Extended Rests

[Nemesis Destiny]

Here's how I'd do it: the players don't get to say when they take an extended rest - you do.

They can take as many short rests as they can squeeze in, but sooner or later, they'll run out of surges and spent daily powers are gone until they come back. In my game, I let players recharge daily powers by spending lots of healing surges to do so, and I don't give them auto-healing after a night's rest.

So extended rests happen at key spots in the story arc. It says they must be at least 12 hours apart, minimum, but nothing says an extended rest has to be available every day. Like most terms in 4e, "daily" can mean just what it says, or it can mean, "it comes back when it's good and ready."

 

[Fox Lee]

I haven't been too strict about it, but my players don't usually abuse this sort of thing. There are lots of plot-based reasons that might be appropriate to keep them moving, depending on their goals:

• Somebody/thing is chasing them. Either it pursues them further into the dungeon so they can't backtrack easily, or it follows them and attacks when they drop their guard.
• They have to find something with a limited lifespan/durability - like a charged device the monsters are using.
• They are trying stop a specific event - like a ritual, coronation, execution, alliance, whatever.
• They are trying to save somebody for whom time is running out - either a prisoner they are trying to reach, or somebody back in town.
• Their enemies are getting stronger while they delay. Other people have discussed using more monsters and providing less treasure, which seems pretty fair.
• They might draw attention to their allies. For example, the BBEG has noticed that they keep going back to Safetown to rest, so he makes plans to set it on fire.
• Something is affecting them over time - I once played in a game where the macguffin we were carrying had a corrupting influence over time, so we had to move quickly.
• Conversely, what about a one-time buff that only lasts 24 hours? This is a kind way to push them towards taking more encounters at a trot. You could also offer additional incentives for reaching Milestones.

Anyway, that's a few to consider - I'm sure there are more.

 

[The Monster]

Just as another idea, you could also have encounters that are more than one 'encounter' - multi-wave attacks, response to the noise of battle, that kind of thing.

Really, though, it depends on what folks at the table want to do. In a sense, an undertaking as dangerous as a dungeon crawl, it would make sesne that a party would take as much time as they could use, working methodically, making sure supplies are ready, discussing what works and what doesn't. In the real world, this is how most stuff like mountain-climbing or spelunking is done: lots of planning and no haste in the execution, and dealing with injuries as quickly as possible.

I've come to view the 'extended rest' as a drama/storytelling tool (kind of like everything else in the game): if it makes sense for the party to get an extended rest, they get one; otherwise they don't. And an extended rest doesn't necessarily get them all the benefits and problems on the ER list. In my campaign, when the PCs were just doing cross-country travel for several days, I gave an extended rest for the purpose of healing and recharging powers, but not for shaking off the Despair Cards I'd handed out, since nothing dramatically significant happened during that time.
By and large, though, if the party doesn't want to push more than one encounter a day, is it really that big a deal? It might be, in which case some cross-table discussion is in order. They are, after all, missing out on a major part of the game (resource management and planning), as well as stacking the odds of every fight in their favor, thus losing an entertaining sense of tension and challenge. And they run the risk of the GM getting bored/frustrated, since they have an easier time dealing with any reasonably balanced encounter.

 

[S'mon]

As a player, I don't object to being ambushed if we rest in a stupid place. I don't object to the princess being eaten by the dragon, the cultists complete the ritual, the BBEG escapes, or any other plausible consequences of the PCs taking an extended rest. I can also accept that an extended rest in sub-optimal conditions may not restore all healing surges or have other bad effects.

But I do really object to:

"You cannot take an extended rest."

"Why?"

"Because you haven't had enough encounters yet."

To me that is the worst form of railroading, trying to force the PCs down a pre-ordained path. I'd be strongly tempted to say "Screw this, then" and abandon the mission, and if the DM kept it up - "You can't abandon the mission" - then I'd quit the game.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

To me that is the worst form of railroading, trying to force the PCs down a pre-ordained path. I'd be strongly tempted to say "Screw this, then" and abandon the mission, and if the DM kept it up - "You can't abandon the mission" - then I'd quit the game.

Out of curiosity, would you quit a game if you were allowed to choose whatever missions your party was interested in and there was an overarching houserule for the campaign that you have to complete X milestones before you could take an extended rest? Would you consider such a game as railroading?

It seems to me the houserule is to address players resetting as frequently as possible in an effort to game the system, not as a means to force the PCs onto a railroaded plot.

 

[S'mon]

Out of curiosity, would you quit a game if you were allowed to choose whatever missions your party was interested in and there was an overarching houserule for the campaign that you have to complete X milestones before you could take an extended rest? Would you consider such a game as railroading?

Would I play it - no.
Would I consider it railroading - yes, like deciding which ride to take at the funfair, but then being stuck on it until the end of the rails.

If the DM really couldn't handle extended rests as written I'd accept house-ruling to limit the impact of each rest, as long as it was in a way that didn't screw over high-healing surge classes too badly (as eg '1 surge per day' would). But I would not accept a "No resting until X milestones" type rule, that would be a dealbreaker. Deciding when to rest (whether wisely or foolishly) is a player/PC decision, not something for the DM to decide based on his preferred narrative or threat level.

 

[S'mon]

They are, after all, missing out on a major part of the game (resource management and planning)

No, they are doing both very effectively - the mark of effectiveness being that they are doing it so well, they no longer need to worry about it!

If extended rests were really the gamebreaker people here say, I couldn't DM or play 4e.

Anyway, how I do it: PCs are of course free to rest anytime, just as I as DM am free to have the captives sacrificed and/or the PCs ambushed in their sleep should they choose to do so. Of course sensible PCs don't sleep in the dungeon, more often it's like the game last Saturday:

Me:
"You've now fought your way through three deadly battles with cultists. Through that door lies the ultimate foe - the High Priest and his minions (I didn't mention the giant crocodile)... Looking at the door , you know that if you go through it now, you may die. Are you gonna do it?!"

Players:
"HELL YEAH!!!!"

Contrary to my expectations they actually won, too...

 

[Dedekind]

Whenever I hear about this, I suspect the players are trying to "win" D&D. Perhaps your players don't get that D&D is about heroes doing dangerous things? That sounds a little harsh, but they may not understand that having a character die isn't the end of the game.


Most of the advice here is very good and you can Google "15 minute work day" for more advice. I suspect that you aren't the problem, but perhaps your DMing style encourages using dailies. Are your encounters always difficult for the party? Do they rarely face a time crunch?

 

[KidSnide]

How to handle extended rests in 4e (or resting in any other daily-resource game) is a fundamental part of adventure design that gets far too little attention in GM guidance.

Any dungeon designer needs to make the decision about whether the dungeon is a purely passive series of obstacles (like the Tomb of Horrors) or an actively inhabited location where the residents will rally to its defense (like Firestorm Gate) or flee when things go bad (like the kobolds mentioned above). A dungeon designer also needs to figure out whether the adventure is going to take place under time pressure or not. In my experience, one of the major failings of 4e is that, while it provides excellent guidance on what makes a balanced encounter, there is much less good guidance concerning how many encounters (of what level) make a good adventuring day.

I also think the stealth/perception rules make it undesirably difficult for PCs to effectively scout most adventure locations, which makes it difficult for players to make well informed decisions about when to press forward and when to retreat. Most players realize that finishing off a faction is better than leaving a runt element to regroup or make off with the treasure. But relatively few dungeons give the players the information to decide whether pressing on is worth it, given the condition of the PCs.

Similarly, I find that most "rush into the room to stop the ritual" decisions are based more in narrative logic and trust that the GM is running a level-appropriate adventure than any sort of in-game decision. That's fine in the right type of game, but I find it unsatisfying that out-of-game GM guidance plays such a major role in the decision of whether or not to rest.

-KS

 

[Raikun]

I mentioned this in another thread but I think it might help here too...

but I houseruled extended rests so that they don't give back all of your resources unless you're in an actual house/bed/inn. In the wilderness (or dungeon etc), if the players take an extended rest they have to do skill checks to set up camp and depending on their checks they get a number of surges and chances to recharge their dailies, etc.

Then all you have to do is enforce the passage of time (or at least create the illusion of it), so that the bad guys still are setting up their plans etc as time passes, and the 15 minute work day really is all but solved.