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Need for a Home Base
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7576896" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Because of D&D's particular resource allocation structure, the need for a secure 'home base' is absolutely critical if you are to avoid excessive PC deaths. In my parlance, I refer to the home base as 'the Haven'. The haven is where you can go to be relatively sure of not having a further encounter, or that if you do have the encounter it will be in your favor. The haven is essential because when you run out of hit points and spells, you must be able to have a secure long rest to recover. And if you don't have that, then you suffer death by attrition.</p><p></p><p>I have about a 7 year old campaign with like 150 sessions played, where I think I've put the whole thing at risk by in this latest phase making securing a haven a challenge. The players simply haven't been very good at anything other than kicking the door down, surrounding the baddies, and killing them. When they need to overcome a challenge that can be solved by doing this, they've run into problems and in this case they've essentially tried to resolve the problem of securing a haven by kicking the doors down, killing everyone and taking their stuff. But at best in this case it leaves them "camping in the dungeon", and camping in the dungeon is quite the opposite of a haven. You can't guarantee that if you camp in the dungeon that you'll have no encounters and that if you do those encounters will be in your favor. So a result, they are in a death spiral. It's a big reason other than my own burnout that I put the campaign on hiatus. I knew that with all chance of a haven lost, and with the party already in a death spiral, there was a very good chance that a TPK was just around the corner, and it would be a TPK that would not be easy or even possible to narratively recover from or handwave away.</p><p></p><p>My suspicion is that D&D with more recent rules sets that lack the mechanical requirement of a secure long rest are apt to not require a Haven, and that players will quite readily succeed without one.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7576896, member: 4937"] Because of D&D's particular resource allocation structure, the need for a secure 'home base' is absolutely critical if you are to avoid excessive PC deaths. In my parlance, I refer to the home base as 'the Haven'. The haven is where you can go to be relatively sure of not having a further encounter, or that if you do have the encounter it will be in your favor. The haven is essential because when you run out of hit points and spells, you must be able to have a secure long rest to recover. And if you don't have that, then you suffer death by attrition. I have about a 7 year old campaign with like 150 sessions played, where I think I've put the whole thing at risk by in this latest phase making securing a haven a challenge. The players simply haven't been very good at anything other than kicking the door down, surrounding the baddies, and killing them. When they need to overcome a challenge that can be solved by doing this, they've run into problems and in this case they've essentially tried to resolve the problem of securing a haven by kicking the doors down, killing everyone and taking their stuff. But at best in this case it leaves them "camping in the dungeon", and camping in the dungeon is quite the opposite of a haven. You can't guarantee that if you camp in the dungeon that you'll have no encounters and that if you do those encounters will be in your favor. So a result, they are in a death spiral. It's a big reason other than my own burnout that I put the campaign on hiatus. I knew that with all chance of a haven lost, and with the party already in a death spiral, there was a very good chance that a TPK was just around the corner, and it would be a TPK that would not be easy or even possible to narratively recover from or handwave away. My suspicion is that D&D with more recent rules sets that lack the mechanical requirement of a secure long rest are apt to not require a Haven, and that players will quite readily succeed without one. [/QUOTE]
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