Invigorating Assault: Can my party always start the fight with temp hp?

[keterys]

Short rests are party things... you can´t avoid them... if as a DM i tell you that nothing happens and you can take a breather, you have done your short rest...

That is one possible house rule, yes. It still doesn't fully address the problem, but it certainly helps.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That is one possible house rule, yes. It still doesn't fully address the problem, but it certainly helps.

I don't really see where it is a house rule. NOTHING in the rules indicates that some party members can forgo a short rest while others take it. There could be circumstances where a DM might rule that a given PC can't benefit from a short rest, but I'd think that would be very unusual and not something the players can just choose to do. There is certainly no support in the rules for it and I expect that is partly due to exactly this kind of issue.

Also I really don't see anything wrong with 'bag 'o rats'. Why would you frown on it in this situation? If players want access to various non-combat spell abilities there are rituals and utility powers (as well as any number of attack powers that don't require a hit) they can choose from. Or they can acquire items which give them extra capabilities. I'm all for having ways to do that sort of thing, but its not really necessary to make accessing the effect line of every power possible in arbitrary situations.

 

[keterys]

You can't take a short rest if you don't rest. If that means you're doing jumping jacks and pushups while the rest of the party does their thing, then you failed to rest. The others had a rest. So it's a house rule to impose a rest on the person avoiding it. It's a perfectly decent one, but one nonetheless. It might also come up in an odd light if you ever had some reason to impose a limitation of 'cannot take a short rest' on someone, via curse or mental imposition or whatever. Doubt it'd come up, but worth mention.

I've got no problem invoking bag of rats, myself, but there is significant table variation on powers with 'Effect' lines like Otherwind Stride, where you say 'Okay, I teleport with it' and the DM goes 'You're not attacking anyone, you can't'.

 

[eamon]

I don't really see where it is a house rule. NOTHING in the rules indicates that some party members can forgo a short rest while others take it. There could be circumstances where a DM might rule that a given PC can't benefit from a short rest, but I'd think that would be very unusual and not something the players can just choose to do. There is certainly no support in the rules for it and I expect that is partly due to exactly this kind of issue.

You don't need a party to take a short rest, right? If you split up, can you still take a short rest? Can one have of a split party take a short rest while the others press on?

Creatures take short rests, not parties. The notion of a party is just a handiness. If game balance requires that a PC must rest whenever another PC rests, something's wrong: there's no logical connection between one PC's rest and another. I see split rests all the time for perfectly mundane reasons: after some encounters some people are almost down and entirely out of encounter powers; while others happened to get it easy. The barely alive PC's tend to say "I don't know about you, but I need a breather, now". Mostly unhurt PC's that used fewer encounter powers say "sure, but let's secure the area and search the bodies first.

It almost never matters; but just because one PC wants to rest shouldn't somehow force the rest to do so.

From a gameplay perspective, it's also unfun to need to excessively precisely police what counts as a short rest. If they want to rest and can get 5 minutes of stress-free time in-game, player's can do the accounting themselves. Anything that requires to DM to verify exactly if everyone's onboard is a hassle.

...which leads me to the conclusion that temporary hitpoints shouldn't last more than 5 minutes; but whatever the case shouldn't end because of a short rest. It doesn't much make sense to me anyhow that a guy constantly doing pushups can somehow maintain temporary hitpoints. That's just a house-rule, though.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I can see both sides of the argument - sure, its true that creatures rest, not parties, but it also seems strange to have party members doing pointless activities simply to avoid the mechanical disadvantages of resting.

So, I personally do think its an area where a DM makes a ruling based on what is best for his/her game and its players.

 

[Turtlejay]

Maybe not a houserule, maybe a rule 0 or a common sense rule. Gaming the system, metagaming, and other garbage like that can be locked down by a DM, and this is just one more example. There shouldn't need to be rock solid legal language spelling out short rests, because if it is being abused, the DM can nip it in the bud.

A short rest is a gaming term, not a real life term. In the game, it is five minutes where the zombies don't attack you. In real life, you are probably not resting, you are probably cleaning your weapon, or thumbing through your spellbook looking for hints on how to kill the next wave. The jackass doing jumping jacks in the corner will be fed to that wave to keep everyone else safe.

Like many, many things in this game, you can't equate the game term 'rest' with real life 'rest'.

Jay

 

[eamon]

A short rest is a gaming term, not a real life term. In the game, it is five minutes where the zombies don't attack you. In real life, you are probably not resting, you are probably cleaning your weapon, or thumbing through your spellbook looking for hints on how to kill the next wave. The jackass doing jumping jacks in the corner will be fed to that wave to keep everyone else safe.

But said jackass in the corner doing jumping jacks is actually stronger for doing so, with the current rules. Sure, the DM can intervene - but it's a tricky call. What should he say? You can't take the strain and take an involuntary rest? If that's the case, then what's the point of allowing THP to last more than 5 minutes anyhow? Should you simply say "your character wouldn't do that"?

A DM shouldn't need to override player's choices. Looks to me like you either decide it's a valid strategy - and then it's one you should expect players to actually use when they have the time and surges to spare (or, in the case of invigorating assault, just a short moment of time), or you need to decide that there's something preventing this from working - something more than just "don't do that" preferably.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Why should the DM have to justify reason when the players are trying to abuse the rules?

 

[ShaggySpellsword]

But said jackass in the corner doing jumping jacks is actually stronger for doing so, with the current rules. Sure, the DM can intervene - but it's a tricky call. What should he say? You can't take the strain and take an involuntary rest? If that's the case, then what's the point of allowing THP to last more than 5 minutes anyhow? Should you simply say "your character wouldn't do that"?

Nope. You simply say, "The calisthenics have reinvigorated you, (reconditioning your muscles, focusing your mind, opening up you soul to inspiration, depending on power source), counting as a short-rest. Would you like to spend any healing surges?"

Certain levels of meta-gaming are silly. In general, having temp HP going into a fight doesn't bother me, but they have to make the sacrifices involved for that to happen, not try and game the system.

 

[eamon]

Why should the DM have to justify reason when the players are trying to abuse the rules?

Because they aren't abusing the rules, merely using them. If you know a spell that grants everyone +1AC until hit, it's a fine idea to use that spell before combat. In fact, armors with such properties actually exist. If a leader has an ability to prevent damage via temporary hit points rather than healing, he's not abusing the rules by doing so beforehand. A DM builds a world and with it a framework for what is reasonable in that work. If day-long buffs are reasonable, then that's not abuse, just due diligence. I mean, the vast majority of 3.5 casters essentially did this kind of thing every day - a bit of buffing isn't abuse per se.

The point is, the DM controls the framework and he can (and should) change it when it's not doing what he wants. If you don't want players buffing up hours in advance, don't tell them not to; just don't let buffs like that last for hours.

Nope. You simply say, "The calisthenics have reinvigorated you, (reconditioning your muscles, focusing your mind, opening up you soul to inspiration, depending on power source), counting as a short-rest. Would you like to spend any healing surges?"

Certain levels of meta-gaming are silly. In general, having temp HP going into a fight doesn't bother me, but they have to make the sacrifices involved for that to happen, not try and game the system.

First off: the difference between your solution and mine is mostly one of flavor. Both of us seem to agree that you should not be able to save temporary hitpoints by avoiding short rests.

But I still believe that there's a big difference in implementation. What is gaming the system anyhow? If someone's dazed and you shift a square away so he can't charge you nor hit you normally, are you gaming the system or just playing tactically? If you assume that a fire breathing reptile is likely to be resistant to fire and perhaps vulnerable to cold, is that gaming the system or playing it safe?

The artificer keterys first mentioned, also has an ability to buff magic items long before combat starts; it's clearly intended to be used as a kind of "buff before fight" effect. Why is that buff good and the temporary hitpoint buff bad? Basically, the artificer can grant someone extra power at the cost that this power only lasts until the target needs to "refocus his mind" during a short rest. The artificer can himself rest, and given enough time and surges, he could buff everyone except himself before combat - is that buff "gaming the system"?

I realize that no perfect solution exists. But these questions will arise time and time again for THP granting powers used outside of combat. Discerning valid buffs from "gaming the system" risks being arbitrary and capricious. There aren't any mechanics or guidelines concerning forced short rests as far as I know, and it looks like there's the assumption that the ability to short rest is a boon, not a bane.

I believe we agree that many such buffs are not intended to be effective long before combat. The choice that each DM must then make is whether it's better to force short rests, rule case by case, or limit the duration of THP. I believe the last solution is best both for gameplay (everybody understands it and knows in advance what the DM will rule, and there's no discussion about DM's controlling PC's), and for consistency (no need for case by case judgments which are likely to be at least somewhat inconsistent). It isn't perfect - for instance invigorating assault still is a bit problematic, and it may remove a few otherwise harmless options.

I don't expect everyone to do it this way, but I hope I've clarified that I'm not trying to encourage abusive behavior, I'm just trying to make a clear and fair guideline that can consistently be applied and avoids needing too many rulings in that inevitable gray area between use and abuse.