The 15 min. adventuring day... does 4e solve it?

[Obryn]

Since the 15-minute workday is a group issue as much as it is a mechanical issue, no system can completely stamp it out. If your group either insists on always being at full strength before any encounter; or if the DM continually presents overwhelming, resource-sapping encounters, you'll see brief periods of adventuring followed by long stretches of recovery.

4e has moderated the effect somewhat, though, in two big ways.

(1) Whereas in 3.5, a Wizard or Cleric's high-level spells were devastating - including huge damage and save-or-lose spells - 4e's characters don't have anything nearly so mind-blowing. At higher levels in 3.5, DMs and designers had to walk a narrow line - if the spellcasters still had all their big blammies, an encounter could be too easy; while if they didn't, an encounter could be overwhelming.

(2) In 4e, even if a party does blow all of its dailies in one encounter, they are still at 80% or so effectiveness, rather than 50% or less. It's likely healing surges that will drive any decision to rest, not character abilities.

I suppose you could put milestones in here, too - but since you can only use 1 action point per encounter, they do less than I'd expected.

-O

 

[Imaro]

Since the 15-minute workday is a group issue as much as it is a mechanical issue, no system can completely stamp it out. If your group either insists on always being at full strength before any encounter; or if the DM continually presents overwhelming, resource-sapping encounters, you'll see brief periods of adventuring followed by long stretches of recovery.

4e has moderated the effect somewhat, though, in two big ways.

(1) Whereas in 3.5, a Wizard or Cleric's high-level spells were devastating - including huge damage and save-or-lose spells - 4e's characters don't have anything nearly so mind-blowing. At higher levels in 3.5, DMs and designers had to walk a narrow line - if the spellcasters still had all their big blammies, an encounter could be too easy; while if they didn't, an encounter could be overwhelming.

(2) In 4e, even if a party does blow all of its dailies in one encounter, they are still at 80% or so effectiveness, rather than 50% or less. It's likely healing surges that will drive any decision to rest, not character abilities.

I suppose you could put milestones in here, too - but since you can only use 1 action point per encounter, they do less than I'd expected.

-O

I don't agree with point 2...how are you at 80% effectiveness, if you only have one healing surge left? This is where I think the designers may have dropped the ball.

When we were getting the previews for 4e this line was accepted as what was to be the "truth" of 4e. It caused many arguments over whether 4e was going to be a cakewalk, mostly because it was a misleading and ultimately false statement. Hit Points are part of a characters effectiveness and since they don't continuously reset to 80% of their total after every encounter...PC's are in fact not at 80% effectiveness after every encounter. In fact I would say this is further complicated by the fact that there is a role based around soaking up the most damage, how are hit points not part of a Fighter or Paladins effectiveness... I'd argue they are integral to it.

 

[Obryn]

I don't agree with point 2...how are you at 80% effectiveness, if you only have one healing surge left? This is where I think the designers may have dropped the ball.

You're misreading what I wrote.

I said they're at 80% effectiveness without their daily powers - and that healing surges will, in fact, drive the resting cycle.

-O

 

[Imaro]

NOTE: I do agree the workday is driven by healing surges, just not that upon using their dailies a party is at 80% effectiveness for the encounters afterwards. Or more so the way it is stated and used most of the time is misleading. In a perfectly controlled environment, where no hit points are lost in a battle and dailies are spent, I guess it could be true...but in a practical, at the table sense I think it's a misleading statement.

 

[Obryn]

NOTE: I do agree the workday is driven by healing surges, just not that upon using their dailies a party is at 80% effectiveness for the encounters afterwards. Or more so the way it is stated and used most of the time is misleading. In a perfectly controlled environment, where no hit points are lost in a battle and dailies are spent, I guess it could be true...but in a practical, at the table sense I think it's a misleading statement.

The thing with healing surges is that you can only access so many of them per combat, unless you have a very strange party makeup with tons of Clerics and Warlords.

For most parties, there will be little difference between when a single character has 3 surges vs. 12 surges for any given encounter. Things get a little dicey when a primary combatant has 2 or less, and very dicey when anyone has 0.

So, I disagree that a party that's used a few surges (but all their dailies) is operating at less than 80% efficiency. You can hardly count resources you can't use when looking at your effectiveness for any single encounter.

-O

 

[Imaro]

The thing with healing surges is that you can only access so many of them per combat, unless you have a very strange party makeup with tons of Clerics and Warlords.

For most parties, there will be little difference between when a single character has 3 surges vs. 12 surges for any given encounter. Things get a little dicey when a primary combatant has 2 or less, and very dicey when anyone has 0.

So, I disagree that a party that's used a few surges (but all their dailies) is operating at less than 80% efficiency. You can hardly count resources you can't use when looking at your effectiveness for any single encounter.

-O

This doesn' take into account the fact that you can spend as many as you want before going into combat as long as there is a 5 min break. There's a big difference in effectiveness between a character who has healed up to full hp's versus one that has only healed up to half his normal amount before fighting... so it still has bearing on a characters effectiveness, not to mention healing potions, as well as those Cleric and Paladin powers that require someone to spend one of their healing surges (which can be used in combat ), etc.

So no, I don't believe in determining a characters effectiveness these things can be disregarded.

 

[Scribble]

In my experience (thus far) Yes and no/

Daily powrs are great, and make an encounter a bit easier, but they aren't "needed" to win the encounter.

With standard attack powers, and encounter powers, every player has "something" they can do that allows them to take part in the encounter.

This is where I saw the majority of the issues in 3e for the 15 minute workday. Once the spellcasters (mainly wizard) had depleted their spells, they were left with very little they could do in the encounter. (I don't see hitting someone 5% of the tme with a staff as meaningful.)

In 4e evena wizard's standard attack has a relatively decent chance of hitting.

So from a power's perspective they fixed things. That said, however, I'm still seeing the issue crop up with Healing Surges... Once those are depleted, attraction of "resting" shows up.

My group doesn't have a cleric, so their healing surges tend to get depleted faster.

I'm thinking more use of action points could be a good house rule?

IE once you're down to 0 healing surges, you can start spending action points to gain an extra surge? (obviously there should be a limit to this though.)

 

[jgbrowning]

This isn't true of any game which determines effectiveness in part on non-mechanical terms. It might be mechanically advantageous to wait 12-18 hours to fully recharge your powers for maximum effectiveness, but not if the cost of your delay is the destruction of the village you were supposed to protect while you were idle. Your delay was not the most effective way to save the village.

Time is a variable placed upon the recharge to create situations in which resting doesn't provide the favored outcome. In other words, it's a way to mitigate the mechanical bias of the system to promote alternate forms of optimal behavior.

The system still favors resting over not resting when there are no other variables.

The only way, IMO, to avoid the resting issue is to have all powers be at-will and have all combatants return to 100% after every battle.

joe b.

 

[Obryn]

This doesn' take into account the fact that you can spend as many as you want before going into combat as long as there is a 5 min break. There's a big difference in effectiveness between a character who has healed up to full hp's versus one that has only healed up to half his normal amount before fighting... so it still has bearing on a characters effectiveness, not to mention healing potions, as well as those Cleric and Paladin powers that require someone to spend one of their healing surges (which can be used in combat ), etc.

So no, I don't believe in determining a characters effectiveness these things can be disregarded.

At most, it takes 3 healing surges to get to 75%+ of your starting HPs. If you have a cleric and an extra 20 minutes or so, it takes even less. I don't think any character will have less than 6, and the beefier characters could have 12+.

It's no wand of cure light wounds, mind you. But it's not like PCs are spending 6 after every combat.

-O

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

The only way, IMO, to avoid the resting issue is to have all powers be at-will and have all combatants return to 100% after every battle.

Which, in my opinion, isn't all that bad a suggestion...

I'd almost go so far as to say that 4e's resource management, even as greatly relaxed as it is, is only there to be faithful to a sacred cow that escaped.

EDIT: A "return to 100% after every fight" style of game would feel even more like Champions (or any other supers game).