Stopping the "extended rest after every encounter"

[Fate Lawson]

[RANT]
Every time I see one of these threads I wonder what happened to the idea of being the

HEROES

of the story.

Seems as though some folks are too afraid of "losing the game"

By Gygax's Grey Beard, you should smack 'em upside their heads with the PHB and point out the back cover.

"THE WORLD NEEDS HEROES"

Not a bunch of chicken****s that are afraid of their own shadows and cry over hangnails.

[/Rant]

That being said, if you need yet more rules to reenforce heroic play, perhaps you could try this as a house rule.

Healing Surges and Daily's don't automatically reset after an extended rest, but rather "recharge" like monster abilities. If you only have one encounter between rests the recharge is on a

2 encounters

3 Encounters


Then again, if you can't do it by adding rules, maybe you should just start having the story proceed without the characters. Maybe a group of actual heroes is on the same adventure. While your players are sitting on their duffs, the real adventurers are defeating the Bad Guys and reaping the rewards. So when your players get to the encounters all they find is dead monsters and empty chests. Then when they return to town the can witness those other guys being feted and getting the wine, women and songs.

 

[Starfox]

They need to get their clothes warm and get to know what they can do. Low-level scenarios generally work like this; there is no real time pressure, and you can rest as much as you like. Gives the PCs a feeling of control. Later, when they are more confident in their abilities, they might decide to progress further in one go, and you can introduce plot elements like time limits and such.

In other words, don't do anything. Use RAI and let them set the pace and learn the ropes.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

You end up either spending (wasting) hours of play on "Teach 'em a lesson for trying to rest" fights that do nothing to advance the plot and aren't interesting,

OR you end up with a "Oh well you took too long, the bad guys succeeded in their thing, too bad, they win and everybody hates you for failing" situation which is very anticlimactic*.

My expereince is that an active world is richer and more involvling than one where you can hit the [sleep till healed] button anytime you are not at full capacity.

I am sure its not just you, but perhaps your attitude towards the scenarios changes the outcomes.

For instance, change '(wasting) hours of play...' to 'run challenging combats that show that the world is not a static place like many MMORPS'. Do they advance the plot? Nope. Can they be fun? absoutely.
Change 'Oh well you took too long...' to 'While you attempted to gather forces, the evil necromancer gathered the critical ingredients to an ancient ritual! You learn that the ritual has to be conducted under the light of the autumn moon, which is three days hence!'
Sounds like a recipe for a new plot line and fits into the story line as the defeat your heroes rise up from.

I have run many games where the players took the game in a completely different direction than I thought it would go. Both intentionally and by delaying/going the wrong way. In every case, the active world ended up with a better game experience than the static world.

YMMV {depending alot on your group and playstyle }

 

[keterys]

There've been a few threads about this... in one I suggested not having daily attack powers recharged by an extended rest but require not only an extended rest but also an encounter, each. So every encounter you do, you get one daily attack back. Takes away a lot of the alpha strike possibilities. Course, people will only need to do at most 4-5 encounters to get access to everything, but... that seems reasonable.

 

[Tuft]

Heh!

I pretty much predicted this would happen in a lot of group when I saw that everybody was getting daily powers in the previews, and that the dailies was the most powerful stuff, not the rarest, most special or most situational powers.

Face it:

• You want to be able to use your most powerful stuff as often as you can. I think it is very rare not to have even the tiniest urge to show-off.
• It is tiresome and feels kind of cheating to meta-game; to try to analyze the structure and build of the scenarios to identify which encounter is which, and manage your resources according to that. "Is this the climatic encounter or just a warm-up? Or even just a false climax to sap our resources?" It's not assessing each encounter, its assuming this is a standard-plot story and second-guessing the writer.

One comment is telling: "It is recommended that you take an extended rest when someone starts running out of healing surges. Nice, that means that if I have a low Con, we need to rest more often, and that means I get to use my dailies more!"

The solution? Well, if your players are into that kind of meta-gaming, I think the only way to stomp it out is to house-rule out dailies... A DM-player war has few winners.

 

[bardolph]

Anyone got any suggestions short of sledge hammer house rules to prohibit my PCs from idling around for half a day after each encounter to regain daily powers and healing surges?

I think they should be capable of doing at least 3 if not 4 encounters per day, and have implied that they will get ambushed if they camp excessively.

Right now though they're right outside a major town (doing KotS), so they had one encounter, went in and rested (which I could believe plotwise, since they spent most of the day exploring town and meeting NPCs), came out, had another encounter, in which they used one daily, one action point, and one character used half his healing surges. We stopped there for the night, but I'm already expecting them to turn back inside and wait around until they can take a rest again. I can't very well ambush them inside town without destroying the plot.

My players have the opposite problem. They insist on NOT resting until at least one of them is on the verge of death

If you want a positive incentive for fast completion, introduce sub-plots that net them extra XP if they complete the scenario quickly. For example, Farmer Bob's favorite goat was kidnapped (get it? "kid"-napped?) and the kobolds intend to sacrifice it. If the players rescue the goat before it dies, give them a tidy little reward for it.

If you "punish" the players by giving them more combat, you are actually reinforcing their cautious behavior, since the players end up having a "full tank of gas" every time they get jumped, and will insist on resting up so that they can survive the next ambush!

 

[Leatherhead]

Right now though they're right outside a major town (doing KotS), so they had one encounter, went in and rested (which I could believe plotwise, since they spent most of the day exploring town and meeting NPCs), came out, had another encounter, in which they used one daily, one action point, and one character used half his healing surges. We stopped there for the night, but I'm already expecting them to turn back inside and wait around until they can take a rest again. I can't very well ambush them inside town without destroying the plot.

Quick question: What class was the character who was down to half of their healing surges playing and exactly how many surges did they have left?

 

[nittanytbone]

I'm all in favor of playing the baddies smart, but it can create a vicious cycle.

PROBLEM: After a moderate or tough encounter, the players burn through too many resources (healing surges, dailies, etc) and go rest.

The monsters take advantage of the time to reinforce their numbers, make traps, etc. Basically, they make the next day's encounter more difficult.

So, the PCs face an even tougher encounter, burn through their resources again, and then need to rest!

Its a vicious cycle.

What works better, I think, is to make the PCs aware of the actions of the foe. If they know that the enemies will reinforce or whatnot in X days, there will be a timeline and they can plan their actions accordingly. Additionally, mild diseases can give time pressure -- the PCs need to defeat the foe/get the cure before their diseases progress too far.

 

[bardolph]

I'm all in favor of playing the baddies smart, but it can create a vicious cycle.

PROBLEM: After a moderate or tough encounter, the players burn through too many resources (healing surges, dailies, etc) and go rest.

The monsters take advantage of the time to reinforce their numbers, make traps, etc. Basically, they make the next day's encounter more difficult.

So, the PCs face an even tougher encounter, burn through their resources again, and then need to rest!

Its a vicious cycle.

Bingo.

Additionally, the PCs are actually being rewarded for their cautious play by getting higher-XP-value encounters!

Bold players should be rewarded with greater payouts for faster completion. This should consist of bonus XP, more treasure, etc. That way, characters are rewarded for bravery rather than cowardice.

Imagine, for example, characters who take the "cautious" approach and, instead of finding a tougher boss encounter worth more XP, why not let the baddie escape, and give the characters an anticlimactic encounter with a couple of garrison guards and no treasure? That might motivate them.

 

[Starfox]

My experience is that an active world is richer and more involving than one where you can hit the [sleep till healed] button anytime you are not at full capacity.

While I do agree with a lot of the things you said in this post, there is a problem with the idea above that needs attention. If players cannot reliably rest after encounters, they cannot take on risky encounters. Even if they do win, they will be so depleted that a random encounter can wipe them out. This can create a snail-paced game where you have to plan and scout for hours before any major undertaking.

Basically, "random" encounters are plot elements too. Use them to build tension and create drama, not to make your players paranoid and defensive.