The 15min adventuring day issue, please discuss

[icetbr]

Hi, this is my first post in the forums. I'm not a very experienced DM but I do enjoy reading a lot about Gameology.

I would like to know your opinions on this subject. If there is another topic, podcast or article here about it, please let me know. I've done a lot of searching and found this peculiar post to summarize very well the issue

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/237103-15-min-adventuring-day-does-d-d-4th-edition-solve-2.html#post4399126

I think a good definition of the 15min adventuring day issue is this: the characters always rest after each encounter to regain health and powers back. They may even teleport away from the encounter then come back later

Some players see this as a flaw, others a feature while others don't even know this issue exist. My interest is mainly regarding D&D (3x and 4th editions) but discussion regarding other systems are welcome as well.

Here are some considerations / conclusions:

• Chances to occur are higher on Dungeon Crawl adventures
• Using this "trick" means the players are playing efficiently. Why play at 80% when you can play at 100%?
• If the party do sleep after each combat, the wizards will be overpowered. To prevent this, an all wizard party or all fighter party would be necessary
• Other then common sense there is really no sollution to this problem. Either the DM punishes the players with random encounters, time sensitive quests, monster respawning, retreat ambushes, or the players agree to not sleep after each fight
• The 4th edition reduced this problem
  • Granting incentives to continue fighting after each encounter: action points, extra uses for magical items
  • The wizards are nerfed
  • Healing surges, allowing the characters to stay alive longer and not depleting only one character resources (the Cleric)
• Popular combo: scry-buff-teleport and it's nova time

Thanks

[Havok4]

You can get pretty good endurance in 3.5 using the right kind of party set up. A martial adapt can keep on going all day, especially if one of them is a crusader and can then provide unlimited healing. A persistent spell using cleric can keep powerful buffs up all day and therefore allow them to expend a minimum of resources. A battlefield control specialist wizard would use very few spells during each encounter and still contribute a great deal to the party. Binders have very few abilities that are limited use during a day and can keep one working all day. Druid's wild shape lasts for hours which makes them formidable opponents all day long, and their animal companion also helps with that. Factotums get their inspiration points refreshed each encounter which lets them pull of a lot of tricks all day long and they are always good skill users. Various tricks can give psionic characters unlimited PP.

  Really the most important thing to adventuring all day is a source of unlimited healing, as it allows for the party to keep on going even after tough battles. And there are many ways to get that. Binders, crusaders, anyone who takes martial study and martial stance for the martial spirit stance, DMM persistent clerics with mass lesser vigor, templates that grant fast healing, classes that grant fast healing, unlimited PP and healing powers, tomb tainted soul and a dread necromancer, tomb tainted soul and black sand in your underpants. There are a lot of options.

[Radijs]

I have heard about the subject before and I have to say that I partially disagree with your conclusions. But then again my own games rarely see dungeon crawls for the sake of dungeon crawls.

Other then common sense there is really no sollution to this problem. Either the DM punishes the players with random encounters, time sensitive quests, monster respawning, retreat ambushes, or the players agree to not sleep after each fight

Well there is a solution, though it won't work all the time. I have often seen the suggestion that you can make time their enemy. They only have X days to get through this dungeon or to location Y because if they don't their quest will fail. The princess will be sacrificed, married etc.

But like I said, I've never encountered it before. And I think that's because of your first conclusion. I don't run kick in the door style adventures. I prefer something more character driven.

[icetbr]

...A battlefield control specialist wizard would use very few spells during each encounter and still contribute a great deal to the party. Binders have very few abilities that are limited use during a day and can keep one working all day.

Well, I believe the most affected character is the Wizard really. He can cast a few spells during an encounter to help the party, but why would he? Isn't it better to use all of his spells each encounter? Then sleep and do the same in the next?

 Really the most important thing to adventuring all day is a source of unlimited healing

Yes, and D&D 4 acknowledges that with healing surges. The unlimited healing is the key factor when dealing with characters that depends on HP to be efficient.  But Wizards should not be getting hit, that's the tank job :-). HP is often meaningless to him compared to his powerfull spells.

They only have X days to get through this dungeon or to location Y because if they don't their quest will fail. The princess will be sacrificed, married etc.

Yes, this is what I meant with "time sensitive quests". This is using good DMing to fix the system "flaws", which you really should be doing anyway.

...I prefer something more character driven.

Yes, not many groups have this issue. When you're not a rule-freak and don't try to "exploit" the system every turn, you're likely to not fall in to this and a lot of other problems. Everything is fixable with good DMing. Which is what I'll talk about in another post. Regarding my previous experiences with some DMs, one of the factors that GODify the Wizard is the low number of encounters per day (which just might be the default anyway). But please lets not go there just yet.

[Hallack]

Urgency and time are indeed the answer to this problem.  If the situation is such that retreating to refresh would allow all kinds of bad to happen then it pushes the party on.

In fact with my particular game group this problem is almost always a non-issue as it seems that there is always a urgency/time factor involved in the adventure.  Actually, it ussually happens to a degree that while we ussually get our daily resting in we rarely get any significant downtime between adventures (which really put the knife to those needing/wanting to research and craft).

A 15 minute adventuring day I think is something that the DM creates or allows.

[RobbyPants]

...A battlefield control specialist wizard would use very few spells during each encounter and still contribute a great deal to the party. Binders have very few abilities that are limited use during a day and can keep one working all day.

Well, I believe the most affected character is the Wizard really. He can cast a few spells during an encounter to help the party, but why would he? Isn't it better to use all of his spells each encounter? Then sleep and do the same in the next?

Yes and no.

If a wizard can get the same effect (winning the fight without any party members getting seriously hurt), isn't it better for him to achieve this result by expending less spells?

You'd be surprised how much a battlefield-controller can do with one or two spell slots.  Seriously.  One Web and one Glitterdust can be enough to make an entire fight trivially easy.  Even if it takes five rounds to resolve, the wizard can spend those other three rounds using his crossbow or eating popcorn.  It really doesn't matter at that point.

Of course, many casters won't have the kind of resources to do this several times a day until around 5th level or so, but everyone's pretty fragile at that point.

[InnaBinder]

Other then common sense there is really no sollution to this problem. Either the DM punishes the players with random encounters, time sensitive quests, monster respawning, retreat ambushes, or the players agree to not sleep after each fight

I find 'punishes' the players to be a fairly strongly worded point of view.  If the adventurers are in a legitimately dynamic setting, things should be ongoing around them, regardless of their actions.  Those things can reasonably include predatory creatures of various types and hostile interest groups who are upset about the PCs interloping on their turf without it meaning the DM is 'punishing' the players.  It isn't punishment for the environment to behave with as much "immersive realism" (new term: realistic behavior within the bounds of an unrealistic setting) and appropriate intelligence as the players do.

[veekie]

I agree, it's a large part, to do with how time critical the nature of the game is. If theres any quest, missions etc, life goes on without the PCs being there, and hence, derive the natural consequences to maintain pacing. Hell, if they take too long to loot a dungeon(due to holing up in a rope trick), monsters may seek them out, or even better yet, another team of adventurers found the joint and are preemptively looting it. Nothing keeps players going as much as the thought of someone else doing their quest before them.

[Midnight_v]

I agree, it's a large part, to do with how time critical the nature of the game is. If theres any quest, missions etc, life goes on without the PCs being there, and hence, derive the natural consequences to maintain pacing. Hell, if they take too long to loot a dungeon(due to holing up in a rope trick), monsters may seek them out, or even better yet, another team of adventurers found the joint and are preemptively looting it. Nothing keeps players going as much as the thought of someone else doing their quest before them.

I find the argument of this poster talking about "God-ifying" the wizard to be very leading...
Frankly, I don't agree that these things can be classified as "Good Dm'ing" or "Bad Dm'ing" unless you individually designate the "bad" descriptor to things "you" don't like. Which is well an unpleasant rubric all around.
So if you're going to assign the 15 min work day as a problem things should be looked at.

  If for instance you mean "God-ify" the wizard in the Treantmonk level20 sense of "controling the battle" or controling individual battles. They can pretty much do that after a certain level regardless of what you do. Why? The simple answer is that they have spells of that type for every level.

  Making the battle "time sensitive" may or may not prevent this as is mentioned in the other thread... parties may well just fail. Harrasing a party when they DON'T want to be bothered (like in a rope trick) will actually lead to just MORE inventive ways of getting what they want." "fighting at 100%"

another team of adventurers found the joint and are preemptively looting it

Funny thing about that is unless thats ex machina then they will invariably find that party kill them and double thier wealth or maybe thats why its so easy to kill the rival party. If your just using the existance of the other party to rush them along it's probabbly a one dungeon trick... or they'll fail. Hell maybe they'll just leave when if they realize the linear guild beat them to it "again".
........................................................

Yes, not many groups have this issue. When you're not a rule-freak and don't try to "exploit" the system every turn, you're likely to not fall in to this and a lot of other problems. Everything is fixable with good DMing. Which is what I'll talk about in another post. Regarding my previous experiences with some DMs, one of the factors that GODify the Wizard is the low number of encounters per day (which just might be the default anyway). But please lets not go there just yet. 

How very telling...
 Notice how he's skimming the surfact of Oberoni land there, but I'm thinking that more lends it self to repeating the "No true scotsman" Fallacy. Though ultimately he assigning pejoratives to things that aren't really "problems" when you look at the entire of D&D.
"Good Dm'ing"? Can't wait to hear it.
  Saying "No" constantly isnt' "good dming", tailoring encounters to defeat new abilities that players earn isn't "good dm'ing".
Having an understanding of the rules and telling a good story that is adjucated and flows well and is fun for your individual group is good Dm'ing, if there's ever been a good definition of it.
Fix the 15 min work day to you desire but... it's not really a problem in and of itself.


 

[icetbr]

Other then common sense there is really no sollution to this problem. Either the DM punishes the players with random encounters, time sensitive quests, monster respawning, retreat ambushes, or the players agree to not sleep after each fight

I find 'punishes' the players to be a fairly strongly worded point of view.  If the adventurers are in a legitimately dynamic setting, things should be ongoing around them, regardless of their actions.  Those things can reasonably include predatory creatures of various types and hostile interest groups who are upset about the PCs interloping on their turf without it meaning the DM is 'punishing' the players.  It isn't punishment for the environment to behave with as much "immersive realism" (new term: realistic behavior within the bounds of an unrealistic setting) and appropriate intelligence as the players do.

Sorry, punishes came out too strong indeed. My point is just that the DM must take into account the issue and prevent it.

If for instance you mean "God-ify" the wizard in the Treantmonk level20 sense of "controling the battle" or controling individual battles. They can pretty much do that after a certain level regardless of what you do. Why? The simple answer is that they have spells of that type for every level.

I mean in the sense of having all of your spells at every battle. I believe the magic system (D&D 3.5) was not developed to take that into account. And my point is, even if a wizard can be the most powerfull class with 10+ battles a day, he is more so with 1 battle a day.

How very telling...
 Notice how he's skimming the surfact of Oberoni land there, but I'm thinking that more lends it self to repeating the "No true scotsman" Fallacy. Though ultimately he assigning pejoratives to things that aren't really "problems" when you look at the entire of D&D.
"Good Dm'ing"? Can't wait to hear it.
  Saying "No" constantly isnt' "good dming", tailoring encounters to defeat new abilities that players earn isn't "good dm'ing".
Having an understanding of the rules and telling a good story that is adjucated and flows well and is fun for your individual group is good Dm'ing, if there's ever been a good definition of it.
Fix the 15 min work day to you desire but... it's not really a problem in and of itself.

I said this intentionally. Although I could be called a rule freak, I'm totally capable of playing any system with any amount of rules. In fact that's just what I do, because I don't see a point in taking every rule to the letter while playing. I just like the gameplay aspect of the systems I play. I love to learn how the designers think, what considerations they took when choosing one rule over the other. I'm not bashing D&D here, it's my favorite system! I play since 1st edition, although not very often.

About good vs. bad Dming, again, maybe I choosed bad words. I don't mean to preach the right vs wrong way of playing, I'm just playing devil's advocate here! But I think I disagree with you a little. I don't think you're a BAD DM for saying "no, you cannot sleep after each encounter". If it will make things unbalanced, the "good" DM thing to do would be to come up with an excuse, just like everybody else in this thread suggested. And the having fun part, there are some huge threads in this forum discussing this, the "Why not have more fun" threads. Something in the lines o "why adjust a system to play your way when you can play a system that already PLAYS your way".

BTW, D&D is not perfect. I does have many flaws. The 15 min adventure is an issue that D&D 4 and Pathfinder explicitly claims that they reduced/fixed it. Does it make it any less fun to play? Of course not!

Seems I'm failing my cross-class "Communicate with other people" skill check :-)

[PhaedrusXY]

This isn't as much of a problem as some people make it out to be. You can't just sleep whenever you want and regain spells. Clerics have to pray for spells at a specific time each day, and they can only do it once. Similarly, wizards and sorcerers can only prepare spells once per day. If there is absolutely no time pressure at all, then I guess they can just go hole up somewhere and rest after one fight per day, but this is rarely the case in the games I've been in. Usually you are competing with some other group to achieve goals counter to each others', and if you spend most of your days staring at your navel, they are going to achieve theirs first.

[Midnight_v]

Seems I'm failing my cross-class "Communicate with other people" skill check :-)

No... no I apologize, I may have been over-reacting I was already irked. Sorry. 

I also think if you fight 10 battles a day ... no party memembe really wins.
Infinite healing does fix that but only by making it to where MAX HP is the rechargeable resource, instead of "your best spells" it's just a way of getting around it. There's no "Real" attrition then for melee's at that point. Which is its own set of problems. . .

[Alea_Iacta_Est]

If they teleport away from a combat, rest, then come back the monsters could be gone or they could lay a trap for the PCs.
If PCs rest in the dungeon, there is a great chance that a monster could have heard their combat or smelt the gore and wanders over to investigate while everyone has their pants down. If the PCs run away and break, have monsters do that. The group of monsters fights, teleports away, then when the PCs are looting the room, they return.
If the PCs leave the dungeon and sleep, so many things could happen in a town after dark. Gang wars, merchant house squabbles, thieves, assassins, fires, a raiding party, or even a dragon. The PCs are not the only moving characters in the game. The NPCs are not static until the PCs activate them. If the PCs won't find action, make action find them. Don't go too overboard. If they get the shit kicked out of them, let them rest up a bit. Just stop them from rebooting all the time.

[veekie]

Well, in my case, its less of restricting the party's power(honestly, resting whenever the hell they want to isn't that bad), but it's above all a functional means of maintaining the game's tone. Simply keeping the time pressure present in some matter can make a world feel more dynamic, and possibly force your players to be slightly more 'realistic' in how they deal with difficulties. And yes, the second party IS there to be looted, they're giving the PCs an impetus to get on with things, and the equipment they bear is literally taken out of the loot ahead anyway(I'm assuming you're running your own game here, not a published product). In essence, several of the encounters ahead have been removed, rolled up and presented as a rival party(challenge ++, loot ++), as the PCs will arrive to find the traps disarmed(challenge -), monsters murdered(challenge -, loot -) and the chests looted( loot -).

As for battlefield control and all that, it's perfectly valid strategy, so just brush up and use it right back instead of having a 60x60ft arena with level ground and square walls. Assuming you and your players enjoy interesting fights of course. As a DM you don't need to have a spellcaster present just to arrange for environmental hazards. Just remember to account for it in CR estimations afterwards. They beat the challenge, by damn, and the reward is waiting!,

[RobbyPants]

If they teleport away from a combat, rest, then come back the monsters could be gone or they could lay a trap for the PCs.
If PCs rest in the dungeon, there is a great chance that a monster could have heard their combat or smelt the gore and wanders over to investigate while everyone has their pants down. If the PCs run away and break, have monsters do that. The group of monsters fights, teleports away, then when the PCs are looting the room, they return.
If the PCs leave the dungeon and sleep, so many things could happen in a town after dark. Gang wars, merchant house squabbles, thieves, assassins, fires, a raiding party, or even a dragon. The PCs are not the only moving characters in the game. The NPCs are not static until the PCs activate them. If the PCs won't find action, make action find them. Don't go too overboard. If they get the shit kicked out of them, let them rest up a bit. Just stop them from rebooting all the time.

This falls under the issue of the DM imposing restrictions.  I think it can work well in some cases so long as it's not overused.  If done correctly, the threat of it happening might keep the PCs from blowing their wad in one fight and then wanting to rest for 23 hours and 45 minutes.

However, if the DM overdoes it, the players will rightfully grow pissed.  If every single monster they encounter seems to have some contingiency plan for their clever tactic, it comes off as DM metagaming.  If they teleport home to "safety" only to find out the night life in the town is equally harsh, they'll get pissed too.  You can only run into so many squabbling ganster-assassins-thieves setting fires that attract dragon raiding parties before they wonder how the hell this town is still standing.

So, while the DM has many creative options at his disposal, he'd be wise not to overuse any of them.

[veekie]

And besides, if the players really seem to be enjoying doing this, you might want a discussion of game tone anyway.

[Alea_Iacta_Est]

This falls under the issue of the DM imposing restrictions.  I think it can work well in some cases so long as it's not overused.  If done correctly, the threat of it happening might keep the PCs from blowing their wad in one fight and then wanting to rest for 23 hours and 45 minutes.

I agree entirely. Everything must be used with moderation and you know when it is bad. When it's bad. Coming up with creative ways to keep everyone going is just part of player finesse as much as it is GM finesse. Everyone has to prepare for multiple challenges and if they blow their wad 15 minutes into the day, they will have trouble later in that day, or night depending on your game.

[Endarire]

Maybe it's my CRPG background, but I would often find foes about as hard as I could handle, beat them, rest, and keep doing this.  In 3.5, the 15 minute workday is viable and encouraged in some situations, but it's up to the group to decide.

[Brainpiercing]

Hmm, I've never experienced this problem, except in computer games. The key is just reading the rules: Per DAY abilities are per day, not per period between rests.

Also, I haven't yet found a party in the groups I am or have played in which was overly eager to rest. Admittedly Rope Trick comes rather rarely, for some reason. Perhaps it's the problem with the Bags of Holding or the Haversacks, which are supposed to be incompatible? (Or the lack of smart wizard players? Who knows...)

But I think just creating a dynamic game world is clearly the key. The game doesn't harass the players on purpose, it just does what it SHOULD do if they are slacking. If they run into the first room of a dungeon, kill something, make one hell of a din, and the dungeon is not obscenely large, then something will most certainly come and check what happened. If they are wandering the countryside and had a fight with some monster, the carrion birds are sure to attract the next category of scavenger. If the party is still there, possibly even asleep, then so much more trouble for them.
Now if they teleport back to town, then again a normal dynamic change in the game world will occur in the meantime. Their doings might be discovered, an ambush might be prepared, or their targets might just pack up and leave.

It's really quite simple.

[RobbyPants]

Perhaps it's the problem with the Bags of Holding or the Haversacks, which are supposed to be incompatible? (Or the lack of smart wizard players? Who knows...)

Which is funny, because we don't really know what happens if you take a Bag of Holding into a Rope Trick Spell.  All the spell says on the matter is that it's "hazerdous" to bring extradimensional space into the spell.

Beyond that, the only specific interaction is defined in the Bag of Holding and Portable Hole entries, which explicitly state the other item.  Hewards Handy Haversack is completely silent on the matter.  Basically, what we end up with is:

Bag of Holding + Portable Hole = Astral rift!
Bag of Holding + Heward's Handy Haversack = Undefined (technically no issue)
Portable Hole + Heward's Handy Haversack = Undefined (technically no issue)
Any of the above + Rope Trick = "Hazerdous" (Astral Rift?  Who knows?  It's not really defined, whereas it is clearly defined in the Portable Hole and Bag of Holding definitions)