D&D 4E Does 4E fix the 5-minute workday?

[SoulStorm]

I'm concerned that 4E may exacerbate rather than resolve the 5-minute workday.

By 9th level 4E characters have 3 encounter and 3 daily powers. There is some indication that hardwired class features add more, and of course, there are racial powers.

Having looked over some of the monsters previewed and lurked in some of the threads discussing combat encounters in 4E, it seems that 4E encounters may take more turns to resolve than their 3E counterparts, perhaps significantly more.

Now as a PC, if I start experiencing combats that last 10+ rounds (even if each round is resolved faster) I'm going to want to be prepared for that. In fact, I'm going to try to prevent that eventuality, and the best way to do that is to have access to my daily powers. Not only are daily powers more potent, but I also have as many of them as I do encounter powers. Such a decision keeps me at full power for 6 rounds (at 9th level) rather than at less than 1/2 power for 3 rounds. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

The only advantage over 3E in this regard is that resting after each encounter benefits everyone instead of just the casters.

Perhaps the balance would have been better if PCs maxed out at 6 encounter powers and 3 daily powers. Then resting after each encounter would seem a little less attractive.

There is apparently a recharge mechanic starting at paragon level that improves at epic level. The question is whether or not this mechanic will be robust enough to mitigate the PCs desire to rest after each encounter.

Does anyone else share this concern? If yes, what kind of recharge mechanic would be needed to prevent people from wanting to take an extended rest after each encounter.

What about at-will powers? Do at-will powers get an upgrade (besides the extra die at 21st) that makes them more competitive with encounter powers? Do class features add more? Will their potency be enough to prevent people from wanting to take an extended rest after every encounter?

And before anyone starts talking about how the DM can prevent the 5-minute workday through good encounter design, please leave that argument for another thread. It never goes anywhere productive.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well, I think most likely at-will powers besides for being upgraded will probably be able to be swapped out for other at-will powers.

Also, there is the fact that, the extended-rest can only be done once every 24 hours. Which places further restrictions on it.

I don't think too, you will be wasting your daily or per-encounter powers right away in battle, since there is a whole slew of new tactics, and especially group tactics to use.

As well as things like, items having their own unique properties.

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

My quick answer is:

There's nothing to prevent you from trying to do this as a player.

However, since the 5 minute workday is no longer hard-wired into the rules, the DM is no longer obliged to design his adventures around it, or risk a TPK.

Since your characters are still fighting fit after using their dailies, just not quite as fighting fit, the DM is free to make a situation where you have to complete your goal in 7 hours, or fail. Sure, you can sit down and rest til tomorrow morning, but the princess is going to be sacrificed at midnight, and the legion of devils will be loose in the world, since nobody interrupted the summoning ritual. Or have buddies of the monsters you just killed show up and have at you while you're trying to rest.

Doing either of those things previously would be a no-no because in the first example, you'd be either forcing the players to give up and fail, or forcing them to commit "PC suicide" by charging in to stop the ritual when they'd be certain to die and fail anyway. In the second example, you'd just be arbitrarily killed.

Now, the DM can throw more time pressure and more adversaries at you without guaranteeing a TPK. So while you can try to operate under a 5 minute workday, the DM is no longer mechanically obliged to comply.

IMO, of course.

 

[ferratus]

When I had my players go through the adventure "Crown of the Kobold King" with the pregenerated characters, we had to rest before our characters did, though our characters were pretty close to needing rest as well (all dailies and all but a couple healing surges were used up).

 

[abeattie]

I don't predict a very serious problem with this. Like 3.5, Dailys are basically memorized spells. Cast one and it's gone. You save up the big effects for the big bad guys. 4e even clues you into which monsters are worthy of your daily powers -- elites and solo mobs.

Its certainly true that some groups will play as you have described. If their GM structures their adventures in such a way that doing so is plausible and succesful. I generally include a reinforcements rule in my planning for a reason, if you hit the bed, the bad guys have time to send for help.

That's my 2c on it.

 

[Herodotus]

Certainly if players want to be at full strength for every fight, they will want to take an extended rest after every encounter until daily-recharge abilities are gone from the game entirely. The change from 3e to 4e is that now if a player uses all of his/her character's limited use abilities in one encounter, many of them come back after a 5 minute rest. From what I've seen in my playtests, a character without any daily powers is still very viable.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

So far I've only seen players who are unfamiliar with 4E tactics (seems to take about 3 encounters, to "get it" - depending on how good or bad the player is at tactical games) use their dailies in a wasteful manor.

It's pretty clear when it's worth it.

Fitz

Oh, as far as upgrading At-Wills, I have one word: Feats.

One more thing: In my experience (12 sessions) I've never seen the WHOLE party use their dailies in the same encounter, not even with the Dragon (unless you run that first). I've actually seen the players discuss "should we go on or rest?" followed by "Well, the Cleric still has his daily, so we're good!" And off they go.

It seems that if one or two characters still have their daily, the party is confident they can have one more encounter at least. This goes a long way towards destroying the problem of the short day.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, I think most likely at-will powers besides for being upgraded will probably be able to be swapped out for other at-will powers.

Also, there is the fact that, the extended-rest can only be done once every 24 hours. Which places further restrictions on it.

I don't think too, you will be wasting your daily or per-encounter powers right away in battle, since there is a whole slew of new tactics, and especially group tactics to use.

As well as things like, items having their own unique properties.

I think blowing encounter powers right away will be standard tactic. Daily powers will only enter play if the encounter seems to be harder then expected. We haven' seen yet how item powers figure into this, but I suspect they might be somewhere between encounter and daily powers.

If 4E can really fix the 15 minute adventure day remains to be seen. I think the way per encounter and daily powers work, there is chance that people will be fine conserving their big guns. Often enough, the 15-minute adventure day came from the fact that there were only at will and per encounter resources. Even if you used low level spells, you blew through your spell list pretty fast. If you faced a difficult encounter, you had to retreat, because you spend all your resources on it and you wouldn't even be able to handle most normal encounters.

 

[Bishmon]

They've certainly made it tougher to go crazy and expend most of your resources in one fight, but they didn't really do anything to otherwise discourage players from resting after one or two encounters.

In my campaign, I might do something like knock 10% EXP off each encounter unless the party makes it through five encounters that day (with some exceptions, of course), in which case they'd get the full EXP. Something like that would encourage the party to push on without me needing to have monsters ambush them in their sleep everytime they wanted to rest after an encounter or two.

 

[Spenser]

Particularly if you are GMing for 3e players, I think you will have to train them early on to conserve their dailies for A) bad dice-roll emergencies, and B) elites/solos/tough fights.

We just ran a session this weekend, pure arena fights, rotating the pregen PCs and fighting random monster groups. It was a heck of a lot of fun. However, the monsters were always 50% or more above the recommended XP amount, and because we were rotating PCs, they all were allowed to use up all their action points and dailies -- which they did. Obviously that's a bad habit to get into.

So in the first few adventures, consider using these techniques:

* Make most encounters 400 XP or less. It's lots of fun to hit the PCs with bigger encounters: 500, 650, 800 XP and see what the PCs can do under serious pressure. But try to avoid making every encounter being so dangerous, give them some opportunities to win some easy fights using just their at-wills and good strategy.

* Use streams of encounters, new bad guys getting alerted and joining the fight. Trains them to be conservative with encounter powers and use action points effectively.

* Use time pressure. Trains them to save their dailies till the final fight, presumably the toughest.