Reasoning behind Extended Rests?

[Runestar]

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'?

I don't think this was ever the issue. Rather, it is how 4e supposedly claimed that PCs would not be limited to the 15-minute workday, yet the number of encounters they can handle each day seems no less limiting than in 3e. In fact, 4e seems much more unforgiving in terms of how far you can continue to push yourself after your resources have been exhausted.

I admit that at 1st lv, a typical 3e party is much more fragile than a 4e party (for example, a 3e fighter has just 12hp, and an orc barb easily deals that much damage with a single blow). Past 3rd-5th lv, I felt that my 3e party could readily handle at least 4 encounters each day. It was not impossible to construct a party with nigh-infinite resources (binder, warlock/dragonfire adept, warblade, factotum) which could theoretically just go on adventuring forever without needing to stop to replenish their resources ever.

In 3e, players had ready access to healing, such wands of CLW/vigor, binder5 with improved binding for buer etc, but people seemed to take offense to relying so extensively on magic gear.

In 4e, each player was more or less self-sufficient in terms of healing, albeit more limited in how readily they could access healing past a certain threshold.

This makes me wonder if it is really such a big deal as to how or where healing comes from.

 

[WalterKovacs]

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..

The thing is, in 3.5, the "15-minute adventuring day". Is about 1 encounter.

You are NOT going to have a fighter lose all their surges in a single encounter. You are going to likely have 4 encounters, or so, before one of the PCs get low enough in surges to have to end the day.

Considering that between each encounter you have (at least) 5 minutes of rest to heal up and get back encounter powers, 4 encounters is at least 20 minutes, plus the time during an encounter (most are "less than a minute" by the 1 round = 6 seconds rule). However there is also exploration time, etc. Dungeon delves are a bit odd ... you do basically have a short adventuring day. However having 1 encounter per day vs. having 4 encounters per day is a big difference.

Ultimate, you can't choose to just use up all our surges, the number of surges you use has to do with how well you do against the monsters. You can reduce the number of surges you have to use based on how you use your healing, how you use your tactics, using the right powers at the right time, and some of it comes down to luck. However, you can't just choose to burn through all your surges to win the fight. You CAN burn through all your spells to make a fight go easier (in 3e). That's the difference.

And, it makes more sense to "have to rest" because you've been beaten down over and over again, and if you were to keep going, you may not be able to survive is much different than "I used up all my spells so now I'm useless". There are some powers out there that give healing without healing surges ... so even running out of surges isn't the worst case scenario. It may get harder, but it's possible to win fights if one of the PCs is out of healing surges.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I'm playing Keep of the Shadowfell, which seems like a very standard dungeon slash.

My experiences so far is that you fight some goblins, then you run out of healing surges and have to take an extended rest.

From this, and from your other comment, it seems as though the problems you're having with the system come from the way you're playing it, not from the rules.

My group, for example, are much more gung-ho. The Wizard likes to get in close and use Thunderwave, for example. I've also taken some advice from these boards and made my monsters take risks - also provoking OA's and giving everyone problems.

In KotS, the group went in, fought their way through all almost the whole upper level before taking a short rest. The only reason they took one at that time was because they'd found somewhere to rest, as they'd said they could probably carry on otherwise.

I think your group should make a bit more of an effort to get in there and fight alongside the fighter, rather than let them take all the damage. You'll find that the defender will use less surges per fight, allowing everyone to continue for longer.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't think this was ever the issue. Rather, it is how 4e supposedly claimed that PCs would not be limited to the 15-minute workday, yet the number of encounters they can handle each day seems no less limiting than in 3e. In fact, 4e seems much more unforgiving in terms of how far you can continue to push yourself after your resources have been exhausted.

I admit that at 1st lv, a typical 3e party is much more fragile than a 4e party (for example, a 3e fighter has just 12hp, and an orc barb easily deals that much damage with a single blow). Past 3rd-5th lv, I felt that my 3e party could readily handle at least 4 encounters each day. It was not impossible to construct a party with nigh-infinite resources (binder, warlock/dragonfire adept, warblade, factotum) which could theoretically just go on adventuring forever without needing to stop to replenish their resources ever.

You should be able to run 4 equal level encounters in 3E without bigger problems, particularly once you added Wands of CLW. That was the baseline the CR system was build around!

In 3e, players had ready access to healing, such wands of CLW/vigor, binder5 with improved binding for buer etc, but people seemed to take offense to relying so extensively on magic gear.

I am not sure I take offense to using Wands of CLW, it's more I take offense to the idea that owning charged Wands of CLW means that the group is out of resources!

Of course, maybe it's not entirely inaccurate.
And try to run your 3E party with only Wands of Cure Light Wounds in a tough (EL = PL +3) encounter and see how well they fare when the wizard and clerics are out of their spells. It hurts. When you do not have any big guns (or big healings), you will get hammered by the opposition.

The Warlock was a cool class, but it couldn't replace a Wizard. Not because he lacked arcane spells, but because he lacked the big boom spells of Wizards. Be they Save or Die/Suck or massive area damage. All of them were crucial if you ran into a tough encounter with a Warlock instead of a Wizard or Sorcerer.

The key difference between 4E and 3E is:
After a tough fight in 3E, you have to rest, because there is nothing left in the Clerics and Wizards arsenal to even get you through regular encounters. Of course, Wands of CLW often provided a way to cheat yourself through such situations. Often, but not always. If you encounter a strong melee brute, you need healing now, not after the encounter.

After a tough fight in 4E, you can go on. Only if you run into the next tough encounter, you will find yourself overwhelmed. (Or if you just act stupid in a regular encounter, as usual.)

 

[Regicide]

People where seriously having problems in 3E with 1-encounter days? I never saw it. I think you people are making this stuff up. Players in 3E and 4E stop for exactly the same reason, they think that the next encounter is too risky if they don't.

Maybe 4E has easier encounters so players don't feel any reason not to stop? That must be it, since now with every class having dailies and AP which refresh on rest and once-per-day magic items there are many MORE reasons in 4E to only have 1-encounter days. Many MANY more. It's almost like 4E was designed to be 1-encounter days.

 

[Lacyon]

People where seriously having problems in 3E with 1-encounter days? I never saw it. I think you people are making this stuff up.

It happened. Not frequently, but it happened.

Players in 3E and 4E stop for exactly the same reason, they think that the next encounter is too risky if they don't.

3E makes it very easy to blow enough resources in a single fight that the next one is likely to wipe you out. When you got good players around the table, it didn't happen frequently, but it definitely did happen.

Maybe 4E has easier encounters so players don't feel any reason not to stop? That must be it, since now with every class having dailies and AP which refresh on rest and once-per-day magic items there are many MORE reasons in 4E to only have 1-encounter days. Many MANY more. It's almost like 4E was designed to be 1-encounter days.

As you said above, players typically stop to rest when they feel the next encounter is too risky. Since there's a limit in 4E to how much of a character's survivability (surges) that a character can use up in a single fight, and every class has abilities that recharge each encounter, players don't usually feel like they need to stop to rest after a single encounter even if they've blown a lot of their daily abilities.

 

[DreamChaser]

People where seriously having problems in 3E with 1-encounter days? I never saw it. I think you people are making this stuff up. Players in 3E and 4E stop for exactly the same reason, they think that the next encounter is too risky if they don't.

The issue with 3e was that there was no way to challenge the party in a way that didn't require them to pull out their big guns. A CR or above battle, could often only be beaten with higher level spells (at least until the splat books gave every wizard their most powerful spells at 1-3rd level...but that's another thread). So, either the encounter may as well have not happened cause those 15 CR-4 orcs had no chance of damaging you, or you blow your best resources to survive the CR+0 through +3 combat.

It wasn't universal but there was a huge pressure on the DM to monitory encounter power level. Because the power curve is flatter, there is less of this.


And for the record, Healing has *** ALWAYS *** been the thing that determines time to rest. In 3e, a party could (probably) survive the wizard being out of spells and falling back to his wand of magic missile, but chances are, the cleric is also out of healing spells and the others can not afford to use a standard action to drink a potion. Plus, the wand of cure light wounds doesn't really do much against creatures that routinely deal out 20-50 points of damage. At the end of a nova fight, the heroes may still have HP, but they are out of healing resources (cause the cleric has used all his spell power on other things)...so resting is virtually guaranteed.

Now, healing is a more universal resource found in locations other than the cleric. Ultimately, when the bulk of the party has run out of healing surges, they will chose to rest. Period. It doesn't matter if half of them still have their dailies. A daily you can't survive to use is pointless.


On the other hand, the point of this thread seems to be that some feel that wizards wrote a check that they failed to cash with the 15 min work day because there are no penalties to resting...only reduced benefits. Now that I understand this premise, I can honestly say that I disagree with it. And since every penalty (mostly storywise) that is brought up is labeled as cheesy or weak or a failure or something else (thus, ensuring that the OP remains forever right...which is cool...his choice), I feel it is time to politely bow out of the conversation.

DC

 

[Jhaelen]

I don't think this was ever the issue. Rather, it is how 4e supposedly claimed that PCs would not be limited to the 15-minute workday, yet the number of encounters they can handle each day seems no less limiting than in 3e. In fact, 4e seems much more unforgiving in terms of how far you can continue to push yourself after your resources have been exhausted.

I don't get it.

I admit that at 1st lv, a typical 3e party is much more fragile than a 4e party (for example, a 3e fighter has just 12hp, and an orc barb easily deals that much damage with a single blow). Past 3rd-5th lv, I felt that my 3e party could readily handle at least 4 encounters each day. It was not impossible to construct a party with nigh-infinite resources (binder, warlock/dragonfire adept, warblade, factotum) which could theoretically just go on adventuring forever without needing to stop to replenish their resources ever.

So, your point is, there's never been a '15-minute workday' in 3E (because you could theoretically create a particular, and imho pretty unrealistic party), but now in 4E, there suddenly is one, because you feel that a typical party cannot take 'at least 4 encounters'?

Forgive me if I get the feeling you
- aren't aware what's commonly meant by the term '15-minute workday'
- are completely off with your estimates about the number of typical encounters a typical party can handle in 4E

 

[Runestar]

So, your point is, there's never been a '15-minute workday' in 3E (because you could theoretically create a particular, and imho pretty unrealistic party), but now in 4E, there suddenly is one, because you feel that a typical party cannot take 'at least 4 encounters'?

My understanding of the term "15 minute workday" is that it refers to a party opting to stop and rest for the day after just 1 or 2 encounters, despite having the resources to take on more encounters. The most common reason given is the casters running out of spells (after spamming them like no tomorrow in said fight), and being reluctant to partake in another fight at anything less than full strength, but I feel that is not the sole reason. Casters just received the most flak because they were the ones with limited resources. But in reality, even fighters could be an offender, if he ran low on hp, and the party lacked resources to patch him up. It just seemed improbable because it is assumed that the party cleric is there to patch him up, but it can happen.

But now in 4e, even with at-will and encounter powers, there is still another limited resource that existed both in 3e and 4e - hp.

In 3e, the party stopped because the casters were out of spells. Now, in 4e, the party stops because one PC is out of surges, low on hp, and unable to access healing, and they are unwilling to risk a PC death due to some lucky hit/crit.

So no, I am simply saying that the 15-minute issue is still as much of an issue in 4e compared to 3e. But at least in 3e, steps could be taken to counteract this (in the form of consumable magic items such as wands, for instance). Yet in 4e, similar provisions cannot be made. If anything, 4e seems even more unforgiving in this aspect.

We just seemed to have exchanged one flaw for another. Nothing has really changed, IMO.

 

[luide]

So no, I am simply saying that the 15-minute issue is still as much of an issue in 4e compared to 3e. But at least in 3e, steps could be taken to counteract this (in the form of consumable magic items such as wands, for instance). Yet in 4e, similar provisions cannot be made. If anything, 4e seems even more unforgiving in this aspect.

We just seemed to have exchanged one flaw for another. Nothing has really changed, IMO.

I haven't played 3e too much, so can't really compare 4e to it. But my 4e experiences are quite different than yours.
I currently DM a campaign with 4 PC's: Dragonborn Paladin, Eladrin Rogue, Human Warlord and Elf Ranger. Have run KoTS and running Thunderspire Labyrinth atm, and have seen following:

Extended rests happen usually because of gametime running out after 3-4 encounters (less bookkeeping). This usually coincides with them finding good place to rest and character resources being pretty low with dailies spent, but even the rogue has 1-2 surges still left so they could still take on medium difficulty encounter without any real problems.

When surges are low, they're low on all players excluding the ranger who very seldom gets hit badly.

If party is running out of surges and being forced to rest, it is not a bad thing per se, it keeps the PC's from being Energizer bunnies who can take encounter after encounter after encounter....

But if you have situation where you're forced to rest because single character is out of surges, it means
a) PC tactics are poor or
b) DM tactics are poor.
PC tactics is the most likely culprit, for example if they allow the only defender take all damage, never trying to divert the opponents. Fault of players, not a fault in system.
Of course if DM decides to concentrate all attacks against one character in every encounter, that character will run out of surges long before others. Fault of DM, not a fault of system.

Of course healing surge mechanics are not perfect and I'm considering giving more bonuses for milestones (+1 healing surge for example).