What is the 15-minute adventuring day?

[jasper]

In the TOH thread I came across ...15-minute adventuring day....
What is it? because the rest of thread did not to clearly define what it was and how it was applied. And I have never hear the saying before.

 

[the Jester]

The term arose in the 3e era, but the actual style of play goes way back.

Essentially, the 15-minute adventuring day is when the party expends many resources in a short period, usually only a single encounter or two, and then retires until tomorrow.

Often in 3e it manifested as "the wizard is out of his highest two levels of spells, let's rest". In 4e it's "I'm out of healing surges." In Ye Olden Days of 1e and such, it was "that was my last cure light wounds."

It's often considered a problem on a couple of levels. It encourages pcs not to hold any resources back and to 'nova' every encounter; it often leads to wussy play (dude, really? Nobody is even wounded but you're knocking off for the day because Fizlor is out of 6th level spells?).

The problem is largely alleviated by random encounters, proactive enemies, attacks while you're trying to rest, etc. The dm doesn't have to use these techniques all the time, but if you know that your rest period isn't a sacred safe time, it changes the 'go nova all the time' part of the dynamic, if nothing else.

 

[Doug McCrae]

It's when an adventuring party expends its daily resources - spells, typically - on a small number of encounters that take up far less time than a day in the game-world. The party stops adventuring at this point and rests to recover these resources.

It's similar to the concept of going nova, when a psionic PC expends all his power points on a few very powerful manifestations.

 

[steeldragons]

Often in 3e it manifested as "the wizard is out of his highest two levels of spells, let's rest". In 4e it's "I'm out of healing surges." In Ye Olden Days of 1e and such, it was "that was my last cure light wounds."

Or in the case of low level parties (and/or editions of play that didn't allow the cleric to "swap out" another spell for a healing), "That was my only cure light wounds!"

To which, the DM leers over the screen, wrings his hands menacingly, and makes a sound similar to "Bwahahaha".

Ahhhh, Ye Olden Days....<waxes nostalgic>

--SD

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

IOW, its a specific style of play in which the PCs expend their scarce (but renewable) resources quickly and the DM let's them do so with minimal or even no consequences.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Dungeon exploration- wuss style.

 

[jasper]

Thanks. I have another question. It appears also in TOH thread if you were a convention using a tourney module, the 15 minute day could be a penalty. Is The 15 minute day a real 15 minute time out of game play a conventions for tourney modules?

 

[Nebten]

Thanks. I have another question. It appears also in TOH thread if you were a convention using a tourney module. The 15 minute day MAY have been a real 15 minute time out of game play.

So what is the question . . .?

 

[Dedekind]

Thanks. I have another question. It appears also in TOH thread if you were a convention using a tourney module, the 15 minute day could be a penalty. Is The 15 minute day a real 15 minute time out of game play a conventions for tourney modules?

If it were 4e, a party might use all their dailies in one encounter and then want to rest to regain their daily powers for use in the next encounter. That would make the module significantly easier. The rule probably means that if the party chooses to rest to renew their resources, they will be penalized (by points? standings? idk). In other words, the tournament module is meant to be run using only the resources the party could normally have in a given day. For Living Forgotten Realms, for example, a party is usually not allowed to rest during the module.

 

[Stoat]

"15 Minutes" is just a figure of speech. Nobody actually spends 15 minutes of real time doing anything.