Extending the adventuring day

[Kzach]

The adventuring day seems to hinge on two main factors in 4e: healing surges and daily usage. If players have used all their character's dailies, they tend not to want to go on, especially if they think a boss encounter is due. And without healing surges, it's a no-brainer to stop and rest.

As I mentioned in a previous thread, I also dislike the accounting to do with milestones so this gets rid of them as well, whilst providing a counter-balance to avoid action points every encounter making the group too powerful.


Healing surges are renamed to 'Hero Points'.

Any time an item daily is used or any time you use an action point, you use a hero point.

You can use as many item dailies in a combat as you wish.

You can only use one action point in a combat.

New consumable items help rejuvenate hero points during the adventuring day. These consumables can be used once between extended rests. They restore 3 plus the character's Constitution or Intelligence bonus (you refresh the mind and body) of hero points.

These include but are not limited to the following:

- Elven Bread: a biscuit-like bread that can be stored in a dry container for several weeks without going bad. Is very dry but quite sweet.

- Dwarven Meal: this floury substance is the ground grains and other additions that are kept a highly guarded secret. Often ale is added to make a paste that is either ingested like gruel or sometimes cooked in stews as dumplings or baked over a fire into a hard bread.

- Orcish Jerky: this is not necessarily of animal content however it is highly nutritious and tastes like chicken.

- Halfling's Tonic Water: who knows what is in this stuff! It tastes terrible yet it perks you up immediately and is undeniably refreshing.

- Eladrin Elixir: an arcane concoction that few even amongst the eladrin know how to craft. It tastes like a mango smoothie yet is bright blue and quite viscous, with sparkles in the liquid.

- Human's Stout: handed down from generation to generation, only the finest ale conners and brewers know the secrets of how to brew this ale. Rumour has it that it must be brewed in a bare earth kettle over a nexus point of ley line energy, however nothing has been confirmed.

 

[Kzach]

Error.

 

[Starfox]

Having consumables that extend the adventuring day makes its length dependent on the gp economy unless you won't let PCs bye these for gold, in which case it become completely arbitrary.

The arbitrary way might actually work. The PCs can keep adventuring as long as you say they can keep adventuring. You keep resources just low enough that they are constantly challenged. Of course, if you are to stingy, they can just rest anyway, which kind of defeats the purpose. Also, you might just as well hand out the hero points arbitrarily, without the roundabout complication of items.

If you sell this for gp, it adds an additional expense, making PCs poorer. Also, unless you have the cost escalate over levels, there will come a point when the cost is moot. Say these cost 100 gp each. At 1st level, this is prohibitively expensive. At 6th level, this is expensive. At 11th level, this is affordable. At 16th level, it is pocket change effectively available in unlimited quantities.

 

[BobTheNob]

Having consumables that extend the adventuring day makes its length dependent on the gp economy unless you won't let PCs bye these for gold, in which case it become completely arbitrary.

The arbitrary way might actually work. The PCs can keep adventuring as long as you say they can keep adventuring. You keep resources just low enough that they are constantly challenged. Of course, if you are to stingy, they can just rest anyway, which kind of defeats the purpose. Also, you might just as well hand out the hero points arbitrarily, without the roundabout complication of items.

If you sell this for gp, it adds an additional expense, making PCs poorer. Also, unless you have the cost escalate over levels, there will come a point when the cost is moot. Say these cost 100 gp each. At 1st level, this is prohibitively expensive. At 6th level, this is expensive. At 11th level, this is affordable. At 16th level, it is pocket change effectively available in unlimited quantities.

The sentiment is in the right place, unfortunately Starfox is completely correct. When I observe my players, they make tough decisions due to the fact that healing surges are running out. It creates a dynamic that forces them to make decisions and not "cheeseball" there way through everything (i.e. "We have a problem before us...KILL IT! (cause it doesnt matter, we can always recover easy enough)"

If you let players recover healing surges (or your variant) through gold, you lose the difficult decision factor, and (as pointed out) for 16+ parties the cost becomes a doddle.

Im personally very pleased with the healing surge system and the way it manifests in the game. But again, its up to you. No two D7D groups are the same and generally player dynamics determines the flow of the game as much as the rules. The beuty of D&D is that the game can change if it needs to. If you your game is better off with such mechanics, more power to you.