You Can't Take Short Rests

[I'm A Banana]

Is this part the house rule? Because a short rest does not recover hp by itself. You still need to spend healing surges, and you only gain those hit points back.

Well that's wrong for a start, you only recover hit points that you spend healing surges to recover not all HP. My players often don't recover all the hit points because if they are only down a few or not a multiple of their healing surges they don't spend the surge.

Well, I did note that extended rests restore the amount of short rests you can take, but you guys are, of course, technically correct. Functionally, though this is mostly anecdotal under multiple DMs with several different gorups, I've never seen a party have to continue on without healing surges. Parties always have (nearly) full HP when going into an encounter, IMXP. Plus, encounter powers are recharged. Something I'm looking to encourage with this bit is the management of resources over the longer term. Which is why I'm probably relegating extended rests only to safe towns (or the rare "dungeon safe zone").

It's not so much a "too easy" thing as it is a pacing thing. I'd like the tension to scale gradually, with the party taking a more cautious, measured route. Keeping the party closer to death at all times, making them feel fragile...this is all part of the "dungeon survival horror" feel. I don't want them to BE weaker, but I do want them to avoid the nova capability (or at least parse it out at the right moment). As an aside, If my D&D combats are going to take 30-45 minutes anyway, I'd like to see them doing more other stuff during it, too. Spending an entire night's gaming on clearing 4 rooms of goblins isn't fast enough for me.

Hmm...looks like I might really need a way to get folks who aren't leaders to blow their big guns here, so they feel the pressure of using their most powerful resources, not knowing what may lie ahead...Any recommendations? How might you get reluctant players to bomb the place with encounters and dailies? I'm thinking making them more effective (bonuses to hit, forex) is Step 1, but there's gotta be more ways...

 

[TikkchikFenTikktikk]

Hmm...looks like I might really need a way to get folks who aren't leaders to blow their big guns here, so they feel the pressure of using their most powerful resources, not knowing what may lie ahead...Any recommendations? How might you get reluctant players to bomb the place with encounters and dailies? I'm thinking making them more effective (bonuses to hit, forex) is Step 1, but there's gotta be more ways...

The D&D Encounters adventures have gotten pretty good at slow-rolling the players. There are generally 4-5 encounters with only short rests allowed. This slowly makes them use up their surges until they enter the last fight of the encounter with just a handful left across the party. It's important to note that Encounters is currently Essentials-only so most characters always have their strongest abilities at the beginning of each encounter.

The classic way to suck up their resources in a dungeon is wandering monsters and interconnected--not linear--floor design so monsters can get between the party and the exits.

To strip them of their big guns early on, have the party get a few rooms in when you surprise them with a boss-fight equivalent. They go nova trying to survive, but then realize they attracted the attention of an entire dungeon and they are trapped. There is no place safe to sleep/trance, the place is crawling with guards, and the exits have been sealed. The climax of the adventure then isn't killing the big, bad evil guy but finding the exit to fresh air and sunlight alive.

I think one of the 3.5 WotC adventures did this pretty well. Maybe "The Shattered Gates of Slaughterguard"? I'll have to double-check this evening.

tl;dr: Wandering monsters and non-linear dungeon design.

 

[Kinneus]

My concern (and the thing that would likely irritate me as a player) is that this would make Encounter powers more or less worthless. Well, not 'worthless', but it would effectively turn them into really, really weak Daily powers. And, as somebody else mentioned, this would give Essentials characters a huge advantage.

If you do this, don't be surprised if no players ever takes an Encounter Utility again. Why would they when they could take a Daily, which they could use just as often?

 

[Mengu]

I think this is a good change of pace. It just has to be handled with care because these days, monsters are scarier than they used to be.

I'd make each area consist of maybe a standard creature and a bunch of minions, so it feels like a fuller encounter, without draining much in the way of resources. Maybe one person will blow an AoE encounter, but the rest of the mini encounter can be mopped up in one or two rounds with minor injuries.

I think it's imperative that each encounter be completed in 1-2 rounds. You give the players more rounds, and they will blow more encounter powers, thinking they are in the thick of a standard encounter. So at the end of round 2, monsters either flee, or surrender, or you just call it and conclude the monsters can be defeated easily at that point.

Time sensitive approach would be one way to enforce no short rests. Another option would be to give them the opportunity to take a short rest at some cost. For instance maybe they can retreat 5 rooms back (to a checkpoint) and bar the door to a room for a quick breather. Meanwhile more monsters fill the area. They have to clear the area and reach their next check point without a short rest to continue. (The old magic fountain, save game approach).

At lower levels when people only have 1 or two encounter powers, they might be blowing them very early, so this approach might get grindy. In that case after every 2 mini encounters, you might recharge an encounter power and allow expending one healing surge, to keep things interesting. Call it a mini rest to go with the mini encounters.

I've run back to back encounters but rarely more than 2. One of these days I'll try for 3-4 and see how it goes. Minions will be key.

 

[Bagpuss]

Well, I did note that extended rests restore the amount of short rests you can take, but you guys are, of course, technically correct. Functionally, though this is mostly anecdotal under multiple DMs with several different gorups, I've never seen a party have to continue on without healing surges.

That's because parties take an extended rest when the get low or run out of healing surges. Which they would continue to do in your system, it would just might mean leaving the dungeon. To continue on without any healing surges is fool hardy. Every game I've seen the party aim to take a extended rest after about four encounters, but if they all run out of surges before then they will rest, or if they all run out of daily powers they sometimes will as well (although we have carried on without daily powers if we had plenty of surges, rarely the other way round).

Blocking short rests, just means that you will effectively have no healing surges sooner (well you will still have surges just no way to access them).

Parties always have (nearly) full HP when going into an encounter, IMXP. Plus, encounter powers are recharged.

The game is design deliberately like that, because that way it is easier to balance encounters. If you never know what Hit Points the party will be on when they face an encounter, and you don't know what powers they will have available thus you don't know what damage they can do, you cannot use the XP system to balance the encounter.

Something I'm looking to encourage with this bit is the management of resources over the longer term. Which is why I'm probably relegating extended rests only to safe towns (or the rare "dungeon safe zone").

This is pretty much standard practice in my experience.

I don't want them to BE weaker, but I do want them to avoid the nova capability (or at least parse it out at the right moment)..... How might you get reluctant players to bomb the place with encounters and dailies?

Just so we are on the same page blowing encounter powers (even all of them) in and encounter is not going nova. Going nova is (virtually every player) blowing all their daily powers, and their action points in an encounter, then hiking out the dungeon to do and extended rest and do it again at the next encounter. If this is happening it's normally because the challenges are actually too hard, and the player feel they need to do it to stay alive.

If you don't want players to use their powers, or take short rests you make the encounters easier. So they don't feel they need to use them.

So take your encounter and split it across several mini encounters. Other people have suggested this but here is a worked example.

Party of five, 3rd level characters. (You'll need D&DI access to follow the links)

Say your big bad for this level of the dungeon is Rolf the Butcher (Level 6 elite brute), and he has his pet a Hungry Dire Wolf (Level 4 skirmisher), two trusted commanders Goblin Hexer (Level 3 Controller, Leader), they command a group of goblins. You can have a mix of 10 Goblin Cutter and Snipers (level 1 minions), plus a few actual skilled ones like a Goblin Cursespewer, Sentry and Sharpshooter.

All that comes to 1850 XP, just over the Hard limit (1749 xp) for a level 3 encounter. If you through that at them all at once it certainly would be Hard 18 against 5, they would probably end up in trouble.

But spread them out in a dungeon level, and the party won't feel the need to blow their Encounters, Daily powers and take short rests, especially if when they try to rest you throw the next wave at them.

So the Entrance room might have 3 minions and the Sentry, just of that there is a room with a Hexer 2 more minions and the Cursespewer. If the PC dispatch the first four goblins quickly, using encounters make it clear that they can hear noises coming from the next room, do they want to press the advantage and attack now, or try and take a short rest. If they press on let them catch the other goblins still drawing their weapons if they rest, perhaps one goes to raise the alarm, and the others take flanking positions either side of the door.

If they press their attack without resting and things look like they are going badly for the goblins then one of them runs off to trigger the next part of the Encounter, and so on until eventually The Butcher and the butcher's dog arrive.

This way you've put break points into a large difficult encounter. You aren't always giving PCs opportunities to take Short Rests (and when you do it might not look worth it, if they are only down a few hit points and a few powers) and when you do their is a penalty to pay for their inaction, but by staggering the arrival of enemies you are keeping the pace and giving them an opportunity to back out if things look too tricky.

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Saying that you can do the same thing with a series of Easy/Standard encounters, it's up to the DM and the player when a Short Rest or Extended occurs. If the players feel pressured all the time then they are more likely to withdraw and look for opportunities to rest.

 

[MrMyth]

Assume a kind of dungeon-crawl game, where each dungeon "floor" is essentially a single encounter. I won't be removing short rests entirely: You can short rest between floors, but not while you're "exploring the dungeon." Alternately, you can take a short rest after gaining [X] XP, where [X] is the approximate XP you'd get from a single encounter.

So instead of fighting everything all at once, you'd space out enemies in more areas across a given dungeon.

Hmm. For myself, I'm inclined to support this via environment rather than mechanics. Design an entire level to be a Level+3 encounter, or some such. Have some rooms with enemies who call for help, plus enemies who patrol, etc. Rather than force the PCs to confront everyone because they have a blanket ban on short resting, you instead have them fight everyone because that is how the combat naturally develops.

And find ways to present options - say the PCs manage to take down one room in silence, and eliminate the handful of enemies before they call for help. They then have a choice - do they rest and get back the few resources expended, or take advantage of the situation to surprise the enemy who hasn't yet noted their presence?

If they rest, they risk having a patrol find them. If they pull back to rest, instead, they might return to find the area fortified once they enemy found the bodies or noticed the missing monsters.

And if the PCs somehow screw up and draw all the monsters on themselves at once... well, it is still a winnable fight, albeit a tough one.

I find that sort of dynamic approach is a good way of encouraging continual exploration/battle without forcing a mechanical constraint upon it.

Or, of course, the PCs might have a time limit they know about - the boss finishes his ritual in 'x' time. If they rest too often on the top floor, they might not have time to rest later on. Etc.

And, finally, you do have the approach along the lines of what Gabe did - presenting it more as a mini-game challenge than anything else. It isn't so much that the characters are forced to not rest - instead, you present them with a challenge to see how far they can get without resting.

And at that point, it turns it from feeling like a limitation into a chance to show how cool they are, and players like that. You do need to be careful to make sure it won't get dull when all they have left are at-wills - one solution is to make sure there are lots of interesting options available.

For example, one battle takes place over a bridge. Normally players might not waste time bull-rushing enemies when they have all their encounter powers. But when all they have are At-wills, that is the perfect time to try just knocking enemies over the side!

Or other rooms might have bowls of fire they can knock over, have alchemical mixtures lying around for them to throw, etc. Including lots of interactive scenery (terrain powers, as they are presented in the rules) is always a good thing, but often gets overlooked when PCs have their full resources. But when resources are tight, those extra options are at their strongest, and help keep things interesting.

 

[eriktheguy]

Hey, I really like the idea of restricting rests based on XP. This would work for short rests-when DMs want to extend an encounter over many fights, as well as extended rests, when the DM wants to extend the adventuring day.

requiring the party to get X exp is a good way to control the short rest. You would probably set it at 1 equal level encounter worth of XP required. Much more and you risk a grindy at-will based battle. Much less and the fight becomes trivial.

 

[fanboy2000]

Any recommendations? How might you get reluctant players to bomb the place with encounters and dailies?

It's called a dragon.

You want to motivate players? Have them fight a dragon away from their hoard. The players will bomb the dragon with encounters and dailies and gladly not rest until they find the dragon's treasure.

 

[Saracenus]

Here are some ideas for regaining "some" powers when short rests are near impossible or "banned."

Have recharge points in the Dungeon (usually one shot each).

Say a shrine that if the appropriate ritual (arcana, religion or nature check) is done, one PC gets an encounter (or if you are feeling really generous, a daily) power back.

A natural spring that refreshes the PCs the first time they drink from it and they regain a single healing surge. If its a catch basin with a slow refill you could put a certain number of charges per day (or # of hours).

These become strategic resources that the party needs to take into consideration. If the spring is in an area that is difficult to defend, they have to balance the need for the recharge with the possibility of being overwhelmed.

I think that denying or curtailing a party short rests can be interesting when used judiciously but you really need to find ways to dangle carrots for the PCs to go for so you can continue to hit them with the big stick...

My two coppers,

 

[LostSoul]

It's not so much a "too easy" thing as it is a pacing thing. I'd like the tension to scale gradually, with the party taking a more cautious, measured route. Keeping the party closer to death at all times, making them feel fragile...this is all part of the "dungeon survival horror" feel. I don't want them to BE weaker, but I do want them to avoid the nova capability (or at least parse it out at the right moment). As an aside, If my D&D combats are going to take 30-45 minutes anyway, I'd like to see them doing more other stuff during it, too. Spending an entire night's gaming on clearing 4 rooms of goblins isn't fast enough for me.

Hmm...looks like I might really need a way to get folks who aren't leaders to blow their big guns here, so they feel the pressure of using their most powerful resources, not knowing what may lie ahead...Any recommendations? How might you get reluctant players to bomb the place with encounters and dailies? I'm thinking making them more effective (bonuses to hit, forex) is Step 1, but there's gotta be more ways...

If you want to put pacing in the DM's hands, why don't you tell them when they can use Daily/Encounter powers? Tell them that this fight is routine/charged/the climax, and based on that they gain the ability to use encounter or daily powers.

What's your goal? Why do you want to change things in the first place?