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

[Imaro]

Is it any good? LOL. Finally they're getting right to what adventuring is about.

Adventurers, the spec ops mercenaries of their genre. Who else would be crazy enough to adventure. I often contemplate how insane you would have to be to take up an adventuring career. I came to the conclusion that you would have to be a downright fearless madman to take up adventuring as a career.

Sure, guys like Frodo just get tossed into adventures. But for the mad fools that actually seek it out, to them do I attribute true madness. Just plum fools that choose to live a hard, gritty, dangerous life facing the most fearsome and evil creatures that lurk in the world as a profession.

Not sure if it's any good, but it's a new campaign setting being produced by Mongoose...there's a thread over on rpg.net about it. You're post just reminded me of it.

 

[Nifft]

Magic Items. These items have "daily" powers, but you can only access a limited number of them... but that number increases as you reach more "milestones".

Also, many higher-level magic items get better if you saved them to use after hitting a Milestone.

Psions were the worst cause of the 15-minute day, in any case.

Hush, you! Some of us were using [Psionic] feats to get Warlock-like staying power years before [Reserve] feats came on the scene.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Mercule]

Not sure why this post is directed at me. I'm not for the 15 minute adventuring day at all.

Sorry if it sounded snarky. I've been doing the final rebuilds on some code all day and just coming here for short breaks. You're hearing nothing more than a divided and worn attention span.

 

[The Little Raven]

Also, many higher-level magic items get better if you saved them to use after hitting a Milestone.

Are there any others besides rings? Rings were the only one I saw that got better on a milestone.

 

[Cadfan]

Also, rings suck until you reach a milestone, then they're great. You need at least a 3rd encounter to use one at full force.
Edit- ninja'd

 

[Vocenoctum]

That's right. The PCs behavior in this instance is perfectly reasonable, and intelligent both in-game and out.

Let's say, furthermore, that the adventure in question is a mummy's tomb; the outer chambers contain some low-level undead, and the main chamber is the final resting place of the mummy lord.

A DM who would arbitrarily deny the party the chance to retreat here is just being a jerk. So the party will retreat for the equally arbitrary but necessary 1 day, twiddle their thumbs, and then come back to finish the job.

It's just silly. If I'm going to handwave a day, I can just as easily handwave the daily requirement and refresh the party so that play can continue.

When I felt like pushing a party, plot wise, I'd usually time the encounters so they'd level in between. As a participating member of the "poof method" of advancement, I also had a house rule that when you leveled you regained all your hp and spells (old and new). Sure it lacked in verisimilitude or whatever, but it worked fine.


On another issue raised above:

"Defeat the BBEG" almost always works as a reasonable refresh milestone. In a typical dungeon crawl, I'll also refresh or add adventure resources whenever the players find the stairs to the next level, regardless of whether they need or use them at that time.

That could work fine, with planning, knowledge of the party, and a DM that can adjust on the fly.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Whether it's a 15-minute adventure day, or a 2-hour one (see my thoughts here), or a 4-hour one even, the bottom line is that healing surges will run out and force the party to rest in a period of in-game time which I consider to be unreasonably short.

The problem isn't a mechanical one, for me. I think the mechanics of the 4E system are lovely and elegant. On paper. They work great . . . if you're not trying to tell/co-create a story that makes any kind of consistent sense.

So, my players want or need to rest after just a few hours in the dungeon, after only defeating 20-30% of the enemies within, perhaps. I know that if they proceed, they'll die. They know it too. So what do I do?

I can just let them take the 16-20 hours in-game and rest, unmolested and with no negative consequences, completely disregarding any kind of logic as well as ignoring the glaring inconsistency this presents in comparison with any fantasy story that I'm aware of. That makes the game work best, and a lot of DMs probably do it, and thus have no problem.

Or, I can apply some kind of logical ramifications of the PCs busting into some lair of villains, killing a couple dozen of them, leaving many others alive, and then deciding to hole up in or near the dungeon for a LOT of hours to sleep. Surely they'll be discovered, surely an alarm will be raised, no?

Do I send monsters to attack them in their camp? This would probably actually happen frequently given the situation, but if I do it, the party probably dies. And it feels like punishing them for just doing what the system forces them to. That's no fun for anyone.

Do I instead have the alerted foes rally and bolster their defenses, thus making the rest of the dungeon harder than it was meant to be? Again, punishing the PCs for playing the way they're supposed to.

Do I give the PCs a motivation for pressing onward by having some kind of time limit or urgent situation which will result in tragedy if they delay? This is probably going to get them killed, unless I just make the adventure really easy. And how fun is that?

Do I contrive every adventure setup to include just a perfect amount of encounters, just perfect places to rest without screwing themselves, just perfect layouts of location to be ideally convenient for an adventure using the 4th edition D&D ruleset? That's not only a lot of work for me, it's also very fake-feeling, and ties my hands creatively quite a lot.

What about published adventures? With the exception of the really short ones like Kobold Hall and the RPGA 4-hour modules, running any kind of published dungeon is going to be practically impossible without running afoul of this problem, changing the modules a lot, or contriving completely absurd rationales all the time. "No, for some reason, all of the rest of the bandits in this bandit compound just never bother to go over to the area you cleared out, and don't notice the pile of bodies you left, or wonder where George is. You rest for 20 hours and come back to find everything as normal."

In 3rd edition, at least the PCs had craploads of wands and scrolls after about 4th or 5th level. Every Tom, Dick, and bugbear barbarian had a backpack full of cure x wounds wands, so running out of healing was sort of a non-issue. There were problems with this, and actually I'm really glad that they did away with it in 4E. I think the game is measurably better without all of that.

But it leaves us with this hole now where the PCs just don't have the hit point/healing resources to get through a full day of adventuring, and there's absolutely no way within the system to circumvent that, not even at 30th level. All that one can do is either deliberately run the game in a stupid, immersion-breaking, story-killing way that everyone at the table can sense is a bit silly . . . OR change the rules themselves, which brings up the whole concern of "Am I breaking the balance of the game's design with this change?"

I don't think it's insurmountable, I just wish that this issue had already been taken into account by the framers of the new rules.

I think there are several issues:
In 3E, it was possible to go on and on and on - if you had Wands of Cure Light Wounds, the casters refrained from using much spells, and if most of the encounters were easy enough that Fighter, Rogue and Cleric could deal with them relying on melee or ranged weapons. Problem: The fights will be boring to at least the spellcaster that's constantly holding back - and none of the non-spellcasters feel challenged, since they won't take much damage and can just waltz over their enemies.

In 4E, you hit the "healing surge" wall eventually. (The question might be.) If you removed healing surges per day, that problem would be solved.

But I think a better approach is to not have that many encounters in the first place. 4E assumes larger encounter areas and more monsters per encounter then 3E. That means you could reasonably create a "dungeon" containing only 3-6 encounters. And if the PCs decide to rest too early for your taste, you can probably risk sending one retaliatory strike against them - they still have all their encounter powers (and they still should have some healing surges).

If you use one patch of Minions per encounter, and one Elite per encounter, this gives you approximately 21 to 42 combatants per "dungeon" - that should be enough for most scenarios, without limiting your freedom to much.

Okay, it might not be the "Worlds Largest Dungeon", but that is probably not an issue - WLD doesn't assume you go through it one day, either.

---

All movies and novels with day-long battles usually only show "key scenes". If you want, you could use the same approach in D&D - only the interesting part of the battle are played out, and only for those you have to spend your resources. Of course, that's another stab against "simulation".

 

[delericho]

Also, many higher-level magic items get better if you saved them to use after hitting a Milestone.

If only that weren't so hideously and blatantly gamist, it would be a great mechanic.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If only that weren't so hideously and blatantly gamist, it would be a great mechanic.

I suppose that's one of the things that makes disbelief suspenders so strange.

Once you accept such an abstract and gamist concept as "hit points", you either:
- Don't care much any more and will accept other gamist mechanics.
- Think that has been enough and the rest better be more immersive.



EDIT: Note that people change how their disbelief suspenders work over time. I think I was fairly in the second camp when I started D&D (Hit Points? What is this nonsense? And what's with this vancian magic?), but well, I changed...

EDIT 2: Or did I? Because if I am dreaming off the "Ultimiate Game System As I Would Do It", I tend to prefer starting with a "simulationist" base and then layer a gamist system to compensate for the deadliness of the "real world"...

 

[delericho]

I suppose that's one of the things that makes disbelief suspenders so strange.

Once you accept such an abstract and gamist concept as "hit points", you either:
- Don't care much any more and will accept other gamist mechanics.
- Think that has been enough and the rest better be more immersive.

You're probably right. The thing is, though, that I find hit points to be a necessary evil: I've found that more realistic damage systems inevitably include a death spiral that can really destroy the fun of the game (combat becomes a matter of avoiding being hit at all costs - really not fun when my players are so risk-averse).

Besides, they do kinda sorta make a bit of sense from an action movie/Jack Bauer kind of way. In a bad light. If I squint a bit.

With milestones, though, there's not really that sort of analogue; they exist purely because the designers wanted some incentive for characters to press on. And despite this, regaining an Action Point on a milestone works - it makes sense that a character might feel a sense of accomplishment, and be envigorated to press on.

But the ring feels a sense of accomplishment and thus becomes more powerful?

I suppose it can be made to work - fluff text can be forced to justify just about any rules (perhaps they should shoot for a 'moment of epic destiny' thing, and encourage DM's to play the campaign theme music after the first milestone is reached, and make everything bigger and bolder from then). But it is really gamist, as I said, which is a shame, because otherwise it's a really good mechanic, as I also said.