[edition neutral] No more dailies?

[Dannyalcatraz]

If this were an episode of Law & Order, I'd get to say something cool on cross like: "Were you lying then, or are you lying now?", and the camera would pan to a hot stenographer demurely sporting eyeglasses and a trim suit, who could thus be mistaken for a naughty librarian.

To which I'd reply "My previous answer was merely incomplete, not a lie."

As long as you understand that many other people would not find that playstyle acceptable, I think we can have a fruitful discussion.

My game is not your game which is not her game which is not his game.

Instead, I'll ask what levels you play at, since IME the 15 minute day happens more towards the high end than the low.

Our games run the gamut.

We've had several campaigns that stalled out at under 5th level (for a variety of reasons). Some have ended around 17th level or so. Essentially, if you pick a PC level, I've probably got a PC that level. The reasons for campaigns ending have largely been RW issues- people moving, interpersonal conflicts, job schedules, and so forth. The campaigns that have ended for game issues were more about disinterest in the underlying plots or genres (esp. for non-D&D games), not in the way combats are run.

Just to be clear, the 15 minute day (which clearly some systems make more possible than others) has been absent from every campaign I've been in, regardless of RPG. I simply have not seen it in person. (And as I've told Hussar before, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that I've never seen it.)

One thing that may account for that, at least in part, is that I rarely game outside my age +-8 years. As I've aged, I've gamed mostly with my contemporaries. It wasn't until I was in my mid 20s that I ran some "intro to the hobby" games for some kids of parents who knew me, and I've had the pleasure of gaming with only a few true grognards- guys who've been in RPGs as long as I have, but came to the hobby as adults. As such, most of the people I've gamed with have learned to play much the same way. Even the noobies in our groups are soon playing the same way as we are...since we're the ones who are teaching them the game.

At the moment, I'm a member of 2 active campaigns.

The first campaign started in 1985 or so, has been updated from 1Ed to 2Ed to 3Ed to 3.5 and is at what most would call "Epic" levels (the lower level PCs are 15th level). It is still going strong.

The other current main campaign is the one in which the aforementioned geomancer is playing- 11th level PCs.

 

[I'm A Banana]

1. Design for the "encounter"...and drop dailies.

2. Design for the "dungeon"...and keep long term resource management.



Thoughts?

I actually think the "15 minute workday" is a symptom of design-for-encounter that going to design-for-dungeon can completely destroy.

The 15 minute workday is an effect of designing your game for the encounter, not for the dungeon.

3e encouraged -- rewarded, even -- going nova. 4e takes that into account, and doesn't have a problem with it, though milestones try to address it (IMO, rather awkwardly, but that plays into grind issue and at-the-table session pacing, and is kind of separate anyway). Both games share the essential detail of PC's generally being able to get completely healed in between encounters.

I think that's something that dungeon-based-design undoes. If resting becomes an opportunity cost (like healing in combat is), if it consumes something limited, or if the adventure your on gets harder because of it, it becomes something you don't want to do. It becomes a meaningful choice. That's key, because it means that resting is an active choice, not something you just do to recharge, but something with an effect on the adventure you're undertaking.

As long as the PC's control the pacing, there is no cost to going nova, no consequence for the rest to get back up to full. Well, in 3e, you might be out the price of a wand of CLW, but it wasn't much. In 4e, the only cost is that you miss out on an Action Point. Ho-hum. And in any game, you could always stick a time limit on it or introduce wandering monsters, but that just passes the buck onto the DM, and limits the kinds of stories you can tell in addition. That's not what we want, I think.

I think what we want is to see more resource management at play. We want the party to be treating their most limited abilities like trump cards, like secret tricks, like last-ditch attempts, like the edge-of-your-seat climactic events that they certainly can be. We don't want the players to use them like tools, like another sword to swing, another magic missile to shoot. We don't want them to become use-it-all-the-time mundane.

Part of how to do that, like RW pointed out upthread, is to introduce a "charge" mechanic (like Iron Heroes had). Another part of how to do that is to make getting it back cost something.

Both approaches mandate that you think beyond the encounter, to the dungeon (adventure) in general. It's not about one combat. It's about all the encounters, events, NPC's, obstacles, and fights you get into between meeting at the inn and beating up the Goblin King, having one big effect. It's about making sure that getting yourself repaired and healed means that the Goblin King has a chance to strike or heal himself as well.

The 15 minute adventuring day occurs because adventures are made up of 15 minute increments that are complete. I think we need a game where the increment is more like the entire dungeon, and less like one or two fights with orcs.

 

[RangerWickett]

If I recall correctly, "The Riddle of Steel" has a mechanic where the more invested your character is in events, the more powerful he is. Basically you establish what your character cares about, and when he pursues those goals, he gets a sort of plot immunity.

Maybe you could implement something similar: plot inertia. After each encounter, you might be more injured, but you have the narrative benefit of the stakes being higher, so the game lets you get away with cooler stuff.

(That might be too obviously gamist for some, though.)

Morrus and I are working on ideas for a new EN World campaign saga, and I'm going to definitely be pondering issues of pacing and 'designing for the adventure' when we finally get to writing it.

 

[Nifft]

I actually think the "15 minute workday" is a symptom of design-for-encounter that going to design-for-dungeon can completely destroy.

Nah, going either all-encounter or all-dungeon would fix it. The problem arises because the design was incoherent: it allowed a single resource to buff by encounter, yet recharge by day ("by dungeon" in the lingo of your context). Thus, it's optimal for many PCs to set 1 = encounters/day, and expend all daily resources on that one encounter.

3e encouraged -- rewarded, even -- going nova. 4e takes that into account, and doesn't have a problem with it, though milestones try to address it (IMO, rather awkwardly, but that plays into grind issue and at-the-table session pacing, and is kind of separate anyway). Both games share the essential detail of PC's generally being able to get completely healed in between encounters.

In 4e, that's not quite true. The Healing Surge mechanic limits your total daily healing. Also, you can't use a very cheap resource (like a wand of cure light wounds) to obviate out-of-combat healing resources above 7th level or so.

You mentioned this, but IMHO it bears reiteration: in earlier editions, you could buy your way out of fundamental limitations (like out of combat healing), with only the DM's stubbornness limiting your ability to negate a major design constraint.

Cheers, -- N

 

[pemerton]

If I recall correctly, "The Riddle of Steel" has a mechanic where the more invested your character is in events, the more powerful he is. Basically you establish what your character cares about, and when he pursues those goals, he gets a sort of plot immunity.

Yes - Spiritual Attributes.

Maybe you could implement something similar: plot inertia. After each encounter, you might be more injured, but you have the narrative benefit of the stakes being higher, so the game lets you get away with cooler stuff.

4e has the potential for this - with diminishing healing surges but milestones attained. Unfortunately the game design perhaps doesn't make the most of them eg dailies that are more powerful after reaching a milestone. I'm not sure that action points are quite as ho-hum as KM suggests, but they're probably not enough on their own.

3e encouraged -- rewarded, even -- going nova. 4e takes that into account, and doesn't have a problem with it, though milestones try to address it (IMO, rather awkwardly, but that plays into grind issue and at-the-table session pacing, and is kind of separate anyway). Both games share the essential detail of PC's generally being able to get completely healed in between encounters.

I think that's something that dungeon-based-design undoes. If resting becomes an opportunity cost (like healing in combat is), if it consumes something limited, or if the adventure your on gets harder because of it, it becomes something you don't want to do. It becomes a meaningful choice. That's key, because it means that resting is an active choice, not something you just do to recharge, but something with an effect on the adventure you're undertaking.

My 4e game already has this to an extent, because enough of the PCs have encounter-duration abilities (stances etc) that they think about keeping on going to get the benefits of their buffs rather than resting and regaining hp but losing their buffs.

Given the 5 minute cap on encounter durations in 4e this doesn't do anything to eliminate 15-minute adventuring days, but it gives an idea of the sorts of costs that can be applied to resting.

I think what we want is to see more resource management at play. We want the party to be treating their most limited abilities like trump cards, like secret tricks, like last-ditch attempts, like the edge-of-your-seat climactic events that they certainly can be. We don't want the players to use them like tools, like another sword to swing, another magic missile to shoot. We don't want them to become use-it-all-the-time mundane.

At least a lot of us don't want a return to 1st ed AD&D play of the sort Dannyalcatraz is describing upthread. Rather than hoarding resources in that operational sort of way, maybe RW has it right - we want powers that become better when you use them later rather than earlier in the adventure. And this has to be correlated with the difficulty of the challenges being faced - if the later challenges are easy, but the powers better, than what should be dramatic becomes mundane. The conclusion to an adventure should be challenging enough that only last-ditch, edge-of-your-seat pulling-out-all-the-stops abilities are up to the task.

HeroQuest addresses this in a resource-hoarding way, but the resources are purely metagame (Hero Points) and so it is quite different from AD&D play (where the resources are ingame elements like potions, spells, rations etc). It also puts a lot onto the shoulders of the GM, but not through wandering monsters but rather via the rules for setting difficulties based on the pass/fail cycle (the more player successes, the greater the difficulty of challenges - numerical difficulty is set first, and the GM narrates around the diffciulty to make the flavour fit). So players have a reason to conserve Hero Points early in the adventure when the difficulties are only modest, because they will need those Hero Points to overcome the concluding challenges.

It would be hard to fit this sort of approach into D&D because D&D has more fiddly rules, with more detailed modelling of ingame elements and tactics, and so it becomes harder to do the pass/fail thing (I don't think the discussion of this in DMG2 works all that well - for example, how is it meant to relate to p 42, or the monster- and encounter-buidling rules?). And 4e remains too ambivalent in respect of those parts of the game that support pacing. Some PCs have Action Surge, other don't - so the value of an Action Point differs across PCs and across groups. Some PCs have Meliorating Armour, some don't - so the same for milestones more generally. And some dailies are very situational (eg Sorcerer Ice Javelins) and so support more of a swiss-army knife orientation than a last-ditch nova-ing orientation.

I guess if I was starting with 4e, and wanted to improve its pacing, I'd look at making milestones worth more, and I'd get rid of sequences of encounters that can't realistically be completed on a single set of healing surges.

 

[Garthanos]

I actually think the "15 minute workday" is a symptom of design-for-encounter that going to design-for-dungeon can completely destroy.

15 minute work day ... was dailies pure and simple ... started out back in version one because the only correct strategy when one has a daily refresh on ones biggest guns (wizards with a sleep spell that took out all enemies and even clerics one shot healing magic ) ran out of ammo after one cast at level one... was sleep it off and start fresh.
It became a dm onus to fight that very correct strategy by enforcing some sort of immediate risk or similar to prevent the 15min work day some times this made sense.. but sometimes it wasnt necessarily natural to the story or context... pulling back and regroup... why not?

 

[RangerWickett]

If this were a computer you would probably have no dailies, but instead would have at-wills and encounters that get stronger based on the situation. Have some sort of formula factoring in number of healing surges left, relative challenge level of the encounter compared to the party, and importance to the game's plot. In the right situation, your encounter powers become as powerful as what in existing D&D are dailies.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

If this were a computer you would probably have no dailies, but instead would have at-wills and encounters that get stronger based on the situation. Have some sort of formula factoring in number of healing surges left, relative challenge level of the encounter compared to the party, and importance to the game's plot. In the right situation, your encounter powers become as powerful as what in existing D&D are dailies.

So... turn dailies into encounters (with appropriate adjustments to damage), and let people spend action points to turn them back into dailies, or even dailies++.

Rebalance distribution of action points to maintain roughly the same power curve.

Salt and pepper to taste.

 

[Nifft]

So... turn dailies into encounters (with appropriate adjustments to damage), and let people spend action points to turn them back into dailies, or even dailies++.

Rebalance distribution of action points to maintain roughly the same power curve.

Hmm, sort of like how PHB3 does Power Points, but with Encounters instead of At-Wills?

The only "new" thing you'd need to worry about is people blowing the Encounter power at its base, unaugmented level before realizing they ought to have augmented it, but you could solve that by allowing the power action point expenditure to ignore the power's usual per-Encounter use limitation.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Voadam]

I dislike daily resource management.

In my last house ruled 3e/PF game I used a variant of recharge magic to make spells not daily but limited Novaing in combat in a way I liked (basically one use of each spell level per combat with recharge times kicking in for long combats). I declared all daily powers (paladin smites, barbarian rages, etc.) were encounter powers. I liked how it was going.

My brother turned healing surges in his 4e game from daily to encounter based refreshing and has been happy with it.