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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4065111" data-attributes="member: 4937">Agreed.  Also, you can confront them with proactive enemies, who will take the fight to the PC's (or to something that they protect or care for) if the PC's don't take it to them.Are you suggesting that a spell-caster has used up all of his spells in 15-minutes, presumably in a single fight?  Well, if the DM is presenting the party with climatic 100% resource draining fights first thing every morning, I would say that that is the cause in itself of the 15 minute adventuring day.  But, for the most part I haven't experienced alot of fights that drain my spell-casters completely of spells.  I've rarely been completely empty in my 28 year career, and I can think of just a few times that its happened to players while I was DMing. Nothing stops a spellcaster from casting all of his spells in the first 15 minutes of the day, but if it does so, he shouldn't expect me to pause the game for him.If the spellcaster does run out of spells, that's the time to pull out the hard to renew consumable resources like wands and scrolls.  At lower levels, he can also do quite a bit of good with a crossbow or something similar, or in extremis by using aid other actions to assist his teammates/flanking foes, etc.No, the heart of the problem is hit points.  So long as you have hit points, you run the risk of '15 minute adventuring days'.The 15 minute adventuring day occurs whenever:a) The players achieve a certain level of system mastery.b) The players are under no time pressure.c) The players are willing to accept the 'gamist/metagamey' feeling that the '15 minute adventuring day' generates.I've seen 15 minute adventuring days in 1e with low level parties not particularly heavy in spellcasters, simply to get the rest period after each fight.  Vancian magic and other 'per day' resources do alot to contribute, but the fact that hit points are a 'per day' resource is the real heart of the problem in my experience.As long as you have hit points, players with sufficient system mastery and no time pressure will pretty much always tend toward a pattern of 'fight/rest/fight/rest/fight/rest'.  If you shorten the rest period, you end up with a different label, but you don't end up with a different pattern of play.  I think that if you present 4E characters with the same huge fight at the beginning of the day, they'll end up with more resources 10 minutes latter than they would in 3E, but they'll still rest if they are under no time pressure.And actually, once you factor things like abusing Wands of CLW, I'm not sure we have made any improvements to reduce the 15 minute adventuring day except perhaps better adventure design.</blockquote>

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