Resting in the dungeon

[Saeviomagy]

Lemme see.

Od&d.

Before I'd ever played a CRPG.

I remember that we rested every time the magic user expended his only spell, simply to avoid making it a crappy game for him. I can't imagine why he would have been given a single spell every day if we weren't meant to do that.

So yeah - the point of D&D has always been to crusade onwards, never resting or recuperating, and CRPGs have ruined all that. I totally agree with your point.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Of course, a good DM will consider adding safe zones to a dungeon that will allow the PCs to rest when necessary.

 

[Greylock]

Cool beans. Nice to see we agree.

For truth, my party always pushes the absolute boundaries of what we can or cannot do. It makes the game more fun, IMO anyways. If there is not some sense of danger or imminent death, what good is the reward?

And, FWIW, I play a lot of CRPGs, and see resting instead of retreating and regrouping, or rethinking strategy, as part and parcel of how a newcomer treats gaming.

 

[cmanos]

Keep track of time. Clerics pray for spells at a particular time of day. If they choose dawn, they can't get spells back until dawn. Even if they rest from 10am-6pm and pray, they won't be able to get their spells back til dawn...12 hours later.

Odds are, if a Wizard has only been awake for 6 hours or so, they aren't going to be able to get a good 8 hours rest needed to relearn spells.

It's 'Spells per day" not "spells per waking period"

 

[fusangite]

I hear you. The last D&D campaign I ran, a couple of players would just decide it was time for the party to go to sleep as soon as they started to run low on spells; often, this would take place after less than two hours of actual adventuring. A few thoughts in hindsight about how I could have handled it better: (a) not allowing non-elves to will themselves to sleep after being awake for only a few hours -- perhaps a DC18 or DC20 Con check is in order to get characters to fall asleep a mere 2 hours after awakening; (b) pegging divine casters' renewal conditions to the natural 24 hour day -- ie. time of day is the actual time of day, not the character's own personal clock; (c) only allowing hit point recovery through rest once every 24 hours.

 

[Zappo]

Fusangite, ability to sleep is not an issue. A 3.x edition spellcaster's daily spells are daily spells. You don't prepare them every time you rest. You prepare them at most every 24 hours, and you have to rest beforehand.

You can't prepare your spells at 8 AM, fight until 10 AM, rest until 6 PM, and then prepare them again. You'd have to sit down until it's 8 AM again, at least. Also, preparing spells takes one hour, so when you rest you rest for 9 hours at least.

As for resting in a dungeon... imagine breaking into a military base, guns blazing, killing off a bunch of soldiers, blowing up a humvee or two - and then picking a random room and expecting not to be disturbed for 9 hours. That's so absurd it doesn't even make sense.

In any inhabited place, people are going around all the time and you'd have to look pretty hard to find a place where six people could stay for 9 hours without being discovered. Especially if they have made their presence known.

Now, some dungeons are so huge and sparsely populated that one might actually be able to stay for a significant length of time without being found; and some parties are so good that they can actually kill off a third of the place's inhabitants without the rest noticing for many hours. Some dungeons are populated by non-sentient creatures, who won't usually actively look for the PCs until they are personally attacked or unless they just happen to stumble onto them.

But in the majority of cases, the "interruptions" in a hostile enemy base would be measured in minutes. Resting in a dungeon with a significant number of hostiles is simply nonsense. Can you picture a burglar breaking into your house while you're in the bathroom, shooting your roommate, and then sleeping on the kitchen's table for 8 hours without you noticing anything?

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

My group used to love doing that too. The would use Rope Trick or some other magical hut spell and rest away. Then they would complain when I would have the baddies attack thier base.

Whiney PC's - "This is BS! How did they know we are here?"
Me - "Well the large stone house that has appeared in the middle of this cavern may have given you away."

 

[jodyjohnson]

For us it's partly a role-playing issue.

It's too easy from a player's standpoint to put your character through torture, unpleasant weather/conditions, and long boring periods of time, especially in very cramped quarters.

Although we never play it out, it's easy to forget that characters should probably hit the bushes every now and then for a bio break.

I have a hard time imagining that a group of hard-driving adventurers would last more than a couple hours crammed into a Rope Trick 'resting' a mere hour or two after getting up for the day.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Keep track of time. Clerics pray for spells at a particular time of day. If they choose dawn, they can't get spells back until dawn. Even if they rest from 10am-6pm and pray, they won't be able to get their spells back til dawn...12 hours later.

Odds are, if a Wizard has only been awake for 6 hours or so, they aren't going to be able to get a good 8 hours rest needed to relearn spells.

It's 'Spells per day" not "spells per waking period"

IME most cleric players just pray at dawn. They either don't know they have an option, or they want to maintain party cohesion by not pulling out in the middle of the day to do so.

"Empty room, right? Give me 15 minutes."

It also means they can't mock the wizard for not sleeping first. (Serious, IME, the clerics never take watch and complain if their sleep is interrupted, even though it's not on hard on them as for a wizard.)

Plus, praying in the morning makes things easier on the DM. "Alright, so we've been facing fire giants in these mountains this morning. I know what my spells are going to be today."

 

[Henry]

My players are pretty capable about this issue; they make sure that any major threats or opposition is cleared anywhere nearby before picking a place to rest. They know that if they don't, someone will come calling at a bad time (because they know ME. ) A lot of times, they STIR UP TROUBLE just to see what comes from nearby. When they are reasonably sure there are no other bad things, they pick a defensible spot, or a spot with more than one exit, and preferably near the main exit, in case things get hairy.

Superfly, I would actually make things HARDER, not easier, to remind them they're still in a dangerous place, but I would also remind them that there are exits out of the dungeon/compound/etc. and that discretion is a part of valor, too.

P.S. It's not nice to circumvent the profanity filter.