Home Game Culture Shock: LFR players vs the 15min workday

[jimmifett]

So I finally got my Eberron campaign together with some friends that normally play LFR. LFR DMs in my area let a lot of things slide for the sake of time, and players are getting spoiled from it.

First two encounters were flashbacks, and I gave them extended rests and what not. Fast forward back to the present, and they start the next encounter. They play as they normally do, take on a decent solo, and after the encounter, the go to take a short rest. Here's where the spoiling comes into play.

During the short rest, their benefactor tells them they need to go track the path of the demon that attacked them back to it's source and locate the summoner. Being made of mist, the trail is growing colder. So, they take thier rest. During which, they healer starts to use their encounters to give surge plus d6 to everyone (2/enc), then attempting to do it again. During the encounter, the player had already used the 2/enc healing, so I reminded the player of the time crunch, and that if they spend the recharged encounter during the rest, it would not be available in the next encounter. This totally left my player in shock. "What do you mean? It's an encounter!". I had to explain that short rests are a about 5 minutes, you get your powers recharged at the end of the 5 minutes. If you want to expend and recharge again, that is going to be yet another 5 minutes. Total culture shock. The player ended up deciding they would much rather have the healing boost in the next encounter and told everyone to use regular surges.

During the hunt( a skill challege), the party was doing quite well at first, then failed a check that led into dark alley ambush by a couple petty thieves. Not a full encounter, just a quick obstacle w/ 3 weak enemies to soften up the players a little due to getting a failure on the skill challenge. They are still in the time crunch as the evidence they are falling is quickly fading from existence. They immediately go to do a short rest. I remind them about the time crunch, and allow everyone a single surge and the recharge of 1 encounter. I also give them the option to take that short rest, but that would make the trail very difficult to pick back up, upping the DCs. Failures in the skill challenge equate to small skirmishes they can easily overcome. They elect for the surge + single encounter recharge and continue the skill challenge successfully.

Once they reach thier destination, I finally allow enough time for a short rest. The take 5 minutes to get thier breaths after running through the streets, bridges, and sewers of Sharn, and dealing with cutpurses along the way. They quietly infiltrate the target location and take out a couple guards before the alram goes up and handle things pretty well when the next piece of LFR spoiling shows it's head...

"Is the next encounter the last for the day?"

They want to know so they can determine if they should use thier dailies and they are starting to get low on surges. "You have no way of knowing, but you can take an extended rest if you don't mind the bad guy getting away and failing your benefactor".

They push on and tackle the next encounter, finishing a short rest afterwards with 1/4 players out of healing surges. The bad guy is currently on his way to assassinate thier benefactor and they are in a race to catch up. I allow a town guard to give that player a healing potion and hand wave it's use of a sealing surge to placate the player.

After a battle in the skies on flying gondolas and flying sky chariot like things, they succeed in stopping the BBEG (who fell into the mists below).
"So he's dead right?"
...
"You saw him fall into the mists below."
"So we don't know if he is dead?"
"You saw him fall into the mists below."

They make it back to their benefactor, all bloodied, only one player having any surges left and I finally allow them to take an extended rest now that the immediate threat is ended over the course of 5 straight encounters.

The players had a ton of fun, started to play smarter so they took less damage, felt truly challegned, and were glad they managed to survive. I was telling them the treasure they found when I get "So player x and player y will both take the boots of so-and-so...". I sigh as I explain that this is not LFR. You find 1 of each item. You guys decide how to split them, I'm not involved in that. There are no item per level slots, extra gold options, etc. If you want more gold, sell the item. As a reminder, distributing gold found is up to you as well. Gold takes up a treasure parcel and you may elect to not distribute gold to players that took items. It's entirely up to you. If you search a body and find gold, I will allow a thievery check to allow you to pocket it. You are not forced by me to share with your party, just be ready to be called out on it if their characters notice.

I finally explain that this is REAL DnD, not a causal thing like LFR or Encounters. Their choices in the world matter, and the bad guy can win if enough time passes from extended rests. They also built combat centric characters and have no Faceman. Since they leveled, I suggested that at least someone may want to get some skill training in a social skill, and that wholesale retraining like LFR is not going to happen. If you want to totally re-arrange your character, they might as well leave the party / die so you make a new one. Retraining will be by the book, powers/feats/themes only.

I had them create wishlists of heoric tier items for each band in the heroic tier. I let them know that this is a wishlist, and not to expect to get much from it, but it lets me know what you are interested in while I plan treasure parcels. I also let them know that common items are readily available in most towns, and that there is a chance that an uncommon item is available for sale as town size increases.

They are totally stoked for the next session, love how challenging it is, and looking forward to the story. I just need to break them of thier LFR habbits.

 

[OnlineDM]

Interesting. I'd say that the "taking back to back short rests to let the cleric use Healing Word again" isn't specifically an LFR thing at all. When I'm running or playing LFR, whether the party wants to rest for 5 or 10 minutes is something that's definitely talked about rather than assuming that we're taking 10 or 15 or whatever.

It's true that LFR assumes that players will get a short rest after every fight (even a one-off that results from a failed skill challenge), but I'd say it was more of a house rule on your part when you told the players about the consequences of resting for five minutes after their encounter with the three weak enemies. Regular D&D rules assume that you get a short rest after every fight; your particular skill challenge with an embedded fight was handled differently, which is fine. But I wouldn't call that an LFR habit, either, just a situation where they didn't know about your particular style.

Asking whether the next encounter is the last of the day is something that I've seen come up in LFR, and a good DM will say "How would you possibly know?" Same here. Yes, some DMs will tell the party that it's the last fight, but nothing in the LFR rules says that they're supposed to do that (though players can usually figure it out based on the number of previous fights and skill challenges - you almost always get a total of four fights / skill challenges in a standard LFR adventure). And I've definitely had players in non-LFR games wondering the same thing: "Should I blow my daily now, or do I think there's still another fight after this one?"

The only thing I saw that's clearly a situation of "These players have bad habits / misunderstandings from LFR play" is the handling of treasure. LFR is very weird in the way treasure parcels work, and I can understand why the players would be confused if they only had LFR experience.

 

[Herschel]

I've never seen or heard of LFR adventures being run that way before (with enough time to recycle encounter heals as needed or telling them how many encounters there are and if the next one is the last). The closest is The Paladin's Plague Battle Interactive which does have some timed breaks but throws another encounter at you when you think you're finished as well as being set up to be deadly (with expedited Raise Dead ritual ability).

I don't think it's a LFR thing, it's a limit-testing or spoiled players thing.

 

[Skyscraper]

I finally explain that this is REAL DnD

Allow me to play at your table that I may experience the one and only real thing

Honestly... Playstyle is just that: a playstyle. I hear what you're saying and my own games are run like you describe yours, but I don't see this as better or worse than any other playstyle, it's just my personal preference.

Also, I don't handle healing surges in a very strict way; nor encounter recharge. I don't think that the game mechanics should get in the way of a cool gaming experience. For instance, if the story suggests that the PCs should press on to catch the BBEG but the PCs are injured and they have no more encounter powers, I'll probably allow minute-long short rest wherein they can heal up and regain encounter powers; or even a shorter rest if the chase will be more interesting if they go at it right away, and the following battle more interesting if they have their resources available.

As for whether or not PCs can repeatedly use Healing Word (or equivalent) during the short rest without spending too much time, since indeed according to the rules they should only be allowed 2 Healing Words per 5 minute: I'm pretty liberal about that. This mostly influences how many encounters the PCs will be able to handle during a day. If they need to use up "dry" healing surges without the associated cleric bonuses, they'll be able to handle less encounters.

Now as I said, I hear you about the PCs not being able to rest when they want, pushing them ahead and providing for meaningful resource decisions (including healing resources), this can be really fun. Just throwing my two cents that game mechanics can be interesting, but shouldn't force you or players down a path that strays away from a fun and cinematic game. And also, that following a strict line on game rules is not necessarily better or worse than house-ruling on some of them, including the more arbitrary rules such as "encounter power recharge time is 5 minutes", not 4, not 6, 5!

 

[jimmifett]

A lot of good points here. The biggest issue (as a DM) is the players taking multiple short rests concurrently before moving onto the next encounter to make sure everyone is healed up, and not realizing that time is passing. If there is obviously time between encounters, it's not a big deal, but they expected to take as much time as needed and have full use of encounters and not suffer anything from time taken.

During the chase skill challenge, after the failure, I allowed a surge, but not a full short rest, as they were chasing. The players needed to learn that they can start a fight not needing to be at full hitpoints.

Another plus is that they learned just how far they can take their characters and how far their resources can stretch. With a single leader, they've figured out that they need to acquire other means of healing themselves, such as potions. They work together more as a team use complimenting tactics.

In LFR, it's all about getting the optimal loot at the end of the module for a lot of players in my area. Now they are being exposed to actual story, being asked to explain why/how their characters are making skill checks, and are moving (slowly) from Roll-players to Role-players.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think they are SPOILED, just used to a specific style of play. Granted LFR gives players a LOT more leeway in some respects, but I don't think that was a decision based so much on "lets give the players everything they want" as just a consequence of the reality of living world style play in such a large open-ended world.

I think the whole back-to-back rests thing is sort of a quirk of 4e rules personally. I wouldn't say I would DISALLOW it, but as you did I will often create enough time pressure that the players will skip it. Frankly if they know they won't get away with it all the time there are various things they can do to gain similar benefits in a single rest, they all just require a bit of resources (Battle Standard of Healing, Comrade's Succor, etc).

Sounds like you have some good players though. They rolled with it, had fun, and sound like they're really into exploring the fun of a regular campaign style play. Kudos to all.

 

[Matt James]

It took me months to ween some of my Dark Sun home game players off of the LFR mentality. I even lost one player because of it.

Short rests went horribly wrong when the supporting text said "roughly a 5 minute break."

 

[jimmifett]

I don't think they are SPOILED, just used to a specific style of play. Granted LFR gives players a LOT more leeway in some respects, but I don't think that was a decision based so much on "lets give the players everything they want" as just a consequence of the reality of living world style play in such a large open-ended world.

I think the whole back-to-back rests thing is sort of a quirk of 4e rules personally. I wouldn't say I would DISALLOW it, but as you did I will often create enough time pressure that the players will skip it. Frankly if they know they won't get away with it all the time there are various things they can do to gain similar benefits in a single rest, they all just require a bit of resources (Battle Standard of Healing, Comrade's Succor, etc).

Sounds like you have some good players though. They rolled with it, had fun, and sound like they're really into exploring the fun of a regular campaign style play. Kudos to all.

They are good players, being only 4, they are realizing they need a 5th player to decrease the damage taken per round on any single player. A 2nd striker would help them there. I'd previously had thier benefactor assist as a DM PC to take down the solo, then he sent them off on the chase. I've floated the idea of a hireling/henchman, explaining the benefits and pitfalls there, but I'd prefer not having to run a DM PC, and i don't want any of the players running a 2nd PC until they are good Roleplayers handling just 1 PC. Next session is a few weeks off, so I'll be canvasing another player.

(The wife approving of said person being invited over to the house is a huge factor in this regard lol )

 

[Herschel]

I'm not sure a second striker is what you really need from the sounds of it. A Runepriest or a defender or even a second controller might be a fine choice. The five slot I've found is perfect for a hybrid if all four roles are covered, for example.

 

[Skyscraper]

I'm DMing a game for 3 players and it's going quite well. Leader, striker, controller. It requires a bit of flexibility on my part on encounter design, but otherwise it's fine.

I really think that 4E has (partly voluntarily, but partly inadvertantly also) set a strict and rigid rules structure, including for encounter design.

I think it's up to the DM to balance and customize the encounters according to the party (and to player decisions, but that's another topic). I'm sure the party is fine with 4 PCs and a single leader if you're ready to play a game with that party.