D&D 3E/3.5 Potential Consequences of using the 3e Resting Rules

[Tony Vargas]

Clarification: The problem is that I run 3 sandbox games for 3 different groups in the same world, in which the actions of one group have a dramatic affect on the actions of other groups. Groups will often play tricks and try to thwart the other groups of players, seeing them as adventuring rivals. As a result, any sort of narrative pacing falls flat and drastically reduces player/group agency. Having time flow at my discretion undermines the conflict.

Sounds like all the more reason to use narrative pacing to give you more latitude in meshing the three timelines...

The trouble I have experienced with the rest and recovery method described in the PHB is that because a near-complete recovery happens over night, one group can became several days "ahead" of the other groups over the course of a single session

That sounds odd. I've rarely seen multiple adventuring days covered in a single session. Do you have a lot of 5MWDs?

, which can be mind-boggling for me as a DM when trying to actively keep track of thee separate time lines and keeping everything consistent.

Trying to keep three timelines consistent when you play one exclusively for days on end could be a problem, yes, I can clearly see that. I can't see how overnight healing, let alone HD, make it worse, though....

When I switched to the slow-paced recovery method presented in the DMG, it was much easier to keep the timelines clustered together. The opportunity cost to resting and recovering resources did its job.

It seems to me that downtime days would do the job, too. When one group 'gets ahead,' the others make it up in downtime?

On the other hand, it made it difficult to have a wilderness trek, followed by a dungeon crawl, followed by another wilderness trek back to the home base awkward. Short rests in the dungeon become necessary to keep some classes (monk, fighter, warlock) reliant. Furthermore, complete overnight recovery makes wilderness encounters meaningless in terms of attrition.

Settling on a single pacing is problematic. Varying pacing with the circumstances, or 'narrative pacing' with the story, are ways to address it that seem practical.

The only other alternative I can think of is completely re-balancing the classes & encounter guidelines to make day length irrelevant (abandoning the 'attrition model' and relying on encounter balance, alone, would be the extreme form of that - but D&D never has gone there, no not even 4e, not even close) - I know that kind of game can work because the last ed of Gamma World was done that way, and I've run and played in some very successful campaigns of it - and tracking days became quite irrelevant, they mattered to travel times and little else, so time flowed with the story, not with the mechanics. FWIW ( I don't think you'd want to attempt that).

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

An idea I came across on these boards not long ago (unfortunately I don't recall who posted it) was to use the grittier resting rules, but with the option to take a rest requiring only the normal duration at the cost of gaining an exhaustion once the immediate scenario was over.

For example, a long rest normally takes 7 days, but if you need to long rest in a dungeon you can do so in 8 hours. However, when you leave the dungeon the exhaustion gets applied (obviously, you can't fast rest more than 5 times this way without taking time to recover). The idea is that you can push yourself harder in a dangerous situation, but once it is over your fatigue will catch up with you.

That said, if everyone is using the same pacing, I'm curious why you would have such a disparity. Why wouldn't you have the same issue when using slower healing (party A runs into a difficult encounter and has to make camp for a week, while party B gets lucky and has no encounters on the way to the dungeon, resulting in a one week difference in their timelines). Not doubting you, just curious why faster healing causes a larger disparity for you.

It's less about faster healing, and making healing have a greater opportunity costs (losing days). Losing days in the context of the game can mean that one of the other groups gets their hands on a piece of sought after treasure before your group. When using the longer healing variant, groups wondered that if by taking so much time to rest, if they were screwing themselves over. Also, the groups have enjoyed setting booby traps for one another. The longer one group waits, the more likely it will be that they fall into another group's hands.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Sounds like all the more reason to use narrative pacing to give you more latitude in meshing the three timelines...

That sounds odd. I've rarely seen multiple adventuring days covered in a single session. Do you have a lot of 5MWDs?

Trying to keep three timelines consistent when you play one exclusively for days on end could be a problem, yes, I can clearly see that. I can't see how overnight healing, let alone HD, make it worse, though....

It seems to me that downtime days would do the job, too. When one group 'gets ahead,' the others make it up in downtime?

Settling on a single pacing is problematic. Varying pacing with the circumstances, or 'narrative pacing' with the story, are ways to address it that seem practical.

The only other alternative I can think of is completely re-balancing the classes & encounter guidelines to make day length irrelevant (abandoning the 'attrition model' and relying on encounter balance, alone, would be the extreme form of that - but D&D never has gone there, no not even 4e, not even close) - I know that kind of game can work because the last ed of Gamma World was done that way, and I've run and played in some very successful campaigns of it - and tracking days became quite irrelevant, they mattered to travel times and little else, so time flowed with the story, not with the mechanics. FWIW ( I don't think you'd want to attempt that).

Narrative pacing is difficult in this context because it's too subjective. With three competing groups that all treat each other like the Big Bad of the campaign, I cannot allow myself to become overly subjective, and must remain an impartial judge whenever possible. Native mechanics have fallen flat because, well, there's no pre-planned narrative. I never have any idea what the players are going to do next. Sometimes, they'll show up at an adventure site, and instead of going in and bringing out the treasure, they'll simply booby trap the place for the next group who coming along and move on to the next site. Other times, they'll spend the half the sessions spreading rumors about one of the other groups, trying to ruin their credibility and, therefore, limit their access to the choicest clients before setting out for their own adventure.

The atmosphere is rather antagonistic and incredibly hilarious, but requires a level of impartiality I believe native mechanics, such as variably pace and inspiration points rarely achieve.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think I'm still a bit unclear on the flavor of PvP you have going here. Are you running 3 different games for 3 different sets of players, in the same world, who interact with eachother only indirectly? Or are you running a campaign in which each player has 3 characters, each character in a different group, and they cooperate within each group, but the groups are adversarial? (I've actually played in a campaign like the latter - it also featured multiple GMs - so I might have more insight if that's the case. The former is something I've had relatively little experience with - and that experience, generally negative.)

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

I think I'm still a bit unclear on the flavor of PvP you have going here. Are you running 3 different games for 3 different sets of players, in the same world, who interact with eachother only indirectly? Or are you running a campaign in which each player has 3 characters, each character in a different group, and they cooperate within each group, but the groups are adversarial? (I've actually played in a campaign like the latter - it also featured multiple GMs - so I might have more insight if that's the case. The former is something I've had relatively little experience with - and that experience, generally negative.)

Indirectly. Each game is played on a different day of the week. Most of the players have never met each other, although plans for a crossover session to deal with a major threat are in the works.