Reasoning behind Extended Rests?

[Lacyon]

Addendum: to make myself really clear, I am amazed at the fact that while powers no longer may be a critical resource, now healing is.

Instead of the Wizard going nova and stating "I'm spent. We rest. No discussion" now we have the Fighter (very quickly) hitting rock bottom and stating "I'm spent. We rest. No discussion".

First they move away from the 15-minute adventuring day, then they implement healing in such a way as to immediately return it.

Why not instead relax the restrictions to allow DMs to tailor them around the needs of his story?

I think there are some that a DM can do to alleviate this within the system.

Background: I've read complaints (here and elsewhere) about fights dragging on past their welcome in 4E. I've also read complaints to the effect of Defenders being boring or unsexy, because their bonus damage (either Divine Challenge or Combat Challenge attacks, OAs, and other things) rarely come into play. And now we have complaints that Defenders are screwing things up by running out of surges too quickly relative to other characters.

All of these complaints hint at a similar root cause: the DM is playing conservatively with his monsters. Move them around the battlefield, risking OAs and trying to spread their attacks around more often. You should find that combats pass more quickly. Defenders gain some "sexiness" because they get some extra attacks. And Fighters won't be the guy who runs out of surges first and demand rest.

(Of course, this kind of thing is on a continuum. Do it too often and you'll get the problem in reverse, where the monsters just get shredded and everybody but the fighter is running ragged. Best to mix it up a bit - it's okay for the Fighter to sometimes be the guy who runs out first.)

If these aren't sufficient for your needs (i.e., you really want to up the number of encounters in a "day"), you can always give out more healing surges, either flat out or as a bonus reward for completing certain goals. You can adjust the time requirements on extended rests, introduce mechanisms to recharge daily powers, or do any number of other things. The big advantage 4E has in this realm is that you can easily do this without losing class-balance - everyone can benefit from these kinds of recharges instead of just casters. You just have to tweak the numbers to match what you want.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Background: I've read complaints (here and elsewhere) about fights dragging on past their welcome in 4E. I've also read complaints to the effect of Defenders being boring or unsexy, because their bonus damage (either Divine Challenge or Combat Challenge attacks, OAs, and other things) rarely come into play. And now we have complaints that Defenders are screwing things up by running out of surges too quickly relative to other characters.

All of these complaints hint at a similar root cause: the DM is playing conservatively with his monsters. Move them around the battlefield, risking OAs and trying to spread their attacks around more often. You should find that combats pass more quickly. Defenders gain some "sexiness" because they get some extra attacks. And Fighters won't be the guy who runs out of surges first and demand rest.

Too true... The flaw in Defenders losing their surges is not with the system, but with the play style. Especially in an adventure like KotS. My party has a Fighter (me), a Paladin and a Melee Cleric. We can clog almost any hallway in that place, and as such, we are the only ones that ever get hit. The Wizard gets touched about once every 3 or 4 encounters, and I'm fairly sure that the Laser Cleric has never been hit.

That's because our DM never likes to provoke marks and CCII attacks. I think he's done it a total of 3 times. The last time, for example, was when we were fighting some Hobgoblins. I had done some pretty sleek tactical manuevering to split them up and we were going to town on them. He tried to shift the last away from me in an effort to get our back row. I said "I get a CCII attack" and he actually wanted to cancel the action, but we convinced him otherwise...well, I hit, and killed his Hobgoblin.

The point though, is that I did that when it was one guy at the end of the fight. If he had tried that at the beginning of the fight, I wouldn't have killed the Hobgoblin. Instead, he would've gotten past me and we would've had to deal with one Hobgoblin loose in the back lines while the others were still out in front. He could've caused a little bit of havok, and a little bit of panic, while also eating up some healing surges from someone other than the Defenders.

If your DM plays conservatively though, your Defenders won't get to make all those extra attacks and end the fights quicker, and they'll be the only ones taking the beat downs. So you end up long, drawn-out fights, and then having to rest because the Defender is out of surges while the Cleric, Ranger and Wizard haven't even been touched.

 

[SabreCat]

First they move away from the 15-minute adventuring day, then they implement healing in such a way as to immediately return it.

This is anecdotal and all, but across four different campaigns (all of them low-level, admittedly) I have never seen this happen. People rarely run out of healing surges, and when they do, it's because we've been through three to four encounters, or a couple of "hard" encounters per DMG. As a pacing mechanism, it totally beats the pants off wizard-dictated adventuring days.

 

[DracoSuave]

Yeah, how -does- a Fighter blow 10+ healing surges in a single fight anyways?

Second Wind is 1, then two healing words, and let's even give 2 paladin lay on hands to be frisky....

....how many leader/paladin classes are you sporting that you -can- blow your entire wad of surges in a single fight? I just don't see it.

 

[Runestar]

Yeah, how -does- a Fighter blow 10+ healing surges in a single fight anyways?

Second Wind is 1, then two healing words, and let's even give 2 paladin lay on hands to be frisky....

....how many leader/paladin classes are you sporting that you -can- blow your entire wad of surges in a single fight? I just don't see it.

??? I said 2-3 fights, not one. Which averages out to 4-5 surges/encounter.

 

[wedgeski]

I realise you realise what the problem is, but allow me to get this off my chest anyway.

Mechanically, yes, it will always be better to take an encounter, 'rest' for 6 hours, sit twiddling your thumbs until your 12 hours are up, then rinse and repeat. However you'll quickly find your DM getting bored and designing encounters based on the assumption that you have all your dailies available, and then the one time you're forced to (gasp!) actually fight two encounters in a row, you'll be creamed.

Not to mention, at one encounter per day, something like Keep on the Shadowfell would take several weeks of game time to complete... by which time messrs. Kalarel and his good friend, Orcus, should have wreaked havoc on the countryside.

The game now gives you incentives to fight on by refreshing at least some of your resources as a reward. Certainly in my game, the players consider AP's to be extremely valuable, and really only force themselves to a halt when all of their daily powers, most or all of their encounter powers, and practically no Healing Surges remain. This is with very little nudging from me. If it ever got to be a problem, and other avenues weren't working, I would probably consider house-ruling in even more incentives, such as spending an AP to get a Daily back, or whatever.

Resource management obviously remains a sacred cow of D&D that even WotC won't slaughter. As long as that is true, the "15-minute" day will never go away... all they can do is try and entice you away from it.

 

[wedgeski]

This is anecdotal and all, but across four different campaigns (all of them low-level, admittedly) I have never seen this happen. People rarely run out of healing surges, and when they do, it's because we've been through three to four encounters, or a couple of "hard" encounters per DMG. As a pacing mechanism, it totally beats the pants off wizard-dictated adventuring days.

I have to agree that Healing Surges are one of the strongest additions to the game, and probably my favourite new mechanic.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Addendum: to make myself really clear, I am amazed at the fact that while powers no longer may be a critical resource, now healing is.

Instead of the Wizard going nova and stating "I'm spent. We rest. No discussion" now we have the Fighter (very quickly) hitting rock bottom and stating "I'm spent. We rest. No discussion".

First they move away from the 15-minute adventuring day, then they implement healing in such a way as to immediately return it.

Why not instead relax the restrictions to allow DMs to tailor them around the needs of his story?

Hopefully I'm making myself understood this time around, because I'm really running out of explanative power here..

I think in most games, "out of hit points" or "taken too much damage" is the primary motivation to stop fighting. Only secondary is "out of spells" or "out of ammo". "Out of Healing Surges" replaces 3Es "Cleric is out of healing spells and the Wands are empty". I think it's pretty much AD&D or OD&D "I am running low on hit points", since healing (even with a Cleric) was harder to come by...

What kind of system do you think should be in place? It would be very easy to "upgrade" milestones to make stopping meaningless. Just have them give you 1-3 healing surges back (depending on role) and a daily power, you're probably set. Or just don't give anything back at an extended rest (or nothing more then you get for a milestone.)

What the designers did with extended rest, dailies and milestones is to create some motivation to go on adventuring and reward smart play by being able to do so longer, and still providing a reason for the party to stop and rest. Do you think it was a misguided attempt at "believability" to avoid situations where the party could go from level 1 to level 30 in a week?

 

[Jhaelen]

??? I said 2-3 fights, not one. Which averages out to 4-5 surges/encounter.

Yes, YOU did. However:

My experiences so far is that you fight some goblins, then you run out of healing surges and have to take an extended rest.
[...]
I didn't count the number of minutes, but it sure felt like fifteen to me...

Well, how many encounters should an average party be able to take on before running out of resources? 1, 4, 16, 64? How many encounters would it take for you to not feel like '15 minutes'?

 

[Bagpuss]

Instead of the Wizard going nova and stating "I'm spent. We rest. No discussion" now we have the Fighter (very quickly) hitting rock bottom and stating "I'm spent. We rest. No discussion".

A fighter has something like 11 or 12 Healing surges, and at most will probably use 3 or 4 an encounter (Second Wind, Healing/Inspiring Words and recovery after the fight). So you are having at least four encounters a day. Personally in Keep on Shadowfell we had between four and six encounters a day. Add in time for searching, roleplay, and other non-combat stuff that easily fills a full work day.

That is not a fifteen minute day.

Besides have you forgotten that healing originally only came from clerical spells and they ran out just as quick as wizard spells, we needed to rest in 3rd Ed because the cleric couldn't heal more often than the wizard running out.