Can you get too much healing?

[Dan'L]

Remember, under all of this is the rule: you can only take one "extended rest" per 24 hour in-game period. Keep track of the time passage during the adventure, and stress this to the party. If they set out at eight in the morning, get to the combat by, say, 2 p.m. and after a furious five minutes of fighting they decide that they need another extended rest... well, let them know that they will need to wait until midnight to begin it. Sure, give them the option to back off, find a secure spot to rest, etc., maybe even figure out a way to watch the entrance to the bad guys' lair, but also let them know that the noise of their fight was enough to tip off their presence, and that while the party twiddles their thumbs, other things are still happening. I know if I had a group of mortally agressive intruders in my dungeon home, I'd not be simply content to rest in my den after killing my family dog so that they could be fully refreshed to come and kill the rest of my family.

Perhaps, given warning and time to prepare, the villains raise up their defenses to such a degree that the delayed adventuring faces an entrenched wall. Taunt them with it like the French knights in Monty Python's Holy Grail.

Maybe there was a back door, and while the party rested on their laurels, the villains closed up shop and ran away taking all the treasure and XP with them.

And of course, the villains could also mount an attack on the intruding party while they're resting. Don't be afraid of doing this, but also be willing to have the villains push for the party to surrender instead of fighting until PC death.

Let them know that while yes, their characters are the heroes/protagonists of the story, that the world doesn't revolve solely around them, and that choices have consequences.

Give them a recurring bad guy whose M.O. is to put his underlings between him and the party, and run away before the party can put the kibosh on him. It doesn't even need to be the main boss -- even better could be a second-in-command, major domo string puller who knows how to get while the getting's good, because he knows that in a direct confrontation with the party he'd hold up like a sub-prime loan. Let just this one underling escape the adventure, but then show up again in another adventure later, working for a new big boss. Wash, rinse, repeat. I guarantee you that your party will want to get this guy. Give clues that by resting, they give him the time he needed to get away, and they should figure out that they want to press on.

*****

Beyond that, for constructing encounters, help them realize that there are more ways to get the upper hand than simple HP count. Bring in lots of controlling aspects, and introduce non-damaging hindering conditions like "blinded" or "total concealment" which preclude your party members from seeing each other (it's hard to heal someone you can't see.) Use traps and terrain to put them in compromising positions that they can't just heal their way out from. Have enemies focus fire on one PC, so that it gets to a point where only one character really needs the extended rest.

-Dan'L

 

[kerbarian]

It seems like the core issue is that the party expects to be able to use all their daily abilities every fight. There are a few possible solutions:

1) Let them. Throw high-level encounters at them that are a challenge even when they use all their dailies, and have 15-minute adventuring days. If they enjoy that style of play, there's nothing inherently wrong with it.

2) Prevent them from taking extended rests via the story. Something bad will happen if they don't complete the quest within two days, or they need to penetrate a location (several encounters) in one shot or the defenses will reset while they rest.

It's also possible to combine 1) and 2). When there's a story reason they can't rest, give them level-appropriate encounters, and the rest of the time hit them with encounters that will test them even when they use all their dailies.

3) Introduce a house rule that prevents them from using all their dailies every fight. Tweet's house rule has been mentioned, but you could also go with something much milder. e.g. When you take an extended rest, you don't recover your daily abilities unless you've passed a milestone.

 

[Nail]

And suddenly we're looking at a party with no less than 10 powers that return hit points, without including the less effective Second Wind and Healing Potions.

This makes it all but impossible for me to challenge the group in any given encounter, as healing will flow so freely....

You (and your palyers) might be stuck in a "3e-ism".

"How Healthy You Are" is not determined by current hp totals. It's determined by current Healing Surge totals. From the DM's perspective, that means "challenging the party" doesn't mean running them down to 0 hps, it means running them down to 0 healing surges (and 0 daily powers).

So it's entirely possible to challenge your player's PCs - even as they keep their hps at 100%. Challenge the party by doing what the word challenge means: give them tasks to accomplish that require skill, effort, and luck -- and don't worry about their hps. Don't obsess about hps.

Either I persist in throwing "appropriate" encounters at them, which are trivial in every way and really can be reduced to "how many surges do I need to use up?". Or I give them an exciting fight...

Hmmmm.....

Is it possible that "an exciting fight" means something other than "reduce the PCs to 0 hps"?

 

[Nail]

...(snip)... but also let them know that the noise of their fight was enough to tip off their presence, and that while the party twiddles their thumbs, other things are still happening.

As an aside:

It's true that "rushing the party" can be cool. I get it. But if you (the DM) do this, don't delude youself into thinking you are giving the players "a choice".

You aren't. This is the choice of no choice.

 

[keterys]

As an aside:

It's true that "rushing the party" can be cool. I get it. But if you (the DM) do this, don't delude youself into thinking you are giving the players "a choice".

You aren't. This is the choice of no choice.

No, that's still a choice. As long as the result of resting isn't something like 'and the god ate the world, new campaign', you're making tradeoffs. Go in with less abilities, or duck out and be more prepared but face whatever consequences.

I'm running a module tomorrow and there are a lot of notes as you go through the module to let you know that other parties are trying to get the same thing as the PCs - they run into these opposing sides, stumble onto bodies of other groups' conquests and defeats, etc. So, there's an implied time pressure, though it's not 'oh no the world dies'. As far as consequences go, though, there's basically just two fights that get tougher if you're slow. In one of them, you add a creature for every day the party extended rested to represent reinforcements.

It's really not a bad way of doing it. Resting has a clear reward against the penalty of reinforcements - so you balance risks out. If you rest excessively then you likely can't take the final fight at all, and have to surrender the item (or whatever).

 

[msherman]

Remember, under all of this is the rule: you can only take one "extended rest" per 24 hour in-game period.

18, actually.

 

[Nail]

No, that's still a choice. As long as the result of resting isn't something like 'and the god ate the world, new campaign', you're making tradeoffs. Go in with less abilities, or duck out and be more prepared but face whatever consequences.

Mmmmm.

A choice of "go forward or else" isn't a choice. It's a plot device. There is no "tradeoff". Either you make it to goal "X", or you don't. <shrug>

 

[keterys]

So, you're contending that:
1) Go forward without rest or there will be an extra creature in the next fight
2) Go forward without rest or the next fight will have unfavorable terrain for you
3) Go forward without rest or you will receive 3 magic items instead of 4

are not valid choices? It sure seems to me like there's a real tactical consideration to each of those, and especially for the first two the rest may overwhelmingly make up the deficit.

 

[Danceofmasks]

I always insist on going forward 'cos my ego is big.

Besides, keterys has it right.
You're on a dungeon crawl?
Someone noticed what you did to encounter 1 and the alarm got raised.

Reinforcements, extra fortifications, potential ambushes, or even some cowardly critters evacuating (with their share of the stuff).

Just saying .. bits of 4e may read like "the universe doesn't exist outside the PCs' view radius," but actual games don't have to do that.

 

[keterys]

I always insist on going forward 'cos my ego is big.

I always go forward cause I'm just that badass. Oh, wait, yeah, I guess that's a 'ditto'

Someone noticed what you did to encounter 1 and the alarm got raised. Reinforcements, extra fortifications, potential ambushes

It's a very D&D thing to happen - pretty sure I remember reading stuff in the Giants modules on how to handle it, for example