Zinovia
Explorer
I am running a War of the Burning Sky campaign, and my group enjoys the story aspects of the game. The problem I am having is that there are rarely more than one or two encounters in a day. The group is free to go nova in most fights, so naturally they do just that. My options seem to be to make every fight brutally hard so that they need to go nova to survive, or to cram a lot of encounters into each day. Harder encounters can be frustrating to the players, especially if you allow monster defenses to go up. I don't want to throw a lot of extra fights in just to use up resources, because then we would spend too much time on combat and not enough on advancing the plot.
I have been thinking about reducing the number of surges gained during a long rest, with an endurance check to regain more perhaps. I don't know quite what to do with daily powers however. It is difficult to "nerf" the group by messing with the recovery mechanic at level 10, but I'm afraid this problem will only get worse as they reach Paragon tier. They are mature enough to listen if I explain my reasoning, but will probably still feel ripped off if I take away their full recovery during a long rest.
A different option is just to make the monsters hit like a ton of bricks, but keep their defenses appropriate for their level. That gets to be swingy and unpredictable. Since I roll attacks openly, I can't cheat on behalf of the group as easily as if I were rolling behind a screen.
4E seems to be balanced around dungeon crawling, not long days of travel or investigation with occasional fights. Any thoughts?
I have been thinking about reducing the number of surges gained during a long rest, with an endurance check to regain more perhaps. I don't know quite what to do with daily powers however. It is difficult to "nerf" the group by messing with the recovery mechanic at level 10, but I'm afraid this problem will only get worse as they reach Paragon tier. They are mature enough to listen if I explain my reasoning, but will probably still feel ripped off if I take away their full recovery during a long rest.
A different option is just to make the monsters hit like a ton of bricks, but keep their defenses appropriate for their level. That gets to be swingy and unpredictable. Since I roll attacks openly, I can't cheat on behalf of the group as easily as if I were rolling behind a screen.
4E seems to be balanced around dungeon crawling, not long days of travel or investigation with occasional fights. Any thoughts?