Pacing & daily powers/surges

[Rothe_]

Make most of the encounters tougher.

Include some non-combat encounters that cause loss of healing surges.
Perhaps some skill challenges with varying cost in surges depending on success.

Daily powers are a bit of a problem since you cannot have the characters spend those without having an encounter.

 

[sfedi]

Daily powers are a bit of a problem since you cannot have the characters spend those without having an encounter.

You can provide bonuses/succeses on a skill challenge if the PCs spend healing surges or daily powers.

That way, you can have them spend resources in a non-combat situation.

 

[the Jester]

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.

I disagree.

4e doesn't force pcs to give up after a couple of challenging fights; I have seen my party go 8 combats without an extended rest.

Even after all their dailies are expended, the pcs have per-encounter attacks that they can fall back on. The real "Gotta rest now" comes when they are out of surges.

As far as it being crappy dming, that's a matter of playstyle preference. Your playstyle is no more the One True Way to Play D&D than mine is.

 

[Infiniti2000]

I don't like houserules that take the PC resource management out of the hands of the PCs. Therefore, I favor any other approach that meets your goals with doing this, such as making your fewer encounters much more difficult.

While I think there should be a potential for in-game consequences for resting too early/often, I certainly don't think the DM should artificially restrict the players from recuperating properly.

 

[keterys]

While I think there should be a potential for in-game consequences for resting too early/often, I certainly don't think the DM should artificially restrict the players from recuperating properly.

Which of the following are artifical restrictions?
a) have the defenses for a location react to a party resting
b) patrols find them resting
c) 24 hours to solve a problem, before (a ritual finishes, a hostage is killed, magic items are donated to Santa, whatever)

A character being restored to full health and surges after resting for six hours is _itself_ artificial. How is it artificial to alter that recuperation method? Whether that's with a wound system, a slower surge recovery system, not allowing health to spring back, or stipulating that wound handwaving only occurs between set adventure or milestones cinematically? Cause those are all house rules I've seen.

If the goal is 'I want to run a combat a day, but don't want players to just burn all their dailies and not care about their surges' then the solution is not 'Too bad'. I already see the problem with LFR (3 combats per day) that # of surges are largely meaningless and you can AP _every combat_ and daily once per combat. Change that to one combat and it throws a lot of the game out of whack.

Some other options:
Allow people to only use one daily attack or daily utility per encounter.
Reduce the # of healing surges in the party drastically.
Change Con to, instead of giving surges, give a modifier to your surge value.

 

[BobTheNob]

I try to span out so at least 4 encounters occur before an extended rest, but I also find you have to be flexible.

For instance, one time the players requested to use dungeoneering to try to find a safe place to rest. I argued that the ruins of the city they were in was crawling with Baddies and it wasnt great, but setup a skill challenge and make it difficult. They pulled it off with good rolls. To not have rewarded this would have been to fail in my responsibility as DM.

I also find that sometimes fight can be significantly tougher than I anticpated they would be and players walk out with little dailies intact and a horde of healing surges spent (after post battle heal) if they were to continue in these situations, they would simply die, and if that happens...did they fail as players, or did I fail as a DM?

So have a standard, but understand when to break it. Most importantly understand when artificialy imposing restrictions is just bad DM'ing.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Which of the following are artifical restrictions?

None of them, of course. Those are good examples that my support my point. Thanks.

A character being restored to full health and surges after resting for six hours is _itself_ artificial. How is it artificial to alter that recuperation method?

The game itself is artificial. How profound is that? Perhaps artificial is not an accurate term without designating a baseline, however. The "non-artificial" part of this is that the rules as-is are not to be considered artificial. Any changes to those rules are artificial (as I've used it). Your examples above which support my point are good example of non-artificial side-effects of coping with too many rest periods. Artificially, the DM could say "you can't rest until you defeat so-and-so." The PC, on the other hand, could say, "I have no dailies and no surges, so screw that! My character doesn't have a death wish so he's gonna find something else to do." That's really a crappy outcome for this houserule.

But, maybe it doesn't come up in practice. I would just be wary of it. I'd have to think it would come up, however. If the DM were so good though that it would never come up then I would argue that the "artificial limitation" is not needed in the first place.

Whether that's with a wound system, a slower surge recovery system, not allowing health to spring back, or stipulating that wound handwaving only occurs between set adventure or milestones cinematically? Cause those are all house rules I've seen.

If the goal is 'I want to run a combat a day, but don't want players to just burn all their dailies and not care about their surges' then the solution is not 'Too bad'. I already see the problem with LFR (3 combats per day) that # of surges are largely meaningless and you can AP _every combat_ and daily once per combat. Change that to one combat and it throws a lot of the game out of whack.

Some other options:
Allow people to only use one daily attack or daily utility per encounter.
Reduce the # of healing surges in the party drastically.
Change Con to, instead of giving surges, give a modifier to your surge value.[/QUOTE]

 

[keterys]

I recently ran an adventure where the party's defender was bloodied and out of surges heading into the last combat. Basically he's playing as slightly suicidal, in that he divine sanctions _everything_ even when it's not really sensical, and this time it was relevant since everyone else was at full health while he was in pretty bad shape.

And they pressed on, and it was heroic, and there was some great party moments - like when he sanctioned a creature and the bard stole his mark to put it on someone else, or they had to delay giving him a potion when he dropped so that he wouldn't just get redropped immediately.

I _do_ want to try a house rule where a short rest heals you to full, without spending a surge, so that surges are just in-combat heals. Cause frankly people not having dailies, whatever - but going into combat low on hp is hard to sell

 

[Elric]

I _do_ want to try a house rule where a short rest heals you to full, without spending a surge, so that surges are just in-combat heals. Cause frankly people not having dailies, whatever - but going into combat low on hp is hard to sell

It seems like PCs (even those with low surge totals) would very rarely run out of surges if you used this rule. Holding constant typical-length combat days and the number of ways to trigger surges, it wouldn't be far from unlimited surges.

 

[keterys]

It seems like PCs (even those with low surge totals) would very rarely run out of surges if you used this rule. Holding constant typical-length combat days and the number of ways to trigger surges, it wouldn't be far from unlimited surges.

When I proposed that house rule, it was also contingent on reducing surge totals by 4, fwiw.

But I haven't had a chance to try it yet.

You could avoid the surge reduction by just doing lots of combats between extended rests. For example, I think that house rule would be a decent way to do 'one extended rest _per adventure_'. The game can actually be much better paced if your surges and 'dailies' are per cinematic unit, but you don't get completely screwed by going into combats at 1 hp.