Healing Potions seem odd

[KarinsDad]

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.

One game hour. Two game hours. Even three game hours. Does it really matter?

The day is still over way before lunch time.

And, the Rogue should not be searching every square for traps. If we run into traps, sure. But, I cannot justify my PC waiting around for hours as the Rogue meticulously finds nothing for hours on end. I'd roleplay my PC to want to "get on with it".

Think about it. You have dozens of monters in a dungeon. Should they all be good trap builders? Should they even build them often in the first place if the entire dungeon has other monsters that might come to their aid (remember, they have to avoid their own traps as well)?

Orc: "Sorry about killing your troops. We forgot to mention there was a trap there."
Hobgoblin: "No worries. We breed like rabbits anyway and we just took their stuff."

Would this really happen?


If you have rival monsters in a dungeon, then sure. A few traps might make sense. But, most of them should be fairly crude unless the monsters are real capable with tools and technology. The Rogue should often spot such traps with Passive Perception.

There really is no need to search for traps often unless we have an inkling that traps should exist.

Yup, we'll walk into one once in a blue moon. But, that's better than either rolling Perception rolls all over the place or Passive Perception where whether the traps get spotted or not is totally at the whim of how the DM created the dungeon in the first place.

 

[tomtill]

Monsters and NPCs get 1 healing surge per tier, and very few ways to use them. They also typically have more hit points than a PC of the same level. The point is that the number of healing surges you get is an intricate part of the hit point system. A limited number per day is meant to represent the accumulation of ongoing damage/exhaustion that requires a good nights rest to recover enough to continue. Effects that represent damage that cannot be healed by a nights rest are represented by loss of healing surges (among other specific effects, depending on the cause). It is a tool the DM can use to represent a long term loss of combat effectiveness.

Specifically, healing surges are used to represent the accumulated effect of multiple battles, and damage taken outside of combat through the ongoing effects of disease, drowning/suffocating, starvation, extreme environment, exhaustion (no sleep in 24 hours) and other failed endurance rolls (minor injuries like a twisted ankle etc.)

They are, like hit points, an abstraction, in this case representing damage that cannot be healed by a simple short rest or healing potion. An exhausted character with only one healing surge remaining is nearing the end of his abilities.

Remove the mechanic completely and you are back to the hit point system. You lost a lot of the drama and the need for a leader class which is simply replaced by the CLW wand.

Effectively bumping up healing surges per day by auto-healing on short rest still preserves the mechanic in battle, so an exhausted PC with one remaining healing surge is still affected: even with potions and a leader he can still only get 125% of his hit points for that battle, and 100% for the next.

However, now you have a surplus of healing surges. Your hit point total per day has been inflated to be essentially infinite. You still have a limit on the amount of hit points you can generate during battle, but that is a very large number with a lot of swing during play. For example with 10 healing surges per day that you only have to use during combat that's what, 6 standard encounters (1 healing surge used for each) 2 hard encounters (2 healing surges used for each) and an infinite number of easy encounters (no surge required, since you will auto-heal). Or maybe just 5 hard encounters (inflated to be the new standard)? If you still want to keep the effects of damage outside of battle meaningful, you have to inflate the healing surges lost due to ...

For me, I like the cap. The reminder that you are fragile. That you have limits. That's what makes it challenging. That's what makes it fun for me. If I want the feeling of juggernauting through a dungeon, I just make most of the encounters easy ones with the hard ones thrown in for drama. More often, with limited time for play, I like to have most of the adventure being exploring and figuring stuff out and roleplaying, with the hard battles thrown in for drama and punctuation.

In my games, the gaming day lasts the whole day. The pacing seems right.

If it seems wrong to you, one option is to change the mechanics as mentioned before, just remember to account for healing surge penalties as out of combat damage mechanics.

Alternatively, if you want the juggernaut feel, alter the adventures to include more easy encounters that drain healing surges less (or alter player tactics to rely on them less). After all, if every encounter is hard, how is it special.

Or, for less hack and slash, include more exploring/problem solving and less encounters.

 

[FadedC]

One game hour. Two game hours. Even three game hours. Does it really matter?

The day is still over way before lunch time.

And, the Rogue should not be searching every square for traps. If we run into traps, sure. But, I cannot justify my PC waiting around for hours as the Rogue meticulously finds nothing for hours on end. I'd roleplay my PC to want to "get on with it".

I'm inclined to agree about the traps, but try telling that to some players. Like you said, most places shouldn't have many traps (but the one or two they find makes players paranoid). Much more understandable is when the rogue wants to search every room from head to toe for treasure, because well he usually finds some.

Anyway dungeons that are intended to be explored over the course of multiple rests are kind of a wierd design, I tend to prefer ones that are designed to be cleared out in one swoop. But I still feel that if a dungeon is realistically designed, and you keep track of how much time the characters are actually spending, there should still be more then 3 hours before a rest, especially when you factor in the time it takes to escape the dungeon and find somewhere safe to rest (because if the dungeon is so stagnant that you can sleep in it without the monsters finding out they have a intruder and hunting you down, it's often kind of silly).

Edit: And I suppose if you do find that despite the best adventure design your sitting around too much, you can always remember the old saying....war is long periods of waiting followed by short periods of frantic activity. Though I always prefferred Terry Pratchet's Edit: War is short periods of waiting followed by extremely long periods of being dead.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm inclined to agree about the traps, but try telling that to some players. Like you said, most places shouldn't have many traps (but the one or two they find makes players paranoid). Much more understandable is when the rogue wants to search every room from head to toe for treasure, because well he usually finds some.

I lost my desire for mega-trap searching 20+ years ago when a group had the Thief search an entire empty dungeon for hours of game play. Never again.

Anyway dungeons that are intended to be explored over the course of multiple rests are kind of a wierd design, I tend to prefer ones that are designed to be cleared out in one swoop. But I still feel that if a dungeon is realistically designed, and you keep track of how much time the characters are actually spending, there should still be more then 3 hours before a rest, especially when you factor in the time it takes to escape the dungeon and find somewhere safe to rest (because if the dungeon is so stagnant that you can sleep in it without the monsters finding out they have a intruder and hunting you down, it's often kind of silly).

It depends.

I prefer the Rogue searching for treasure after we clear out the entire dungeon.

Then, he can spend 16 hours doing so and it's just a few dice rolls. Quick and easy.

If it is a one day dungeon, then it can take a day or two of searching after one or two hours of fighting.

If it is a four day dungeon, then it will be three days of 2 hours of exploring and fighting, followed by a fourth day of 2 hours of exploring and fighting followed by 8 hours of searching for treasure. Granted, the Rogue could search on the first 3 days, but that is riskier. If he kicks over an encounter, then a bruised and battered party might suddenly be in an encounter they were not expecting.

 

[FadedC]

I prefer the Rogue searching for treasure after we clear out the entire dungeon.

Then, he can spend 16 hours doing so and it's just a few dice rolls. Quick and easy.

If it is a one day dungeon, then it can take a day or two of searching after one or two hours of fighting.

If it is a four day dungeon, then it will be three days of 2 hours of exploring and fighting, followed by a fourth day of 2 hours of exploring and fighting followed by 8 hours of searching for treasure. Granted, the Rogue could search on the first 3 days, but that is riskier. If he kicks over an encounter, then a bruised and battered party might suddenly be in an encounter they were not expecting.

That's interesting, every group I've seen prefers to search as they go. In mega dungeons, the treasure and magic items you find in one area might be necesary in order to succeed in a later challenge. Plus there are things like clues, secret doors, etc that can be important for defeating the module or even just knowing what the hell is going on. And of course there's no guarantee you'll even be able to to go back for the treasure in the first place, in quite a few adventures that's not possible.

Triggering an encounter on your last legs can be easily avoided by only searching when you'd otherwise be ready to handle another encounter. It's better to search in small chunks after each fight, and not save it all for when your no longer able to handle fighting. This also helps ensure that you don't do something stupid in area 2 because you missed that important clue in area 1.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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.

I find this approach very interesting. It might really be a good house rule - "free" healing for short rests, but healing surges regain only after an extended rest. This could be a house rule I might be willing to try (though I don't see a need for it yet. We - meaning my group - just don't have enough experience with the system yet to decide on house rules...)

 

[KarinsDad]

This also helps ensure that you don't do something stupid in area 2 because you missed that important clue in area 1.

Although I tend to not like dungeons with clues spread about. I don't mind riddles and such used as "door locks" or an occasional rare dungeon where it is an entire set of clues to navigate and the PCs pretty much can figure that out, but clues should be more concerned with the overall adventure and not with what might show up in the next room as a general rule.

One might just miss the clue and if the DM is expecting the group to find it or the adventure requires that the group find it, the group might disappoint the DM (at which point some DMs start doing silly things like dropping metagaming hints, etc. which is also uncool).

JMO. Let players explore the way they want. If one group wants to search like crazy, have at it. If another wants to make themselves safe by cleaning out the dungeon first, have at it. A dungeon with clues reinforces one type of behavior, regardless of the exploring desires of the players.

 

[FadedC]

Although I tend to not like dungeons with clues spread about. I don't mind riddles and such used as "door locks" or an occasional rare dungeon where it is an entire set of clues to navigate and the PCs pretty much can figure that out, but clues should be more concerned with the overall adventure and not with what might show up in the next room as a general rule.

One might just miss the clue and if the DM is expecting the group to find it or the adventure requires that the group find it, the group might disappoint the DM (at which point some DMs start doing silly things like dropping metagaming hints, etc. which is also uncool).

JMO. Let players explore the way they want. If one group wants to search like crazy, have at it. If another wants to make themselves safe by cleaning out the dungeon first, have at it. A dungeon with clues reinforces one type of behavior, regardless of the exploring desires of the players.

Hmm it's funny, I tend to find door riddles more annoying but to each their own I guess. Actually I like the riddles themselves, it's just always hard for me to justify why somebody would take a riddle that's solvable by your average reasonably inteligent group and use it as their means of security .

But I wasn't so much thinking clue as in riddle clue as much as clue as in finding signs that the wizards of the chalice are actually dopplegangers or secretly agents of good infliftrating the bad guys, or that they are immune to fire or have trapped the altar or something like that which is actually useful to know before you meet the wizards of the chalice.

 

[KarinsDad]

Hmm it's funny, I tend to find door riddles more annoying but to each their own I guess. Actually I like the riddles themselves, it's just always hard for me to justify why somebody would take a riddle that's solvable by your average reasonably inteligent group and use it as their means of security .

I would not use this as a means of security. I would use it as a means of worthiness. The BBEG cannot figure out the riddle because he does not understand:

"The best thing given, the worse thing received."

For him, this is the worse thing given and he could care less about the reception part. So, he cannot comprehend it unless it is explained to him and even then, he would think it stupid.

But I wasn't so much thinking clue as in riddle clue as much as clue as in finding signs that the wizards of the chalice are actually dopplegangers or secretly agents of good infliftrating the bad guys, or that they are immune to fire or have trapped the altar or something like that which is actually useful to know before you meet the wizards of the chalice.

But, it's the same thing as the security argument. Why would the bad guys leave this type of info just lying around if it tells people about them or their weaknesses?

I always found this to be a bit of a DM crutch.

 

[Saeviomagy]

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 think the primary reason is that it makes it very difficult to write an adventure. Just because it's possible for your PCs to level up 20 times before the end of their first day of adventuring does not mean that they have, and the more possible levels the PCs can get, the bigger a spread of actual levels you'll have to cope with at a given point.

In an MMORPG, the players can tell what level an area is, and go find areas that match their progress. Being a player, I can tell you that that is usually annoying - it's entirely possible that a quest you want to experience will be too high (resulting in it being impossible to complete) or too low level (resulting in the experience being significantly lessened) for you. Your choice is to give up a storyline you were enjoying, or have your enjoyment reduced by the game mechanics, and it sucks.