "number appearing" entry in the statblock that tells you what one group of the creatures is made up of, and so you "buy" all of them at once with your XP price.

Another, or also, you can go with the idea that the "encounters are disposable" thing cuts both ways. If all the goblins in the camp CAN gang up on the party, they're going to try to. If the party takes out one at a time, they're going to go down much easier. Let the party's strategy determine how many at once they want to try to tackle, and how they get out of or avoid a situation where all the goblins try to mob them at once.

I think the former is a good place to start, and the latter gives some interesting tactical choices as the battle unfolds, so both in concert work well: you know how much typically appear in an encounter, but you also know that stopping the snowball is important, if you hope to pull out victory here and not get overwhelmed. There's probably a few other ways you can handle it, too, this just seemed the most obvious to me.

 

[Lanefan]

Alternatively there could be parties of NPC adventurers, as featured in the 1e DMG encounter tables. ... If the PCs don't loot the ancient tomb, within, say, a month of rumours of its existence becoming known in the City of Greyhawk, then a party of NPC adventurers will loot it.

I guess one problem with this approach may be that competition between adventurers devolves into warfare, with multiple gangs of treasure-crazed bastards lurking around outside every dungeon, waiting for a heavily wounded, spell-depleted, treasure-laden party to exit.

Problem? I don't see any problem.

Other parties are - or should be - the PC party's most dangerous foes.

That said, DMing a combat between two adventuring parties is a female dog.

Lanefan

 

[Tony Vargas]

The idea of having some structured element of pacing that would help keep limitted-use abilities balanced is a nice one. I'm not sure how it could be implemented. D&D has always used the 'day' as a pacing and recharge yardstick. In older versions of the game, a monster's special attack or an item's power might be useable 3/day. Spells were each cast 1/day. 3e and 4e retained this, though 1/day became a lot more common than the once ubiquitous 3/day.

The problem is defining the day. Sometimes it was 24 hours since the last use of the 1/day thingie. Sometimes it was until the next dawn or midnight. Sometimes it was until the next time the party 'slept' (took an 8+ hour break from adventuring). A party could thus pack several days into a day. Nevermind blipping into a plane where time flowed differently.

With 'day' a shambles, it's tempting to find some alternative. A DM-defined 'Adventure' might be tempting, but, if its DM-defined, it runs into the same problems as the player-behavior-influenced day. If the DM tends, stylistically, towards long or short 'adventures,' the value of 'per adventure' abilities varies. If the system has a formulaic 'Adventure,' it becomes predictable, and open to metagaming by the players, and you're back to the same sort of problem as the 'day.' The other extreme is to have encounter balance. It'd be workable (The latest Gamma World is an example of a D&D-ish game with very little in the way of accross-encounters resources - it doesn't really try to be balanced, but its structure could make a fair foundation for an aproach that doesn't depend upon balancing over a 'day' or other limitted-use recharge period.)