Idea on keeping Vancian casters from novaing

[Minigiant]

You don't have to use the same tactic(s) every time. Variety is spicy, and different circumstances will demand different responses.

But every time, you should consider what happens when the party rests, and how the enemies act during that rest.

Else there is no real long-term challenge.

Variety is spicy but it can be noticeably boring.

In the past, I had a DM that used various excuses to continue. Never the same one but it felt inorganic when you ALWAYS ran into a complication. Guaranteed events that force continuing on.

It was always...
A kidnapped and soon sacrificed spouse, child, or siblin
A dying ill person depending on a far way cure
An imminent attack of ugly humaniod
A surprise attack while asleep
Convenient Anti magic

Eventually we talked it out and agreed not to "nova and rest" (not like we ever really did, it was always preemptive attempts to stop us from thinking about doing it).

If the gams allows short work days, then the only ways to combat it is to agree not to have them, inorganically and constantly create various excuses why the PCs can't rest, or add rules that disallow short work days. This is a fact.

It is better not to allow or encourage short work days from the start.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's not necessarily about creating circumstances where the player's can't rest, though that is an element of it (an element that reinforces ideas of "safe havens" and of dangerous wilderness).

It's mostly about ensuring that resting has a consequence.

If your resting has no consequence, you need to be aware that the strategy of nova-rest-repeat is going to eventually be victorious, because there's no cost for that rest.

If you let the PC's run away from combat, but keep the damage they've inflicted, you run into the same problem. The party can run in, blast, run out, recover, repeat. It seems folks generally recognize that you don't run combats in such a static way: even after you use your encounter powers, you can't just run away and rest and expect to be able to come back in five minutes to a situation identical to the one you left. Why, I wonder, is there a push to note that one must be able to run adventures in a static way, where it's easy just to run away and rest, and then return to an adventure that has not changed?

 

[Herschel]

I didn't play 4E.
Wasn't the "15 minute wizard" a problem with all classes in 4E? What did prevent any class to go nova on the first encounter and then demand a rest to recover the daily powers for the next encounter?

No. Daily powers in 4E often have riders that make them hard to use more than one or two in an encounter. Many Wizard/traditional spellcaster spells, for example, create zones which can/should be sustained each round using your minor action. Numerous classes also have stances that occur when spending a Daily and you can only have one active stance at a time, same with Barbarian Rages.

Characters also have Encounter Powers to fall back on when they're out of Dailies. They often do comparable damage (sometimes even more), just without as strong riders, say an effect lasts until end of next turn instead of end of the encounter (sustainable or not). At-wills also can be strong enough to carry a character if their powers are chosen around off-turn actions. I have two defenders (Swordmage and Swordmage Hybrid) and a leader (Prescient Bard) based around off-turn actions/interrupts. With those characters my turns are really quick.

Even in previous editions, any class that had an important daily ability could demand a rest to recover it before going further on the adventure. Really, I've seen Fighters going back to town after an encounter to rest so they would always fight with full HP. Are you sure it is a rules problem?

Generally, yes. Does the Fighter want to rest because he's a wuss, or does he want to rest because he knows he's the only/entire front line and he'll get gang-ganked every battle? In other words, everything the spellchuckers don't kill before the enemy gets to even go is going to attack the Fighter. The surge/HP mechanic was a very good way to break HP down so the Fighter didn't feel like he needed to rest when he is the constant focus of enemy attention.

 

[Splurch]

Another way to deter this is if they attack and run away to rest and return that the enemies are more prepared for them. Such as buffed up spells, traps, more backup and such. I mean come on all villains aren't morons.

 

[nightwyrm]

The 5 Minute Workday is a playstyle issue brought to the surface by a system issue.

It is caused by/when:

The DM does not actively drain all of the PCs' resources equally.
OR
The Players don't attempt to spend their resources equally.

System issue: Vancian spells where not designed to last as long as the other many D&D resource... Hit Point
Playtest issue: The DM doesn't know how to force Vancian users' resources to sync up their spellcasting with nonvancian casters.


Explanation.

The wizard has 3 combat spells.
The cleric has 2 combat spells.
The fighter has 15 HP.


The game and DM both have to encourage the wizard to only cast a combat spell in combat when he or she predicts or sees the fighter will lose ~5 HP.

The game and DM both have to encourage the cleric to only cast a combat spell in combat when he or she predicts or sees the fighter will lose ~7 HP.

At which point... if the party runs into the 5 MWD, it is they own gang fault.

The problem I see with this equation is that while both the wizard and the cleric refreshes all their spells with a rest, the 15 hp fighter doesn't refresh his 15 hps (unless with items or the cleric's spell slots) with his rest. The spell to hp ratio is actually lower than 5 and 7, especially since the fighter dies at 0 hp.

With this lower effective hp:spell ratio two things happen. One is that the party preferably expends their spells instead of hp because it refreshes more quickly. The second is that the casters runs out of spells when the fighter is at half or three-quarters hp. People would look at the high hps of the party and be under the illusion that they're still good to go when in reality they are out of out of the big guns that prevents massive hp loss.



Edit coz I don't want to start new post:
I think we need to distinguish between where a party spent half their spells against two orcs guarding a hallway and then going back to sleep and where a party are tapped out after going through two dragons guarding a hallway and then resting. The first is poor resource management, the second is not. No amount of "post-resting enemy gets stronger" deterence is going to work if the party thinks they're going to die anyways if they push on without that rest.

 

[Minigiant]

Resting as a consequence works when it is organic.

The problem is that making organic consequences for creating is a skill that only experienced DMs or great story writers have.

I think it is better to just make spell slots ans hit point drain at the same rate.

 

[Elf Witch]

Wouldn't it be nice to have a solution that doesn't immediately cause new problems?

Or, actually can be implemented easily in every campaign? Who is to say there is even a plausible reason for the PCs to have random encounters? If they ever get Teleport and a decent home, the last spell the Wizard casts will be Teleport.

Teleport does not change the fact that if you start clearing an area and leaving dead bodies and then leave your handiwork has a good chance of being discovered.

Here again in my 30 years of play we usually used teleport as an emergency beam out because we were about to die. Not to teleport after going nova. Granted we did sometimes use teleport to go rest some place safely after a full day of adventuring.

Again I think this is not a system issue but a playstyle issue.

 

[Herschel]

Yeah, because it makes the most sense to build a system then tell every DM to go through the whole thing and decide which things to tell the players "only use if..."

 

[Elf Witch]

Yeah, because it makes the most sense to build a system then tell every DM to go through the whole thing and decide which things to tell the players "only use if..."

It makes sense to build a system and then tell the DM these are guidelines and give them the tools to adapt the game to their play style.

One of the problems I see with this kind of issue is that you have three choices keep it as it is which pisses off the people having the issue, change it which pisses off the people not having the issue. Or the best give options that make both sides happy.

 

[keterys]

Again I think this is not a system issue but a playstyle issue.

It is a problem only in certain systems, ergo it's a system problem.

It is, however, one easily solved through playstyle _solutions_.