Five-Minute Workday Article

[Mengu]

I kind of want to see what he's talking about before throwing sticks and stones at him, but I'm not even sure if what he's talking about can be implemented for pacing, and yet create a sense of danger throughout earlier encounters of the adventuring day. And once those earlier encounters are done, with the greatest danger looming ahead, there is nothing to discourage PC's from taking a good long rest before they continue. Even if there was time pressure or some such to continue, with the PC resources depleted, they would feel like they can't do much in the most important climactic fight, and it would generally be a poor experience.

Also, who wants to fight 2 kobolds at a time, just because that's the necessary pacing for an 8 encounter adventuring day? It all seems ill contrived.

 

[delericho]

So, we're down to five minutes? It was a fifteen-minute day in 3e.

I always felt that the 15-min AD was a playstyle issue anyway. After all, in 4e there is not a single thing stopping the party from throwing their every Daily power, magic item, and Action Point at the very first encounter, and then declaring that they were taking a rest. Indeed, that's the sensible approach to dugneon-crawling, just like having the caster's go nova in 3e.

It was also largely a feature of published adventures, which due to space constraints felt the need to make every encounter 'meaningful' - which came to mean extremely challenging. And so, an arms-race developed between increasingly more-powerful monsters and encounters, vs ever more optimised PCs going nova. The later chapters of "Shackled City" were fun despite this, not because of it.

So I agree with Mearls. I especially like that they're looking at suggesting a budget for an adventuring day, and allowing the DM to decide whether that should be one combat or five.

 

[Kraydak]

I can't see how this article is objectionable. The only two ways around short workdays are either:
a) everything is a per-encounter ability (including hp), so the "workday" becomes meaningless,
b) the DM pacing the adventure so the party isn't forced to blow too many (limited) resources early.

Since they don't seem to be going for option a (yay!), that leaves option b. Of course, one could argue (I certainly would) that the real design challenge lies in designing mechanics which push DMs and Players away from encounter-difficulty/resource-usage escalation, but that would be a different article.

 

[Badapple]

I’m disappointed to say the least. I can understand though that any mechanical way they put in core rules to limit vancian characters from going nova in the first room of the dungeon would present a new source of outrage for a segment of their potential customer base.

At the very least it would be nice if they presented some optional modules where the rate of recharge of cleric and wizard spells could be controlled. For example:


1.) Wizards at home in their lab can regain all their spells in one day. Priests praying at a sanctified temple in town can regain all their spells in one day. Otherwise in the field wizards and priests regain 1 spell per day.


2.) Wizards and priests need to have X amount of uninterrupted rest in order to regain their spells. Even one round of combat or use of a physical skill or distractions such as noises, insects, an conjured imp sent to harass the party by its master, or nightmares induced from a haunted forest would interrupt the rest. (So a DM could do this to a party that rests too often for example).


3.) A “day” can be replaced with a “chapter”, so vancian casters over the course of an adventuring “story” replenish their spells at certain points determined by the DM, which might be hours, days, or even months (in the case of a long travel adventure where maybe 3-4 combats take place over the course of a three month long journey)


All of these things can be done without official rules supporting them, but it would be nice to see them addressed in a DMG excerpt or something so that less experienced DMs would have optional tools to deal with parties that excessively engage in a 5 minute workday. Like the rest of the modular approach a DM might want to choose one of these limitations for one adventure, but not for another. (these options are just examples btw... I'd like to see good examples from game designers to limit rest with nice mechanics as an option).


Also, D&D official adventures are notoriously bad at dividing up the points where there should be an extended rest period. I hope the D&D Next official adventures (especially ones that are more “linear”) make use of the pacing guidelines and designate default guidelines when it is appropriate to rest and if the party rests more often than they should what the consequences are in the adventure. This would help new DMs have a point of reference so they can design their own adventures.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I always felt that the 15-min AD was a playstyle issue anyway.

I share that view.

Besides, a "fix" might very well introduce problems of its own- the Law of Unintended Consequences and all that.

 

[delericho]

Hi Badapple! I have a request - would you mind not explicitly setting the size, font, and (especially) colour of your posts? I read the board in the "Child of Black" format, so text set to WHITE doesn't show up for me.

At the very least it would be nice if they presented some optional modules where the rate of recharge of cleric and wizard spells could be controlled.

I agree. I rather hope they will.

... snip examples...

I like many of these.

Wizards and priests need to have X amount of uninterrupted rest in order to regain their spells. Even one round of combat or use of a physical skill or distractions such as noises, insects, an conjured imp sent to harass the party by its master, or nightmares induced from a haunted forest would interrupt the rest. (So a DM could do this to a party that rests too often for example).

This is actually counter-productive. A party that feels it needs to rest won't be encouraged to move on by having that rest interrupted - they'll feel they have to fortify their position and remain there for another day until they can get the rest they 'need'.

Also, D&D official adventures are notoriously bad at dividing up the points where there should be an extended rest period.

What is this 'should' of which you speak? The whole attraction of RPGs is that players are in control of their characters. Amongst other things, that means that if they want to take a rest after every encounter, that's (largely) their prerogative. If they come up with a cunning strategy to take down encounter after encounter, they won't need to rest at the prescribed points. And if they make a mess of things, and score only a Phyrric victory, they'll need to rest more often.

In other words, I don't want the adventures to be mandating where an Extended Rest should occur. That said...

I hope the D&D Next official adventures...

To be honest, I'll be surprised if we see very many of these. The modular nature of D&D Next makes it more difficult to write adventures for a broad base, and adventures are borderline-viable products even in 4e (and 3e before it) when everyone is playing with the same rules. So we might see one or two adventures to introduce the system, and maybe an adventure a year if they have a 'gimmick' they want to present, but I wouldn't expect much beyond that.

(I would suggest eDungeon be the main source of adventures, but given the dimunition of the e-mags, I'm not holding out too much hope there either.)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It seems to me "DM Empowerment" mostly means "the DM has to think about more details than ever before". Maybe that is making the game more flexible and appealing to a larger audience, since the game isn't pre-defining things in ways they don't like.

But it's still more work, and I am a very, very very lazy person. I don't want this type of "empowerement". I'd rather have a system that makes all the pre-defined things I can agree with and takes that workload off. It really doesn't look like this will become a game for me.

 

[Minigiant]

It seems to me "DM Empowerment" mostly means "the DM has to think about more details than ever before". Maybe that is making the game more flexible and appealing to a larger audience, since the game isn't pre-defining things in ways they don't like.

But it's still more work, and I am a very, very very lazy person. I don't want this type of "empowerement". I'd rather have a system that makes all the pre-defined things I can agree with and takes that workload off. It really doesn't look like this will become a game for me.

Yes the "DM Empowerment" talk is really feeling like "Toss the DM all the work." As I am no longer a 16 year old with tons of controllable free time and I have become lazier, this is a fear of me. I'll give D&D Next a chance but I'd love to see more "here are some modules and rules for lazy DMs" talk.

----

Seriously. Just add milestones.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I don't really understand. The DM's role isn't to combat the players, it's just to facilitate the ongoing game, the stories, adventures and challenges.

If there's an orc stronghold that needs raiding, then if you dive in, burn all your resources immediately and decide to retreat then they will respond. They'll call up reinforcements, attack the players' camp, build barricades and so on.

If instead the party is raiding an undead dungeon, what do they care that things are killing them? You can go in, blast away, retreat and rest without penalty. Unless of course there's some reason not to - like skeletons are resurrected by the evil magic within.

As the DM, it's not your job to stop a 15 minute adventuring day just because you want the players to have a hard time of it. It's your job to effectively consider what the consequences of that sort of approach would be. If you *do* dislike that style of play, there are a hundred things you can do about it that don't take much thought. Really though, you should only care if it doesn't make sense.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I can't see how this article is objectionable. The only two ways around short workdays are either:
a) everything is a per-encounter ability (including hp), so the "workday" becomes meaningless,
b) the DM pacing the adventure so the party isn't forced to blow too many (limited) resources early.

There is a middle ground between all abilities being encounter based and none of them being encounter based. The closer you get to all per-encounter the less the reason to rest all the time. If every character has only one daily ability and 10 encounter abilities then not having the daily isn't as big of a deal...Unless the daily is so much better that you can't win combats without it.

The issue is that each daily resource you give the PCs is an excuse to rest when it's gone. I think you could do a game where hitpoints were the only daily resource and the PCs would still rest when they felt they wouldn't survive the next battle.

I prefer answer a) above in general. Anything else pretty much ruins cinematic games where you'd like to be able to control the pacing of the game as the DM. Anything less puts the PCs and the dice in charge of pacing....or forces the PCs into unwinnable situations.

However, rather than a daily resource, I'd like to see an accumulating penalty of some sort. Your hp may replenish after each battle but you'll still take battle wounds that will slow you down in the next fight.

Though, this seems like a pipedream as 5th seems to be firmly in the camp of "hp decide whether you continue. Have bad luck and you'll have to turn back after a simple battle with 2 orcs. Guess the princess will have to die."