One Encounter Per Day

[I'm A Banana]

I'd actually still be wary of all 6 PC's dumping dailies in round 1, when they know there will only be 1 encounter. But if you use some stagger tactics, some terrain, use delay tactics, use larger maps, etc, that initial dump can be avoided.

This doesn't worry me so much. I'd like to see them all using every ability at their disposal in every combat, ideally. They should feel and look totally spent, unable to continue, just as they're about to fell the last monster. If they have Regeneration, I just have to come up with monster or mechanics ways to stop that from ruining the encounter...which reminds me...any things I should look out for in encounter-breaking abilities? Any counter-strategies I might be able to employ?

I routinely have single-encounter days. I certainly don't house rule, nor do I try to suck up all their healing surges (why the Hell would that be an imperative??).

To make them feel like they've used all their resources. To highlight the choice of a low surge class vs. a high surge class (and make the latter feel hardier by virtue of not having to ration them as much). To make the party WANT to rest.

The PCs will be pushed to survive, but if they can do so then they should still have healing surges left and can press on if desired.

Edit: MAJOR point: The players very rarely can be sure that this is indeed going to be the only fight of the day.

Yeah, I'm not particularly interested in either of those outcomes. I don't mind if the party knows that this will be a one-encounter day for some reason, and I WANT the party to feel like they cannot press on after the combat.

I wouldn't increase the power/numbers of the monsters, but instead reduce the number of healing surges each player has. My gut tells me 25% of their original surges and to increase the xp budget of the encounter by about 150% to 200% (to account for them having all their dailies available).

Hm....good on the ratios. Ideally, I don't want to futz with the characters' mechanics in any way. I'd prefer to handle this purely on the DM side, so that I can mix in single-encounter days with standard-encounter days willy nilly.

Some days, you'll be fighting a Wandering Monster group that can utterly destroy your entire party. Some days, you'll face smaller waves of them.

KM. Is this just what you plan to do for the next adventure/few sessions/in case I just wanna do it, or do you plan to do this for an entire campaign?

I'd like it to be something I can turn on or off as I desire, a new trick for my DMing hat. I don't want it to have to be EVERY encounter in the campaign, but I'd like the option to use a "daily encounter" if that suits the pace of the game a little better (for instance, if we have a shorter session that week and we can't be futzed to bother tracking HP and surges over the course of the next few weeks until we meet again, or if I want to use a single Wandering Monster).

 

[Jools]

One option would be to make encounter powers daily and daily powers weekly. This simple change would redress the balance.

 

[Infiniti2000]

The first step, I imagine, is to just throw 2 x or 3 x the monsters into the battle (perhaps in "waves"), since that's how many encounters a party would normally go before resting. But there is some weirdness that makes that especially difficult.

Actually, I thought the magic number was 4 encounters per day. The big problem with a larger encounter is that your encounter powers don't recharge before you hit the next wave. You can of course handwave that, and I certainly recommend it, specifically in light of healing powers.

Outside of other combat-shortening houserules, the laws of physics prevent you from adding to the encounter while retaining a shorter encounter time period. So, besides the anti-grind threads (I won't repeat the many excellent ideas in those), if you just want to have a very special one-day-encounter event, maybe use a "hivemind" type of approach. Calculate the total HP for a single normal encounter (or maybe +1 or +2 levels), add in (e.g.) x3 monsters, but then pool the hit points. A hit one monster one of 15 would deduct from the total. The encounter doesn't end till the pool is gone. The interesting part is that you can use your DMing cinematics skillz to decide when a particular monster dies. So, a PC crits, calculate damage and deduct from the pool, but that monster dies. Have monsters slip and fall, breaking their neck or simply incapacitating themselves.

Anyway, just an idea. Might work for something like a colony of bee-people.

 

[KidSnide]

My campaign often features single-encounter days, so I have some experience in these types of encounters.

There are lots of ways that you can have a single "spike" encounter that challenges the PCs and is a ton of fun (many mentioned in this thread), but I'm not sure there are any easy ways to do that without taking longer than a usual encounter. As a general matter, adding in tons of new monsters take longer to kill.

That said, there are a few ways to get something closer to what you want. You could stage an on-going fight in a zone where everyone takes damage. With monsters and PCs both exposed to damage in regular waves, that will speed up combat. Plus, such a combat would presumably have particularly dangerous zones where monsters (and PCs!) could be pushed.

I also had success with fast-dangerous single-day encounters was with what I think of as a 3/4 solo. It's essentially a solo creature with only 3/4rds of the total hit points and not quite the full power set. It feels like fighting a solo, but the monster doesn't have quite the same endurance. Pair it with a pack of minions, and you get a nice light-weight boss fight. I wouldn't use it as the climax of a major adventure, but it still feels more significant than a regular fight.

A helpful houserule for extended combats is to allow the PCs a mini-short rest between waves in which they can spend a single healing surge and recharge a single encounter power. That kind of structure allows the characters with tons of healing surges to take some advantage of their endurance and reduces the tendency to fall into an at-will-only grind. This won't really help speed up combat, but it can make a long combat more fun.

I should also add that higher level characters perform much better than low level characters at this sort of encounter. The "spike" power of having several daily powers and a full complement of magic items is significant.

Lastly, my game became a little more fun when I realized that my single-encounter days didn't have to push the PCs to their limits. Sometimes the PCs blast through an encounter, and that's fun too.

-KS

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think the best way to accomplish what you want is simple.

Remove Healing Surges from your game entirely.

Your PCs have their Hit Points AND THAT'S IT. That's all they have. Just like in the older versions of D&D.

The problem you facing is that you want combats to just try and blow through too many hit points. Because with one encounter between each Extended Rest (where each PC would get back all their hit points and all their healing surges)... each character has their max hit points, plus 6 to 14 Healing Surges you want them lose each and every encounter. As each Surge is approximately 1/4th of a character's hit points... every character really has a total amount of hit points anywhere from more than double their max to FOUR TIMES their max hit point total. That is just way, way, WAY too many hit points to try and blow through during a single encounter, especially an encounter you want to keep down to an hour at most. Even if you were to double or triple the damage of your monsters, it just would take too long.

So just take out Healing Surges altogether. What they have is what they have. And to save additional time and make these combats actually mean something... remove from the game any powers that allow players to spend healing surges to heal. You can't heal your fellow players at all except in the rarest of occasions where a PC chooses a power that grants healing without needing to spend a surge (like Cure Light Wounds for example). You do this... and you make every swing of a weapon important as the PCs watch their hit points trickle away... knowing that if they fall below zero they are effectively out of combat (since the best they might get would be a Heal check to stabilize so they don't have to make any more Death saves... but that they won't get back up until the combat is over and the group goes directly into another Extended Rest-- after which time everyone's hit points return to their max total.)

 

[Pickles JG]

One problem that no-one raises in the 15 minute adventuring day threads is that 4e is actually pretty bad for running exciting single encounter days.

To make one super encounter work well you need to have waves in some form or other or the monsters will overwhelm the players.
To keep it going faster & still be threatening it helps to use a tier of monster between minion & standard – either 2 hit minions or half HP monsters.
As well as giving mini refreshes out during a long fight you might also give out some Action Points – either on a clock or for doing cool stuff or for doing something plot related – some sort of in combat skill uses. Extra AP will speed things up too.

 

[Balesir]

I think you need to add healing, but you also should think about recharging Encounter Attack powers if things aren't to get a tad "grindy". A good "multiple birds with one stone" might be to have items, terrain features or schticks that allow PCs to spend a healing surge to either heal or recharge an Encounter power.

 

[JohnnyO]

Personally, I take a more liberal view of the definition of an extended rest.

For example, in one of the LFR adventures, the PCs take a ship from port out to a small island (a trip of a day or two). Before they leave, they have to repair the ship and decode a navigational map. Failure on either of the skill challenges makes the journey so arduous that they must constantly work throughout the voyage, arriving without time for anyone to take an extended rest.

Success on the challenge grants an uneventful trip which counts as an extended rest.

 

[S'mon]

Bah, the Internet ate my post.

I take it that you have made a concious choice to let the players have all their powes available to them in every encounter, as you could simply redefine what a short and extended rest is (like Rechan mentioned). Just be careful as some daily powers can ruin encounters, effects that last until the end of the encounter (like regeneration) comes to mind.

PCs may have all Dailies available, but if they don't *know* for sure that it's the only encounter of the day, they're not likely to drop all their Dailies on it.

I've seen a few broken 'I win' Dailies, but only in splatbooks.

 

[S'mon]

I WANT the party to feel like they cannot press on after the combat.

Can you explain why? Is the 15 minute adventuring day too long for you?