Why is it so important?

[Jackelope King]

Exactly. And threshold for fatigue is based very much on rules set. It is based very strongly, specifically, on two factors:

(1) How much is my current fatigue liable to harm me, and

(2) How much is resting liable to harm me.

Or, as I put it much earlier, the 15-minute adventuring day problem arises from players not asking themselves, "Is this the fight where I break out this big gun?"

Now, I say that the player who does this does not ask himself "Is this the fight where I break out this big gun?" does not do so because the game rewards him for not doing so. Using the big gun at the first hint of trouble increases his chance of survival. The only cost to him is that he has to rest -- i.e., accept that his character adventures for 15 minutes before resting to recover and reset. This is an acceptable (if not desireable) exchange for this player, or he would not do it.

If you believe that this reasoning is false, please propound your alternative theory.

That is indeed a relatively accurate summary of the nova player's point of view.

If the above was true, and was the only real consideration, then a system with fewer bread-and-butter resources would cause those resources to be used more quickly, and consequently be more likely to cause the 15-minute adventuring day problem.

IOW, if this was true, the 15-minute adventuring day problem would be an artifact of earlier editions, that was made less common by 3e. This is not my experience, or the experience of anyone that I know. I have played D&D since Christmas day 1979, with the Blue Box set, with hundreds of people in several states, and in two countries. In no case, whether I or another was DMing, have I ever heard of the "15-minute adventuring day" problem, or simular, until 3.0.

I cannot help but conclude that "If you have more bread-and-butter resources, you will not use up your bread-and-butter resources as quickly, and consequently will not cause the 15-minute adventuring day problem" cannot, in general, be true.

If the above was true, and was the only real consideration, then a system with fewer per-day resources, and no magical per-encounter resources, would cause those resources to be used more quickly, and consequently be more likely to cause the 15-minute adventuring day problem.

IOW, if this was true, the 15-minute adventuring day problem would be an artifact of earlier editions, that was made less common by 3e. This is not my experience, or the experience of anyone that I know. I have played D&D since Christmas day 1979, with the Blue Box set, with hundreds of people in several states, and in two countries. In no case, whether I or another was DMing, have I ever heard of the "15-minute adventuring day" problem, or simular, until 3.0.

I cannot help but conclude that, again, your reasoning here cannot, in general, be true. I do, however, believe that it is what WotC believes to be true.

In my experience, this is the main cause of PC resting. Most players are paranoid about expending resources which they percieve as critically limited. For example, if you can only use one 5th level spell, most players will likely guard that jealously, just because they might need it later (which is a seperate issue). However, most players won't lead with their biggest attacks against a foe they believe is an average threat. Those are too valuable and scarce. Most PCs tend to lead with more mediocre (but plentiful) resources to gauge their opponent.

For example, even if I have only one 5th level spell, I probably won't mind pitching out a 3rd level spell and see if that works. That is a less critically limited resource, so the players are less likely to be squeamish about spending one. The player will then wait to see how the enemy reacts (how injured he gets, whether or not he saves, what he does on his turn in reaction to the attack), and adjust accordingly for the next resource expenditure. So if the spell absolutely evaporates the enemy, then the wizard might just back off and let the fighter handle it. If it does an expected average damage, he might stick to it. Or if the enemy laughs it off and then charges, the wizard might switch things up and use a higher-level spell, knowing he'll need more resources to succeed.

You may not have heard of the problem before. Indeed, I haven't ever heard it called by this name until just this past month. But I remember all too vividly my few games with old Gygaxian expert dungeoneers in a Rules Cyclopedia game where we staked the door if a PC so much as broke a nail to rest. It certainly existed in old-school games.

Though honestly, exchanging annecdotes won't get us anywhere. We'd need more hard evidence, like a survey of casters to see which spells are cast first and more often. I can see that others upthread have similar experiences to mine, but a wider sample-size would be needed.

This I can agree with.



RC

We agree! Alert the media

 

[gizmo33]

It came across as one, but I thank you for your reply. I still think that no encounter is meaningful out-of-context, and neither do I think that putting an encounter into the context of the world as a whole means that you're being heavy handed.

"Context", in the "context" of what we were talking about earlier took on a more narrow definition of that part of the encounter design that was supposed to make an encounter interesting when you remove the threat of death from an encounter under a per-encounter resource system. I don't know if "meaningful" is the same thing as "interesting" in what you're saying here, to me, they are slightly different things. An encounter can be interesting because of the tactical challenges it poses, without the encounter having to be meaningful to the overall campaign.

Can it mean that? Certainly. "And once again, you swoop in to save the princess just as the dragon is about to eat her!" "What is that, like, the tenth time?" "Eleventh, by my count." "You two! Shaddup and listen to my story or both of your PCs are getting the plague!"

However, the other extreme is even more distatesful. The idea of just going from room to room in a dungeon where nothing that happened in the other room matters beyond the spells I cast and the hit points I lost and the loot I collected? *shudder* And yes, I'm fully aware that this is an extreme and I'm 99.99% sure that this isn't what you're advocating.

It's probably too big of a topic to discuss, but I don't actually find these two concepts to be polar opposites, nor do they even lie on the same spectrum IMO. I don't feel that giving "meaning" to an encounter (so as to avoid your second scenario) must necessarily lead you to a more contrived situation. Perhaps my definition of "meaning" here is different than yours, but I don't particularly feel that placing the princess in immediate peril of being eaten for purposes of making an encounter exciting does anything in terms of making the encounter more meaningful to the overall campaign.

No, I'm not. I was just trying to recieve clarification on what you were saying there. I honestly don't know what you mean when you're talking about "the more contrived exampels of "how you keep the party moving" in an all per-encounter design."?

Making sure that the princess is unconditionally 2 rounds from being eaten in order to assure that the party tackles the battle with the dragon then and there is an example of "keeping the party moving" in an all per-encounter design (it would also work in the per-day situation).

 

[gizmo33]

I haven't seen anything that could explain to me why those aren't two valid points.

You mean you didn't read all 1000+ posts on this thread!? I personally have responded to them and so have others. I'll perhaps summarize what I've already said at a later time but you have some more interesting stuff here so I'll get to that first.

I was running a party through RTTToEE and then Castle Maure afterwards. RTTToEE has built in options for "What happens if the PCs leave for a week and then come back. However, at low levels they were tedious and lame.

And this, to me, is the beginning and end of the problem. It's as if you're concluding that dungeons are boring because you purchased a dungeon but all it was was 20 rooms each filled with a few faceless, uninteresting mooks. That's not a condemnation of the dungeon concept, it's just a poorly designed one.

Now I'm not exactly sure I'd say RTTToEE is "poorly designed", but I think it's pretty obvious that the time dimension of the dungeon wasn't sufficiently planned for. I don't know if that was your responsibility or Monte Cook's, but IMO it's someone's. A "dungeon" really should be a dynamic place, and obviously the more of a "time" dimension there is, the more there needs to be a design in this area. This is actually one of the things I *want* in the game, because by going to a per-encounter resource to make sure that the dungeon is reduced to smoking rubble in an hour, the DM is being denied to opportunity to make his campaign world more of a living, breathing place.

By simply responding to PC forays by restocking the dungeon with replacement mooks, that's basically equivalent, in the time dimension, with stocking each room with the same monster in the space dimension.

So, then, we'd spend one session fighting all of the battles we fought two sessions ago, run out of time, then have the party continue to actually get further into the dungeon on the following session.

Not only (I agree) is this boring, but it's also unrealistic. If I'm a terminator I can't just walk into my local police station, kill a bunch of them, and then sit around and do the same thing next week. Granted, this is a secret cult (I don't know much about RTTToEE but I do know the original and I'm assuming their similar) but if it's like ToEE they have their tentacles in the surrounding area and would take a great interest in persons who were killing their troops. Seems insane not to do so unless their troops are getting wacked on a weekly basis by all sorts of people - in which case the identities of those people would be very relevant to making the dungeon dynamic and interesting (another subject).

Which got boring for me as a DM. I wanted to get to the cooler part of the adventure instead of rolling the same 12 crossbow shots from the entrance guards again.

Absolutely. I think you really have to step in as a DM here and insist that your NPCs act like thinking people (not even smart ones). Even stupid people don't do the same thing over and over again when it's what got the last bunch killed. Traps, trained creatures, abandoning and walling off the area (forcing the PCs to look elsewhere) are all simple-minded responses. Poor morale among troops who have to listen to stories of massacres every week would inspire the leadership to deal with this situation.

So, I gave up allowing the temple to recruit new people so that we'd get somewhere. I figured they'd run out of possible candidates after a while.

That makes sense given the circumstances. So here they are, unable to replace their troops and they're still just sitting down in the dungeon, twiddling their thumbs at their particular encounter area?

Then, the party realized this and started resting in the dungeon in areas they'd already cleared out, sealing the doors so no one would bother them. When they realized they could do this and get away with it, they started resting more often and more often.

They're foes were stymied by a door!? Again, I don't know the module but siege techniques aren't rocket science and they're not all that expensive. A few goblin slaves with pick-axes, and maybe setting traps at the door when the PCs come out could do the trick.

There really were no story concerns except that the PCs knew that the temple was up to something big and they needed to stop it.

But there could have been story concerns! New recruits are a new opportunity for PCs to get information - a new recruit can be from a certain area where the temple has just established an outpost. The dynamic nature of a realistic environment would introduce new elements to the story.

But there was no urgency in the PCs because they were fairly certain that I wouldn't let the temple succeed before they got to the end of the dungeon.

This almost speaks for itself. A player's sense of certainty is pretty easy to fix.

Once they got high enough level to teleport, I didn't have to worry about restocking the dungeon at all anymore or whether or not someone would discover them while sleeping. They'd simply teleport out as soon as they felt they had used enough resources or they had enough treasure and teleport in the next day, fully rested. Since there were no story concerns and no consequences to resting, they did it whenever they wanted.

Teleport is a big, unmitigated problem in 3E. There are plenty of theoretical spells and other magical counter-measures that could be available to opponents who are high enough level to be a challenge to PCs who can cast teleport. In any case, this is just a higher level version of what was going on with the low-level/mook situation - if you're a high level NPC whose house is being broken into every week you're going to find a way to fix the problem.

The only REAL concern was it didn't seem very "realistic" for them to be exiting the dungeon after every battle just because they could. It seemed like they should WANT to push on, to reach the leaders of the temple and wipe out the den of evil as soon as they could before their plan could be unleashed.

Why? They know instinctively that it's not going to happen. The PCs know instinctively that their actions (or lack thereof) actually have no bearing on what happens in the world.

Also, resting does bypass the resource attrition game.

How am I not being clear about this? Resting is part of the resource attrition game. The "game" wouldn't be a game if attrition were always in the negative direction. There's nothing inevitable about resource attrition, and it's part of the game for PCs to manage it. IMO You need to understand that their successes in this area are not a bad thing, any more than when they kill a monster instead of getting killed by it. It's part of the game.

"Will I need my fireball against the BBEG?" is a
different question than "Will I have enough spells left to survive against the BBEG?"

I don't see the difference. Assuming the fireball is not a relevant factor in determining whether you would succeed against the BBEG, then why ask the question in the first place?

Running out of any one spell or spell level may not be enough reason to rest, but there reaches a critical point where you CANNOT continue with the resources you have. I want to remove this limit.

Yes, I think I understand clearly that this is what you want.

But as was pointed out previously, if you fight the 3 "uninteresting" battles, end up with not enough resources to continue, then you either risk death by resting or death by continuing on. You don't have enough resources for another battle one way or another.

They have enough resources to fight a single kobold. They have enough resources to avoid a battle. You also have one-time resources, like wands and potions. The situation is more complicated IMO than you're describing here.

It's just that unless you push the PCs forward, that they can find a solution to 90% of all consequences to resting: Leave the dungeon and come back tomorrow or spike the door shut are the two biggest and easiest(I've also seen rope tricks, illusions and silence spells, and any number of other adventurer tricks).

The PCs have a time machine? A day is a long time. Go into some crazy, violent person's house, then lock yourself in a room and spike it shut, wait an entire day and then come out (if you make it that far - because I'm pretty sure you're average crazy person knows how to deal with someone in a locked room). There are just so many obvious problems with this scenario that I don't know where to begin.

It IS possible to push a party to continue with story reasons, but that almost always ends up in a TPK. After all, if a party is stuck in a situation where they have to fight the BBEG with almost no resources or rest and have the BBEG kill the kidnapped villager, then they HAVE to continue if they want to be the heroes. Forcing a party to fight a battle they can't handle will often cause a TPK.

This is a gaming style issue. I'm not saying anything about *forcing* the PCs to fight a battle they can't handle. I could break down the details of how I would run something like ToEE but it's too long for this post.

 

[pemerton]

Gizmo33, I have a sense that in your reply at post #1192 you may have missed my point (perhaps my post obscured it).

What I was trying to say is this: if an encounter becomes win/lose not because the probabilities and die rolls make it such (ie it is not like a 10th lvl Fighter vs a Stone Giant), but rather because skilled tactical play is required to make the probabilities come out PC-friendly, then it is not very different from a resource attrition game, where a given encounter (#N) may not pose a very big risk to the party (eg 10th lvl PC vs kobolds) but if poorly handled can deplete resources which result in the party facing risks later on (encounter #N+1).

In particular, you said:

*If* encounter N+1 is at a certain difficulty level then the N+1 encounter is not much different than the per-encounter situation. But that's one of my points, because there is no reason the N+1 encounter has to be like anything, whereas in order to make encounters interesting in a per-encounter resource situation that very encounter must be the one posing the risk of death.

My point is that, if bad play never leads to a risk of death in the attrition game - ie if every encounter is one which, however poorly the players have managed their resources, they can succeed at - then the attrition game will also be mechanically meaningless. Assuming that non-mechanical thresholds of significance are put to one side for the moment, for the attrition game to be of interest there must be consequences to the players of consuming resources, and I don't see what else those consequences would be but the chance of losing (ie, in the last analysis, PCs dying in) an encounter.

In a per-day design, the looming N+1, N+2, etc. encounter that adds the tension and sense of vulnerability.

But if that sense of vulnerability never actualises - if there are never encounters which are dangerous to take on in a resource-depleted state - then the tension will eventually evaporate. And if there are such encounters, then it turns out that poor play earlier on makes the PCs vulnerable to death.

So, as I said, it seems to me that the only crucial difference, in this respect, between per-encounter and pure per-day, is that per-encounter loads all this unfolding of the vulnerability, and the potentially fatal consequences for the PCs of poor choices by their players, into a single encounter rather than stretching it over multiple encounters. I don't see why this is generically a bad thing (it is of course a different thing - the skill of good play changes, from resource management to what I have been calling "tactical decision making" - but I see this as an issue more of taste than of quality).

So the timeframe for discovering mistakes is the encounter itself

Yes.

I'm not sure if that's meant to be a good thing

As I said, I think it's a different thing. I think it makes for a game that's plausibly enjoyable to a wide audience (eg I can envisage me an my fellow players enjoying it, and I have no reason to think we're terribly unrepresentative). I wouldn't expect it to appeal to all gamers. I expect that WoTC have done market research to try and gauge the tastes of RPGers.

in the per-day design, the options you have for mitigating the difficulty level of the N+1 are much greater than those you could have for a per-encounter design. Multiple weak cures, for instance, can actually help in the per-day design but are just too expensive to use in a per-encounter situation where every round counts.

<snip>

I'm there's a much higher tolerance for mistakes in the per-encounter design, because while in the operational game a mistake costing me 10 hitpoints is significant, in the per-encounter design it's meaningless.

I'm not entirely sure if your first and second examples point in the same direction. You seem to be saying both that operational play allows for mitigation of mistakes, and that per-encounter is more tolerant of mistakes. I don't understand what you mean - these claims seem to me to be in tension.

Turning to the particular issue of healing, it seems to me that in the per-encounter game a 10 hitpoint mistake might well be fatal if healing can't be brought to bear, whereas (as you note in your first example) in an operational game minor cures can handle it easily.

As far as healing goes, I suspect that the designers will find ways to compensate for the phenomenon you note in your first example eg via abilities which let a Cleric simultaneously attack and rally (ie heal). These options will be different. I'm not enough of a designer to say that they will obviously be adequate. But nor am I inclined to believe that they will obviously be inferior to the possibilities that operational play allows for.

 

[pemerton]

there are often consequences for resting, and thus the events that lead up to you being forced to rest (the three "uninteresting" battles) are actually very interesting to players that aren't naive/uninterested about resource issues in the game. Granted, if resource issues aren't a party of the playing style then this is probably the case. But if they are, then weathering the first three encounters with enough resources intact that you can continue with the adventure is an important part of the challenge of those three encounters.

I think that the sort of play you have just describe is the sort of play that 4e is deliberately trying to move away from.

If the PCs cannot continue with the adventure, an obvious possibility is that the players do not have anything more to do that evening that is interesting - instead they have to play out a retreat, a camp, re-equipping, rememorise spells, possibly resolve some wandering monster encounters that may well be (from the point of view of the plot or theme of the game) largely meaningless.

For a lot of people whose gaming time is limited, that is not how they want to spend their one evening a fortnight. The design challenge, if one wants to accomodate such players, then becomes one of delivering a game which is mechanically interesting, but is not prone to this sort of "bogging down" if play is poor. In my view that is a difficult design specification, and I have no idea if 4e will satisfy it. But I can see why the designers regard the introduction of per-encounter abilities as one of the steps - because it loads the mechanical challenges into the encounter, which is (presumably, if the GM is doing his or her part) relevant to plot and theme.

There are still questions unanswered - what happens, for example, if a PC dies in an encounter? But operational designs also have to deal with this problem - but they introduce a whole lot of other issues as well, like the playing out of the retreat and the wandering monsters, which per-encounter abilities allow to be circumvented.

Again, whether this shift in design priorities is a good or a bad thing is a different question. My point is that I think it is rational to believe that introducing per-encounter abilities into the mix will support such a shift.

The alternative, with an "all-per-encounter" resource design is that the PCs just keep fighting until everything else is dead or they're dead.

That is correct, assuming that the "victory conditions" are purely military. As I've said in earlier posts, per-encounter design I think is more attractive when non-mechanical thresholds of significance are in play.

 

[pemerton]

If this same party was able to:
A. Fight a battle where they had to use a significant number of resources
B. Felt like the battle might turn against them if they didn't try hard enough
C. Got all their resources back afterwards

I think it would be a lot of fun.

Agreed that this is a sensible design goal for a fantasy RPG.

I have to wonder how you will react to 4e if it is no fun for you or a number of your players to constantly run 1 hour long battles which use only a couple of resources and whose ending is a foregone conclusion?

I know the point you are trying to make: That if you don't use any resources at all, then the battle was boring. Since everyone's powers were all per encounter that means that all battles that don't dip into people's daily resources will be boring. Since all battles are boring, you must increase the difficulty of encounters to the point where each one will use up daily resources. And then groups will rest to get them back after every encounter, thus creating the same situation.

What I'm trying to say is that in the "weak" encounters that one throws up against a party as part of the resource attrition/per day model tend to use up mostly hitpoints/cleric spells of the party rather than any other resource.

<snip>

The battles aren't fun for anyone except the fighter and maybe rogue as they are the only ones doing anything of note in the combat. The cleric sits there and heals, the wizard either casts some spells because he's bored or uses a crossbow to miss.

It's not a matter of the battle being a forgone conclusion. Most are. I don't see a lot of DMs hoping that the party will lose the encounter, so they purposefully use enemies the party will defeat.

It's a matter of how interesting the tactics during the battle are and how much fun is had while trying to beat them. This is created by having a variety of enemies in the came encounter with varying abilities which work together in an interesting environment rather than using resource attrition to decide when it's the best time for the wizard to actually cast spells.

Again agreed. I have been trying to make this point for about 15 pages - apparently without much success . . .

My point requires that the player(s) and/or DM feel that, to be exciting, an encounter must be meaningful outside the context of the encounter itself.

<snip>

Removing resourse attrition removes a measure of both context and consequence for any given encounter. Reducing the affect of resource attrition reduces a measure of both context and consequence for any given encounter.

<snip>

If you accept that context or consequences outside of the battles themselves is a part of what makes combat encounters exciting, it should therefore follow that reducing anything that reduces a measure of both context and consequence for any given encounter is also going to reduce the excitement of that encounter.

Obviously, you can increase other factors to increase the excitement of that encounter, but when the most obvious factor is the difficulty of the encounter itself, and you have already narrowed the level of difficulty possible without resulting in a TPK, you will be hard pressed indeed to raise the stakes successfully in this way.

I suspect that for many players of RPGs, including of D&D, the most interesting context of consequence for an encounter outside of the encounter is not its resource impact, but its plot or thematic impact. Per-encounter resources are apt to facilitate the use of such non-mechanical thresholds of signficance.

They also facilitate exploration of certain themes or tropes within the context of an encounter, by allowing a greater variety of resources to be deployed in more interesting ways.

And I'm more than willing to dump that system in exchange for one that allows for more freedom of pacing and gaming.

<snip>

I don't need or want a system that encourages the players to play a game closer to Boy Scout Camping Adventure than Heroic D&D Fantasy to assign meaning.

<cut to subsequent post>
The system will better support the heroic ideal of sallying forth even in the face of great danger, even if it starts to move away from the old Gygaxian expert dungeoneer ideal (which to me isn't terribly heroic).

Agreed.

the 15-minute adventuring day problem arises from players not asking themselves, "Is this the fight where I break out this big gun?"

And per-encounter resources, by offering more choices that will affect the encounter, and more complexity in encounter resolution, are intended to cause this question to be asked.

the 15-minute adventuring day problem would be an artifact of earlier editions, that was made less common by 3e. This is not my experience, or the experience of anyone that I know. I have played D&D since Christmas day 1979, with the Blue Box set, with hundreds of people in several states, and in two countries. In no case, whether I or another was DMing, have I ever heard of the "15-minute adventuring day" problem, or simular, until 3.0.

When I used to play AD&D the 15-minute day was common. It is also very common in Rolemaster (in which the relevant per-day resources are Power Points).

Of course, for a certain sort of play - namely, what 1st AD&D calls "good play", but which (as Jackelope King has identified) is not everyone's idea of what they want from a game - it is not a problem, and that is why you may not have heard it referred to as such.

 

[Hussar]

If the above was true, and was the only real consideration, then a system with fewer per-day resources, and no magical per-encounter resources, would cause those resources to be used more quickly, and consequently be more likely to cause the 15-minute adventuring day problem.

IOW, if this was true, the 15-minute adventuring day problem would be an artifact of earlier editions, that was made less common by 3e. This is not my experience, or the experience of anyone that I know. I have played D&D since Christmas day 1979, with the Blue Box set, with hundreds of people in several states, and in two countries. In no case, whether I or another was DMing, have I ever heard of the "15-minute adventuring day" problem, or simular, until 3.0.

I cannot help but conclude that, again, your reasoning here cannot, in general, be true. I do, however, believe that it is what WotC believes to be true.

Really? Not one person ever complained about that? Good grief, we did it all the time. The end of our adventuring day was always when the cleric announced that he had spent his last cure light wounds. Didn't matter what was going on, we rested (assuming we could).

If that meant we rested after the first fight of the day, yup, it happened. If you continued to adventure after you cleric ran out of cure spells (remembering that there were no curing spells of 2nd or 3rd level, until your cleric hit 7th level you were using his 3-5 cure light wounds), why didn't you die a lot?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Really? Not one person ever complained about that? Good grief, we did it all the time. The end of our adventuring day was always when the cleric announced that he had spent his last cure light wounds. Didn't matter what was going on, we rested (assuming we could).

Please note that "assuming we could" there. If your DM followed the wandering monster guidelines in the DMG, this was not necessarily a good assumption to make. And, as my point is, it is assigning a cost to resting that prevents the 15-minute adventuring day problem, I suppose that means you agree with me on this point?


RC

 

[shilsen]

And, as my point is, it is assigning a cost to resting that prevents the 15-minute adventuring day problem ...

Or, conversely, lowering the cost of not resting. Which is the approach that use of per-encounter abilities takes.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Or, conversely, lowering the cost of not resting. Which is the approach that use of per-encounter abilities takes.

Lowering the benefit of resting can help as long as it is lowered beyond the cost threshold of resting. If the cost of resting is 0, the benefit must also be 0 to resolve the problem.


RC