Is the 15 minute adventuring day now the 90 minute adventuring day?

[DM_Blake]

Ditto.

Adventuring 15 minutes a day and resting 23 hours 45 minutes is a bit like trying to complete a job working only 15 minutes every day... you'll never end.

Personally I think that the idea that characters go adventuring 15 minutes and then go back home resting is theoretical only, and no one really plays like that. Because that requires anyway that the rest of the world would allow you to do so: you clear 1 room in a dungeon and go back to camp, and the rest of dungeon stays where it is and waits for your team to come back the next day? In my own opinion, the 15 minutes-per-day adventures require a very terrible DM.

I must be a "very terrible DM" then. Because I do, frequently, allow players to rest when they want to.

Suppose I have a dungeon. It's small, maybe only 10 rooms. Some have no encounters, others have guardians, traps, whatever. The last room has the big bad boss.

My players head into the dungeon. They use some spells, some healing, some potions, and they get through 8 rooms. But now the wizard has only a couple low-level spells remaining, and the cleric has only a few low-level heals. They have 15 charges on their wand of cure moderate wounds, but they suspect the next fight might be more devastating than the occasional charge (averaging 12 hp per round) can handle. So they retreat out of the dungeon and set up camp a safe distance away.

If this final encounter really needs them to be near full capacity, and they are not, then they will probably TPK if they push on.

Now as a DM, I can tell them "No, you can't go camp", but I cannot justify that with any reason other than railroading, so I let them decide.

During the night, I can punish them with "random" encounters. End result, they use more resources and are in worse shape in the morning. They still refuse to enter and die at the hands of the big bad boss, so they camp another day. More "random" encounter punishment? Will they ever face the boss if their resources continue to dwindle?

During the night I can have the big bad boss decide to come out and face them. He's smart enough to know they retreated due to lack of resources and figures now is his best chance to beat them. If it truly is an encounter that requires the players to be near full capacity, then this might result in a TPK. I would only use this option if I feel confident that they could take the big bad boss in their current state.

During the night I can have the big bad boss run away. He decides facing adventurers is too scary, picks up his most valuable loot, and heads for distand lands. Maybe the players will see him again in the future, maybe they won't. In this case their decision to camp might have saved their lives, but it cost them the XP, loot, and closure of defeating the big bad boss.

During the night I can have the big bad boss reinforce his lair. Realistically, he can't just hop on phone and call Monsters-R-Us to have some new monsters overnighted to his lair. So his ability to reinforce is probably fairly limited. Maybe he is a mage, so the next day he memorizes several trap spells and sprinkles them around his home. Maybe he animates some dead minions to defend him in undeath. Maybe he finds a good place to ambush the PCs to improve his odds of winning.

Or maybe I will just adjust the big bad boss to be a wimpier version of himself and go out to assault the camping PCs, or maybe I will adjust him to be a tougher version of himself so the fully refreshed PCs face a harder fight after camping.

I have done all these things over the years DMing. Which of course means that sometimes I have not allowed the 15-minute adventuring day to work (making me not a "very terrible DM"), but sometimes I have allowed it to work (making me a "very terrible DM").

 

[DM_Blake]

Even though I know it happens, I've never experienced it either. I'm pretty sure if our group tried that any of my GMs would use it as an opportunity for stuff to come after us instead of us coming to it.

So, there are only two possibilities then - either you should press on, because the stuff will come out, or you should retreat to fight the stuff outside - either way you must fight the stuff?

What if you had correctly assessed that you've spent all your resources and another fight will kill you? Low HP, no spells, no more healing potions. If your assessment that continuing equals death was correct, then you cannot continue. But if you retreat and still have to fight the same encounters, then you will also die.

So, based on what you've said, any of your GMs would just kill you?

Really?

 

[Fenris_x]

One more reason why I say that those groups must have a bad DM is: how is it possible that the PC party can fight 15min and retire always without consequences?

Two words: Rope Trick.

Any group that includes a mage of level 8 or higher can cast an 8-hour rope trick, which will allow everyone to rest in complete safety for long enough to get spells back. Very few bad guys have the ability to find and enter a specific extradimensional space to ambush a party resting within one.

 

[hong]

it is always possible to break the system.

It is always possible to reduce the ease of breaking the system. Trust me, I'm a statistician.

You should learn not to burn all daily abilities when there is no pressure.

No pressure is boring. Why do you do things that are boring?

The DM should make sure that burning daily powers always bears the risk that you are less powerful afterwards.

The DM should make sure that encounter design matches the requirements for the current adventure and prevailing circumstances, not shoehorn them into a predetermined framework.

 

[fafhrd]

No pressure is boring. Why do you do things that are boring?

No love for uncontested carnage? Not even once in a great while?

 

[Grog]

The 15 minute adventuring day doesn't happen because of bad players, or bad DMs, or bad adventure design.

The 15 minute adventuring day happens because the 3.X rules are designed so that the party will have to rest after every four encounters. A great deal of the time, it simply doesn't take very long for the party to face four encounters.

It's the rules that leads to the 15 minute adventuring day, not the players, DM, or adventure designer.

 

[hong]

No love for uncontested carnage? Not even once in a great while?

Oh, well, that's different. Uncontested carnage for its own sake is great! But uncontested carnage to eat up time is boring.

 

[Harshax]

I've never had much problem with the '15 minute adventure day'. Maybe in 1E, when there wasn't a healing spell for every level, few wands, scrolls, potions, and fewer clerics in the party.

I hated when the party holes themselves up once the casters use up their boom spells. If they're doing that, the locale is too tough for them. Either I make an adjustment (for scripted adventures), or I dole out the pain until the players start using their brain, or start rolling up new characters.