My Solution to the 15-Minute Workday: The Hero Score

[Jhaelen]

In order to avoid favoring classes, the system needs to exploit a mechanic that all classes use equally.

Yup. I didn't spell it out, but that was at the core of my concern, especially since Combat Advantage cannot stack. E.g. there's Barbarian and Warlorld powers that cause you to grant CA in exchange for extra-damage. And if you're granting CA anyway, there's no longer any cost at all to balance the benefits.

I like the ideas about using escalation dice in some way...

 

[Jhaelen]

I have never encountered the 15 minute work day in 4th Ed, even though it was common in the same group playing 3rd Ed.

I'm confused as to how it even occurs, you have so many healing surges and can usually only use one or two an encounter, so you rarely use them all until about the sixth to eighth encounter

Well, we recently had an encounter that started when our archer ranger was scouting ahead and was spotted by an enemy. He was down before we reached him and it took the combined effort of our two leaders and a couple of healing potions to save him. After the encounter he was down to one surge. So he pleaded for taking an extended rest.
However, nobody else wanted to, since except for him, nobody had lost more than a single surge. We convinced him to continue by pointing out that our leaders also had ways of surgeless healing. So we had another two encounters before taking that extended rest (although he refused to do any more scouting ).

I think that was the closest we have come to a '15 minutes adventuring day' in 4e.

 

[Balesir]

Well, we recently had an encounter that started when our archer ranger was scouting ahead and was spotted by an enemy. He was down before we reached him and it took the combined effort of our two leaders and a couple of healing potions to save him. After the encounter he was down to one surge. So he pleaded for taking an extended rest.
However, nobody else wanted to, since except for him, nobody had lost more than a single surge. We convinced him to continue by pointing out that our leaders also had ways of surgeless healing. So we had another two encounters before taking that extended rest (although he refused to do any more scouting ).

I think that was the closest we have come to a '15 minutes adventuring day' in 4e.

Ha - what a wuss!

Our ranger once entered a fight with no surges left and only one hit point. Mind you, that was on an occasion before a safe local rest site had been found, but the player did have to put up with comments like "don't leave the minion too exposed!"...

As a general rule, I agree with the view that the 5MWD is not a huge issue in 4E - that has been my experience, too. Nevertheless I do feel that, in the cost-benefit analysis that must be done comparing the benefits of moving on with the benefits of finding a site to rest and getting a full healup, the scales are weighed a little too much in favour of the extended rest, on the whole.

There are two ways to address this perceived problem (and if you don't perceive the problem then there's no reason you should address it at all - but finding reasons the party can't rest right now is not "not addressing the problem", it's just one way of addressing the problem).

Option one is to reduce the benefit of an extended rest. I have done this in some cases: when in particularly harsh surroundings in-game, I have set Extended Rests as only partially effective, on a "recharge" principle. Surges and Daily Powers are rolled for in a way similar to monsters' recharge powers - i.e. needing X+ on a d6 to get them back (the value of X depends on how bad conditions are). In practice, for surges at least, you can use a "law of averages" for the bulk of the recovery - if X is 4 then just get back half of all expended surges; roll for any odd ones. This method works fine sometimes, but it isn't always justifiable or fun.

The other option is to give a bit more reward for pushing on. This can be fun; a carrot is usually better than a stick. It doesn't need to be much - Action Points, Daily Item Power uses (which I still use for the more powerful Item Dailies) and added item abilities (especially for rings) already give some incentive. These are mostly just ways to stand still, though - a little bit more would be welcome. The Escalation Die idea comes closest, for me, to what might be ideal.

 

[Ferghis]

If you can get hold of it, Gygax's advice on this in the 1e DMG is excellent.

Can't xp, but would if I could. Quoted for emphasis.

Sadly, most of the suggestions are more work for DMs. Work that is great when done, but I rarely DM because it's too much work (for me). So it's nice to have a bit of help built into the mechanics.

PS: My hat is off to all you regular DMs. Thanks for making my sessions so much fun, and all your hard work.

 

[pemerton]

I find the idea of 4 or 5 encounters in a day a bit weird except as an extreme outlier.

Whereas that is routine for my group.

When they first arrived in Adakmi they drove their capture Behemoth over a waterfall (to provide the besieged town with meat), then fought cultists, then fought more cultists, then went to dinner with the Baron where they ended up fighting his vizier mage, and then a catoblepas and some more cultists, then they went to search out the (now deceased) vizier's apartment where they fought mercenaries and wererats. It was a busy day.

In their current day they have closed an Abyssal rift (fighting demons and undead in the process), cleared out a temple of Lolth, beaten up a drow vampire, crossed to a Demonweb-ish demiplane on Thanatos where they fought guards, then entered a ziggurat on Thanatos where they fought more demons and undead, then fought an artefact that turned back into a primordial when they poked it too hard. The wizard has been on 0 surges for a little while now, but they have a paladin for surgeless healing.

I agree with those who haven't encountered a 15 minute working day problem. And this is with a group who in other systems (eg Rolemaster) are very happy to do a 15MWD at every opportunity.

 

[CM]

Like many of the posters here 4e has mostly solved the 15mwd for most of the groups I DM or play in. Typically we go 3-4 encounters before resting. Early in 4e I started to notice that I may have been overcompensating for the old bad monster math and making encounters too difficult. I have a pretty good sense now what the PCs will be able to handle, and do a little tweaking on the fly if needed.

That said, I do like to encourage the party to press on rather than rest. Here are some things I have done:

My fantasy games: in particularly long sequences, typically final confrontations with major villains, I treat what may be several encounters in a published adventure as one long encounter with limited power and healing surge recovery allowed in the middle of combat. For example if a major ally unexpectedly joins the fight, a key opponent is defeated, or a player character is killed, the characters might be filled with fervor which could manifest in several different ways as needed:

• Characters each recover as many as 3 healing surges, which they could forfeit to recover encounter powers 1-for-1 or daily powers 2-for-1.
• Characters each gain an action point which must be spent before the end of their next turn, or forfeited to recover an encounter power.
• All characters can heal as if they had spent a healing surge, any excess healing over their maximum becomes temporary HP.

In my gritty, sandboxy "Fallout" universe level 3-10 sci-fi game: Daily powers and action points are lost when you rest, but after every significant encounter you regain your action point and unlock one or more daily powers.

I have some of the WotC fortune cards, and often give those out for good roleplaying or brilliant ideas. Most of these are equivalent to an extra utility power.

Finally, the Comrades' Succor ritual goes a long way to solving the problem of one character getting badly beaten up while the others are unscathed. It allows ritual participants to funnel healing surges into a recipient, and is almost always one of the first rituals picked in every fantasy campaign I've run. Groups will use this religiously just to avoid the need to rest in a potentially dangerous location.