Reframing the 15 min day

[olshanski]

The most effective way to get rid of the 15 minute day would be to give characters abilities that ramp up during combat and decline at rest...

Say that every combat gave your fighter a cumulative +1 attack bonus on future combats for the day... and your warlock got a cumulative +1 damage bonus on the eldritch blast... those characters would be encouraged to rampage around and get as much done as possible.

Now if you balanced it and gave the fighter and warlock each one or two "once per day" abilities... then they would have to balance between pressing onward for the increasingly greater bonuses... meanwhile they'd have to preserve their 1/day ability for when they really need it.

 

[shilsen]

The 15 minute day system from 3.5e obviously has its problems, but at the same time 4e will have its problems as well. Having a party of adventurers gain large numbers of levels because they can clear a dungeon in a single adventure, is, IMO, a problem.

The solution to both is in the DM's hands - careful encounter design, and catering to the limitations of the system. In 3.5e that might mean less encounters per day to the point where the PCs are never really caught completely without resource, and in 4e that'll mean limiting the number of encounters to make sure PCs don't level to fast or reach epic levels in one day. I think you'll find that despite the system, both approaches in either system will lead to the same thing.

I've never had this problem in 3e/3.5e, partly because I don't run dungeon crawls and usually only have 1 encounter in a given day and maybe 2-3 at most. I also do something which will obviate the problem you expect in 4e. I've completely divorced XP gain from combat and encounters (or anything else in-game, for that matter). So in 4e I expect that PCs in my game will do the same thing that they do now, i.e. advance at a speed I'm comfortable with and which lets me do the best job DMing that I can do.

 

[helium3]

So here's a tangential question.

Why is the 15 minute work day even a problem that needs to be "designed away?"

 

[roguerouge]

I think one way of "fixing" it in 3.x might be by allowing low level spells to "recharge", especially those spells that scale pretty well

...

One suggestion: Remove bonus spell slots. Instead, a spellcaster can prepare spells worth a number of spell levels equal to his Spellcasting Ability Modifier as a "per encounter" spell. These spells refresh after expirations and 1 minute of preperation. Alternatively, he may double the effectives spell cost to make a spell a "at will" spell.

Might really be interesting to test in-game.

Be prepared for howls of outrage from the players playing fighters. Removing the 15 minute day at the cost of making any wizard yet more powerful than the melee people is going to cause problems... or all-caster parties.

 

[WyzardWhately]

So here's a tangential question.

Why is the 15 minute work day even a problem that needs to be "designed away?"

Because, from a standpoint of versimilitude, it looks kind of lame. Honestly, I haven't seen it that much in my own games.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

My suggestion to solve this is by changing the XP value of encounters to be somewhat dependent on how many encounters the party has had that day. The first encounter is worth some fraction of its actual value, and the proportion actually awarded steadily increases. In this way, the party has a strong incentive to hold back their most powerful abilities in an attempt to go that extra mile.

Story reasons also work, of course, as can wandering monsters/random encounters.

But the question is: What do players do when their resources are depleted? That's inevitable. You can't get through an encounter for free. Fighter and Rogue lose hit points, Spellcasters lose spells. But the encounters where you don't lose a lot of resources are, well, cakewalks. They are okay sometimes (you don't want to forget that your're a powerful hero, right?)
But you can't take this away either. You don't want to go from 1st level to 20th level in 2 days.

You must find a middle ground between going forever and going too short.
3e assumed that an "average" encounter costs 25 % resources. (EL = PL). Unfortunately, unless the resource cost are very badly distributed, this means no one really feels challenged. No one gets near death or is out of spells. Several of these encounters in a row don't make the game much more interesting. The basic idea was sound from a mathematical point of view, but it isn't from a gamer psychology point of view.
The interesting encounters are those where a character gets close to death, where spell casters struggle to choose the right spell at the right time. In 3.x, these are the EL = PL +4 (or higher) encounters. Unfortunately, these encounters also mean that most resources are expended for the day, and it's time for rest.
Per encounter abilities allow you to deplete loads of your resources, but if you don't die, you can recover and go on.
Remaining per day powers are then needed to stop people from going on forever. There is still stuff that forces you to rest...

Why is the 15 minute work day even a problem that needs to be "designed away?"

If it's a problem, why shouldn't it be designed away? And if I don't want to build my adventures around the 15 minute work-day (either creating artifical incentives to avoid them, or creating encounters counting on it, but with little middle ground), they definitely are.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Be prepared for howls of outrage from the players playing fighters. Removing the 15 minute day at the cost of making any wizard yet more powerful than the melee people is going to cause problems... or all-caster parties.

Is longer going automatically more powerful, within any given encounter? At will Scorching Ray is pretty good, but how does it stack up against at will Greatsword +4?

But I agree. There must be some improvements in the non-spellcaster area. I think the Death and Dying rules and a Second Wind mechanic might be help somewhat. But there is probably need for more.

But I guess this just reinforces how to difficult it is to make isolated changes, and why 4E made not just sense for a business perspective..

 

[Noinarap]

My games have run into the accidental 15-minute day more often than the planned version. At low levels it's especially common. Sometimes the PCs get really hurt in 1 or 2 fights and they have to rest and recharge. I could push them further, but if they've used all their heals and some are still low on HP, I'm just not going to.

I've also had a few situations (mostly in the AD&D days) when the party was badly hurt, so we rested a day, used all the cleric's spells to heal, got bad rolls, rested another day, got healed up, and then rested a third day to get the cleric's spells back. This is probably more realistic, but it slows the game down a LOT and detracts from the sense of adventure.

No game can absolutely get rid of the 15-minute day. But if 4e creates fewer accidental ones and there is less of an incentive for deliberate ones, that's an improvement.

 

[WyzardWhately]

But the question is: What do players do when their resources are depleted? That's inevitable. You can't get through an encounter for free. Fighter and Rogue lose hit points, Spellcasters lose spells. But the encounters where you don't lose a lot of resources are, well, cakewalks. They are okay sometimes (you don't want to forget that your're a powerful hero, right?)
But you can't take this away either. You don't want to go from 1st level to 20th level in 2 days.

You must find a middle ground between going forever and going too short.
3e assumed that an "average" encounter costs 25 % resources. (EL = PL). Unfortunately, unless the resource cost are very badly distributed, this means no one really feels challenged. No one gets near death or is out of spells. Several of these encounters in a row don't make the game much more interesting. The basic idea was sound from a mathematical point of view, but it isn't from a gamer psychology point of view.
The interesting encounters are those where a character gets close to death, where spell casters struggle to choose the right spell at the right time. In 3.x, these are the EL = PL +4 (or higher) encounters. Unfortunately, these encounters also mean that most resources are expended for the day, and it's time for rest.
Per encounter abilities allow you to deplete loads of your resources, but if you don't die, you can recover and go on.
Remaining per day powers are then needed to stop people from going on forever. There is still stuff that forces you to rest...

I'm not sure if you're missing my point or not. Some people were raising the issue that, so long as there are abilities that DON'T recharge, there's not a mechanical reason not to blow your load in one or two fights and then clock out for the day.

I'm suggesting a mechanical fix to that that I think works well in a game where there is a mix of rechargeable and per-day powers. There is an incentive to use all your "good" abilities and then quit counterbalanced by an incentive to keep on trucking and try to get the bonus award - sort of like how some video games give you bonus items or points for setting up improbably large combos (I'm looking at you, Disgaea.)

It seems imperfect, but it at least puts something on the other side of the scales.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Why is the 15 minute work day even a problem that needs to be "designed away?"

Because it breaks the resource management game that D&D has been based on from 1974 to the present.

Admittedly there are other areas of resource management:
1) Actions in combat. One of the great things about 3e is that non-casters at last have meaningful decisions to make here too.
2) Spell memorisation.
3) Character build. Feats, magic items, spells known, classes/PrCs.
4) Action points - Eberron and Unearthed Arcana.

But an important part, particularly in OD&D->2e, when to cast your spells, is removed by the 15 min day.