Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bullgrit" data-source="post: 5752798" data-attributes="member: 31216">Huh? From what I saw in BD&D and AD&D, it took two days. Once the party is spent, they pull out/hole up and rest. Next day, the cleric memorizes all cure spells, casts them on everyone who needs them, then they rest again. Next day, go back into the dungeon. This is exactly what I saw with D&D3 adventures when the PCs decided to pull out for rest.Now, I have seen an increase in the 15-minute adventuring day with D&D3. (I haven't played D&D4 more than once.) But the problem was a paradigm shift in the DMs' heads, not really with the game edition rules.In the "old days" a BD&D or AD&D dungeon/adventure was stocked with a wide range of challenge levels. Even in 6th-level adventures, there would be encounters with a half-dozen orcs or some other mild challenge, (compared to the party's level). Translating the old style into D&D3 encounter levels, a dungeon might be something like:6th-level adventureEncounter 1 = EL 3Encounter 2 = EL 4Encounter 3 = EL 2Encounter 4 = EL 3Encounter 5 = EL 5Encounter 6 = EL 7Encounter 7 = EL 2Encounter 8 = EL 5Encounter 9 = EL 6Encounter 10 = EL 8The party could go through many encounters without having to use their "big guns". Heck, they could probably go through all 10 in one adventure day, reaching resource exhaustion only after the last. (And then they had to resist the "one more room" urge -- which I saw kill many PCs and parties.) They'd then pull out/hole up for a couple days to recuperate before going back for encounters 11+.But when DMs started creating adventures for D&D3, I saw this happen:6th-level adventureEncounter 1 = EL 6Encounter 2 = EL 6Encounter 3 = EL 6Encounter 4 = EL 6Encounter 5 = EL 6Encounter 6 = EL 6Encounter 7 = EL 6Encounter 8 = EL 6Encounter 9 = EL 6Encounter 10 = EL 6So the party was often spent after the fourth encounter. They'd have pull out/hole up before taking on the next few encounters.Then DM's started misunderstanding the idea of a challenge, and thought that if the encounter wasn't a full, balls-to-the-wall fight, it wasn't worth bothering with. So adventures started becoming:6th-level adventureEncounter 1 = EL 8Encounter 2 = EL 8Encounter 3 = EL 8Encounter 4 = EL 8Encounter 5 = EL 8Encounter 6 = EL 8Encounter 7 = EL 8Encounter 8 = EL 8Encounter 9 = EL 8Encounter 10 = EL 10The the PCs pretty much had to rest for a day or two after every one or two encounters. Pushing forward for a day beyond that was almost suicide.Then DMs started complaining about the 15-minute adventuring day.A couple years ago, I played and DMed in a round-robin style campaign, where each person DMed an adventure in turn for the group. I saw the above in action. I still designed my adventures like I used to in AD&D, and the party could go through many encounters in a day. But the other DMs always upped the ante for their encounters. It got to a point where the party sometimes had to rest after *every* encounter, because every encounter had to be a "real challenge" (read: party level +2 or +4).Then when the DMing turn came back around to me, I still used my old style adventure building, and I saw the PCs throw their biggest resources into every fight, even when it was completely unnecessary. I mean, when the wizard throws a fireball to wipe out a a handful of orcs rather than let the fighters slaughter them in a few rounds, (with minimal or no party damage), it shows that the Players have been *trained* to hit every encounter as if it required their full arsenal.I've seen this kind of paradigm mentioned many times around here, too. So I know it wasn't just my groups who did this. So in my experience, the 15-minute adventuring day is not an effect of the game system so much as it is the result of DMs simply misunderstanding the challenge rating system, and forgetting, (or never knowing), the old style of dungeon design.So really, the way to end the 15-minute adventuring day is not to come up with *more* ideas to force things, but best to just go back to the early idea that not every fight has to be a full-force challenge. Players/PCs falling to the 15-minute adventuring day is not the game's fault, it's the DM's fault -- the DM trains Players to use that tactic.Bullgrit</blockquote>

Verification