Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="moxcamel" data-source="post: 5341675" data-attributes="member: 67954">Design-wise, the reason for the 5 minute short rest was to keep the game moving at a fairly brisk pace. (apologies if this was already obvious, mostly I'm just writing stream of consciousness here <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)&nbsp; When you define a short rest as 6 hours, you're slowing the game down quite a bit, something 4e wasn't really designed for.&nbsp; Which isn't necessarily bad if your players don't mind, but if you ever played 1e or 2e, you might remember that the basic formula became a few fights a day, then holing up in a cleared dungeon room (remember those door spikes?), or heading back to town for at least a few days, and then rinsing and repeating.&nbsp; It just felt monotonous sometimes because it seemed like just as things were getting good, we'd have to pack up and head back to town because the spellcasters were out of spells.I think if you really want to make the fights count more, just make multiple encounters seem like one big encounter with the breaks situated in such a way that they don't really seem like breaks.&nbsp; An idea off the top of my head is having the PCs defend an area where multiple waves of attackers enter at different times.&nbsp; The challenge for the players is to kill off one wave before the next wave arrives.&nbsp; If they take too long, they don't get the benefits of a rest in between. (although at the very least I'd let them have a rest after no more than 3 fights.)&nbsp; Using this method, you still have a &quot;fight that counts&quot; (even though in game terms it was a series of encounters), and it's likely that at the end of it your PCs will have to head back to Tyr to resupply and heal up.&nbsp; Then maybe the next time they're chasing somebody through the city streets, having to fight their way through bunches of thugs whose job it is to get in their way.&nbsp; You could even mix it up with skill challenges.&nbsp; Doing it this way results in a more cinematic approach, rather than the plodding fight/hole-up/repeat formula of old.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="moxcamel, post: 5341675, member: 67954"] Design-wise, the reason for the 5 minute short rest was to keep the game moving at a fairly brisk pace. (apologies if this was already obvious, mostly I'm just writing stream of consciousness here :)) When you define a short rest as 6 hours, you're slowing the game down quite a bit, something 4e wasn't really designed for. Which isn't necessarily bad if your players don't mind, but if you ever played 1e or 2e, you might remember that the basic formula became a few fights a day, then holing up in a cleared dungeon room (remember those door spikes?), or heading back to town for at least a few days, and then rinsing and repeating. It just felt monotonous sometimes because it seemed like just as things were getting good, we'd have to pack up and head back to town because the spellcasters were out of spells. I think if you really want to make the fights count more, just make multiple encounters seem like one big encounter with the breaks situated in such a way that they don't really seem like breaks. An idea off the top of my head is having the PCs defend an area where multiple waves of attackers enter at different times. The challenge for the players is to kill off one wave before the next wave arrives. If they take too long, they don't get the benefits of a rest in between. (although at the very least I'd let them have a rest after no more than 3 fights.) Using this method, you still have a "fight that counts" (even though in game terms it was a series of encounters), and it's likely that at the end of it your PCs will have to head back to Tyr to resupply and heal up. Then maybe the next time they're chasing somebody through the city streets, having to fight their way through bunches of thugs whose job it is to get in their way. You could even mix it up with skill challenges. Doing it this way results in a more cinematic approach, rather than the plodding fight/hole-up/repeat formula of old. [/QUOTE]

Verification