Resting in the dungeon

[TheAuldGrump]

Heh, I remember my players in one game doing this... they were very upset when the monsters chained the door shut and then cast Wizard Lock on the door. And while the Magic User (yes, this was back in first) had Knock in his book at home base he hadn't 'wasted' a page for it in his travelling spellbook... They had food for 3 days, and about a pint of water each. As far as I know their bones still rest in that chained up room.

The Auld Grump

 

[Klaus]

My 3-PC party is currently storming Nightfang Spire. They rest inside the dungeon, using Stone Shape to seal doorways and using a hound archon (lesser planar ally) as a sentinel (outsiders don't need to sleep).

The game is already dragged out (and too infrequent) without me throwing wandering monsters at 'em. Matter of fact, I can't remember ever using wandering monsters...

 

[cmanos]

True, but by the same token, odds are that if you put it to your players like this, they will respond by saying "okay, we sit in the empty room until we're all nice and tired, and its only eight hours before dawn, and then we'll sleep".

OK so not only are they resting for 8 hours before dawn their sitting around in a high threat area for 10 hours before they rest?

I'd love to have you as a player....I can guarantee those tactics would get you and your party in a serious world of hurt...

Empty room doesn't mean unenterable room. Monster doesn't mean untactical. You want to assault the monster's stronghold, find an empty room, and expect them not to A) come find you and harrass you B) set up traps and ambushes C) evacuate the women, children and valuables?

 

[Janx]

What few people have talked about is encounter management.

How many encounters are they going through before they decide to rest.

Assuming each encounter in a dungeon is the same CR as the party level, then it's the old 1/5th of resources consumed effect. That means after 5 encounters, they're pretty worn out.

The problem with a dungeon is, it can easily have more encounters than that. Yet it's not really safe to stop and rest in one. So knowing that, the party is going to have to stop sometime. Given walking time, killing time and looting time, you can easily clear out 5 rooms by mid-morning. Then what? The party's tired, and they've got 20 hours until spells refresh.

Now I don't know if the party in question is stopping earlier than this or not.

This is a predictable problem for any party. There's a limit to how many encounters they can actually take before they need rest. As a GM, it might be a good idea to estimate when this will occur and pace the adventure accordingly.

One formula might be, take party level times 4 and that's how many CR's total you get to use before you let them rest.

Granted, a dungeon is tricky to apply that formula which MIGHT work in a more linear game. But then, dungeon crawling adventures have a slew of challenges to running them well. Perhaps the point is, avoid doing them. While a D&D staple, they're not entirely realistic or practical to justify their existance.

 

[tylerthehobo]

Fair and Balanced Dungeons...

I know that to an extent I'm a softie, but I always try to design my dungeons with at least one safe haven to rest per 2 levels - usually it's hidden and requires either a decent Search roll or a high Spot roll. If you make it so that the players have to leave the dungeon every time they get beat (no matter how realistic this may be), I find that it tends to have a video-gamey meta-gaming element to it. "Okay, we've cast our spells. RETREAT to the temple! Let's just waltz back in tomorrow and pick up where we were!" That said, when my players decide to do that, I'm CERTAIN to make sure that some beasties from the lower levels came up to the higher levels of the dungeon to see where their scouts/friends/foot-soldiers went... Nothing like the surprise of a party finding a drow war party in the same place where they had attacked kobolds the previous day.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Assuming each encounter in a dungeon is the same CR as the party level, then it's the old 1/5th of resources consumed effect. That means after 5 encounters, they're pretty worn out.

By the book definition after 5 encounters they would be dead. Their resources include hit points. That's why the recommendation is 4 encounters between rests.

The problem with a dungeon is, it can easily have more encounters than that. Yet it's not really safe to stop and rest in one. So knowing that, the party is going to have to stop sometime. Given walking time, killing time and looting time, you can easily clear out 5 rooms by mid-morning.

When going commando style they can clear 5 rooms in 3 minutes or less.

This is a predictable problem for any party. There's a limit to how many encounters they can actually take before they need rest. As a GM, it might be a good idea to estimate when this will occur and pace the adventure accordingly.

I think it's a hold over from the very beginning where an adventure site has way too many encounters and an illogical array of creatures living together in very close quarters.

For a lair type location that would have more than 4 encounters (or the equivalent) then the key would be to avoid the majority of them.

 

[Davelozzi]

True, but by the same token, odds are that if you put it to your players like this, they will respond by saying "okay, we sit in the empty room until we're all nice and tired, and its only eight hours before dawn, and then we'll sleep".

I'd love to have you as a player....I can guarantee those tactics would get you and your party in a serious world of hurt...

I never said these were my tactics, I was just guessing that this was a likely response to telling the players "sorry, you're not tired enough to sleep yet" or something similar.

Frankly, I never play D&D a player, I'm always the DM*. My players sometimes rest in dungeons, but only in secure areas**, not just behind a closed door in an otherwise monster infested area. I would throw monsters at them if the situation warranted it, but frankly I haven't found it to be a problem anyway.

*When I am a player, in other games, this generally isn't an issue as we're rarely in a confined environment like a dungeon, and usually one combat encounter is set off from another by extended time lapse anyway. But when it's not we don't force a rest where it doesn't belong.

**Example from Forge of Fury,which I'm currently running (spoilers ahead):

Spoiler

The party did not camp inside at all until they had completely cleared both the orc and trog areas. Now they've taken the Mountain Door (orc area) as their base camp. The dragon can't fit up there (older, bigger dragon as I'm running it for a higher level group). The gricks are dead, and the duergar don't know about the party, but the party knows (from interrogating the orcs) that the duergar had a stalemate with the other groups, and generally stick to their own area. And if worse comes to worse, they have guards posted anyway.

 

[D+1]

Man, how quick can they run through HP and spells? Are they blowing every bit they have on every 2 bit encounter? You really need to rough them up at their rest, like the others say. I'd go nuts playing in such a party. I can't imagine DMing them.

I would ask what kind of game are YOU running? I can't imagine playing in it.

Consider a 14-room dungeon. That's 14 encounters (unless you enjoy a LOT of empty dungeon rooms. If they average out to being roughly equal to the party's level then not only will the party have needed to rest they will need to LEVEL UP! Each equal-level encounter is supposed to use up 20% (25%) of party resources. If you aren't designing a lot of weak encounters into your dungeons/adventures then after only 4 rooms (that is, 4 encounters) they are faced with a choice of rest and recover or go into the next room with an excellently improved chance of catastrophe.

Now consider a dungeon with 20 rooms. 30 rooms...

 

[Twinswords]

Well, my party will ussually sleep in the room that had a monster that normally wouldn`t be distrubed. You know the haunted room, the cranky drow wizard. that sort of room. Scouts don`t useally check those out because the occupants would normally kill them. And if a scout checks it well, dead scout. But that would be nothing new. If this is not an option we ussually use highly defensable rooms and a few simple traps.

Twinswords

 

[Greylock]

I would ask what kind of game are YOU running? I can't imagine playing in it.

I am not a DM, just a player. But our party in the 15+ sessions of our current campaign has yet to rest in a dungeon. When our resources are low, or when our fannies have been handed to us, we retreat. Regroup and rethink our strategy, as I said above. Yes, this means that sometimes the dungeons denizons regroup and rethink as well. On occasion this has made things a battle of attrition.

It just me, and my fellow gamers feel likewise. We just don't like sleeping in dungeons. Your mileage may vary.

[Leveling up in a dungeon? Okey-fine, if it works for you.]