Is the adventuring day longer in 4th Ed?

[Goonalan]

4E extends the adventuring day, certainly for my players, we're 13 sesions into the presnt 4E campaign and the players are mangaing six to eight encounters easily before a rest. As for Dailies, my players think they're rubbish, I don't mean to be rude but they just don't hit a lot (for us)- save for ther Wizard who hits with hers every time. Excluding the Wizard's Dailies I would guess that from approx. 40+ rolls of the dice for dailies, they've hit probably 5 times. Our Paladin has never hit- in eight attempts.

As for the respondent (babrino) that said the players rest every second encounter to recover their Dailies, and the DM springs an encounter on them while they're resting- don't spring an encounter on them, kill them- or have the objective of their quest get up and leave the dungeon, with a note of course for the brave adventurers- "sorry, got bored waiting for you, gone on holiday, stopped off to eat your family et al".

Our rule is there needs to be at least 12 hours between rests and you can only Extended rest once in every 24 hours- it makes for a more considered response, and clear up, after encounters, plenty of roleplay and investgation, time for back-tracking, trying to make sense of the dungeon, the players surroundings, lots of scouting out places- and when NPCs, or captured bad guys are on hand, time for a "friendly" chat. And should they need to rest while still in the dungeon then they'd better find a good place to hide because I'm coming looking for them- I know they're Goblins, Kobolds or whatever but you can't just rest up in the guardroom and not expect to have the whole tribe come down on you- my players hide bodies, clear up after themselves, back-track out of the place et al. Oh and if I had a pound for every time a returning patrol entered the dungeon just as the players were trying to clear out, then I'd have two pounds (in thirteen sessions as I say).

I'd kill my players just for suggesting they rest after two encounters, or else the Goblins (or whoever) would receive orders that the PCs are present and attack in ever increasing waves. Our Warlock started bleating after five encounters in the last session, although they'd last finished resting at 7 AM game time, and it was 10.30 AM after the fifth encounter, he had full HP, had used only two Healing Surges but had spent his daily power (he's a new player). I added an extra Rat Swarm to the next encounter just for complaining- players, gah, stop mollycoddling them.

Oh, and a note, 13 sessions in and I haven't managed to kill one of them, and the sessions have gone from three hours to five hours (minimum). Treat them mean and keep them keen.

Two of the players want to start up a second group, they quite like it. Whatever works for you and all that... but two encounters and a rest, gah- kill them all, let Gygax sort them out.


Goonalan.

 

[Keenath]

In my group it didn't change a whole lot, but they were never bad about long adventuring days anyway.

I'm seeing typically 4-5 combat encounters per day, with usually two or three non-combat events (puzzle, skill encounter, chatting with an NPC) in addition to those, depending on how many I put in.

Interestingly, that usually means it takes two sessions and two to three weeks of realtime to get through one in-game day, but that's not really a huge deal. Getting my group of busy people together is like herding cats sometimes, that's all.

I think there is one way it's a major success even in my group -- it's not always the cleric or wizard who tells everyone when it's time to sleep. For the first time in years, the Fighter -- or sometimes Rogue -- is the one who gets to say, "Let's camp, I'm nearly spent for today."

I do see a certain amount of desire to rest before the boss battle, which is really only to be expected, and not really a change from 3e except that everyone has the same desire to do so, rather than it being the wizard and cleric trying to convince everyone else that they *really* need to go in with all their spells. I can get around that to a certain extent by not telegraphing the boss battle, but it's not always possible.

 

[Holy Bovine]

My group is definitely seeing an increase in encounters per day. In 3.5 there would be 2-3 tops before camping (except the finale of my last 3.5 game where I forced the players to continue to the very end in one go - it was probably 9-10 encounters all told, none of them pushovers). Now? 6+ is normal. I think the most we've done is 8 but I'm not sure. The rule seems to be as long as everyone has a least 1 surge left (and maybe a daily) you can do one more encounter. Of course it helps that the group has a paladin, warlord and a cleric - healing during combat is a breeze and the paladin has 13 or more surges at the beginning of the day. I thought I was doing great last time with two players at 0, two at 1 one at 2 and the paladin at 4.

 

[Benly]

Our adventuring day is mostly extended, but we still end up being cut off by the TWF ranger's healing surges. The dude deals out massive damage, but in turn draws plenty of attacks; even with a paladin doing the best she can to keep enemies' attention, he goes through those seven healing surges like they were candy, and as a result usually the extended rest is Ranger: 0 Healing Surges, Paladin: 8 Healing Surges, Everyone Else: All or All But One Healing Surge remaining

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, I've seen the 'healing surge problem child' problem, too. It's usually the melee striker. In our group, the Rogue got down to 0 healing surges at one point, and we headed back to town, only to have one final encounter, which he started at 1/4 hps, and was quickly dropped, we had to carry him out of there (no non-surge healing, at the time, this was before we had a paladin).

Since then, the rogue has taken toughness and durrable.

 

[Ravingdork]

I usually play softer characters (rogues, wizards) when compared to the rest of my party (cleric, fighter, paladin, ranger) and I find that when I run out of healing surges, my "friends" usually have at least half of theirs left. What's more, they almost always ignore my pleas to take a rest for a few hours before going on to the next encounter. Quite naturally, I die a lot more often then they do.

To answer the OP's question, I find that my "friends'" adventuring day is quite a bit longer then it used to be in v3.5. For me, however, I get through the standard 3 or 4 encounters (that is, standard for v3.5) before getting squashed. I usually spend the rest of the game (about two hours or so) watching a movie or playing a video game while I wait for my character to be ressurected (usually at the end of the session on the beginning of the next).

 

[KarinsDad]

It really depends on the group.

We average 5 to 7 encounters per day in a dungeon.

I would suspect that it is rare to experience more than 7 encounters most days due to limited total healing surges for defenders. For example, if a Paladin (the PC with the most starting healing surges) has 13 healing surges (16 Con) and is the front line defender, it's pretty likely that with 1.5 healing surges for the front line defender per encounter (or between encounters) and a handful of Lay on Hands per day, he runs out of healing surges by about 7 encounters. A 1.5 healing surge average is only 50% or so of his hit points taken per encounter. 6 or fewer encounters if he averages 2+ healing surges per encounter.

But, a group that rotates the defender back and puts a heavily armored Ranger or other PC in the front could theoretically average a few more encounters because the PC taking the most hits rotates.

But even that would be difficult to do every day due to other "low on their luck that day" PCs running low on surges earlier.

 

[Celtavian]

re

Hard to say. In my experience the adventuring day is longer for low level 4E characters versus low level 3E characters. But high level 3E characters can go longer than high level 4E characters due to magic items being more powerful and flexible in 3E. If you have a bunch of wands and consumable magic items, you can extend your adventuring day indefinitely in 3E. But in 4E you are limited by healing surges and a certain number of magic item dailes, so you're adventuring day will end when you're healing surges run out. Healing magic items aren't like 3E magic items, so you won't be able to rely on them.

So low level the adventuring day is maybe a bit longer in 4E, high levels the adventuring day is much, much shorter than 3E. We are currently 8th lvl in our 4E campaign and we can't go as long as our previous 3E characters in an adventuring day.

Also given the balance rules with monsters, you can't get your AC or defenses high enough to withstand attacks from what you fight. Right now the enemies hit easier than we do a great deal of the time and our ACs and defenses are easy to bypass. So avoiding damage is nearly impossible. There are very few long-term resist spells like Resist Energy or Delay Poison that can help you prevent damage from energy and poison attacks and the like. It all adds up to a shorter day.

We can generally finish 3 or 4 encounters a day at 8th lvl. In 3E as we went up in level we could go on indefinitely with magic items. We were often much stronger than many of the weaker encounters we took on, so we didn't take as much damage in those encounters. In this edition there aren't many weak encounters. I'm not sure if our DM is beefing adventures up, but we are getting hammered. We have already had 3 deaths so far.

So I'm not sure. It may depend on how your DM designs encounters. But for my particular group the 4E adventuring day is shorter at 8th level than it was in 3E mainly because we had healing wands in 3E that kept us going whereas we don't have magic items to keep us going in 4E. You're healing surges run out, and your day is done unless you want to die.

 

[amysrevenge]

For any 3E group I played in, healing was NEVER the limiting factor that determined when rest time was. The remaining highest-level spells of the caster(s) was what determined rest times. If your encounters don't require the caster(s) to unleash the highest-level spells, then they are too easy - of course you can do many in a day. However, if your encounters are appropriately challenging, it is almost impossible to do more than 2-3 of them in a day - the caster(s) end(s) up dry...

For 4E, it should scale similarly all the way up - you should probably be able to do 6+ encounters in a day at any level.

 

[Thanee]

The action point isn't encouraging enough to keep them adventuring.

When two of the PCs died in KotS, they were highly motivated to go through more encounters (reaching milestones to remove the death penalty from being raised).

Of course, I don't want to recommend this as a method of motivation.

In general they seem to push as far as they can... daily's are a small factor, healing surges the big one, when it comes to calling it a night.

Encounters per day is something between 3 and 6, I think.

In mid-level 3E it was about the same, I'd say, when no super-hard fights were among those, but in lower-level (due to the limits of spellcasters) and higher-level (due to fights tending to be more of the super-hard type in general) the number of encounters per day was surely lower.

Bye
Thanee