Continuing beyond Healing Surges

[Paultimatum]

What if you allowed one moderate rest per milestone? If they work like a short rest they would not erase milestones. This could add an incentive to collect milestones, as doing so would not necessarily mean not regaining healing surges and daily powers, as well as preventing players from taking multiple moderate rests in a row.

 

[the Jester]

The moderate rest idea is verrry interesting.

I like the "healing surges or a daily power" renewal choice- that's cool, and makes it feel like less than a full extended rest.

I also like the idea of using moderate rests and milestones, and the way they interact, to encourage the pace the dm wants to set. Maybe in some types of environments, you reset to "0 encounters" on your "milestone counter" when you take a moderate rest; maybe in others, you keep counting up encounters without cease when you take a moderate rest; maybe in some, you keep counting up but only for magic item daily uses, not action points. The dm can really fine tune the adventure's pace that way.

Intriguing...

 

[77IM]

Weeny players in static dungeons could have encounter, nova, and then take multiple moderate rests to regain spent surges and Daily powers.

In a static dungeon, you can already do this with extended rests. That is the OP's point about the "15 minute adventuring day."

The moderate rest idea (or the original Fatigue Points idea) let you have more encounters in a single day, by letting you get back resources without taking a full extended rest (or by shortening the time of extended rest, it's approximately the same thing). Neither rule addresses the cost-balancing of resting, since there isn't any in a static dungeon.

-- 77IM

 

[77IM]

Actually, here's a way to cost-balance resting. If players are weenies about taking too many extended rests, hit them where it hurts: XP.

For each encounter you beat, you get a cumulative +10% XP bonus on your next encounter. So your second encounter of the day is at +10% XP, your third encounter is at +20% XP, your fourth is at +30% XP, etc. If you are on your sixth encounter of the day and happen to be low on resources when you stumble upon the boss fight... look on the bright side, you will be getting a +50% XP bonus. The idea is that fights are harder when you are low on powers and surges... so why not reward that extra difficulty with extra XP?

An extended rest resets your "kill-streak bonus" back to +0%, and a moderate rest reduces it by 10%. That's pretty strong disincentive to rest.

Unfortunately, XP may be too tempting to some groups. Deciding whether to press on (yummy +60% XP on the next fight!) or rest (but we will probably lose the next fight...) might be an "unfun" decision and feel more like a lose-lose scenario than a bonus. It's because XP is so valuable; trading off XP for anything else becomes painful.

-- 77IM

 

[inkpenavenger]

Here's a solution: Quit running all-standard encounters. I've noticed too that one or two characters tend to run out of healing surges after 3 or 4 standard encounters. Then I started throwing in some lower-level fights in between and BAM, upwards of a dozen encounters before they need an extended rest.

 

[CapnZapp]

Thanks for all the helpful replies!

Some comments:
* Yes, I meant to replace healing surges with fatigue points. I'll clarify that in the original post.
* As I explained in the original post, the reason for the name change (and that numbers go up rather than down) is purely aesthetic: it avoids having "negative healing surges".
* I'm not going to respond to the nitpicking replies regarding time. Why bicker about whether the time spent adventuring totals 10 or 30 minutes? That won't change the fact that any party will commonly spend 23 hours out of the day resting. Just like in 3rd edition!

I disagree with your assessment of the problem; I have found my pcs running for three sessions, including hours of exploration, multiple trap-monster combos, etc. without taking an extended rest.

How many combats have they had?

My experience is mainly in playing Keep of the Shadowfell with a 4-PC party. On average, I'd say we have needed two extended rests per session.

This might change with a less combat-intensive adventure (KotS is a pure dungeon slash).

Edit: But to be more helpful, I'd say that your proposed system is a good start, but what if the pcs just keep going? Is there a point at which the penalties get worse? I would recommend it, but I'm not sure how you'd want it to work.

I think so too. I didn't include anything like that, because I wanted to start with basics. Remember, the purpose of the rule is to let the party move on even when one PC is at low or zero healing surges (=near or at his fatigue threshold), assuming the rest of the party are fine.

When everybody (or almost everybody) is low on resources, resting is much more natural and much less of a problem. Being able to press on in this case isn't the intention of the rules, so yes, some additional discouragement is probably a good idea.

Here's a solution: Quit running all-standard encounters. I've noticed too that one or two characters tend to run out of healing surges after 3 or 4 standard encounters. Then I started throwing in some lower-level fights in between and BAM, upwards of a dozen encounters before they need an extended rest.

I understand your point, and probably this is what we have encountered in KotS.

Not sure I like the remedy, though. If the system requires you to have easy encounters for the resources to last through-out the session, that still seems flawed somehow. Sooner or later, the lack of variety ("always easy encounters") is bound to get boring. I'd much prefer a solution that's robust enough to handle the full variety of encounter strengths the system can throw atya.

 

[CapnZapp]

This is a pretty good idea. Here is a similar house rule that I think might be easier to inject into the game:

MODERATE REST

• Just Like Short Rest: A moderate rest works just like a short rest in all respects, except as described here.
• Duration: A moderate rest lasts one hour.
• Regain Healing Surges: After a moderate rest, you regain up to 2 spent healing surges. You can choose not to regain any healing surges. (You can then spend healing surges if you want, since a moderate rest works just like a short rest.)
• Renew Daily Power: After a moderate rest, if you didn't regain any healing surges, you can instead renew one spent daily power. You select which daily power at the end of the moderate rest. (You also renew all your encounter powers, since a moderate rest works just like a short rest.)
• Requires Adequate Sleep: Similar to an extended rest, you must have slept for at least 6 of the last 24 hours in order to gain any benefit from a moderate rest.

In other words, the moderate rest is a sort of extended rest chopped up into parts. It's not quite as good as a full extended rest but still very useful due to its flexibility.

-- 77IM

So, what you're saying is that if you take a "short" rest for an hour, you get back either two surges or a daily?

I guess that's fairly similar to my sixth rule:
6) Each hour's rest (sleep, light transport etc) removes one Fatigue Point...
But more generous.

The more I think about it, however, I like the idea to tie recovery to milestones.

(Sure, you could still allow the party to pay time to regain their health; but the milestone idea is more... energetic and active).

The idea is that whenever you're low on healing (few surges or many fatigue points), you should try to hang back, play it safe. If your fellow party members manage to take a larger share of the hurt onto themselves, you could end up with a more equal distribution of health. And if you play it smart, you might not run out for a very long time - which would finally then extend the adventuring day regardless of adventure composition.

I'll add it in (see the original post) - feel free to comment further.

 

[CapnZapp]

Here is the updated section (also updated in the original post):

§1 Instead of Healing Surges, Fatigue Points are used. Each morning, a character's Fatigue Points start at zero. See §9.
§2 Assume a character's Fatigue Threshold = his number of Healing Surges +1.
§3 Assume a character's Exhaustion Threshold = his number of Healing Surges +5.
§4 Each time you take a Second Wind, you get a point of Fatigue. (Any time you would have spent a Healing Surge, you instead get a Fatigue Point)
§5 Once you reach your Fatigue Threshold, you're Fatigued. If you get below this threshold, you immediately cease to be Fatigued.
§6 Once you reach your Exhaustion Threshold, you're Exhausted (in addition to being Fatigued). If you get below this threshold, you immediately cease to be Exhausted.
§7 Each hour spent out of strenuous activity (such as combat, running or climbing) removes one Fatigue Point.
§8 Reaching a milestone removes one Fatigue Point. Option: You can regain the use of a Daily power when reaching a milestone. Instead of removing one Fatigue Point, add one.
§9 Six more-or-less contiguous hours of rest (i.e. an Extended Rest) removes any and all remaining Fatigue Points.
§10 The DM can declare all Fatigue Points lost at any time for any reason.

Fatigued (Condition): You take a -2 penalty to all rolls and checks (attacks, skills etc).
Exhausted (Condition): You take a -2 penalty to all defenses. You take a -1 penalty to your Speed. Once Exhausted, the Fatigued condition won't go away until you rest for 24 contiguous hours with nourishment and warmth/cool readily available.

Comments welcome.

 

[Zelc]

Why not just give everyone more healing surges? That is in effect what you're trying to do, only in a far more complicated manner .

 

[inkpenavenger]

Why not just give everyone more healing surges? That is in effect what you're trying to do, only in a far more complicated manner .

Aha! That is what you are doing!