No More 15-Minute Adventuring Day: Campsites

[Gentlegamer]

Therein lies the challenge of playing a support role.. and Mage should (IMHO) be a support role character. Like Gandalf, he is there to pull the 'OMG, we mortals couldn't do that!' instead of 'magic is the only way to win battles'.

A couple thoughts on Gandalf and the other iconic Mage in fiction.. Merlin. Their greatest power was that they knew things. Not magic things.. just things. Like were to stay in Breland or how to navigate the Misty Mountains.

The majority of the magic used by both amount to parlor tricks when compared to the DnD spell lists.... actually some of the 'spells' used by Gandalf were 2e cantrips...

Gandalf was a 5th level magic-user.

 

[prosfilaes]

Instead of seeing if the mundane methods work first they rely on the supernatural..

D&D magic is not the least bit supernatural. It's physics; do this, do that, and a ball of fire shoots from your fingertips.

leading to a less mystifying experience of magic at the game table

It's hard for RPG magic to be really mystifying, but D&D magic--particularly 3E D&D magic--doesn't even try. Casting a spell is as exactly unmysterious as swinging a sword. You roll the dice and the result is entirely predictable.

I enjoy playing the support role and have spent many a game literally off screen, often spending my time reading comic books or tending the register at the store we played in, only to step in at the rare moment when the group needed my characters special talent.

Okay. I submit that that's a niche playing style.

I don't see your concerns here reflecting what most players want out of the game. Mages are very good at blowing things up because a lot of players find it fun to have characters who can blow things up. A lot of my mages take the xkcd: Regular Expressions attitude; I have these spells, let's find a chance to cast them.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Yep- things like this are why I've never seen the 15-minute workday in person despite gaming since 1977. I'd never even heard of it until I joined ENWorld.

Nearly every GM in every RPG system I've played in- and me, personally in the GM's chair- has had time pass and the NPCs react logically to PC actions.

Retreat too long, and reinforcements arrive, and are on alert. Camp in a dangerous area and you don't get any rest.

My experience too.

 

[Stalker0]

The talk of Gandalf is coming up a fair amount, and there are two points I wanted to make about using LOTR in general when discussing DND.

1) Magic is imbalanced in LOTR. While Dnd tries to balance magic and nonmagic users (to a degree), LOTR does not require such. Wizards beat fighters, wizards beat everyone.

2) Dnd adventuring does not exist in LOTR. What I mean by that is that the encounter in LOTR occur over the span of weeks and months and maybe even years. The idea of having many fights over the course of a couple of days just doesn't happen.

In LOTR you might have an encounter once every two weeks. In LOTR adventurers are in fact the worst at 15 minute adventuring. One fight....and then a lot of travel and rest.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Healing is also pretty hard in LotR. (Seems to be all about rituals. No clerics outside of Rivendell!) Fortunately injuries (and therefore the necessity for healing) is pretty rare.

Using fiction as a guide is a bad idea, IMO. Even D&D fiction has 15MD, only worse. There may be few or many encounters per day, but the wizards never have the chance to rest, and if they do, they can still only manage three spells a day. They're even more incentivized to use 15MD tactics, but the writing refuses to let them.

 

[Derren]

but the writing refuses to let them.

Enter the DM.

When you create a world where time doesn't matter, a plot which waits for the PCs and a dungeon which does not react to intrusion of course the 15MWD will happen as it is just the safest way to proceed.
But that is not a failure of the game system.

 

[prosfilaes]

Enter the DM.

When you create a world where time doesn't matter, a plot which waits for the PCs and a dungeon which does not react to intrusion of course the 15MWD will happen as it is just the safest way to proceed.
But that is not a failure of the game system.

I don't see how you can dismiss the game system's role in this. In a world where fighters used swords, wizards cast bolts at will, sleep wasn't needed, and no healing was possible, parties would never rest; you would continue until you were forced to retreat through injury. Change the no healing to 3 HP a round, and they'd never try and rest, unless you were pounding them solidly.

Is the DM willing and able to run a game that can be survived without 15MWD? Again, looking at [MENTION=31216]Bullgrit[/MENTION] in #29 in many cases, this is a DM taught pattern.

 

[jonesy]

Gandalf was a 5th level magic-user.

A little MERP perspective to the proceedings:

Aragorn II (the Aragorn of Lotr) is a level 36 character. That gives you a nice idea for MERP levels.

Now for the fun part:

Gandalf is level 40(80) Grey, 50(120) White, 360 Istari.

You see, the problem with playing as Gandalf in MERP is the exact same problem as playing Raistlin in Dragonlance. Everyone knows the levels they should be able to rise to should the situation warrant it and the things they should be able to accomplish, but the player is never going to be able use any of it, because the DM is holding the trigger for those things in a locked chest that he is sitting on.

So, Gandalf gets to cast exactly as many spells as the Gamemaster says. If the Gamemaster says that Gandalf is fully Istari now, out goes all the resting for him and woe to his opponents.

 

[Gentlegamer]

A little MERP perspective to the proceedings:

Aragorn II (the Aragorn of Lotr) is a level 36 character. That gives you a nice idea for MERP levels.

Now for the fun part:

Gandalf is level 40(80) Grey, 50(120) White, 360 Istari.

In MERP, characters need to be that level to cast Lightning Bolt, Pyrotechnics, and Ventriloquism?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Gandalf could control the palantiri, cow Saruman, and raise himself from the dead. That's a little more impressive than dishing out some combat magic. Plus there's all that phat loot he had, like the magic ring that let him modify the defenses of Rivendell, and the badass magic sword, plus the skill he showed in wielding it.

I really cannot believe we're using LotR in an attempt to explain the 15MD. IIRC, the reason Gandalf didn't use magic much was because it drew attention, not because it was draining, or because he wanted to save it up for a "rainy hour" or anything like that. The real reason was to prevent him from overshadowing the other heroes, which shouldn't be an issue if you've got a party where all the PCs are roughly the same level. Book writing bears little resemblance to actual gaming.