the thirst rules

[ryryguy]

I'm sure this must have been a hot topic of discussion already, but...

Ok, not really. Has anyone ever actually used the thirst rules on DMG page 159?

I'm preparing to and something seems off.

An adventurer can handle...three days without water[.] After that, such deprivation is a significant test of PC's stamina. At the end of the time period (...three days...), the character must succeed on a DC 20 Endurance check...

Ok, so say I have three days worth of water and a nine day journey. By the letter of the rules it seems like I can do this:

Day 1: 1 day without water
Day 2: 2 days without water.
Day 3: 3 days without water; I drink.
Day 4: 1 day without water
Day 5: 2 days without water
Day 6: 3 days without water; I drink.
Day 7: 1 day without water
Day 8: 2 days without water
Day 9: 3 days without water; I drink.

Voila! I've made it nine days on three days of water without having to make any Endurance checks!

I'm thinking of a house rule where when you go without water, when you do get to drink it doesn't reset you to "zero days without water", it just subtracts one from that count. I.e.,

Day 1: 1 day without water
Day 2: 2 days without water.
Day 3: 3 days without water; I drink. (but now I just go back to 2 days without.)
Day 4: 3 days without water again! Crap, I drink!
Day 5: 3 days without again! Drink again!
Day 6: I'm out of water! Endurance checks from here on out!

Now it doesn't seem to matter whether I drink the water right away or save it, I still have to make checks on the sixth day, which makes sense.

I guess I would cap this at 3 days without water (stop counting the days after that).

What about healing surges lost to failed checks - get them all back after 1 day of water? Or should they only come back one at a time too?

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

Interesting questions. I definitely wouldn't let you do the 9 day thing, though I might let you gain some benefit from rationing (since this does work) maybe offering you save bonuses. Probably not though since everyone would then use water rationing as a tactic. Just assume it's already factored in and don't let the accumulated days without water go down until the pc's get to a place where they can "drink their fill". Thus, if you go 3 days without you roll once, then drink 2 days on the 6th day you choose to go without and you roll with a 5 penalty, then drink your last days worth on day 7, day 8 is at -10.

I would give back all the surges as soon as they have all the water they can drink. If they got two days water and drank it, I would likely erase one lost surge. Surges are an abstract but if you can recover all your damage by sleeping I would let you recover all your thirst penalties in one day as well.

 

[Oompa]

You forget to mention everytime you make the check, the dc increases with 5 and that you have to make a check every day after the third..

And why should it not be possible to drink 2 liters on day 0, without water on day 1 and 2 and 3rd drink 2 liters again..

With the houserule you make you just give your players a reason to buy a unnecessary wondrous item, everlasting provisions for 840 gp..

And really.. how many times you think your players would go witout water for 3+ days..

 

[Wepwawet]

When you talk about drinking to reset the thirst days count, you mean drinking a lot of water, right? Like the typical 3.5 litres people should drink each day, or more to compensate for the dehydration.

If you drink just a bit of water (33 cl) after 3 days i don't think even your 2nd interpretation would make sense.

(btw, I can only think in the International System of Units)

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

You forget to mention everytime you make the check, the dc increases with 5 and that you have to make a check every day after the third..

And why should it not be possible to drink 2 liters on day 0, without water on day 1 and 2 and 3rd drink 2 liters again..

With the houserule you make you just give your players a reason to buy a unnecessary wondrous item, everlasting provisions for 840 gp..

And really.. how many times you think your players would go witout water for 3+ days..

Not sure who you responded to here. I effectively upped the difficulty by 5 each time by using a -5 modifier to the role.

Dehydration is cumulative, so drinking once every three days is not good unless you're drinking 3 times as much.

Thirst and hunger are good plot lines in certain campaigns/situations. obviously it's not important if your always provisioned or in a city but I started one campaign trapped in a slave ship with no equipment and we were shipwrecked in the world of al quadim. All I can say is never trust a bugbear to carry the water.

 

[Plane Sailing]

IIRC the starvation and thirst rules have bigger problems than this, as in the book higher level people will succumb more quickly than lower level guys!

 

[ryryguy]

Interesting questions. I definitely wouldn't let you do the 9 day thing, though I might let you gain some benefit from rationing (since this does work) maybe offering you save bonuses. Probably not though since everyone would then use water rationing as a tactic. Just assume it's already factored in and don't let the accumulated days without water go down until the pc's get to a place where they can "drink their fill". Thus, if you go 3 days without you roll once, then drink 2 days on the 6th day you choose to go without and you roll with a 5 penalty, then drink your last days worth on day 7, day 8 is at -10.

That's pretty much my thinking, and on further reflection I think you're right about letting the -5 penalties stack up too. i.e., don't cap it at 3 days like I originally said.

I would give back all the surges as soon as they have all the water they can drink. If they got two days water and drank it, I would likely erase one lost surge. Surges are an abstract but if you can recover all your damage by sleeping I would let you recover all your thirst penalties in one day as well.

I think that makes sense too, and touches on something I didn't really consider originally. In my proposed house rule "by the letter" there's no way to get back to "zero days without water" once you're past it, if you only ever roll back a single day. But why not let someone drink two days worth of water at once to roll back two days? And also extra water to get back extra surges as you suggest? Sure, it's not medically/physiologically accurate, but the whole point of this is to be a challenge when water is scarce. It should just go away once you have plentiful water supply again.

Which brings me to...

And why should it not be possible to drink 2 liters on day 0, without water on day 1 and 2 and 3rd drink 2 liters again..

With the houserule you make you just give your players a reason to buy a unnecessary wondrous item, everlasting provisions for 840 gp..

And really.. how many times you think your players would go witout water for 3+ days..

Well, without the rule, anyone can drink only every three days all the time and stay perfectly healthy. With all that money saved on water, they'll start rust monster farms or something equally horrible! The game economy will surely collapse!

But seriously, it's obviously only an issue if the players are going to go without water for 3+ days. That rarely happens, but in an upcoming adventure, they'll be lost in the desert and have had all their water stolen by thirst demons. So it's going to be an issue. I want the thirst system to be the "ticking clock" that puts pressure on them to get out of the desert.

And if after that experience they decide they need an "unnecessary wondrous item" so it can never happen again... well, I guess it's not really that unnecessary of an item, is it?

When you talk about drinking to reset the thirst days count, you mean drinking a lot of water, right? Like the typical 3.5 litres people should drink each day, or more to compensate for the dehydration.

Yes, I mean drinking a "day's supply of water", whatever that happens to be. Sure in a desert that's probably a larger amount in reality, but that's not interesting to me - it's just an abstract amount, "one day's worth of water".

IIRC the starvation and thirst rules have bigger problems than this, as in the book higher level people will succumb more quickly than lower level guys!

I'm not sure how that happens. But the problem is indeed worse for starvation, since that's on a three week timer before you have to make endurance checks. So by the letter of the DMG rule, you only have to eat once every three weeks! Who's going to break the news to the tavern owners? And after all that hassle over the oregano supply...

 

[cmbarona]

I may as well offer a link to my houseruled solution to this issue (which reminds me, I still need to look into tweaking the suffocation stuff...):

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan...suffocation-thirst-hunger-disease-tracks.html

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I dunno, I don't think the issue of technically only needing to eat/drink every 3 days/weeks is a big deal. In a situation where all you find is 1 day's worth of water and you haven't had a drink in 3 days, I'd roll back 1 day's worth of thirst. Its simple and not really all that unrealistic. Same with hunger.

I'm not sure where the notion that higher level characters would 'suffer more' from thirst/hunger came from... The rules are perfectly clear, it is a DC20 check with -5 per day/week after 3. Same for all levels of characters. High level PCs in fact are quite likely to be able to go on practically endlessly without food or water (or air for that matter) by the rules. EVENTUALLY the -5's will get to them, but they will be tougher.

Note that the section in PHB 185 under Endurance skill has errata which brings it into line now with DMG 159.