Making extended rests less desirable

[Asmor]

One problem I've always had is that "sleeping for the day" is not something I handle well.

After playing KotS yesterday, the party moved on after their first fight in the day when they clearly were drained heavily on healing surges and should have taken an extended rest. There was also no reason for them not to take an extended rest. I honestly don't know why they continued on. Hell, they even get the bonus of regaining their action points immediately if they take an extended rest!

Limited healing surges seems like a dubious idea in the first place to me. I love that healing surges have a value, so that healing the wizard and the paladin is very different. I don't however see any point in having a limited number of healing surges, since there's usually enough to make it through your first fight of the day with enough left over to heal completely after combat.

So here's my idea.

First, after every extended rest, you start with 0 action points. You get an action point at the end of every encounter. So, in essence, you can spend an action point in every encounter except for your first every day. This gives players a very strong incentive to keep going instead of resting.

Second, there are no limits on healing surges. During a short rest, you heal completely. This removes one of the major incentives for taking extended rests.

Basically, this means extended rests are only used now for recovering dailies, which I'm happy with. Dailies are you most powerful abilities, and particularly if you're going to keep pushing on to take advantage of action points you're either going to ration them or lose them.

 

[keterys]

This does devalue abilities that give a free healing surge - like Cure Light Wounds - you may want to address that.

Otherwise, it feels like by taking healing surges (and action point, for that matter) expenditure away from being a concern that you'll need to throw harder fights to properly challenge the party.

There are pluses and minuses to that, same as, say, using recharge magic in 3.x

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I don't however see any point in having a limited number of healing surges, since there's usually enough to make it through your first fight of the day with enough left over to heal completely after combat.

I see the point of having to ration healing surges throughout the adventure day. Sure, you can heal up completely after the first encounter. But since you can only take one extended rest per day, unless you plan on taking a couple days to clear out the first couple of rooms in the dungeon....

Eliminating the limit on out of combat healing, IMHO, destroys the tension of the adventure. I like healing surges based on what I know of the RAW.

 

[FireLance]

One way to keep healing surges valuable as a resource is for in-combat healing to still require the use of healing surges. In this manner, a character who is out of healing surges is slightly weaker because he has no way to recover hit points in combat except through the use of healing abilities that do not expend the target's healing surges.

 

[keterys]

That's true - there are a lot less problems with keeping the healing surge rules intact, just making it so that a short rest heals you to full without spending any surges.

 

[DreamChaser]

i strongly suspect though that what you experienced was more of an indication of the players' lack of experience with 4e and less an issue with the rules. If the players were depending so heavily upon their dailies / surges within the first encounter they had, then they deserve to go the rest of the day without them.*

In the case of most of my adventures, I make resting frequently disadvantageous within the story.

Additionally, since an extended rest can only be done once per day, the players are really screwing themselves if they do it after encounter 1 or 2.

DC

*by deserve I mean if such poor tactical decisions were made by gamers experienced in 4e flow, then they would be hard pressed to get sympathy from me.

 

[Harr]

I would be very leery of messing around with the currency systems just now (healing surges being one of those systems) since we have no idea currently what they will be used for in the future. For example, think of some great and powerful amulet of life giving that resurrectas a fallen ally in exchange for reducing your surges to half the usual number while you wear it (or something like that)... or maybe a sword of life-leeching that will actually give you an extra surge each time you scroe a critical hit. Both of those hypothetical items would be cool but would have their effects severely changed up by having no limit on surges.

Instead, think about doing this: For every encounter after the first that is compelted without taking an extended rest, the party receives a cumulative 10% bonus to XP for that encounter. So you'd have something like:

1st encounter - normal XP
2nd encounter - normal XP +10%
3rd encounter - normal XP +20%
4th encounter - normal XP +30%

I think that's a good motivation to keep going, it doesn't mess with any core systems, and it isn't in any danger of blowing up (it would take 10 encounters without rest for double-XP). And the bonus is big enough to at least think twice about resting or continuing. A sort of "D&D meets Deal or No Deal" kinda thing

 

[Asmor]

I would be very leery of messing around with the currency systems just now (healing surges being one of those systems) since we have no idea currently what they will be used for in the future. For example, think of some great and powerful amulet of life giving that resurrectas a fallen ally in exchange for reducing your surges to half the usual number while you wear it (or something like that)... or maybe a sword of life-leeching that will actually give you an extra surge each time you scroe a critical hit. Both of those hypothetical items would be cool but would have their effects severely changed up by having no limit on surges.

Instead, think about doing this: For every encounter after the first that is compelted without taking an extended rest, the party receives a cumulative 10% bonus to XP for that encounter. So you'd have something like:

1st encounter - normal XP
2nd encounter - normal XP +10%
3rd encounter - normal XP +20%
4th encounter - normal XP +30%

I think that's a good motivation to keep going, it doesn't mess with any core systems, and it isn't in any danger of blowing up (it would take 10 encounters without rest for double-XP). And the bonus is big enough to at least think twice about resting or continuing. A sort of "D&D meets Deal or No Deal" kinda thing

Oh. Wow. That is freaking awesome. It's so beautiful and elegant! And as you say, it's pretty much unthinkable for it to blow up... They do have to worry about using up their resources, after all, and it's a linear growth so even if they went a long time they wouldn't get an insane amount.

My only question is whether 10% is the right number. Seems like a good starting point, at least.

 

[Harr]

My only question is whether 10% is the right number. Seems like a good starting point, at least.

True... if you put a gun to my head I'd probably end up saying 15% is a better number, but I'm gonna try it with 10% just because I can chop off the final digit of the normal XP and automagically end up with 10% rounded down, no math: 475 XP + 10% = 475 + 47 = 522 XP (ok maybe a little math ).

Besides, I think one can reasonaly expect players not to rest after every single encounter... just for the fact that it feels ridiculous. It's resting every other encounter as a matter of course that would worry/annoy me. So 10% isn't that significant, but 20% and 30% does start to be, and that's where the actual deciding would come in.

 

[djdaidouji]

The one problem I can see is that the game will start going faster then expected.
Lets say that the players, on average, go three encounters without a rest.

Original  Redone 
     1      1
     2      2.1 (1+1.1)
     3      3.3 (1+1.1+1.2)
     4      4.3 (3.3+1)
     5      5.4
     6      6.6
     7      7.6
     8      8.7
     9      9.9

Granted, this doesn't seem like much. But if you include the occasional quest experience, or the PCs do a four encounter stretch, the rift becomes wider. I like my players to not gain levels every other session...But maybe this will change with 4e.