extended rests

[mneme]

Joining the chorus: D&D is a lot more fun if you don't extended rests too often, and you don't need dailies to win fights except for really tough ones. If the group burns all their dailies in the first or second fight, let them take a couple of fights without dailies.

Also, keep in mind (and yes, I know this isn't in the books except maybe DMG2 -- still true and showed up in Dragon recently) that short rests are dramatic -- not tactical. You need not force the group to have a place to "rest" for them to spend surges and get their encounters back; instead it just needs to be the end of one encounter and the beginning of the next. So you could not provide anywhere for them to "rest" at all (because why are you resting in the middle of a breakout) and still give them a surge or adreneline or a a rule thta the time they've spent waiting for an opening in the guard's schedule. And -not- give them anywhere to take an extended rest unless they get recaptured and have to try again from scratch.

 

[KidSnide]

The party is captured and attempting to break out of prison. There are about 4 encounters to fight through. This is their first time playing D&D, so by encounter 2 they've blown all their dailies to stay alive. I let them take an extended rest, but they've blown all their dailies again in encounter 3 (they are improving, though!)

Now I think in terms of verisimilitude, it doesn't make sense to sleep for 6 hours while doing a prison break. In fact it wouldn't make sense to extended rest at all throughout the entire series of encounters. But that's pretty darned tough for a newbie party, and I want to go easy on them.

Um, see, that's precisely the kind of situation where you don't take extended rest. They should have like 1h before first wave of reinforcements, and maybe 2-3 before a total lock-down of said prison. And if they do extended rest before they take out all the wardens? They should consider themselves happy to wake up at all, and even then - in not-so-comfy reinforced cells.

Cor-Malek is right. You've written up a scenario in which the PCs wouldn't realistically be able to take an extended rest. I know you say that you want to go easy on the PCs, but a four-encounter escape sequence isn't "going easy on the PCs" unless your plan is to have four very weak encounters.

That said, it sounds to me like your PCs are already deep in the hole. The obvious choices are to hand-wave them a rest (either by futzing with the rules or creating some sort of magic guard fountain), really cut down the last one or two encounters or re-capture them.

My guess is that none of those are very satisfying. My inclination would be to have them discover a secret sewer hatch in the room they're in. That way they could escape into a wider area (where they might not be found) and find a place to hide and rest up. Or, if you prefer, they could escape with a sewer-navigation skill challenge. Other alternatives is to let them take guard uniforms and role-play / skill challenge their way out of the prison. Or, if there is a limit to the total number of potential reinforcements, your PCs could barricade themselves inside the captured part of the prison and plan a break-out after they've rested up.

I hope that helps.

-KS

 

[jbear]

Two extended rests during a jail break... hard to imagine, really. Unless your tlalking about having survived 2 nights outside of the prison after they have escaped.

What is more important to you:

-Going easy on what you call a newbie group of players

-Or giving them a play experience where their decisions as a group matter.

I know which one I'd prefer. I guess setting up a situation so difficult to overcome that they are bound to be slaughtered by the 3rd encounter unless they... unless they... hide themselves in a nearby discarded paper bag is not an ideal starter adventure.

Something like a Jail break can be perfectly run as Skill Challenge. Each fail could have lead to a bloody but short combat encounter. You could have mapped out your prison and depending on their escape route the group would have to overcome different obstacles and difficulties. Rather than: Can you hack your way through hundreds of prison guards, you could have run it more free flow, narrative where viable solutions could meet with success before anyone even picked up a dice to roll an ability check. Once out of the Jail when the bounty hunters, guards, tracker dogs and hired assassins have been sent after them, then resting holed up in Grandma Fudge's barn is a believable and viable option between encounters. In the prison itself... you'd have a hard job convincing me, but I'm open mided... Any way, these are options to keep in mind in future.

As I player I'd be frustrated by two things in particular:
1) I am forced to go this way even though I think this other way is a better option (probably avoiding combat)
2) My actions have no consequence, including my errors.

I guess 'needing to go easy on these poor defenseless newbies' can be substituted by providing alternatives to their actions which don't involve combat encounters at all. Letting your players know that they can imagine there way out of a situation and into a solution is an important concept to put forward to new players as early as possible.

 

[Jack99]

You do not need dailies to perform well and survive combats in 4e. Just surges

 

[thewok]

You do not need dailies to perform well and survive combats in 4e. Just surges

Truth.

I play a warden in a 2-player campaign. The other player is a shaman. There are days when I don't even use a daily because I just don't need it. I tend to save it for emergencies or "boss fights."

But to the original question: why would I ever take a short rest over an extended rest? The main reason is because it makes sense in the game world. As a GM, if I ever thought my players were metagaming the extended rest, I would start throwing random encounters at them so they could never have the extended rest. An extended rest should make sense in the flow of the game. A group is not going to enter a dungeon, blow everything in the first room and then lay down for sleep. It just doesn't make sense. They will delve as far as they can, and then, when they have all grown weary of combat, and their bodies and minds are crying out for rest (i.e. all their dailies and surges are gone or nearly gone), then they will find a defensible location to take a long rest.

There is also the fact that milestones allow for more uses of item daily powers. But, for me, the main reason I would take a short rest over an extended rest is because an extended rest doesn't make sense at that point in time.

Also, what does the once-every-12-hours limitation mean in real life terms? Is it a real life limitation (pretty much saying that during a gaming session, you are only allowed to take 1 extended rest)? Or is it assumed that the party only takes an extended rest in-between game sessions? Can the players fight 1 encounter, say "oh, we head back to town, wait 11.5 hours, and have another extended rest"?

It really means nothing in real life terms. A single gaming session can cover multiple days, and it might take multiple gaming sessions to cover one day of game time. That rule is there to put some sort of verisimilitude in the game. To a player, the difference between an extended rest and a short rest is just what words he says and what changes (if any) he makes to his sheet. To the character, it means a lot more. Twelve hours is a very long time, and a lot can happen in that span of time. A missing patrol will be replaced, guards become more alert, and so on. It might be a time issue, as mentioned above: something will happen soon, and there's just no time to take an extended rest.

In my group, we never really mention extended or short rests. After combat, we collect ourselves, catch our breath, mend wounds, look for treasure and roll corpses (short rest). When we camp for the night (whether it's actually night or not--sometimes the night-day cycle can be tricky after long periods underground) then we take the extended rest.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

OK, this all makes sense. What if, in my campaign, the opposite is true?

The party is captured and attempting to break out of prison. There are about 4 encounters to fight through. This is their first time playing D&D, so by encounter 2 they've blown all their dailies to stay alive. I let them take an extended rest, but they've blown all their dailies again in encounter 3 (they are improving, though!)

Now I think in terms of verisimilitude, it doesn't make sense to sleep for 6 hours while doing a prison break. In fact it wouldn't make sense to extended rest at all throughout the entire series of encounters. But that's pretty darned tough for a newbie party, and I want to go easy on them.

For our next session since I only have 1 encounter remaining I think I will need to introduce some more in order to pad it out a bit... which means even more encounters without extended rest spots. I guess as the DM I should have considered the sequence of encounters leading up to an extended rest with difficulty in mind.

Not sure where to draw the line, at the moment... I guess I'll treat them as having fully rested when we start the next session, and provide safe areas to rest once they've fought a reasonable number of encounters.

I would nip this in the bud. Don't train your players to lean on you to give them extra benefits to make up for their lack of foresight. I know its a new group of new players and they certainly haven't learned all the ins-and-outs of resource management, but if you just give them free stuff whenever they get in trouble that will become the pattern. They won't ever learn to not blow all their daily powers because they simply have no reason to, the DM will just give them back! If there are not even any consequences for that then effectively you might as well just call them all encounter powers and be done with it.

This kind of thing does happen a lot when you start out and its just part of the unwritten lore of being a DM. So don't feel bad, we have all gotten into this kind of situation.

Generally speaking you're always in a somewhat tricky situation when you have a plot line that requires the PCs to carry off several encounters in a row with no real way to back out. Even if the consequences are bad if a party is in a position to withdraw they have some control of the situation. This starts to move into the discussion of player choice and "railroading". When you hit a spot in the plot that allows the PCs no real choices except "soldier on" the best advice is to keep that short, preferably one encounter if possible. Find ways to give the players options.

They break out of their cells, fight a couple guards, then they can go down the sewer grate or fight some more guards, their choice. Each option should be a viable course of action (you can always present other obviously non-viable options, but just remember that those aren't real choices). Maybe the sewers are rumored to contain nasty monsters. The guard post down the hall OTOH has obvious dangers. Now if the players blew off too many powers or got unlucky they can risk the sewers and if they're in good shape maybe they'll take on the guard post. Of course they may not choose wisely but so it goes.

Don't be afraid to rough them up if they make bad choices. You might even end up killing some of them, or even all of them at some point. That's OK. If its just one or two of them they can always find a way to get raised or at least they can make a new character and work it into the story. If its a TPK you'll have to decide what to do next, recapture is always an option. Maybe the next escape attempt involves breaking out of the salt mines where the troublemakers get sent.

 

[draquila]

This kind of thing does happen a lot when you start out and its just part of the unwritten lore of being a DM. So don't feel bad, we have all gotten into this kind of situation.

Thanks for that. I think my problem is that I am also entirely new to D&D ... I tried to run the campaign based on the little 3-encounter adventure based on the starter kit because I thought it would be easier on me the first time without having to worry about what's the correct XP budget, etc.

But I found the hook of the adventure extremely dissatisfying (questgiver walks into a tavern to give the heroes a quest? How much more cliche can you get? ) So I converted it to a jailbreak scenario... and added a tiny encounter to start that they should definitely not struggle with (2 minions).

I was myself unfamiliar with the rules the first session (the starter kit instructions were so brief) and we wanted to get into the game straight away without a 2 hour exposition of the rules, so when they really struggled after the 1st real encounter (encounter 2) I just told them all their powers recharged.

Anyway in the next session I'll explain the rules clearer, hopefully they will play better and take the appropriate rests in the places that make sense.

 

[CovertOps]

Are your PC's pregens or custom built by the players?

If custom you might have an optimization problem like I have in my game where combats are hard because your party isn't doing the expected damage.

 

[MrBeens]

Couple of things to bear in mind (especially as you are new to the game)

1) Just becuase you are out of daily powers doesn't mean that you cannot carry on. Make sure the players understand this. Granted this does get easier at higher levels when you have more encounter powers etc.
Ultimatly the PCs have to trust that you will put together a series of encounters that are doable as long as they work as a team and spread their powers and actions points out sensibly.

2) Don't equate the adventuring day to a session, and don't feel pressured to make sure that each session ends in a nice safe place.
It is perfectly fine to end a session in the middle of a dungeon and just pickup right where you left off next session.

3) Don't be afraid to make mistakes, or change the way you do things later as you get more used to the rules.
The main thing is that you and your friends are having fun. Make sure that if anything does change, or you throw them a bone as they are new (like letting them get their powers back), they understand why the change has happened and that they understand the change.

For the game to work well they need to trust that you will be constructing fair and balanced encounters, you need to trust that they are not going to abuse the situations.

 

[Katana_Geldar]

Tabletop RPGs are a lot about trust, and it goes both ways. They players need to know you are not going to feed them to the lions, and you need to know when the players are going to scam you. It sounds as if they are taking advantage of your generousity, and the simple solution here is to take it away.

They sound as if they view taking extended rests as save scumming, when they're not. You need to firmly establish with them why you take extended rests and when to take them. If they want to take one too soon, find some way to limit them.

"The ground here is stony and wet and you can find no place to set up camp."
"The road is filled with brigands/ghosts/wolves."

Extended rests should either be taken when the party is at the end of their tether (very low on healing surges), the wizard/swordmage needs to switch spells from their book or there is some quest-specific reason (eg, you're in a town and there's a curfew and you want to stay on the right side of the law).

If the party realises you are limiting their extended rests, they may be more choosy when to take them and therefore better with their daily powers. (I agree that Daily Powers should be saved for bosses and for last resorts). And if they still insist on taking extended rests, then interrupt them with a random encounter.

And there is nothing like an encounter when you have no healing surges, no dailies and you are on level 1. Living on the edge, baby!