Healing Potions seem odd

[theNater]

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

There _must_ be a limit. Should it have been more then 1 hour?

Prompting you to ask the question:

Must be a limit? Why?

Which he answered with:

you don't really want players to run through 5, 10, 15 or 30 levels in one day.

Then you came up with this:

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?

There must be a limit. This is all that Mustrum_Ridcully has claimed so far. No one has claimed that tripling the number of healing surges would result in PCs gaining 5 levels in a day.

The question of where that limit should be is open for discussion. The writers of the rulebooks seem to be trying to place the limits at about four encounters per day, and about 10 encounters per level. This translates to characters engaging in non-stop adventure to level at a rate of two levels per five days, maybe one level every other day if they push.

If you feel that's too little, more healing surges can increase the rate. If you feel it's too much, fewer healing surges can slow it down.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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?

Doubling or tripling might not be a problem, most of the time. "Infiinte" Healing could be. There are several factors:
Believability: Would anyone _really_ be able to fight several dozens of life-or-death fights without needing to rest?

Daily Powers: If fights go on too long, they lose meaning. The DM will have to use mostly encounters of similar difficulty (not requiring daily powers). You could try compensating with more daily powers, but then you would invite people to "nova" and go back to rest. (See 3E) A DM might be tempted to compensate by making every fight require all those daily powers, but then you just invalidate encounter powers and still have 15 minute adventuring days.

Gamist concerns: Managing your resources is a challenge in the game. You have to find ways to manage your daily powers and healing surges so that you can go the maximum time and beat the maximum amount of enemies.
Players usually like challenges and showing off their smarts. ;-)

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.

The trick would be to ensure that one coherent area or group of monsters can be taken down mostly by 4-7 encounters. If they can, there is no one left to twiddle their thumbs while the PCs retreat. And it's possible to have survivors reorganize their defenses or track down the PCs in the meantime.

Since 4E uses larger encounter areas and more monsters per encounter, this approach seems very feasible. The Keep on the Shadowfell Kobold lair is a good example - in 3E, people might have been tempted to make the entire scenario 3-4 encounters (entrance, side room, wyrmpriest, the goblin) and ensure that the wall openings would be doors or furs to ensure that the rooms can be dealt separately and delay the arrival of new-comers that could reasonably alerted by fighting noise.

 

[KarinsDad]

Doubling or tripling might not be a problem, most of the time. "Infiinte" Healing could be. There are several factors:
Believability: Would anyone _really_ be able to fight several dozens of life-or-death fights without needing to rest?

Believability? in 4E? Where nobody gets hurt until they fall over? Ever? Where Wizards can routinely escape the grasp of a grabby monster like a Roper?

We must be looking at two different game systems because believability is not a term I would use for 4E.

Fun, yes. Believability, no.

Daily Powers: If fights go on too long, they lose meaning. The DM will have to use mostly encounters of similar difficulty (not requiring daily powers). You could try compensating with more daily powers, but then you would invite people to "nova" and go back to rest. (See 3E) A DM might be tempted to compensate by making every fight require all those daily powers, but then you just invalidate encounter powers and still have 15 minute adventuring days.

This really is not a discussion of Daily powers. Those work fine and do not contribute to the 15 Minute Workday problem unless the players Nova. In that case, they reap what they sow (again, Dailies are a player choice, Healing Surges are not, one heals or one dies).

Gamist concerns: Managing your resources is a challenge in the game. You have to find ways to manage your daily powers and healing surges so that you can go the maximum time and beat the maximum amount of enemies.

This is a "cause that's the way it is" argument.

Come on. If the designers had doubled the number of healing surges so that 8-10 encounters per day would be the norm max and I was stating that it should be half that rate, you might be arguing that no, the double rate was perfect.

The "cause that's the way it is" arguments are always suspect.

It's perfectly reasonable to manage Dailies and have very little management of Healing Surges (if any) and the game would still be fun.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Believability? in 4E? Where nobody gets hurt until they fall over? Ever? Where Wizards can routinely escape the grasp of a grabby monster like a Roper?

We must be looking at two different game systems because believability is not a term I would use for 4E.

Fun, yes. Believability, no.

Even for a f4nboy, there are breaking points. Though I agree that this is the weakest reason, at least for me. I probably wouldn't create adventure scenarios where the PCs could hope to gain 5 levels over one day.

This really is not a discussion of Daily powers. Those work fine and do not contribute to the 15 Minute Workday problem unless the players Nova. In that case, they reap what they sow (again, Dailies are a player choice, Healing Surges are not, one heals or one dies).

You can't isolate just one part of the mechanic. All parts of the game system are interconnected, and in case of the character resources, healing surges an daily powers definitely matter!

This is a "cause that's the way it is" argument.

Come on. If the designers had doubled the number of healing surges so that 8-10 encounters per day would be the norm max and I was stating that it should be half that rate, you might be arguing that no, the double rate was perfect.

The "cause that's the way it is" arguments are always suspect.

It's perfectly reasonable to manage Dailies and have very little management of Healing Surges (if any) and the game would still be fun.

I am not arguing about the specific rate. Maybe double the numbers would be fine. The designers could probably have made the system work with any other number, too. But that would have effects on other parts.

But I think one of the reasons the numbers are where they are is because they "harmonize" with the daily power expenditure. They keep everything into a similar scale. If you had 20 encounters per day, 4 daily powers really don't make a difference.

 

[KarinsDad]

But I think one of the reasons the numbers are where they are is because they "harmonize" with the daily power expenditure. They keep everything into a similar scale. If you had 20 encounters per day, 4 daily powers really don't make a difference.

I do agree with this.

I think the designers tried to come up with numbers for Healing Surges that matched usage of them with usage of Dailies in their playtests.

But, I also think this is a mistake to some extent.

It forces all games to be played similarly.

In our game, we often have Dailies left over unless we run into encounters 3 or 4 levels higher. With Dailies on magic items, even then we have some left over.

We had this discussion with our DM and I tried to convince him that a nice solution would be "Never use healing surges out of combat. After a 5 minute rest, everyone is totally healed up without using a surge."

This has several advantages:

1) It removes most of the 15 minute work day problem, at least for me. We spend half or more of our Healing Surges out of combat in our game.

2) It removes out of combat bookkeeping. Having the player of the Cleric roll a D6 half a dozen times or more and us using 4 or more rest periods, just to get everyone mostly healed is slightly time consuming. If it is 5 minutes of out of game time and there are 4 encounters in game that day, it wasted 15 minutes of play time (20 if we bother to do it after the last battle of the day).

3) It adversely affects feats and magic items that give more healing surges less since the number of healing surges does not change, just their usage.

But, my DM did not like the idea (he tends to not like any idea that changes the rules). So, shrug. He's the DM.

 

[FadedC]

2) It removes out of combat bookkeeping. Having the player of the Cleric roll a D6 half a dozen times or more and us using 4 or more rest periods, just to get everyone mostly healed is slightly time consuming. If it is 5 minutes of out of game time and there are 4 encounters in game that day, it wasted 15 minutes of play time (20 if we bother to do it after the last battle of the day).

I should point out that if your using 4 or more rest period at the end of every fight, there is no way that your "work day" isn't going to be several hours long.

 

[KarinsDad]

I should point out that if your using 4 or more rest period at the end of every fight, there is no way that your "work day" isn't going to be several hours long.

It's not every fight. It's the big ones. But, most fights have at least one 5 minute rest and most have at least two. But, 5 encounters in a day in a dungeon = 5 minutes of fighting + some exploration time + 40 to 50 minutes of resting. That's an hour plus, but it's not 6 hours.

And, who cares about the rest periods anyway? They are white noise. Filler. Whoop dee doo.


I want to be exploring, not sitting around. And I sure as heck do not want my PC to get up at 7 AM and be finished by 9 AM and then play Gin Rummy for the rest of the day in the dungeon.

 

[FadedC]

It's not every fight. It's the big ones. But, most fights have at least one 5 minute rest and most have at least two. But, 5 encounters in a day in a dungeon = 5 minutes of fighting + some exploration time + 40 to 50 minutes of resting. That's an hour plus, but it's not 6 hours.

Well I can agree about the 5 minutes of fighting and 40-50 minutes of resting. But are you really only spending 10 minutes of exploration time in between those 5 fights? If the monsters are so close by, why aren't they helping their friends or at least attacking you during those 40-50 minutes of rest or hunting you down during your extended rest? As I said in my previous post, your DM's adventure design (or perhaps the adventure design of his module) may be more of the problem then the rules.

And, who cares about the rest periods anyway? They are white noise. Filler. Whoop dee doo.

Well by that logic, the extended rest time is white noise and should be ignored too.

 

[KarinsDad]

Well I can agree about the 5 minutes of fighting and 40-50 minutes of resting. But are you really only spending 10 minutes of exploration time in between those 5 fights? If the monsters are so close by, why aren't they helping their friends or at least attacking you during those 40-50 minutes of rest or hunting you down during your extended rest? As I said in my previous post, your DM's adventure design (or perhaps the adventure design of his module) may be more of the problem then the rules.

Well, he used KotS. We just finished it this evening. We have had 2 or 3 "shared encounters" in it and 1 outside that he created.

But, if this is what the DM should do, the DMG indicates that these "close monsters" should be a single encounter and calculated accordingly.

And, it really does not take too long to walk 200 feet down a corridor unless one checks for traps every step of the way. Rolling those dice gets old too (and Take 10 is the same autofail or autosucceed joke it was in 3E, i.e. if the DM decides you fail, you fail with Take 10). Ditto for passive checks.

Well by that logic, the extended rest time is white noise and should be ignored too.

It should (unless we get attacked mid-rest).

Our DM did tell us to totally ignore the 5 minute rests completely. The Cleric just rolls Healing Words for everyone who needs them and we no longer keep track of how long that takes.

The DM might keep track if we happen to be in a time crunch, but for the most part, we did speed this part of the game up a bit.

 

[FadedC]

Well, he used KotS. We just finished it this evening. We have had 2 or 3 "shared encounters" in it and 1 outside that he created.

But, if this is what the DM should do, the DMG indicates that these "close monsters" should be a single encounter and calculated accordingly.

And, it really does not take too long to walk 200 feet down a corridor unless one checks for traps every step of the way. Rolling those dice gets old too (and Take 10 is the same autofail or autosucceed joke it was in 3E, i.e. if the DM decides you fail, you fail with Take 10). Ditto for passive checks.

I'm not as familiar with KoTS, so I don't know how well it follows the encounter guidelines (certainly some other modules don't). But yeah the general rule is that all monsters in the general proximity should count as an encounter. Any monsters who are not in the encounter should be a good distance away to justify both the fact that they don't come to help, and don't bump into the party while they are resting after the fight. I'd say most of the time they should be quite a bit further away then 200 feet (I'd certainly hear a fight from that distance) but I'm sure there are plenty of modules that have them even closer then that.

In general it should take a decent amount of time to rest up after the fight, search the monsters and the rooms they came from, discuss what to do next and move to the next encounter while exploring all the rooms they come accross along the way. This is especially true if the rogue is searching every square for traps (it may not take you a lot of time in the real world if the DM is doing it right, but it's certainly taking your characters a long time). Doing all of this 4-7 times in one in game hour should not be possible in most cases.