Can you get too much healing?

[Kraydak]

For what it's worth, maximizing HS triggers across a party is optimizing the party for single (or linked, no short rest) massive encounters. The problem the OP is having is that he cannot challenge the party without draining the party's daily allotment of resources (because the party can drain their full allotment of HSs in a single encounter, or at least one character's HSs).

This has nothing to do with players choosing to take 15 minute adventures, but rather with the DM feeling that he has the choice of not challenging the party, or forcing the party into 15 minute adventures by facing them against brutally hard encounters. Providing the party with incentives to push onwards/penalties for not pushing onwards is irrelevant to the problem at hand.

I would say that, given the party's build, design an adventure fairly normally, cut the opposition a little (the party will be using fewer Encounter abilities, although it may be able to get more juice out of some Dailies) and link the encounters (so there is no time to short-rest) into a few mega-encounters. This generally has the side benefit of making locations feel slightly more reactive to the PCs' presence. Don't force yourself to strain the PCs' resources in each encounter, by try and make them burn a daily HS trigger or two each linked-encounter: they'll notice that.

I *strongly* recommend having the "second" half of a linked encounter arrive AFTER the first half is completely over until you get a good, solid grip on the balance issues. In the absence of strong AoE abilities, encounter difficulty tends to go as the square of the number of opponents, which can get out of hand really fast.

 

[KidSnide]

But further, if the DM lays out the choice (implicitly or explicitly) that "if you rest, the enemies will get tougher to compensate for you resting", then there's really no choice for the players. It's tougher for them to go in at less than 100%, and it's tougher for them to go in when they're at 100%. Same result, so no real choice.

If the DM lays out the choice (implicitly or explicitly) that "if you rest, you will fail to obtain your objective", then there's really no choice for the players. They simply must go on to achieve their objective. No choice.

I really disagree with your implicit definition of "real" choice. To me, a "real" choice is one where different reasonable people could come to different decisions.

Perhaps an example is in order...

If I tell my players, "There are two passes to city of Hiyal. The northern pass is guarded by a tribe of ogres. They are fierce fighters and know the land well but are stupid and have no magic. The southern pass is held by a vicious necromancer. His wight army is even more deadly, but you have a cleric, an invoker and two paladins. Which way do you choose?"

That sounds like a "real" choice to me. The PCs can consider their strengths and decide whether they want to try their luck with ogres or wights.

Similarly, if I tell my PCs that the evil Vizier of Hiyal has begun to summon an army of efreetim, but it takes him several hours to summon each one. If you work your way through his dungeons in a single day, he may be guarded by only two or three efreetim. But, if you take your time, he may have a dozen or so to guard his many chambers.

How is that less of a real choice? Presumably they will try to work their way through the dungeon being sparing with their non-renewal resources in the hope of an easier fight at the end. But if they get a little too hosed, they can choose a harder fight with the benefit of regaining their strength. It is similar to them having the option of fighter a harder wight army, but figuring that it plays to their strengths.

...and either way it seems real to me.

Plot choices can also be real choices. I had an adventure in which the PCs came into a city to discover that (A) an evil sorceress had wormed her way into the royal harem and was trying to replace the princess with a zombie puppet, (B) cultists to the evil sun god were sacrificing lepers in the slums and (C) the great general of the enemy giant kingdom wasn't dead, but had been spending the past few years in a very large opium den. Time was ticking. The PCs chose to focus on the sorceress and the cultists, so the giant's orc allies were able to rescue him and escort him out of the city.

Had they been more clever or time efficient, they could have resolved all three plots. Now, a genius fire giant general (as opposed to a doped-out fire giant) and an orcish demon summoner are at large in the kingdom. This is a clear penalty for failure - the PCs would absolutely rather not deal with these two on their terms. But it hardly ended the campaign... Indeed, it was a perfectly reasonable choice for the PCs to say that the sorceress was the biggest immediate threat and that they had a real personal hatred for the cultists, so they were the priorities. (Another of these cultists defeated the PCs in their first major adventure, and left them for dead. They was a lucky stabilization roll...)

Again, reasonable people could come to different decisions. The PCs came to a result through deliberate strategic and character choice. Those are real plot decisions. Their decision to effectively skip one of the three missions made them more likely to complete the other two. It wasn't optimal play, but I find it hard to see how it wasn't a real choice.

-KS

 

[Nail]

You can always choose to retreat or to fail to get the best objective. In fact, a game that doesn't have that choice is doing a disservice to its players by failing to give them _meaningful_ choices.

So, an honest question: Is "failing" a meaningful (or "legitimate" or "reasonable") choice (in gaming)?

 

[Cadfan]

So, an honest question: Is "failing" a meaningful (or "legitimate" or "reasonable") choice (in gaming)?

In the context of this conversation and the specific examples under debate, yes.

The example given, going into the final battle battered and weakened but with a chance of saving the day, or going into the final battle strong and healthy but with some crucial objective lost, is obviously a choice. Its like deciding to go for a field goal versus a hail mary pass. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. Depends what's at stake, and what your chances are, and who's making the decision.

In the situations given, the party has essentially already failed. They went into a fair fight, lost, and now they aren't strong enough to win the next fight. So they get to decide how to handle that situation. Do they double down and go for it in spite of being weak, or do they rest, accept the consequences, and retain some personal safety? They didn't choose defeat, defeat happened, and now they're deciding how to deal with it.

 

[keterys]

Yep, basically. Even if all they're doing is choosing between pride and their character living, it's a choice.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

So, an honest question: Is "failing" a meaningful (or "legitimate" or "reasonable") choice (in gaming)?

Sure they are, provided you're not playing in game where failure = the world ends. Failure can simply mean that you fail to track down the bad guy and you'll face him again later. Or it can mean that you failed to get a certain powerful item (that would likely be added into a later treasure parcel). It can also mean failing to save someone and not getting paid for the job.

We're conditioned by a lot of games that "failing" is impossible and requires a restart. One of the reasons why I actually loved the old Wing Commander game on the SNES was that if you repeatedly failed missions (but survived) you would start going down an alternate path in the game where the Humans pulled out of the area, rather than sending the Kilrathi packing. It wasn't the "ideal" scenario, but even though you failed missions you could still survive and beat the game.

There's also a wealth of games with "optional" objectives that are often quite difficult to complete. Sometimes you're even faced with a difficult choice wherein if you spend the time and resources to complete the "optional" objective, it could compromise the "main" objective. So you're left with a choice to either finish the mission, or go after an optional bonus and risk losing the mission. D&D is no different, provided you have a DM that designs the quests in such a way as to allow for different objectives that present a choice to the players.

 

[Regicide]

So, an honest question: Is "failing" a meaningful (or "legitimate" or "reasonable") choice (in gaming)?

Some games even have mechanics for it.

 

[Herschel]

Wandering

Elder

Dragon

Otherwise, what he said:

Etc.

Tell them "Toughen up buttercup. Adventuring isn't for wusses." Shoving a couple wandering solos in to their extended rests should give them the point.

 

[lin_fusan]

Exactly: this is no choice at all. It's just Plot, and "the Power of the Plot compells you!" It seems you and I agree on this.

But further, if the DM lays out the choice (implicitly or explicitly) that "if you rest, the enemies will get tougher to compensate for you resting", then there's really no choice for the players. It's tougher for them to go in at less than 100%, and it's tougher for them to go in when they're at 100%. Same result, so no real choice.

If the DM lays out the choice (implicitly or explicitly) that "if you rest, you will fail to obtain your objective", then there's really no choice for the players. They simply must go on to achieve their objective. No choice.

Etc.

While I agree that there is an inherent problem with "ticking clock" scenarios (as well as forcing players to not rest in order to "challenge" them)*, I am a little puzzled about the above statements and need a little clarification.

There is the obvious situation where the players have put their characters in a dungeon, slaughtered the first room or so, then decide to rest in the dungeon. Are you, Nail, stating that it is bad to have the DM determine that another group of monsters see the carnage and raise and alarm, thus creating this "if you rest, the enemies will get tougher to compensate for you resting".

I have been a player in a similar situation, and it was endlessly frustrating to have to decide to 1) rest and get attacked by a wandering patrol, or 2) not rest and encounter a placed encounter.

However, I don't expect the game to simply stop because I decided to rest.

*As for the "ticking clock" scenario, what makes it more compelling if it is more of a "time-management" scenario, where you have a limited amount of time to accomplish a larger goal, but you have several choices to accomplish smaller goals and will eventually aid to the larger one.

 

[Kraydak]

...
Tell them "Toughen up buttercup. Adventuring isn't for wusses." Shoving a couple wandering solos in to their extended rests should give them the point.

Go back and read the OP. This isn't a case of the players going "oh no, we got dinged up, time to sleep". This is a case of the players going "oh crap, character X (and possibly Y) is out of healing surges, time to sleep".

CapnZapp is throwing a full day's worth of encounter at the party (give or take the extra difficulty inherent in over-large encounters) and then complaining about the party taking a break. Or, to be fairer to CapnZapp, this is a case where he wants to challenge the party, and cannot do so without throwing a full day's worth of encounter at them at once, and he wishes the party could keep going.

Most parties simply do not have enough HS triggers to run any character out of HSs in less than two encounters (low con wizards excepted, if they get focus fired). This party can.

I happen to disagree with CapnZapp about how serious the problem is though. You don't need to make the party blow all its HS triggers in a fight to make them sweat, you just need to make them blow a daily HS trigger to get them to notice it. The players will imagine the worst and provide all the requisite sweating. Reducing the combats to that level will allow for longer adventuring days (although he will likely need to consolidate encounters a little in modules to get to the correct encounter difficulty).