D&D 5E [Poll] 15 Minute Adventuring Day, 5e, and You

[I'm A Banana]

Poll Time.

Have you experienced the 15 minute adventuring day in your testing of 5e?

For the record, for this thread, the 15 minute adventuring day is defined as having the party blow their daily resources in a few encounters, and then retreat to rest for the night, to come back the next day at full bear and repeat the process, so that the party is almost never at less than full resources when they have to have an encounter.

If you have not, what aspects of 5e or the Caves of Chaos or your particular playstyle do you think helped prevent it?

If you have, what do you think went wrong, and how do you think 5e might be tweaked so that it doesn't happen?

 

[GX.Sigma]

My experience with the playtest was consistent with the description of adventuring in the original KotB: one game session is one day is one adventure. At the end of the session, you leave the dungeon and go back to town.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the pacing of the game facilitated this so well: The first session, my players totally cleared the kobold cave. The second, they invaded the orc cave and were forced to retreat. The third, they snuck into the hobgoblin cave, freed the prisoners, went out through the goblin cave, fought the ogre (twice), and managed to escape. Each of these adventures fit perfectly within a 4-hour session (with plenty of dicking around at the keep, charming the ogre, pouring lantern oil on the floor as a trap, etc.).

 

[Crazy Jerome]

You'll need more poll choices than that before you'll get my participation. "No" has got a lot of "No, but" and "Not exactly" and other potentials that really aren't the same thing at all.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't think it's a coincidence that the pacing of the game facilitated this so well: The first session, my players totally cleared the kobold cave. The second, they invaded the orc cave and were forced to retreat. The third, they snuck into the hobgoblin cave, freed the prisoners, went out through the goblin cave, fought the ogre (twice), and managed to escape. Each of these adventures fit perfectly within a 4-hour session (with plenty of dicking around at the keep, charming the ogre, pouring lantern oil on the floor as a trap, etc.).

That seems VERY old-school. Which, I'm guessing, was part of the point of the design there. Interesting that it seemed to work pretty much perfectly as intended in your games!

You'll need more poll choices than that before you'll get my participation. "No" has got a lot of "No, but" and "Not exactly" and other potentials that really aren't the same thing at all.

So, vote no and post your but.

Central Question: Has it happened?

Why it did or did not happen is something I hope the thread can discuss, so that we see what common strategies may be effective, and what commonalities those who have the problem seem to be stumbling on, from an evidence-based perspective.

 

[Tony Vargas]

We were sufficiently unimpressed with the playtest that we didn't bother with a second stab at the Caves, so, technically 'no.'

Given the relative lack of healing, though, it'd seem inevitable that you'd only get a little way in before using up all your HD and the Clerics' little bit of healing and having back out for a day or two to get back up to full strength. Much like classic D&D at low level, really - one thing 5e definitely got right was that old-school feel. ;|

 

[CleverNickName]

We had several playtests, and all but one or two of them were several hours long. The "15-minute workday" was not observed at any of them (although two of them ended in TPKs.) The party managed--through force or subterfuge--to survive about eight encounters before returning to town to sell their loot.

Maybe the new resting and healing mechanics helped? It's hard to say. For the sake of comparison, I also ran the Caves of Chaos a couple of times using the original Red Box Rules. And even with the classic rules, which did not have the resting and healing mechanics, we did not have a 15-minute work day.

 

[mlund]

15 Minute Adventuring Day might be a stretch, but my players did have the "one combat and run to rest" experience after scouting the caves. They basically sandwiched into a sprawling fight with the Kobolds and some giant rats and got beat up, felt they lacked sufficient healing resources, and wanted to tuck tail. I had to give them my best "come on, guys," pitch to get them to continue on for the sake of the play-test. Their self-interest said to get gone and take it slow.

- Marty Lund

 

[JRRNeiklot]

We didn't, but the first thing we did was throw out the healing mechanics, so there wasn't much point in resting until we were really hurt.

 

[Serendipity]

Nope, but then it's never shown up in any D&D game I've played, be it 3.0, Pathfinder, 2e or older either.

 

[Dark Mistress]

No but then we rare had that happen with 3.5 or now Pathfinder. So in that regard it played much the same as most of our games.