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

[Foundry of Decay]

So far we haven't had a solitary 15-minute work day under 4e. It was a slight problem with us in older editions due to spells running dry (especially healing).

As it is, three campaigns haven't seen the characters once have to hole up in a room in a dungeon while the monsters wandered around like idiots not noticing them. They tend to go from the front door to the end of the place in one go. Even if they blew their dailies earlier on.

The only factor that really pauses our group is healing surges. Once the group is low on those we'd decide to stop. However it hasn't come up yet due to relatively short dungeons.

That's our experience anyway.

 

[Remathilis]

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: My last 4e session had a group of 3-4 adventurers from levels 1-2 (leveling midway) go through six encounters (levels 1-3) before stopping to rest. If the leader PC had been there the second session, they might not have even needed to rest then! I'm sure my 3.5 PCs would have had to rest at least once in between; just for spells and hp. With 4e, they took 5 short rests and 1 extended before finishing the whole dungeon. That's impressive.

(Esp since my last 3.5 game was Castle Ravenloft: where 6 PCs averaged 3 rooms per day in Strahd's castle before casting Modekainen's Spectacular Savegame and needing to heal).

 

[DM_Jeff]

This is one of thosae things I've only heard about on line and never seen in any game I've been part of.

Huh, yeah, whaddaya know, me too.

-DM Jeff

 

[Imaro]

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: My last 4e session had a group of 3-4 adventurers from levels 1-2 (leveling midway) go through six encounters (levels 1-3) before stopping to rest. If the leader PC had been there the second session, they might not have even needed to rest then! I'm sure my 3.5 PCs would have had to rest at least once in between; just for spells and hp. With 4e, they took 5 short rests and 1 extended before finishing the whole dungeon. That's impressive.

(Esp since my last 3.5 game was Castle Ravenloft: where 6 PCs averaged 3 rooms per day in Strahd's castle before casting Modekainen's Spectacular Savegame and needing to heal).

I just wanted to bring something up about your example...you had PC's that were levels 1 and 2...and used level 1-3 encounters... all standard encounters for their level. According to the 3.5 DMG a party of PC's should be able to handle about 3 challenging encounters along with a few easy challenges (maybe 2 or 3) this seems comparable to your example above. So is this really that big of a difference? Or did 3e not really work out that way? IME, it's always been up to the DM and PC's.

 

[AllisterH]

Hmm?

The 3.x ruleset indicates that a PC party can go through 4 CR encounters per day.

The first two tended to be relatively easy while the last one was challenging. Im not sure one can compare encounters across editions...

 

[delericho]

Except for the "You can't benefit from an extended rest more than once in a 12-hour period" rule on page 263.

This really won't help, since if the party want to rest, they'll hole up for as long as is necessary. And if the DM discourages this by throwing additional encounters at them, that will just delay them getting back to the 'real' adventure even longer.

With that restriction, plus the incentives from milestones (action points and magic item daily uses), I've found it more difficult to get my group to agree to a rest.

The use of milestones, on the other hand, should strongly encourage players to carry on and, in doing so, it should also encourage them to ration their 'big gun' powers somewhat better.

In 3e, I only ever saw the 15-minute day when the first encounter was so threatening that it literally drained every resource that the PCs have. In 4e, if the first encounter of the day drains all the party's healing surges and daily powers, then I fully expect they would likewise go for the 15-minute day. That being the case, having never really seen the problem except in extreme cases, I can't comment on whether 4e really does improve it... but the rules certainly do seem to be an improvement.

 

[Vocenoctum]

And you do realize that "Extended Rest, Encounter, Extended Rest" was what I was addressing, right, since the 15-minute workday is all about using up all your necessary resources within 15-minutes of getting up? And that with the limitation, you can't just do that anymore, since there is 12 hours between the end of the first rest, and the beginning of the second, which would make it 18 hours between encounters.

In 3e, a cleric regained spells at dawn. If they were waiting 23 hours before, 18 hours isn't a difference.

If players want to waste 18 hours of in-game time between each encounter because they're afraid of running at 80% effectiveness in a second encounter, then I'd recommend a game more suited to that playstyle... like Candyland or Solitaire. No threat of challenge or difficulty there.

If the 3e CR system was used correctly and encounters were paced correctly, it was never a problem. When one DM insisted on ambushing us with encounters that by CR shoulda killed us and we barely survived with all our powers depleted, we'd rest. After a while I just quit the campaign.

I think it's a function of a computer game mentality. I can sit down and have a meal & some water 30' from Guard #2, right after killing Guard #1 10' from him. Getting into WoW, I actually had to "retrain" my thinking to NOT conserve everything that wasn't needed. In D&D I tend to hold back powers that I think might be needed more importantly elsewhen, in WoW blowing a "3 minute cooldown" isn't a big deal if the enemies are scattered.

Many players don't conserve at all though. I've seen some mage players that start with their biggest spells in the first encounter. It's not the systems fault, and I don't think 4e nullifies it. I do think 4e had a sort of "squishing" effect, so the "big bad spells" aren't as big & bad, while the "I pull out my crossbow" replacement of "at will" spells is more flavorful and powerful.


All in all, 4e doesn't remove the 15minute day, but it greatly reduces the need. Once folks get used to it, I think it'll reduce even more.

I did laugh quite a bit though, when I realized they consider going two encounters without resting a "milestone".

 

[Ahglock]

never saw it in any edition of d&d or any RPG ive played.

 

[El Bob]

No, the problem is not solved. For example, in our last adventure, our party left town, was ambushed, rolled very poorly and ended up using many healing surges and dailies. When the fight was over, we turned around and went back to town. We were mocked a little, but we spent the whole day in town and went out the next morning.

When I run games for my 3E group they tend to go until they are suicidely low on resources.

I don't think it's the game. I think it has more to do with group dynamics.

 

[delericho]

If the 3e CR system was used correctly and encounters were paced correctly, it was never a problem.

To be fair, though, as 3e went on many pre-published adventures (and notably the Paizo adventure paths) tended to abandon the 'correct' pacing of encounters in favour of fewer, tougher encounters (indeed, I believe one of the Design & Development articles mention that this was the case - that the expectation of 13 encounters per level had shifted to be more like 10 or even 8).

Of course, if each encounter is tougher, each will use up more resource, and so the party will have to rest more often. Take this too far and you get the 15-minute adventuring day.

However, even with that I'm really not sure the 15-minute day is really that much of a problem. So the PCs only complete one encounter in the day, so what? It's not like the players around the table actually have to wait a day before they carry on, all it takes is for the players to say "the Wizard casts rope trick and we wait out the day", and for the DM to say, "okay, the next day, you proceed onwards..." and you're done. And, if that really bothers you, you could always just replace the 'replace expended spells with 8 hours rest' with 'replace expended spells after an hour's rest' and go from there. Since it's bound to be little more than a handwave most of the time, does it really matter which handwave you use?