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

[jimmifett]

They have the basic roles covered, the defender does his job well, and the controller is great at controlling, they just need more damage to drop enemies faster so they get less oppurtunies to take damage.

 

[Skyscraper]

They have the basic roles covered, the defender does his job well, and the controller is great at controlling, they just need more damage to drop enemies faster so they get less oppurtunies to take damage.

Yes, I understand that. What I'm saying is that a party does not exist in a vaccuum. Their power is relative to what they are facing. You can select what you wish the PCs to face, inside out. You can chose the Tarasque if you want, and then argue that they lacked 4 strikers, 3 leaders and 2 controllers to have won. Or you can chose the opponents you've had them face up to now, and state that they lack one striker. Or you can chose yet other opponents and find that their party composition is fine and that they're not lacking a striker. I think that this last option is what you want to aim for.

Adding PCs of course changes the resources available, whether those resources are damage-dealing, healing, support, tanking, map control, or what have you. If you find that they lack damage output, it's because they lack damage output relative to what they are facing. The other way of looking at that exact, same picture is by stating that your monsters can take too much punishment before they go down. If that is the only problem in your encounters, reduce the starting hit points of enemies but otherwise leave them precisely as they are.

 

[Herschel]

They have the basic roles covered, the defender does his job well, and the controller is great at controlling, they just need more damage to drop enemies faster so they get less oppurtunies to take damage.

Sounds like the players aren't the only ones bringing pre-conceived baggage to the game.

I'd be more tempted to ask the new person to bring in a character trained in ______ (skill, such as streetwise, whatever) if that's missing in a home game.

 

[jimmifett]

Any new player needs to be able to handle social skills in some fashion for the party. I've also told the party that if they want to succeed, at least one of them should consider strongly taking training in a social skill.

A player in the striker role would reduce the amount of consumed resources (in the form of healing surges and daily) as enemies would fall faster from increased damage. A leader would add to the healing, however, surges could then get eaten faster but preserve the encounter power economy. A defender reduces the damage done to everyone else (in theory), allowing the others to hold onto surges longer, but then runs low quickly himself.

It's obviously the new player's decision, however, knowing my players, they could use a striker.

 

[TerraDave]

I have moved to a tighter interpretation of the rest (if you cast healing word during it, then you need to rest more to get it back) combined with, depending, wandering monsters or an equivelent.

There still doing a dirty job, all these decades later.

 

[mneme]

Back to back rests are sometimes a problem, sometimes not. And then, sometimes you've got a bard and it ceases being an issue. But there are plenty of LFR games where you get punished for taking multiple rests in a row and home sessions where you don't.

Good LFR players in organized groups should know how to divide up items -- even though in LFR, you do that during sessions and then pick what you want to keep permanently at the end.

I'm guessing the local LFR group you have buddy/buddy softballs. I'll look at the clock in an lfr game to get an idea of what I think the pacing is, but really, your feel for adventure pacing is usually better, and I've never answered or asked the "is this the last encounter" question.

 

[S'mon]

I'd normally treat a chase sequence as a single encounter - so short-resting would be an auto-fail, but I wouldn't expect the PCs to be able to plow through multiple standard encounters without resting.

For long-term tracking, short rests would almost always be fine, including the 'rest 15 minutes so we can recharge & use Leader buffs & then still have them for the next encounter' technique.

I think your particular "You can rest a wee bit... but not too much" would be a very marginal case in my games. It can make for an exciting adventure, as you noted, but it needs good DM judgement and good players.

 

[Blue]

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.

I'm a bit hesitant about calling this a "house rule", I think the OP had the right point. Short rests take time, always have. That time may have consequences. That's not a house rule. He didn't deny them a short rest (changing the mechanics), he made them aware of in-game consequences of taking too much time and they chose not to take a short rest.

Short rests aren't guaranteed by rules. Commonly you can take them. Often you can't. In one game I'm in we were infiltrating a base and took out a set of guards. They didn't get off an alarm but there was sounds of combat. DM asked if we wanted to rest for 5 minutes. We had no idea if the rest of the base has been alerted, it was risky. Not "the rules say we're guaranteed one (or more!) short rests before you throw anything else at us."

I'm in a long running Eberron game, and some of the most fun is when the DM challenges us by upsetting normal expectations. Having not one but two major battles after we were mostly our of surges because we couldn't escape is one memorable one. Airship combats at heroic where going over the edge was basically death for anyone of the map. We're just hit paragon (with no character deaths and a 4 man party) and we need to escape from imprisonment before being tried and hung. No equipment, and we know if we start our attempt and then sit down for five minutes to take a short rest, we'll have hundreds of guards worth of reinforcements on us. It's just the logic of the situation.

To tie it back, there are times when the players won't want to take a short rest or won't be able to take a short rest. And that's part of the game. If the game wanted you to automatically get everything back, they wouldn't of imposed a cost of 5 minutes on it, they would have made it automatic at the end of encounter.

 

[OnlineDM]

I suppose "house rule" isn't the right term - you're right about that. I think it's fair to say, though, that players have certain expectations about the way the game works not just from LFR, but from reading the Player's Handbook and Heroes of... books. Maybe I read too much into it when I read my PHB (and admittedly, it's been a while), but I think it's true that players are given the impression that, "After a battle, you and your allies will generally take five minutes to regroup, during which time you can spend healing surges and recover your encounter powers."

Now, there's a "generally" there for sure. The DM doesn't have to make taking a five-minute rest consequence-free, and a good DM challenges player expectations. I didn't think it was at all unfair in this case for there to be consequences to taking a five-minute rest after a short fight - as a matter of fact, I think it made total sense and was a good idea.

But I also don't think it was correct to say, "My players got this bad habit from LFR, thinking that they'll get to take a short rest after every fight." That's not solely an LFR expectation - it's a D&D4e expectation, and one that's totally reasonable to challenge when the circumstances dictate.

I'm just saying "Don't blame LFR for forming this expectation in your players."

 

[catastrophic]

It's fine to challenge players, but there's a point where the line can be crossed. Calling it 'real D&D' doesn't change that.

A few thoughts.

Short rests should be allowed after most combat encounters. That is one of the core assumptions of the design. A chase is fine, but that's an exception, not the rule.

It's not actually fun to force players to rely on at-wills for fear that they can't rely on the system as written working as it's expected to. They should be able to use their encouter and yes- daily powers.

I am also not sure why you can't just reduce the monster lineups in line with the party composition. 4e is pretty well balanced, across classes and monster roles as well as by party. Put in a bit less in the HP and AC department, and you won't miss that striker. Sure, add a new player if you want, but that should be based on suitability, not assumed combat role.

Also if you're requiring them to take on social skills, you should probably allow them a rebuild.

Skills are a weak point of the system; they are consistantly inconsistant in their usage depending on the game, group, classes, modules, ect. That's not on these players, or lfr. It's on the system, and everyone using it.

Requiring them to use a certain set of skills is an expectation that you're clearly adding after they built their pcs- you should have emphasised the issue before they built their pcs, but since you didn't, they should have the option of a full rebuild. After all, if they're going to be competitive with those skills in this new, toiugh game they're in, they may need a secondary stat at last in cha, and a few skills to capitalise on it.

You also have to be very clear with them what your expectations for the skills are- what exactly they can be used for, wether, as some gms use them, they're more of less interchangable, or wether, as some gms use them, they play the role very much as laid out in the book.

A good example of this: if a barbarian PC is warning an npc noble of a goblin horde soon to attack his lands, can they use their intimidate roll to, in good faith and without provocation, emphasise the threat the realm is under? Some gms will say 'sure thing', others will say 'no way!', it's up to you to make your views clear to the players.