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Message: <blockquote data-quote="firesnakearies" data-source="post: 4399018" data-attributes="member: 71334">Here's my problem with the whole issue:  Assuming no random, long periods of walking around between encounters or other excessive delays, any party would be doing WELL to put in a 60-minute workday in 4E before running out of steam.  Consider that the dungeons in basically every published adventure ever are laid out with a ton of rooms right next to each other and monsters in most or all of them. There's typically about a thirty-second to one-minute walk in between, if that. Consider that a round is six seconds long, and virtually NO encounters will go longer than twenty rounds. Most will be much shorter than that. But let's say twenty rounds per fight. That's TWO minutes each. Add in a five-minute rest in between each one, and a one-minute travel time to the next encounter. Heck, we'll go crazy and call it TWO minutes. So, seven minutes total between each fight. How many encounters are we expecting the team to beat before totally depleting their healing surges and other resources such that one more fight will probably kill them all? Let's say that these PCs are really good and can tear through seven encounters before HAVING to stop. Heck, we'll go eight, even. That's pretty impressive and will likely not happen often, but let's go with it for now. Eight encounters at two minutes each, plus seven rest/travel periods of seven minutes each. So . . . 65 minutes total from Start of Day until "oh crap, we need to go hole up and rest NOW or we're hosed" time. And that group did incredibly well, and my time estimates were generous. "But wait, what about if they have to do more exploration, deal with traps, do skill challenges, solve riddles, stop and roleplay, etc?" Right, I understand that a good deal of this sort of thing will happen, but it might not, it certainly won't ALWAYS, and even when it does, it's unlikely to really take up any seriously great length of time, in most cases. Dealing with that big hairy trap room took an hour of gameplay time, and it felt pretty arduous and intense . . . but in-game it still only took fifteen rounds, or about a minute and a half. So let's tack another full HOUR on to the day's work, to account for some of this non-combat extra stuff that might happen as the group moves from one room to another one that's thirty feet away over and over. Sometimes it'll be a lot longer than that, but MOST days, it'll probably be less. So we'll go with an extra hour, for argument's sake.  So, here's what we have then:   The intrepid heroes get up from a nice rest, feeling good, ready to delve into the shadowy maw of evil and kick some infernal tail today! The wicked Overlord awaits in the depths, plotting even now to enact his next horrific stratagem against the innocent people of the Light. The PCs are inspired, they're prepared, they're the heralds of destiny this day, here to put a stop to this dire threat! In they go, fighting with exceptional valor and tactical prowess. They kill more than most adventurers could, and wear themselves down to the bone. In two hours. TWO HOURS after they got done scarfing down their English muffins and rubbing sleep out of their eyes, a mere EIGHT ROOMS into the vast and labyrinthine halls beckoning them onward . . . they're done. They can't go on, they're drained, today's adventuring is over. They're a bee sting away from death's door. They couldn't best a puppy in their condition. Sadly, they are forced to withdraw to find a safe place to hide and wait until they can rest and recharge... TWO FREAKING HOURS after they rolled out of bed! That's the adventure for the day? That's the epic crusade of heroes? "Eh, I guess we'll go after the Overlord tomorrow. Kinda tired today. I'm sure that stopping this evil can wait." Some people might ask, "So? What's wrong with that? They beat eight encounters, why shouldn't they rest now?" Because it's not heroic or fantastic or cinematic or consistent with practically ALL literature of this genre whatsoever! When the hell did you see the protagonist(s) of any heroic movie or fantasy novel go boldly into the Bad Guy Lair on a mission of great importance, get into a few scrapes, and after an hour or two say, "Well, I think I'm all dried up for the day. Time to lay it down for awhile." And by "awhile" of course I mean like sixteen to eighteen HOURS! Yeah, they're not just going off to take a napsie right now, and be up and at 'em again in six hours. Oh no, they basically just woke up. They're going to go SIT AROUND all day and evening until bedtime, hiding out like scared kids and hoping that no patrolling beasties find them (because if they do, the PCs are pretty much Monster Chow), and THEN turn in for the night, before finally getting back up, almost a day after they started their most vital assault on the domain of pure malevolence. And then... ...they're going to valiantly venture forth for ANOTHER heroic two hours of stirge-slaughtering and dart-ducking before scurrying back to their tents to play cribbage and soak their feet for the rest of the day. Repeat as necessary, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. (Wow, what an epic tale, eh?) Seventeen days later, they finally emerge triumphant with the Overlord's head, and return to town, where they spend the next week making up excuses as to why the quest took them so damn long. "Honestly, we were trapped in an interplanar RIFT for two weeks and only managed to escape through the greatest feats of cunning and courage! Yes, yes, we ARE pretty great heroes, aren't we?"  Seriously, this doesn't fit MY idea of a heroic fantasy adventure story, the kind we've all read or watched with awe since we were children.  Consider:  - The Fellowship of the Ring didn't poop out after two hours in Moria.  - The Companions of the Lance didn't head for the locker room after two hours in Xax Tsaroth.  - The Knights of Myth Drannor didn't mix it up with the forces of Zhentil Keep for a couple hours and then say, "Whoa, hey guys, we're gonna call it for today, all right? See ya tomorrow, suckas!" - Perrin Aybara didn't just wake up in the morning, have a cup of kaf, spend a leisurely two hours fighting to drive the trollocs out of the Two Rivers, then yawn and stumble back to bed.  "Gimme back my pillow, Faile." - Kahlan Amnell didn't pencil herself in for a quick two-hour session each morning of leading the Galean army in a desperate struggle against the monolithic Imperial Order, and then wile away the rest of the day braiding her hair. - Conan the Cimmerian didn't hew and slay wildly through the teeming Nemedian hordes for two hours and then politely excuse himself until the morrow. - Elric of Melnibone didn't start fighting the Dukes of Hell with a lot of fire and fury, but then after a couple of hours decide that he was plumb tuckered out and maybe he should go grab some shut-eye before continuing the epic battle. - The Scottish Highlanders didn't put in 120 solid minutes of woad-fueled bloodshed at the Battle of Bannockburn and then call a recess until the next day. - The Spartans at Thermopylae never once stopped and said, "Well hell, boys. We've been killin' these Persians for at least an hour or two now, aint we? We deserve a break! Somebody fetch the lawn chairs and the margarita mix, and them invading bastards can just wait 'til tomorrow to wet our blades again!"  So what I'm saying is, I'd like to see a model of rest and resource replenishment which allows for a more organic, classic fantasy story-like narrative of the heroes' adventure, where they're able to keep delving, keep fighting, keep moving forward, pretty much all day long . . . but which doesn't functionally alter the actual balance of the game as written.  A system which manages to avoid forcing the party to stop and rest (or wait to rest) after only a very small portion of the day has passed, yet doesn't take away the resource management responsibilities, sense of danger and drama, consequences, and general level of power and survivability that PCs have currently. I know that's a tall order, and I've been thinking about it a lot.  I hope to start a dialog with other interested people here and maybe we can come up with a really workable idea to take away the absurdities inherent in the present model without changing the game in any concrete mechanical way. For a lot of people, maybe it's no big deal, maybe they don't care, maybe this is a trivial non-issue. But for me, the "two-hour workday syndrome" is patently absurd and unacceptable.  It's NOT how I want my games to play out.  But how to fix it without breaking anything in the process?  That's the tricky part. Any ideas?</blockquote>

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