Changing the Duration of a Rest
- Thread starter I'm A Banana
- Start date
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Sunseeker
Guest
You'd just have to define a value for a "surge". Say, 10 points. So whatever the heal does +10.
Assuming there are any spells or other effects that have a defined duration, there has to be a default duration for rests to balance things on. For example, a 24 hour spell works very differently with 1 hour extended rests than 1 week extended rests.
Those who want to alter pacing can always change the default, with the understanding that balance may also change.
Those who want to alter pacing can always change the default, with the understanding that balance may also change.
Crazy Jerome
First Post
The latter. The idea is that if the game is at a relatively fast pace, then you get a full rest every day--and stuff happens every day. Having to pay an increased "upkeep" is one way out of many (a particularly abstract and easy one) that you can deal with "stuff happens every day". Then if the game moves at a much more leisurely pace--say, once a month effective rests, then you don't pay such a premium for upkeep or have these other things always happening. You aren't in a big hurry all the time, which gives the characters time to relax at their sleepy home--where they quickly accumulate things and thus don't need to buy daily upkeep off of some greedy innkeeper.
But definitely, you'd have other events happening at the same pace, whatever it is. It sounds counter-productive, until you realize this is a narrative device. You'd think the wizard stuck at home for his sleepy month could swap out spells easily while the guy on the frantic day-to-day grind would be hard-pressed to swap at all. It might work out that way occasionally, but if you set the campaign pace as "sleepy"--then you are specifically saying here that one of the reasons that things move slow is because it takes all wizards that long to swap out spells, and warriors that long to heal. On a fast pace, the pace is that fast, because wizards can swap spells on a dime, and warriors heal overnight.
Contrawise, when the campaign goes against type for a brief time, it really stands out. If you really maintain a fast pace--healing, recoverying spells, and the activity needed to maintain that--then characters that get a free three days feel incredibly wealthly. They can do so much in that time! Likewise, in an otherwise sleepy game, if you have an emergency that requires quick action, the characters will be incredibly pressed--that wizard has to make his spells last, and every hit point gone requires limited resources to regain.
Note that to make this work, however, you explicitly do not scale everything to this time frame. For example, characters get the same amount of money from treasure regardless of pace. (The amount might change for other stylistic reasons--poor characters scrounging or wealthy characters that don't worry about that stuff.) The pace doesn't determine if your are poor or wealthly, but a fast pace emphasizes whatever poverty or wealth is otherwise present, wile a slow pace deemphasizes it.
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I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Quickleaf said:
Since I'm not a big fan of 4e's copypasta * Word powers anyway, I've decided to swap their 2/encounter encounter powers with a more powerful daily.
Warlords get to add 2d6+Charisma Modifier temp HP to everyone within about 5 squares. Clerics get to heal 4d8+Wisdom Modifier HP. Bards grant Regeneration (Charisma Mod) to allies within 5 while in a specific stance (fluffed as playing a song while they are in that stance), until the regenerating character is at full HP. There might be some subtle adjustments to the maths of these, but that's the basic idea.
I basically have to make these healing powers dailies so that groups don't just take multiple short rests to heal up to full -- spamming *Words when there's no surges wouldn't be great.
But I also don't mind them being dailies. Adding some resource management and swinginess to HP and healing is boffo in my book.
Li Shenron
Legend
Sounds very reasonable.
All they need to do is explain in the DMG how many encounters of your same level are supposed to happen (maximum) between rests, and then the DM can find out how she needs to define her short/long rests.
In 3ed they were something like 4 encounters a day. So if your campaign is more like LotR with expected max 1 encounter every couple of days, you can substitute the standard night rest with a week's rest (provided this doesn't mean total bed rest but just no fighting, or maybe even fighting doesn't prevent this). And on the other hand if you want to have tens of encounters per day, you can just allow e.g. 30 minutes rest.
howandwhy99
Adventurer
That is a brilliant breakthrough KM. It makes one of the major aspects of the game, healing, something setting or even campaign specific.
More healing options will still be desired though. I use different mechanics than the ones you listed. 4E has surges during combat that work differently too. Healing by points rather than set amounts or even "fully healed" means different methods really need to be offered as well as optional length.
Fatigue would be my in-combat kind of healing. A full round spent resting refreshes a creature from any accrued energetic actions or fatigue penalties. Non-magical healing takes 24 hours / HP, with limited activity spent during the day. Below zero healing is unconscious the whole time. Stabilization of a dying character does not heal, but certainly pertains to helping out the damaged.
All the options really need to be looked at, but this is a great variable to identify.
More healing options will still be desired though. I use different mechanics than the ones you listed. 4E has surges during combat that work differently too. Healing by points rather than set amounts or even "fully healed" means different methods really need to be offered as well as optional length.
Fatigue would be my in-combat kind of healing. A full round spent resting refreshes a creature from any accrued energetic actions or fatigue penalties. Non-magical healing takes 24 hours / HP, with limited activity spent during the day. Below zero healing is unconscious the whole time. Stabilization of a dying character does not heal, but certainly pertains to helping out the damaged.
All the options really need to be looked at, but this is a great variable to identify.
Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
Actually (putting on my well-worn 4e apologist hat) I like a lot of the way healing is handled in 4e -- a fairly permissive basic set of rules that we've manipulated and adapted for different situations to create the scene/story moments we've wanted to created (my Co-DMs and me in our home game).
We've done things like half-exented rests when the PCs are not able to rest comfortably -- basically count the number of healing surges and dailies your character has expended, and you recover half that number back instead of the full number. It gives the PCs choices to make (are dailies more important than your surges?), and slowly bleeds away resources.
I've also done things like used skill challenges to represent overland travel -- so each skill check round represents a day of travel (usually there are embedded skill checks that determine whether there are encounters on the road) and I don't allow an extended rest unless the PCs stop traveling for a day (which may or may not represent a failure in the challenge, depending upon how I've written it). Often, in those extended challenges, failures on some checks also inflict special penalties (based on things like sprains, wounds, exhaustion, etc) that also don't go away unless the PCs rest.
The key thing, for me, is the idea that the 4e designers most often repeated (at least in what I've read) -- they look at an option and ask themselves "What would be the most fun" from the player's point of view.
And, really, having your character gimped is rarely the most fun option. If a PC has daily powers, it would seem to make sense that the player should expect to be able to use them at least once per game session under normal conditions. So, I tend to only use these sorts of mechanics as exceptions, when I'm trying to do something specific -- which again brings me back to my 4e apologist's hat -- I like the exceptions-based idea; a fairly generous healing system that I can tweak for specific exceptions.
-rg
We've done things like half-exented rests when the PCs are not able to rest comfortably -- basically count the number of healing surges and dailies your character has expended, and you recover half that number back instead of the full number. It gives the PCs choices to make (are dailies more important than your surges?), and slowly bleeds away resources.
I've also done things like used skill challenges to represent overland travel -- so each skill check round represents a day of travel (usually there are embedded skill checks that determine whether there are encounters on the road) and I don't allow an extended rest unless the PCs stop traveling for a day (which may or may not represent a failure in the challenge, depending upon how I've written it). Often, in those extended challenges, failures on some checks also inflict special penalties (based on things like sprains, wounds, exhaustion, etc) that also don't go away unless the PCs rest.
The key thing, for me, is the idea that the 4e designers most often repeated (at least in what I've read) -- they look at an option and ask themselves "What would be the most fun" from the player's point of view.
And, really, having your character gimped is rarely the most fun option. If a PC has daily powers, it would seem to make sense that the player should expect to be able to use them at least once per game session under normal conditions. So, I tend to only use these sorts of mechanics as exceptions, when I'm trying to do something specific -- which again brings me back to my 4e apologist's hat -- I like the exceptions-based idea; a fairly generous healing system that I can tweak for specific exceptions.
-rg
I'd like to see most Daily resources become Adventure resources, with guidance in the DMG to either make a DM call on what an "Adventure" is, or to establish a sensible rest period to naturally demarcate them.
The idea is to make the player's option of resting for the night be less overwhelmingly powerful, avoiding forcing the DM to constantly invent reasons why resting would be bad. They can't choose to recover Adventure resources without abandoning the adventure, so there's a naturally large disincentive. I'd have a simple night's rest recover some HP and/or Surges, but little else.
The idea is to make the player's option of resting for the night be less overwhelmingly powerful, avoiding forcing the DM to constantly invent reasons why resting would be bad. They can't choose to recover Adventure resources without abandoning the adventure, so there's a naturally large disincentive. I'd have a simple night's rest recover some HP and/or Surges, but little else.
Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
I don't know, dkyle -- how do you define an "adventure" -- it's too fuzzy a term. Plenty of folks don't play distinct adventures, others play LFR games that are essentially one adventure per session -- and that means there's a lot more variability in the way you build encounters, because it's a lot harder to know how many daily resources the PC can expect to have at their disposal.
I'm curious -- why do you think it would be better to get extended rests less frequently (or the benefits of an extended rest less frequently). I've just said, above, that I do it from time to time for the sake of story and situation, as an exception, but making it the rule? What makes that better?
-rg
I'm curious -- why do you think it would be better to get extended rests less frequently (or the benefits of an extended rest less frequently). I've just said, above, that I do it from time to time for the sake of story and situation, as an exception, but making it the rule? What makes that better?
-rg
