What's wrong with it is that it's thematically stupid. "Let's poke ourselves with thirty magic sticks until our intestines coil back up" is not the kind of fantasy action roleplaying game I want to play. I'd much rather have 'adrenaline surge' healing potions.
Healing Potions seem odd
- Thread starter Bluewyrm
- Start date
The issue is that one of the 4E designer goals (TMK) was the removal of the 5 minute work day (note: I cannot find a reference for this from WotC, just everywhere else on the Internet).
But, that's still here. It just happens to be an hour and it's controlled via healing surge attrition as opposed to spell attrition.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
The problem is, this is the ONLY thing you say in the 4e forum. I've warned you about it before and yet still it persists, so welcome to a 3 day ban. If you do it again the ban will get longer.
It seems that you dislike 4e extensively, but presumably you like 3e or other RPGs. Please concentrate in participating in forums about systems you do like rather than (effectively) trolling in the 4e forums
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
But it's one hour? What did you expect to happen? A 24 hour work-day? Or an entire work-week without resting?
There _must_ be a limit. Should it have been more then 1 hour? Maybe... But I don't think so.
The system as it is allows you to run around 3-4 encounters - even if one or two of them are very hard encounters that require you to expend dailies. Each of these encounters will be challenging, because your in-encounter resources (encounter powers, total healing surge to be triggered per encounter - not total healing surges per day) must be managed to beat it.
The 3E approach was 3-4 encounters per day, but only the last of them would really be exciting because now you'll see if your managed your resources well enough. Or just have one very challenging encounter that requires you to go "nova"... Either way, only one encounter gets a fair chance to be a real nail-biter.
I pick 4 exciting encounters per day over 1 exciting encounter per day.
The question might: Should it have been, say... 8? Could it have been 8? Should it have been any number I like? Could it be any number I like? What are the repercussions of this?
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For people that need "more" encounters per day, the easiest way to do it is just giving extra surges. Or let characters regain healing surges on milestones, in addition to action points. (And possibly a daily power).
A more complex approach might be to create some healing rituals, whose cost increase with the expected "wealth level" of the PCs.
Must be a limit? Why?
In LotR, the heroes fought for an entire day at the fortress.
I just find it boring to do (in our group, 4-7 encounters per day so far) and by 9 AM, the PCs are sitting around like a bunch of mopes.
I find it exciting to explore, do combat, find stuff, etc.
Sitting and waiting for Healing Surges to recover, even if the 23 hours can go by in a moment of real time, just jars me out of character. It's like watching a movie and suddenly mid-excitement, realizing that you are in a theater because the movie had a jarring moment. It takes me straight out of the immersion of the activity.
I did send an Email to our DM asking if we could double, triple, or even quadruple healing surges.
I have no problem with PCs running out of dailies and stopping because the players control that.
I have a problem with healing surges because that is mostly out of the control of the players.
Plus, since Healing Surges is a regain of will (or fatigue or luck or whatever) and not real damage, having 6 or having 50 is irrelevant.
These are heroes, not green grocers. Let them be heroes. Let them push the limits.
This "sorry, but you have no more luck for today" is pretty lame. IMO.
While a limit on daily combats may not be strictly necessary, it is certainly reasonable, if for no other reason than to prevent characters from going from level 1 to level 30 without ever stopping to rest. A total failure to become fatigued is just as damaging to immersion as immediate exhaustion is.
On the topic of the 5-minute adventuring day, I was under the impression that about 4 encounters per day has been a design goal since 3rd edition, but 3rd edition ran into a problem(relative to design goals) in which characters would use up all of their best powers during the first encounter, then stop for the day. In 4th edition, using up the party's dailies in the first encounter will leave them high on healing surges, and that combined with the encounter powers will encourage continued adventuring.
Note that that's adventuring, not just fighting. A sequence of combat-rest-combat-rest-combat-rest-combat-sleep is a very short adventuring day, but combat-rest-explore-combat-rest-explore-combat-rest-explore-combat-sleep is a much fuller day. Those sorts of adventuring days are much more extended, especially when you realize that "explore" can include running to the other side of town, carefully moving down potentially trapped corridors, searching for secret doors, and puzzling past obstacles.
And of course, either of those chains beats combat-sleep as an adventuring day.
On the topic of the 5-minute adventuring day, I was under the impression that about 4 encounters per day has been a design goal since 3rd edition, but 3rd edition ran into a problem(relative to design goals) in which characters would use up all of their best powers during the first encounter, then stop for the day. In 4th edition, using up the party's dailies in the first encounter will leave them high on healing surges, and that combined with the encounter powers will encourage continued adventuring.
Note that that's adventuring, not just fighting. A sequence of combat-rest-combat-rest-combat-rest-combat-sleep is a very short adventuring day, but combat-rest-explore-combat-rest-explore-combat-rest-explore-combat-sleep is a much fuller day. Those sorts of adventuring days are much more extended, especially when you realize that "explore" can include running to the other side of town, carefully moving down potentially trapped corridors, searching for secret doors, and puzzling past obstacles.
And of course, either of those chains beats combat-sleep as an adventuring day.
ForbidenMaster
Explorer
And you could too if you didnt get hit. It comes down to how many life threatening situations you think a hero could handle in one day. And by life threatening I mean life threatening, not just something that could kill a normal person, but something that could kill one of your heros.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
theNater already explained it - you don't really want players to run through 5, 10, 15 or 30 levels in one day.
A good example for what makes "sense" of a story-telling perspective - but could you pull this off without advancing the PCs 5 levels in a day?
Would you play out such a battle? Or would you "hand-wave" all the boring encounters and focus on the ones where the characters have to attack the more dangerous foes? In that case, hand-wave the theoretical requirement for daily resource management and healing surges for the off-screen battles.
First off, you would have to illustrate this extreme claim. Even tripling the number of healing surges would not result in PCs gaining 5 levels in a day.
Secondly, again why not? What is wrong with the PCs bumping up one level in a single day? Why is this a bad thing? Does it make 4E too close to (dare we say it) an MMORPG?
I agree that it sounds a little wierd, but it also seems a little wierd that you would have 4-7 encounters in an hour. It implies that the monsters are just sitting there stagnantly in their individual rooms and not making any effort to assist each other. Though I'll grant you some of the 4e modules kind of encourage that.
But my point is that 4-7 encounters is a lot of encounters to do before resting. If your pulling that off then it seems the system is doing it's job. The only part that' it's kind of silly is that your having all those encounters in one hour and then are free to rest for the next 23. That seems more of an issue of adventure design then rules design.
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