Dealing with Healing Surges

[Keenath]

I also like city adventures, or wilderness adventures. It's hard to reconcile that the 5 days of travel on the road from Tarnaq to Mar'Delenne will be frought with 25 encounters. How would merchants, or even military patrols, ever survive?

I usually relegate "on the road" encounters to the low-level, easy "bandit squad" sort, with the occasional weak monster. Random encounters are for boosting the Power Fantasy side of things, where you show how awesome you are -- so I don't care if they only have 1 per day and nova it. I mean, you wanna Brute Strike the bandit goon with 20 HP, go right ahead, y'know?

I'll occasionally put in a more serious road encounter, but only if it advances the plot in some way -- a set piece rather than a random wandering monster. You'll never just run into a gryphon while walking down a road; you'll get assaulted by a wing of them in the mountain pass on the edge of a cliff in a blizzard, or something. Something I planned out pretty well.

Yeah, maybe POL is like that, with constant danger between the L's. But I don't play POL. My world is more civilized, more orderly.

Well, and that's a good argument for just not having random encounters on the road, or very few. And again, it's always fun to have an occasional mook battle that you can really slaughter without effort. It's always fun to cleave through a few dozen goblins or something. Not every battle has to be a serious life-and-death sort of thing.

Which means if I want a kobold skirmish on day two and bandits on day 5 of that road trip, I will have to deal with novas and with the PCs have more surges than they can possibly use.

Which means either turning the kobolds into trolls, or having many dozens of kobolds, or turning day two into a slug fest with 4 or 5 encounters literally coming out of the woodworks.

Or just accepting that those two encounters will be novas, and -- as DM -- deciding to allow it.

It's no different in city adventures. OK, so today the PCs will get into a brawl in a tavern. But, to make it a challenge, they also must face a vampire before dawn, rescue an orphan from wererats in the sewers right after breakfast, bust up a gang of thieves after lunch, and help the city guards turn back a marauding band of ogres before dinner - now they're ready for the tavern brawl to be challenging.

How can anyone live in a city this dangerous?

I guess I don't really see the point, though. Why SHOULD a brawl be a combat challenge? Do you really see your players getting the crap beat out of them by a drunk with a busted bottle? Do THEY see themselves that way?

If I want to include a tavern brawl, I prefer to throw in something the PCs are trying to accomplish in the midst of it -- like protecting a weak NPC, trying to chase the guy who started it as a distraction, and so on. (That is to say, the guy they're trying to find -- or who has the item they want -- sees them coming for him and starts a brawl to distract them and give him cover while he makes a getaway.)

I only really want to have important fights when it will be, well, important. If the PCs are going to have challenging combat, it's because that combat naturally comes between them and their goal. If they're fighting wererats and vampires, it's because there's a demihuman crime syndicate they're fighting and a goal they're trying to complete -- not because I need random encounters to make tonight's brawl a challenge!

After all, nobody recruits a pitcher who can only throw fast balls. Gotta pitch them some curves and knuckles and sliders and change-ups or they'll keep knocking your monsters out of the park.

My favorite changeups are to change the rules of engagement. The standard assumption of D&D combat is "your mission is to kill the monsters", so I like to throw down additional or replacement goals. In a brawl, they need to complete a task, not kill everyone in the bar. It might be more important to stop the trap than kill the monsters, to the point that the monsters stop as soon as the trap is off. That sort of thing. The mission is more important than the kills, and that in itself often makes nova-ing kind of irrelevant.

 

[Keenath]

Double post.

 

[Keenath]

He is building them correctly according to the DMG. But, a correct build in 4E assumes conservation of Daily powers due to multiple encounters per day.
...
That's a totally different paradigm. It almost doubles the strength of the party.

Yeah, I got all that. I said as much in my post. Read the name of the thread, and the OP. He's claiming Surges are the issue; I'm pointing out that surges have little or nothing to do with it. That's all.

 

[Squire James]

If I were in an adventuring group that only fought in towns, I wouldn't be very scared either. Towns limit what monsters that can be used. "Yeah, I figured I had to get a bigger owlbear once my neighbor got one!"

If I were some master villain wanting to take out some PC's, I'd assume he read the Evil Overlord list and send them all out in one big Level +5 clump or at least an equivalent amount spread out as several encounters in one day. And ALWAYS save the hardest for last. Have that last guy taunt them with something like, "Where's your Judgement now, Paladin?".

For best results, get the PC's captured (or killed, if you don't mind rolling new characters) as a result of their decision to use their Daily Powers early. They can complain, but you can also shrug and say, "You'd probably have taken him out if you saved your Paladin's Judgement for him rather than using it on some mook earlier."

 

[Dausuul]

Throwing occassional multi-encounter days at the PCs, especially ones with weaker foes early on and stronger foes later on, is the solution. The DM has to train the players that using up all of their dailies in the first encounter can and will have consequences. Not every time, but sometimes.

The reason the problem exists is that the DM changed the balance of the encounters per day and trained his players that using up all of their daily powers is the right thing to do. The DM has to untrain them of the behavior that he himself trained.

This.

If the PCs are blowing their dailies all the time in the first encounter, then give them a second encounter and make it tougher. Just once or twice should teach them to conserve their resources properly. And if they stop and rest in the middle of a dangerous area, they should get ambushed at night.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

One thing: There's nothing wrong with having multiple days in a row with *no* encounters -- say, for extended travel. If they've had one extended rest, it doesn't matter whether it's a day or a month between fights.

I like to go with "quiet - quiet - multiple encounters - quiet", with the idea that as adventurers you indeed do go into "hot spots" where, say, a merchant caravan wouldn't risk it at all. I totally agree that "25 encounters over 5 days travel" would just be nonsensical if you're following a road in a even slightly civilized area.

 

[Regicide]

If the PCs are blowing their dailies all the time in the first encounter, then give them a second encounter and make it tougher. Just once or twice should teach them to conserve their resources properly.

So if the players use their powers, the DM should punish them for doing so. I'd find a different DM personally.

 

[LostSoul]

So if the players use their powers, the DM should punish them for doing so. I'd find a different DM personally.

Random encounters.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

I run an urban-based campaign, and ran into this same problem. I "fixed" Healing Surges as such: Healing Surges available are Constitution bonus + 1/2 level. This helps curb the amount of healing a PC can take, and since the city-based game offers a bevy of options for an extended rest, it made the players rethink about recklessly galavanting around.

Check out the rules I made for my urban campaign on how to deal with action points, dying and death: A Good Night's Rest: http://deismaar.pbwiki.com/f/AGoodNightsRest.doc

 

[Old Gumphrey]

So if the players use their powers, the DM should punish them for doing so. I'd find a different DM personally.

Yeah, who wants a challenge? It's better to quit the first time things get difficult!

To the OP: I believe your problem is stemming from daily powers, as well. If you do not want to alter your playstyle (and that's your choice, no right or wrong answer to that) I would suggest changing the "scale" of when you can rest and recover your daily powers. Observe:

If you make it so that, say, you can only recover daily powers after 1, 2, or even 3 milestones, it will get your players to conserve their resources. This style of game might be preferable for you and your group.

So, you can heal normally between combats, and regain your encounter powers after a 5 minute rest, but you need to hit a certain number of milestones before you can use an extended rest to recuperate those juicy daily powers.

Believe me when I say that being able to heal in between combats isn't a big deal; I can almost guarantee that your troubles are stemming from those awesome daily powers. I have a similar situation in my games, and this is one way I've dealt with singular encounters over multiple days or weeks.