Pacing & daily powers/surges

[Trellian]

I'm about to start a 4th edition campaign next years, and while I'm really excited about a the system, I am curious to how I can adapt the system to my play style. I prefer to have 0-3 battles per day/session, so the pacing mechanism og resource distribution part of 4th Ed won't work perfectly as is.

I have seen that several others have changed "Dailies" to everything from "once per day", "once per story arc" or "once per level". I was, perhaps, thinking of doing something of this sort. Maybe "once every 4/5 encounter" (or whatever the average number of encounters per day is), so that the pacing mechanism is somewhat maintained?

But then, shouldn't everything else that is contingent on extended rests, also follow this? Healing surges aren't per day, they are per 4/5 encounters. Action points aren't reset until 4/5 encounter? Anything else?

Or is a much simpler and better solution to beef up the encounters?

For example:
0 battles: N/A
1 battle: 1 hard
2 battles: 1 standard + 1 hard
3 battles: 1 easy, 1 standard, 1 hard

 

[keterys]

I'd totally suggest the Rests don't count as extended until you've done 4 encounters houserule for you, sure.

 

[the Jester]

Healing surges take care of themselves, since you can only use them when something triggers them (at least 1/encounter via second wind), which limits itself per encounter. Unless you want the pcs to carry wounds for days, I would leave this aspect of the game alone.

As for dailies, I would actually leave them pretty well alone too. IMC, unless the pcs are dungeoneering, it is pretty rare for them to have many encounters in a day, and things work fine. Yeah, maybe the pcs get to fire off the big guns in 1/3 of the encounters instead of 1/6 of them, but so what? Let them shine.

On the other hand, if you find this pacing problematic, you should feel free to adjust. But I'd try it as-is first. Like I said, my average campaign day has 0 encounters, with most of the days with encounters having one or two. Only when undertaking "serious adventuring" does the party have a lot of encounters.

 

[Roger]

The Dungeon Delve book seems to be based on a "run through these 3 encounters in one day" model, so it might be helpful.

As I recall most of them work on an EL,EL+2,EL+3 basis, more or less.


Cheers,
Roger

 

[holywhitetrash]

I'm about to start a 4th edition campaign next years, and while I'm really excited about a the system, I am curious to how I can adapt the system to my play style. I prefer to have 0-3 battles per day/session, so the pacing mechanism og resource distribution part of 4th Ed won't work perfectly as is.

I have seen that several others have changed "Dailies" to everything from "once per day", "once per story arc" or "once per level". I was, perhaps, thinking of doing something of this sort. Maybe "once every 4/5 encounter" (or whatever the average number of encounters per day is), so that the pacing mechanism is somewhat maintained?

But then, shouldn't everything else that is contingent on extended rests, also follow this? Healing surges aren't per day, they are per 4/5 encounters. Action points aren't reset until 4/5 encounter? Anything else?

Or is a much simpler and better solution to beef up the encounters?

For example:
0 battles: N/A
1 battle: 1 hard
2 battles: 1 standard + 1 hard
3 battles: 1 easy, 1 standard, 1 hard

i'm confused do you think you won't be able to have 3 encounters /day with the normal system or do you think that 3 won't be enough

 

[Regicide]

It's pretty DMing to not allow players to rest to get their powers back. The 4E system forces players to give up after a couple fights if the fights are at all challenging as they'll have blown their dailys, magic item powers and maybe even their healing surges. They'd be stupid to keep going at that point. If they haven't blown their better powers, then the fights probably weren't challenging and those get pretty boring pretty quickly.

Getting rid of all the artificial BS that 4E added in an attempt to make it a 1 fight per day system like daily powers, magic item dailys and healing surges is really the best bet. To me even a 5-minute rest in the middle of a dungeon is gratingly implausible as the sound of battle would ring from one end of the dungeon to the other. Although I haven't done it yet, I'm tempted to give extended rest status to 5-minute rests and making finding 5 whole minutes to rest in being hard to do.

 

[holywhitetrash]

in all dungeons of all editions the monsters have to play stupid or else they would hear the battle and go and gather together and wait for the party and just slaughter them

 

[Trellian]

i'm confused do you think you won't be able to have 3 encounters /day with the normal system or do you think that 3 won't be enough

No, I don't want to have more than a couple of fights per adventure.

I don't mind allowing my players to use dailies, but I also don't mind giving them a challenge, which means that the one or two fights they'll be in each day, needs to be more challenging than normal, if I'll be using dailies as dailies.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Two things:

1) I would say to try the system "as is" first, before you go tweaking. See where your problems are, or even if there are any, and then address them. If you make the changes before you even start playing though, then you won't get to see the "normal" system in action, and you won't necessarily know what's broken if you have trouble down the line.

2) Is there are particular reason why you're limiting the encounters to just what you can accomplish in a session? In my group, we usually get through a couple encounters per session, but don't always finish the adventuring day. In those cases, we simply make a note of where we left and continue next month. So, we might have 4 encounters in a "day", but those encounters are spread out over two different sessions. In that way, we don't really feel the need to nova at the end of the day and hit the sack for an extended rest because we'll just be continuing the adventure next time. This also gives some room for error, as when 3 behemoths almost TPK'd the party after a VERY long battle that took up full half our session. This was unexpected for the DM, and really changed the flow of that story arc...but if he was sticking to a very rigid encounters per day/session model, it would've caused a lot of issues.

 

[Trellian]

Two things:

1) I would say to try the system "as is" first, before you go tweaking. See where your problems are, or even if there are any, and then address them. If you make the changes before you even start playing though, then you won't get to see the "normal" system in action, and you won't necessarily know what's broken if you have trouble down the line.

You're right. None of my players have tried 4th ed before either, while I have, so they might be at a tactical disadvantage in the start.

2) Is there are particular reason why you're limiting the encounters to just what you can accomplish in a session?

I guess everyone has this problem to a certain degree, but more often than not, not everybody can make it to every session. That's OK, since we are 5-6 players anyway, but it creates an awkvard situation wherein someone suddenly leaves/enters the adventure. Sometimes, you can find plausible reasons for this, sometimes, you cannot.

Combats also take a lot of time, and I would rather spend two hours role-playing than running through grinding encounters, and then end the session with a big fight which actually matters and where the characters face off with a boss or something.

It might be that all I need to do is adjust the difficulty level of my few encounters.