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

[Ahglock]

Those adventure paths have about 90% too much combat for my taste.

Having never played or used them is that because they are combat heavy or because you hat combat or a mixture of both.

 

[Fenes]

Having never played or used them is that because they are combat heavy or because you hat combat or a mixture of both.

They are too combat heavy for my taste. As I said, the average adventure in my campaign has one or two combats that count, the rest is legwork, social encounters, sneaking around, and similar stuff.

I don't hate combat, but I don't want it to take up too much of a session.

 

[kristov]

It really is up to the players not to try and be cheesy and the DM to handle the game properly.

In our run through of Keep on the Shadowfell, the party did about 6 or 7 fights per day while they were in the dungeons.

They did attempt to rest a second time on the second day, but being a good DM i had the wandering guards show up and ensure that wasn't going to happen - at least not IN the dungeon itself overnight.

Im sure inexperienced DM's will let it happen, and players trying to take advantage of the system however will try and get away with it. Your millage may vary.

 

[Celtavian]

If one defines the '15-minute adventuring day problem' as always resting for the day after one encounter, then I think I can be pretty safe in saying no one did that.

On the other hand, it's pretty common in 3.x to
- call it a day when the major spellcasters are out of their high-level spells or when buff spells expire
- refuse to go into an 'expected' 'boss fight' without resting unless there's an external time constraint imposed by the DM adventure.
- use scry-buff-teleport and nova tactics (i.e. hitting the bad guy with every powerful spell you've got as quickly as you can) to take on enemies above your level as the only encounter for the day

This is exactly why I designed the majority of my own encounters. It always seemed to me the module designers didn't have a clue how the players were playing.

I always ensured my high level enemies either had a spell caster available, were a spellcaster, or were just too tough and smart to be done in by a port in and nova. That means preventing them from scrying, having a means of blocking teleport, and dealing with the high level tactics of characters.

It was just too much for me to think a Balor or ancient lich wasn't smart enough to deal with some simplistic tactics used by the party. So I made sure I had calculated for the spells the party had access to.

So I never much dealt with the above unless we had no choice. When we fought a demon army, the teleport and nova thing was expected. They had no choice but to do small strikes getting in and getting out. If they stayed too long, too many demons would descend on them. If they didn't stay long enough, the monsters were too tough to kill quickly and they would fail at their goal of piece mealing the demons.

Then the leaders of the demon army sent an assassination squad after us of half-fiends and mercenary evil adventurers. That was a harrowing time.

We just never played the above way. I can't recall us ever running a short adventuring day.


call it a day when the major spellcasters are out of their high-level spells or when buff spells expire

This has never happened in the course of one day. The only person I ever saw this happen to was a wizard player that liked to nuke rather than sit on his power and let the melees do the majority of the work.

When I play a wizard, I don't cast a spell for the majority of encounters. I relax in the back watching the fight maybe using my wand on occasion if I get board. My magic was for times when it was needed. I don't believe in overusing magic when that overuse is overkill and wastes resources that could spend in important fights. The majority of the time the cleric and melees could do enough damage to deal with standard encounters throughout the dungeon.

So this is another DnDism I never dealt with. I never played that way. I kind of set tone for people playing wizards and casters. Blowing off spells willy nilly in easy encounters just because you're bored and want to do damage always seemed like an unwise way to play a wizard. The only encounters that usually required wizard power were BBEG encounters or domino encounters (encounters where attacking a particularly guard post or lair entrance set into effect a long series of encounters which leads to the BBEG).

 

[Hussar]

Having played the World's Largest Dungeon, I can honestly say that I saw the 15 minute adventuring day. The only time it went longer is if the party spent a lot of time exploring outside of combat. But, after one or two combats, three at the outside, they rested. Every time.

Shemeska, you've been on these boards long enough to have seen this sort of thing before. Good grief, this has been complained about for years on these boards. People complaining that players would nova encounters and totally screw over their adventures has been a recurring complaint for as long as I can remember.

Do a site search if you think I'm mistaken.

 

[pemerton]

If anyone ever played in the type of campaigns we run, you would not know what the 15 minute adventuring day was like because I would send a waves of attackers after you and that rope trick garbage would be figured out fairly quickly and dealt with by the BBEG (who would be very familiar with such tactics).

No, 4E hasn't dealt with this problem. It's not a problem that mechanics can deal with. The only way to deal with such a strange way of playing is to teach players that choose such a path that they will not be left alone to regenerate their spells and abilities on a daily basis after every battle.

It's simply false to say that mechanics are irrelevant to this.

Compare RM and HARP. The 15-minute work-day is a huge issue in mid-to-high level RM, for at least 2 reasons:

*Character's Power Points increase at about 5 per level, but their best spells cost about their level in PPs to cast. Therefore, the higher the level the relatively more expensive it becomes to use one's best spells, but anything less than the best risks not being good enough for an encounter that is challenging to the party. Power Point multipliers and Spell adders offer one way of dealing with this, but they have their own problems (eg the Christmas-tree syndrome).

*Teleport is a 10th level spell, and therefore available (via overcasting) from somewhere around 7th level or so. More on this below.​

HARP, on the other hand, has mechanics very clearly intended to reduce the problem. Because higher level spells suffer scaling penalties (roughly, higher level spells are simply low-level spells with additional PPs spent to add options/increase effect, and each extra PP spent in this way gives a -5 penalty to the d100 casting roll), there is an incentive not to always use one's highest-level spell, because it may not land (being cast at a penalty). I haven't played enough HARP to know if this fix works, but it is an obvious attempt to address the 15-minute day via mechanical means.

It's not uncommon for our group, though it doesn't become pronounced until Teleport or something similar is available.

Teleport is a huge issue, and it means that the BBEG can't retaliate against a retreating party. In my last high-magic RM game, the PCs were members of the most powerful wizards guild in the land, and also were powerful agents of the Emperor. They therefore had accomodation in two virtually-impregnable locations: the Tower of High Sorcery (yes, the concept was stolen from Dragonlance) and the Imperial palace. Teleporting back to such a location prevents retaliation.

In any event, as Mustrum Ridcully points out, such retaliation is (from the metagame perspective) ineffectual:

From a adventure design or pacing point of view, this all leads to some limitations.
- Time Critical adventures are hard to make. Assuming optimum play (use of Wands of Cure Light Wounds, Spellcasting minimized), the entire line of encounters risks not being particularly interesting (especially for spellcasters). In "suboptimal" play, it's very easy to make the time critical mission fail. That might actually be desirable, in a way (we want to reward "good" play), but the problem is that both routes don't lead to a lot of fun. Either the individual encounters are perceived as boring, or the party fails in the end.
- Non time-critical adventures introduce the 15 minute adventure day if the party plays "optimal".

Now, some people might not find watching from the side-lines that uninteresting, and see this just as a sign of good play (and after all, the non-spellcasters kick ass!).
And others might say who cares about 15 minute adventure days? It only matters whether the encounters we have are fun and exciting!
In these cases - just don't worry about it. It's not your problem that others prefer to play differently.

<snip>

The 15 minute adventuring day is still possible. (Little can change that).
But the implications if you do not follow a 15 minute adventure day are far less dire - the "gamist fun" of challenging combat does not have to be sacrificed for the parties survival chance, or vice versa.

The whole post was excellent, but the above bits are key, I think. In any game system where some players' fun (eg Wizards) depends upon per-day resources (ie Vancian spells) and other players fun (eg Fighters) depends upon a balancing assumption that players in the first group are not always using those resources, and in addition the whole playgroup's fun depends upon the party not dying, near-ineradicable tensions emerge of the sort that Mustrum indicates: encounters become boring, especially for the Wizards who sit on the sidelines (and the Fighters can also tell that the only reason these encounters are challenging them is because the Wizards are holding back - the old "Green Lantern & Green Arrow" problem); or the party dies; or the 15-minute day ensues, to the benefit of Wizards, the detriment of Fighters, and the death (in many cases) of verisimilitude.

In my high-level RM games, two solutions have emerged. In the game mentioned above, everyone plays a wizard (and thus all play the 15-minute day). Verisimilitude was preserved when the game was a tomb-looting one, as tombs stay put and are fairly static over time. When the story changed to a "hunt-the-bad-guy in his demiplane" scenario, the game eventually came to an end with a TPK as the 15-minute day prevention measures (both time pressures and anti-teleport mechanics that had been implemented) made play unworkable.

The alternative solution (in the current game) has been to play only Fighters, some of whom have self-buffing capabilities (which are not as Power Point intensive), with the healer and the diviner as NPCs (who therefore don't have any metagame influence on the play) and the only PC Wizard our best player from the rules-mastery point of view, who is therefore able to play effectively even when unable to optimise his Power Point use vs rest time.

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.

This is, in effect, a variant form of retaliation against the players: mechanically optimise your play and your PCs will lose ingame. It suffers from the problems Mustrum has pointed out: if the encounters are such as to make a PC win without resting possible, then from the players' point of view they risk being boring encounters.

Furthermore, I think it is an indictment of a roleplaying system that, if it is played in a mechanically optimal fashion, then the story is compromised. In the best RPGs the mechanics facilitate the story, they don't push against it (eg by encouraging the 15-minute workday).

When I play a wizard, I don't cast a spell for the majority of encounters. I relax in the back watching the fight maybe using my wand on occasion if I get board.

In my experience most players want to play, not watch.

Well... if a party is spending close to month or more clearing out a dungeon then they're certainly going to earn less during their adventuring careers... at least by my reckonin'.

I've never played a campaign in which the passage of ingame time was a limiting factor on PCs' adventuring careers. If they do get old, it is only at high level, when rejuvenation magic becomes available.

If your adventures feature only one or two combat encounters you may never have seen the 15 min day. I ran more typical multi-encounter dungeons and saw it a heck of a lot.

<snip>

Now you may say the DM ought to send a revenge squad after the party if they 'cheat' by going to bed early. Often this isn't possible. Many dungeons, tombs and the like, don't have intelligent defenders. Or the monsters may be unable to track, very few have the Track feat after all. Or the PCs may employ magical means to make tracking impossible such as rope trick or dimension door. And from level 9 onwards they can just teleport back to town anyway.

Obviously I'm agreed, but an extra point: even in non-combat encounters, if they are to be challenging to the Wizards then they will require those Wizards to spend resources (CHA buff spells, Suggestion spells, mind-reading spells etc). My RM games are quite heavy in non-combat encounters, but this does not make the 15-minute workday disappear.

Of course 20th-level Wizards don't normally cast high-level spells to deal with city guards or horse traders, but these are not the sort of non-combat encounters my players are interested in.

 

[Dave Turner]

This is, in effect, a variant form of retaliation against the players: mechanically optimise your play and your PCs will lose ingame. It suffers from the problems Mustrum has pointed out: if the encounters are such as to make a PC win without resting possible, then from the players' point of view they risk being boring encounters.

Furthermore, I think it is an indictment of a roleplaying system that, if it is played in a mechanically optimal fashion, then the story is compromised. In the best RPGs the mechanics facilitate the story, they don't push against it (eg by encouraging the 15-minute workday).

It's only retaliatory (and therefore quasi-punitive) if the goal of the particular game is to succeed only in the most mechanically optimal way. That's a fair standard to hold some games to, but not roleplaying games. The cooperative storytelling aspect of a roleplaying game cannot be so easily disregarded in the debate. It's reasonable to hold roleplaying games to their more nuanced, historical standard. The goal of a roleplaying game isn't merely to succeed mechanically, but to succeed mechanically in the service of a cooperative story.

Every group partitions responsibility for the success of the cooperative story in different ways. If one group (the players) is actively taking steps to reduce the other group's enjoyment of the cooperative story (the DM), then it's reasonable for the DM to take steps to blunt the first group's impact. I suppose that qualifies as retaliatory, but it's justified retaliation. It's a kind of narrative self-defense, if you will.

As for Mustrum's problem, I don't think that it's sufficiently nuanced as a criticism. The outcome and tension of any set of encounters is highly dependent on a DM's skill. It's certainly possible to craft a set of encounters that can be defeated without rest that aren't inherently boring. If nothing else, the fickle d20 can see to that.

In addition, a party's failure doesn't have to be a narrative dead-end. If the village was destroyed because the party was waiting to refresh their dailies, a robust plot prevents the party's failure from being a campaign-stopper. There should be some consequences for the PCs' laziness and lack of heroics but, unless that was the climax of the campaign, the story can just move forward in a slightly different direction.

 

[MerricB]

I saw it happening most frequently in The Spire of Long Shadows. Paizo were very good at promoting the 15-minute day with some of their encounters.

Cheers!

 

[pemerton]

It's only retaliatory (and therefore quasi-punitive) if the goal of the particular game is to succeed only in the most mechanically optimal way. That's a fair standard to hold some games to, but not roleplaying games. The cooperative storytelling aspect of a roleplaying game cannot be so easily disregarded in the debate. It's reasonable to hold roleplaying games to their more nuanced, historical standard. The goal of a roleplaying game isn't merely to succeed mechanically, but to succeed mechanically in the service of a cooperative story.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that modern RPG designers, who are using mechanics to facilitate the production of story rather than letting it sometimes be an obstacle, are on the right track.

As for Mustrum's problem, I don't think that it's sufficiently nuanced as a criticism. The outcome and tension of any set of encounters is highly dependent on a DM's skill. It's certainly possible to craft a set of encounters that can be defeated without rest that aren't inherently boring. If nothing else, the fickle d20 can see to that.

This issue has come up in this thread. I think that a game should be designed so as to reduce the burden on the GM in this respect, rather than increase it.

 

[frankthedm]

They are too combat heavy for my taste. As I said, the average adventure in my campaign has one or two combats that count, the rest is legwork, social encounters, sneaking around, and similar stuff.

I don't hate combat, but I don't want it to take up too much of a session.

May I suggest looking into WFRP 2E? Works well for that kind of mix.