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

[hong]

I am more than willing to concede that healing is more spread out in 4E and can't all be blown as easily as in 3.x. The point I was getting at is that there is still a limit on the total adventuring day based on the number of Healing Surges available to the party.

And this is a bad thing, why?

 

[hong]

But remember, he can also use his healing twice in a short rest, as long as people's healing surges hold out. If people are willing to take three short rests - 15 minutes down time - the cleric can use his twice-per-encounter ability six times.

Outside of combat, you can blow through a character's entire stack of healing surges in the time it took the rogue to thoroughly search a room in 3E.

Each healing surge heals 1/4 hit points, so, assuming the guy is conscious at the end of the fight, you only need 4 surges at most to regain all health.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

I don't get it. If the number of healing surges run from 6-13, and you consider that if each character needs to use at least 1 surge per encounter, from where did you get 3-4 encounters per day? Based on your logic, we get at least 6 encounters. And that's already a good number.

I said at least 1 but more likely 2-3. Lets say the 6 person gets 2 encounters a 1 Surge and 2 encounters at 2 Surges. That is 4 Encounters. Then the Defender who is most likely to be hit and at least bloodied every encounter has 12 Surges. At 3 Surges per Encounter that is 4 Encounters. In my reasoning I also expect challenging (but not overwhelming) encounters not easy ones.

But I think your logic is completely flawed:
"I would think that each character would likely have to use at least one if not two or three Surges to either get though the battle or heal up completely after the battle."
If they need to use two surges, that means they got bloodied.
So all characters need to get bloodied in every combat in order for it to be a good challenge? I don't think so. That's too much damage. And also badly distributed damage. Controllers and strikers, IMO, are not supposed to get so much damage as defenders and leaders. An encounter where the Defender and the Leader got bloodied , the striker lost 1/3 HP and the controller wasn't even bruised, was a nice encounter.

From the above I expect the controller to be hit once per enconter 50% of the time and about bloodied 50% of the time. I expect the defender to be around bloodied every time and to lose 75-100% hps the other 50%. You and I see average difficuly differently.

3.5 considered an encounter to be balanced and challeging if it drained 20% of the character resources (HP, spells, magic item uses, etc). One healing surge heals 25% of the character's total HP. So if, based on your idea, each character needed to use one, two or even three surges per encounter, that means spending 25%, 50% and 75% of characters resources per battle, and only HP resources. Even if 4E changes that math, it's still way beyond! As I said, too much damage per encounter.

The base of all your argument is wrong.

In 4E the only resources that can be drained are per day powers and healing surges. Per day abilities are hard to judge if there is only one. That leaves Healing Surges. For Controlers with 6 Surges using 1 surge is a 16.666% drain and 2 surges is 33.33%. Figuring a usage level of that much is about right. For defenders with 12 Surges usiung 3 is a 25% drain, using 2 is a 16.66% drain. Yo can't look at 25%, 50%, and 75% hp drains in a combat as a drain of resources since it resets after each encounter.

I believe Defenders' surges will end before the other characters surges. They take more punishment, they are meant to take more damage. The number of encounters the party will be able to face per day will probably be limited by their surges, and they have a lot of it.

The pregens had 12-13 surges at the top end for defenders. If the defenders are only bloodied (50% hp loss) then that is 6 encounters a day. If they are more than bloodied that drops the number of encounters. 12 Surges only equals 3 encounters if the defender is dropped to 0hp each encounter.

The amount of encounters will be based on the capacity to keep the defenders in shape.

Likely true. But see above.

The only thing I see that changes the equation is the presence of a cleric in the party. This could up the number of encounters by possibly 50%. But then the game was supposed to be balanced without needing a cleric in the party. Using a cleric can also draw out the time between ecounters to probably 20 minutes.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

And this is a bad thing, why?

I am talking here about the 3-6 combats per day and then rest for a day. My point was more that I was not seeing much of a difference between 3E and 4E in terms of the 15 minute adventuring day. Not that more balanced healing was bad.

 

[keterys]

Even if he's not conscious, it takes at most 4 surges.

And you might be able to do it in two surges using the cleric's healing word ability.

If your wizard is going through 1.5 surges per combat, he's getting hit too much frankly. But even then you can still do up to 5 encounters, but probably try to sleep after 4.

4 encounters in a day is _not_ a 30 minute day and misses the entire point of the 15 minute day.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Each healing surge heals 1/4 hit points, so, assuming the guy is conscious at the end of the fight, you only need 4 surges at most to regain all health.

And three during the combat - Second Wind plus two from the cleric - so that's potentially 7 in the first combat of the day. That's more than half of what the fighter has, and more than all of what the wizard has, right?

-Hyp.

 

[Mistwell]

I've never, EVER seen the so-called 15-minute adventuring day in actual play, and I've gamed with some fairly diverse groups.

And, having gamed since 1e and the basic set, I've almost ONLY seen the 15-minute adventuring day if a dungeon was involved unless the folks involved went out of their way to try and change that. The rules and published modules certainly encourage the 15-minute day a lot. In fact, they even said in 3e that the average day was four encounters. Given combats last around 10 rounds, that's four minutes of combat. Just how much time does it take to search things and travel?

 

[fafhrd]

And three during the combat - Second Wind plus two from the cleric - so that's potentially 7 in the first combat of the day. That's more than half of what the fighter has, and more than all of what the wizard has, right?

-Hyp.

Healing words is going to be adding extra healing on top of the surge, a significant portion of the wizards total.

 

[hong]

I am talking here about the 3-6 combats per day and then rest for a day. My point was more that I was not seeing much of a difference between 3E and 4E in terms of the 15 minute adventuring day.

"15 minute day" != "3-6 combats per day", by definition.

 

[hong]

And three during the combat - Second Wind plus two from the cleric - so that's potentially 7 in the first combat of the day. That's more than half of what the fighter has, and more than all of what the wizard has, right?

-Hyp.

If a fight is severe enough to take multiple characters to 0 or less, then they would have blown all their per-day powers as well, and you've met your fun quota for the day.