Without passing judgement on any of them or on GM's who have a problem with this, I just wanted to brain storm some ways to keep the party moving, despite having burned through some resources or being afraid of failure against a BBEG. Adding to the list would be helpful.
1) The Literal Timer.
If the party doesn't finish their task in a certain amount of time, the window for succeeding in it will close. Variations include: Hostage Crisis, Magic Doorway Closing, Ingredient Needed Before Whatever Bad Thing Happens (magic stops working, person dies, buyer leaves), Ritual Completion at X Hour
2) The Threat of Increasing Difficulty
Once the party starts doing damage to the enemy, word will travel that they are coming. If a minion fails to check in, the enemy will go on alert. Therefore, once contact with the enemy is made, the party has invested interest in hurrying. This requires a balance on the GM's part: that the increase in difficulty for not getting the job done quickly is significantly worse than doing the job with limited resources.
3) Pointless Attrition
The trail to the enemy is so fraught with peril, including intelligent and bothersome wondering monsters, that staying in the campaign area longer than necessary is unacceptable. The players may believe that each day will be equally difficult and that no advantage will be gained for waiting.
4) Looming Death
Similar to the counter, there is a random daily chance of encountering a superbeing unrelated to the adventure at hand. For example, the goblin dungeon is next to a red dragon the party can't kill, and there is a 10% daily chance of meeting the dragon. Be prepared to wipe the party with the dragon if they drag their feet.
5) Competing Forces
There's a reward for the giant shaman's stone of translation, and another competing adventuring party might get there first. As a DM, have some increasing random chance that another group completes the mission while the...
Excellent YRM, I especially like 7.
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There is little to say on this which I haven't said in other threads, so here's some of those:
Some discussion of the 15mAD issue
If I had to condense my advice down to one thing: timers! Soft timers, hard timers, short timers, long timers.
If allowed to include another tender vittle of advice: sometimes it's okay to up the challenge and force the players to blow all their resources on one encounter. The important thing is to mix it up. Be unpredictable! The 15mAD issue is one of predictable GMing.
Yeah, I let them rest too, but the 15 minute adventuring day would in a dangerous area, lead to a quick demise for some of them in my games.
Sometimes the best solution to this, is for one player to be especially driven. The polearm ranger that refuses to sit back and rest when there are monsters to kill and people to save. Now the spellcasters can rest, but they lose the strength in numbers, if the adventurous go out and raid and survive, they will level up faster and be more centrally the heroes.
Ryszard the ranger: you are free princess. The bugbears are all dead.
Princess: is it just you? There are no other heroes?
Ryszard the ranger: yeah, my other adventuring buddies all decided to take a nap and wait the hours out to refresh their abilities.
Princess: take me you brave man!
Or:
Rest of the party: Look there's Ryszard's half-eaten corpse. What was he thinking running off alone and already wounded. We barely survived this fight, even at full strength.
Ryszard didn't die. He is a hero not yet claimed by death. The non-heroic got left behind to camp and think of what they could have been.
He got half-eaten a couple of times. But he got better.
On taking a rest and not pushing on, camping and risk aversion is seeming very common in games of late, across media.
http://memegenerator.net/instance/10540237
If players need to get stuck in more, dm should drop some hints. Grue-some hints.
It was a small party. His attack and tactics were good and he got lucky; Ryszard and the character after him (Ryszard got retired as a local hero) later teamed up with other heroic npcs and quickly solved problems. Which in kingmaker, is actually a really good choice.
You seem angry, but as a player that has had to wait around for spellcasters to recharge when there are things to be done, that is precisely what makes me angry. This leads to the taking of risks. To quote a Ferengi, the bigger the risk, the bigger the win!
It was a joking hypothetical, but then equalizer reminded me it happened... a few times.
Fools rush in? If barbs rush in and power attack while raging, they might just cut straight through enemy lines, cleave their way to victory. Fools rush in? Cav or a rogue comes in hard on the flank and pushes to win a battle quickly. Fools rush in? An archer steps out and moves forward looking for foes, puts all those ranged feats to good use and mows down targets, killing then moving, killing then moving. Or in the case of Ryszard, reach polearm ranger with powerful charge impales foes and keeps stabbing and going. High movement so he rushes quick, into harm and out of it if need be.
Hate popular sayings assumed to always be true, you hit a nerver bro! :D
I love offence, really respect good defence, but trying to sit out battles because you want your full spell list just annoys me, its the safe playing style/laziness that is behind it that is infuriating. I come to game, not camp.
On tpks and rushing in, yeah, it can happen. If the plan is to skirmish and take your time, and a char desperately tries to get in there and is in serious danger, a lot of deaths can result from trying to save Leeroy Jenkins. To the lost!
From a player perspective I just realized why other players don't carry things like door spikes anymore. Or understand why we did. Or value things like Daern's Instant Fortress as much as I did - or my favorite item from X5, the oft-overlooked House of Zebulon ("I" still have this to this day). Or not worry too much that the old Rope Trick spell was made much less useful (though I can see why it was made much less useful). Or bother to learn and memorize Rope Trick (though I guess now I understand why they skip over utility spell such as these, as unnecessary to how they experience the game).
Well, if this thread helps prompt people to re-value these and similar things, then it's done a good job.
I wish I could favorite this twice.
Fundamentally all these suggestions, even mine, miss the real point and violate a basic rule of gaming: Don't try in-game solutions for out-of-game problems.
If your players are trying to rest between every encounter, ask them why.
Suggest they not do so. Deal with it from that end first, before imposing in-game solutions.
That's an excellent basic rule of gaming and I'm always glad to be reminded of it. But in what way is the 15 minute adventuring day an out of game problem?
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Out of game solution to in game problem.
If it works for your table great, no harm no foul. But it breaks immersion at mine.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Players can choose to not use all their resources in 15 minutes, eliminating the 15 minute adventuring day from outside the game.
This works too, but sometimes it makes more sense for them to have a 15 minute day. I like to present them with the choice, they can take a short day if they want, but they always know there are consequences. For example: If the wizard goofs up and preps a bunch of fire spells and they attack the fortress of fire elementals, maybe it's worth taking a short day. There are still consequences to the short day, but it's worth it to them.
TOZ I'm not familiar with the term. Would that be like "punishing" players for scrying?
If so, no, I don't do that as a DM. I might have some lead lined walls or something if it makes sense for them to be there and I want to protect a secret.
Anyway I haven't played all that much beyond 12th.
Edit: Looked up scry and die. I get it now.
As a player I would totally do that if the bad guy left himself open. I wouldn't be crazy about the DM asking me "hey please don't scry and die because then you will miss the whole adventure I made."
I would wonder, why didn't he just do something in game to block scry and die?
11. Bigger rewards for fast completion
Kinda self explaining, their employer wants to see it taken care off as soon as possible or perhaps there is only a limited time to spend before the city sinks back into the sea/swamp for another 100 years.
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If the dungeon is suitable for 15min adventuring, then a coldly calculating party (I'm looking at you, mr. Wizard) would be wise to use it. So an issue is if the party is capable of recognizing what kind of dungeon this is. That's a player skill/insight thing, although good information gathering and scouting skills of the PCs matter too.
Question: how do the PCs camp after 15mins? How come they get away with this?
I've heard of the Rope Trick trick, but that one got nerfed in PF.
Barricading a room would only work against really stupid monsters; I doubt the party sound-proofs the barricade, so keeping the casters from getting real sleep should be doable. Or smoke them out. Or try to set the room on fire from outside. Or beat down the door. You're opening up yourself to siege tactics while not at full resources; that's risky.
How come people can camp after 15mins? I really don't know. Tell me please.
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Out of game solution to in game problem.
If it works for your table great, no harm no foul. But it breaks immersion at mine.
Agreed. And I think if you approach the problem realistically in game the 15 minute adventure day shouldn't be happening much anyway.
These are Big Damn Heroes who are doing hero type work. That type of work is generally urgent (timers) and against intelligent enemies who will adapt to how you fight and reinforce if your retreat and return.
Just keeping that in mind discourages the 15 minute work day without killing immersion in my games.
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Edit: Looked up scry and die. I get it now.As a player I would totally do that if the bad guy left himself open. I wouldn't be crazy about the DM asking me "hey please don't scry and die because then you will miss the whole adventure I made."
I would wonder, why didn't he just do something in game to block scry and die?
Agreed. This goes back to high level enemies being smart. And scry being a two way street...retreating to restore is much harder when the enemy can scry where you went. It makes it all the more important to get it done in one go, before the BBEG knows fully who you are.
Also, looking at the spell
"A creature can notice the sensor by making a Perception check with a DC 20 + the spell level. The sensor can be dispelled as if it were an active spell."
And of course a 1000gp mirror for non divine casters vs lead sheeting.
Yep, and the question is, are they being lazy, cautious and unheroic by taking a 15 minute day, or are they doing what is needed? Are they near dead or not? How should a dm respond to this if they are simply being deliberately slow, so that they are always at full power.
I've not gotten a campaign up over 5th level in years. For some reason that seems to be some kind of dead zone for me. But a couple campaigns ago I was using ONLY APL to APL+2 level CR's and designing all 5 room dungeons. My players hated it since combat was so slow and I hated the predictability of it all.
Purely by accident I stumbled on the magic formula of mixing low and high level encounters. I know it says it in the core and on more than a few blogs but I guess I wasn't paying attention.
So at low levels it's still pretty tough. That's when I use stuff like timers and such. But its a lot of fun watching my players wade through kobold CR 1 encounters at level 3 for a few combats and then having them turn a corner...right into a black-dragon inspired kobold wizard (necromancer) 6 with a small horde of bloody kobold skeletons. Talk about a grind...
But I come back to expectations. Realistically I get through about 8-12 encounters in a session. This is with a good mix of CR's encounter types (some traps/puzzles, non-combat intended, etc.) and the players surprising me a bit with their tactics. This is also limited by the real-life fact that I usually only have 4-6 hours to play the game w/my buddies.
So 10 encounters, averaging about 2 rounds per encounter equals 20 rounds...2 minutes of my PC's day is spent defeating monsters. I have an expectation then that my PC's will spend almost EVERY waking moment of their day doing NON-COMBAT related things. This is the primary reason why I tell all my low-level wizards to bring an ink and quill set w/them on the adventure; if there's ANY spell they haven't expended in those 2 minutes, even if it's a utility, make a scroll. Then at least you're doing something with all that free time.
Now there's also the expectation of resource management. I play with some pretty tactically minded players. I still haven't convinced them to buy magic items or craft them (they're old school and feel potions of CLW found in the dungeon will just happen) but besides that they're pretty savvy. Therefore they press on when they can.
Therefore I can pretty reliably gauge when their spells/powers/HP's will run out. This is usually around 10 fights ironically. By then the wizard's gotten fed up with his crossbow, used up his first level spells, and since he's an abjurer he doesn't have any cool force bolts to hurl 4/day, so he's pretty much down to acid splash. Also by that point the dwarf has gone down and gotten channeled back up to hover around 4 hp for the last hour.
So my expectation is that, based on good resource management, we STILL only manage about 10 fights a session. Now, if I were at a con or stuck in a cabin over a long weekend, and therefore running a marathon session, I'd think 10 fights was pretty lame. But over 5 hours, with time factored in for potty breaks, some dialogue and small talk both in and out of character, and players using decent resource management I think 10 fights is pretty respectable.
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For the last month, I've been studying Pathfinder Adventure Paths, specifically ones with dungeon crawls in it. Usually they are the ones Greg A Vaughn do. I noticed that in these long dungeon crawls, they tend to have encounters that are one to two levels below the ECL scattered about. Furthermore, I've used this method and have found that dungeon crawls last longer without a lot of rest in-between and are still challenging. I'd suggest trying that. I also like to scatter traps in there as easier ways to gain XP without the same resource expenditure.There's a reason the 3.5 DMG suggested that you only make half of the fights even EL with the party. Doing something like this not only increases dungeon longevity without over-pressuring the players, but it gives the fights more variety as well. The Alexandrian has a good writeup on the matter.
People on these boards moan at Paizo's designers if they present 'mook' challenges.
Don't really know where the word 'mook' comes from, don't really know where the complaining comes from either. It has worked though.
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Edit: Looked up scry and die. I get it now.
Agreed. This goes back to high level enemies being smart. And scry being a two way street...retreating to restore is much harder when the enemy can scry where you went. It makes it all the more important to get it done in one go, before the BBEG knows fully who you are.
I find the "must have a connection or knowledge of the subject" clause of scry to be quite functional. Sure, my villains take countermeasures, but that includes more than permanent private sanctum. When I run the high level game, villains always act through proxies and disguises, and leave their true nature a complete mystery in order to foil scry.
It's a lot like the "familiarity" clause of teleport. As a GM, if you are aware of these clauses and build accordingly — moreover, build consistently with how people would behave in a world with these spells, a lot of the clever "one-liner" techniques from the internet fizzle.
Also, looking at the spell
"A creature can notice the sensor by making a Perception check with a DC 20 + the spell level. The sensor can be dispelled as if it were an active spell."
This rule. This is , but not for that reason.
You might imagine this clause was put in for some kind of "balance" reason, to give villains a chance against scry-n-die tactics, but you'd be wrong. It's in there to screw with players, and you want them to pass those perception checks.
Returning the the original thread topic — if you're having trouble with the 15 minute day, start a pissed-off archmage scrying on them all the time. Do this every time they try to rest — or every time they prepare spells. At least some of the time, they'll make the perception DC.
Nothing motivates a party to expedite the adventure like knowing the villain is watching their tactics. Sometimes, it's not even the villain, just an interested party, but the PCs don't know that!
May have already been mentioned, but you can always attack them in their sleep if they rest too much. Especially if they're resting in open areas and near dungeons and such.
You could also kind of keep increasing the defense at locations they need to go to. If they take too long, word is going to spread to the BBEG and his minions. They will begin to prepare. The longer the PCs take, the more preparation.
More traps, more monsters, more encounters with favourable terrain for the enemies. Harder locks, better equipped sentries.
Think of it this way: put yourself in the position of the leader of a given adventure location. You get word that adventurers are on the way. What would YOU do to prepare?
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So with all of the ranting against the 15-minute adventuring day, just how long should the standard adventuring day be? The standard advice was 4 APL equivalent encounters, right?
but, sadly, implied in PFRPG.
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I would go with a broad encounter range, from CR-5 to CR+5 but with the majority of encounters below CR, for all of the reasons linked to earlier.
Make them feel like idiots for resting after smashing through 4 groups of weaklings, make them re-assess the situation and decide, "Let's just get on with it!"
And if your party still has 60% of resources when they face the BBEG at the end of the dungeon? Awesome! You get to make one super-badass BBEG.
Another thing I will mention.
Sometimes it is not the fault of the players that there is a 15 minute work day.
I have been in groups were nearly every single combat was down-to-the-wire, pull-out-all-the-stops, time-to-nova. If after the first fight with the lookouts the part is 1/3 hps, nearly out of spells, used alot of expendibles, etc... Why would they think they can go farther without recovering?
I've never believed that dungeons require one session.
Right now my players are hiding in the extra-dimensional space caused by the Rope Trick spell. The Cleric is at -9 (of a possible -14, but he's stable), the Ninja is at 13, and the Wizard is almost full (somewhere in the high 20s). They're 6th level characters.
I decided to custom build a dungeon and not fudge the dice. This is what happens when I put my players against Encounter Levels equal to their APL-1 (due to being a 3 player party).
I'm sure there a plenty of people here who will give you all sorts of advice on how to punish them for doing that.I've never believed that dungeons require one session.
Right now my players are hiding in the extra-dimensional space caused by the Rope Trick spell. The Cleric is at -9 (of a possible -14, but he's stable), the Ninja is at 13, and the Wizard is almost full (somewhere in the high 20s). They're 6th level characters.
I decided to custom build a dungeon and not fudge the dice. This is what happens when I put my players against Encounter Levels equal to their APL-1 (due to being a 3 player party).
I think I've punished them enough.
First fight: two dire bats, two bat swarms on a 10 foot wide bridge with no visible bottom beneath it. Wizard was bullrushed off the bridge by a dire bat in the first round.
Second fight: Ninja actually falls for a Cloaker. Upon me mentioning the cloak he runs over and puts it on right away. That ended with the ninja on the floor being affected by several Moan affects, the Wizard unconscious and the Cleric okay.
Last fight: a Golden Guardian (actually APL +1). Thing knocks out the Cleric right quick, and then when it dies it explodes which is what nearly killed the Cleric.
Though there is a Half-Fiend Minotaur wandering the dungeon looking for fresh meat.
So with all of the ranting against the 15-minute adventuring day, just how long should the standard adventuring day be? The standard advice was 4 APL equivalent encounters, right?but, sadly, implied in PFRPG.
I guess you can see that as an implicit encounter count — but! The APs generally go against that, and strike a good balance.
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So with all of the ranting against the 15-minute adventuring day, just how long should the standard adventuring day be? The standard advice was 4 APL equivalent encounters, right? More if they're weaker, less if they're stronger.
So if you want more encounters than that in your dungeon (loosely defined dungeon), your party is going to have to rest. My basic problem with most of the ideas suggested in this thread is that they don't make resting too often hard, they make resting at all hard.
So for those advocating them, do you design all your areas to be doable in one day?
Do you break them up by providing specific safe places to rest? Essentially dictating where they can and will rest? And then how to keep the group from returning to them after the next fight?
Well, I don't exactly rail against it, but if I might defend the key methods of Reactive NPCs and Timers... there should be no "standard" adventuring day. I mean, those words are just silly when put together in that order, "standard adventure". You need a baseline frequency to assign challenges fairly; that number is around four, as mentioned above. Once established, deviate from that standard early and often. Twist every knob, pull every lever, flip every switch.
15mAD advice is for GMs who are having a problem with PCs taking every encounter at full strength. Now, I believe that the PCs should have periods where they do exactly this — but variety is the spice.
Sometimes they can rest whenever. Sometimes they get attacked when they rest. Sometimes they can't rest at all. Sometimes the players curse their rotten fate for not being able to rest. All of these things, some of the time.
The 15 Minute Day problem is one where the GM doesn't change it up, and the players start to think in terms of static rest plans. "We'll just teleport back, rest, and start up here tomorrow!" Is there anything wrong with that statement? NO! It's completely reasonable if you have a tool like teleport at your disposal. You should get to use it that way, some times. But sometimes, the villain has pet hounds of Tindalos. Sometimes he sets a teleport trap.
That is the crime of the 15 minute adventuring day: it is a pattern that goes uninterrupted for so long that it has been given a name. This means it is worth watching out for. But the inverse postulation, "We can never rest evar because game balance depends on it!!" is equally boring and broken. Sometimes you let the PCs off the rest leash. Sometimes you choke up on it. Sometimes the wizard loses a spellbook. Variety keeps campaigns interesting.
So with all of the ranting against the 15-minute adventuring day, just how long should the standard adventuring day be? The standard advice was 4 APL equivalent encounters, right? More if they're weaker, less if they're stronger.
So if you want more encounters than that in your dungeon (loosely defined dungeon), your party is going to have to rest. My basic problem with most of the ideas suggested in this thread is that they don't make resting too often hard, they make resting at all hard.
So for those advocating them, do you design all your areas to be doable in one day?
Do you break them up by providing specific safe places to rest? Essentially dictating where they can and will rest? And then how to keep the group from returning to them after the next fight?
Personally, if it's a dungeon, I make mine to allow the players to explore a floor in a game session.
Depends. Usually they don't have to rest after the first floor. And I try to put enough items in an area (potions, wands, etc.) to where there are options for using more than just your spells to attack or patch up. Remember though, I run about 25% to 33% of a dungeon's encounters below ECL. I also prefer mixing up traps, hazards, and to a lesser extent haunts to challenge my party in other ways that don't involve an hour of combat or nova'ing. And finally, depending on the dungeon, sometimes they can hole up somewhere safe. Some times they can't. It depends of whether it's some cave, a ruins, or an active fortress.