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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheClone" data-source="post: 5358274" data-attributes="member: 90399">My 2 cents.Don't punish the players for being clever. Yes, they seem to have outsmarted you, but that's generally okay. It's their bonus for being clever. But considering that you don't want to give out as many magic items as the treasure tables tell, you will have players with too much money all the time. Therefore it's okay to raise the "lifestlye" costs with toll houses along the road, entry fees in cities or adventurer registration fees. And if the players have no cash left at some point you can use this to make up a small side plot. Like getting inside the city despite being unable to pay the entry fee. Residents get in for free, so they need to find a possibility to get a residence certificate.Having a few rare and special items is a good way to satisfy their wishes. But if you want to play with less magic items they'll have to get used to that. Or you change your approach to magic items. You should find a consensus or you might have some players with a bad mood at your table. Surely no reason to give in to whatever they wish.Where is the problem? Let him take 10 and that's it. By that he will never notice what extra things you have prepared for DC above his passive check. If there is nothing to find with higher DCs, add something. Make a trapdoor hard do detect (make it elite or higher level) or put in some additional information apart form the obvious, which he sees with his passive check. Try to mention to the players which player is seeing which detail. That may encourage him to rolling so he'll also spot something. But in general taking 10 is what you see on first glance. It's boring sometimes, but that's the rules. Unless you want to make house rules and maybe generally stop passive checks, you have to live with it.My players (or I as a player) declare when they want to take a rest. They do so, maybe including unfriendly guests and that's it. When we break for the night (real world <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    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ) there is never an automatic extended rest. The break is where the game is and next we continue right there. Don't give them free extended rest. If they camp next to a room with monsters or where monsters might patrol along (they won't stay in their defined room all of their live and if it's just for peeing) ambush them with reasonable forces. If you don't do that, they'll camp one day right between the bowels of the monsters they slew 2 minutes ago. That's not only disgusting, it lacks realism. And it allows them to rest more often, because they have no need to find a safe place to rest. This reduces difficulty and thereby thrill.If the players are at a location where food is scarce, have them track their stuff. If they are cheating, track it by yourself. For easiness one player might do the accountant. He buys supplies for the group and the horses and tracks it. That makes things a little easier and maybe one of the players likes doing that. If you are in areas where food is plenty, you may omit tracking it. Once in a while, when the players a lot of food, let them calculate their total weight. Especially horse food is really heavy and might even exceed the maximum load of a horse. Horses that wait in front of a dungeon need food, too. Is there grassland? Are the horses knotted to a tree or may they hobble? You don't have to go that deep, but if you and your players like it, it adds an extra level of challenge.I have experienced and done that in the beginning too, but today I have totally stopped it. "Good role playing" is always totally subjective and that sometimes leads to bad moods. Plying Savage worlds I do give out bennies. they are a kind of action die, but the players got more available, so it's worth a little less than action dice. I'd consider giving out those more "fluid" resources that last only until the end of the session to the players. Action dice might be a good idea for 4e or you hand them special one-use power cards like "get a +2 bonusto a skill role" or "reroll one attack role". I found XP bonuses to be a too strong "currency" for such a weak thing as good role playing.Sounds like a good mix. With 4e I find it rather easy to make up challenging encounters. You have to get a propper mix of monster roles and that's half of what you need. I tend to play intelligent monsters more clever and mosnters with animal intelligence more straight foreward. Also I allow the more clever ones to learn "Wait. The guy with the plate armor hit me and then I attacked his companion but that allowed him to hit me in the back. I have to attack the plate armor guy after he hit me." The same is for fleeing and fighting to death. If clever monster are just trying to hold some kind of forward position, the flee once they realize that the will definitely loose the battle. Animal monsters fight usually to death. But if the clever monsters are defining a important position like the altar of their god, they surely will fight to death. I know 4e adventures are usually not build including the option to flee for the monsters, but it's ridiculous to let everyone fight to death. It's even interesting to force the rogue to tumble in the back of the monsters to hinder their escape. Otherwise they will alert the monsters from the next rooms.</blockquote>

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