Seriously, do responsible DM's actually let their characters get away with stuff like resting during the flow of play, without logical consequences?
(spelling edit mine)
Yes. The game is built so that people can only fight a few encounters a day before a TPK is assured. If you, as a DM, have set up too many encounters, then its your failure that the PCs rest. Punishing the PCs for your failures is just Gygaxian.
On another note, real adventurers have Rings of Sustenance (2 hours to rest!).
Yesss....because worlds are made of nice, game balanced four encounter days, and characters in stories or real life heroes, never have to struggle against insurmountable odds.
It isn't about punnishing players, or a failier on mine or anyone elses part. It is about telling a story and portraying a world in a fairly accurate manner. Not to mention to provide 'challanges' to the players. Good encounters and adventures often include a great deal of risk to the characters.
Not all encounters need be solve by force, not every adventure need be in a Dungeon, nor every story end with a fight verses a big bad guy.
Seriously, do responsible DM's actually let their characters get away with stuff like resting during the flow of play, without logical consequences?
(spelling edit mine)
Yes. The game is built so that people can only fight a few encounters a day before a TPK is assured. If you, as a DM, have set up too many encounters, then its your failure that the PCs rest. Punishing the PCs for your failures is just Gygaxian.
On another note, real adventurers have Rings of Sustenance (2 hours to rest!).
Yesss....because worlds are made of nice, game balanced four encounter days, and characters in stories or real life heroes, never have to struggle against insurmountable odds.
It isn't about punnishing players, or a failier on mine or anyone elses part. It is about telling a story and portraying a world in a fairly accurate manner. Not to mention to provide 'challanges' to the players. Good encounters and adventures often include a great deal of risk to the characters.
Not all encounters need be solve by force, not every adventure need be in a Dungeon, nor every story end with a fight verses a big bad guy.
Yes. it is punishing players.
As a DM, your job is to make sure that they CAN beat the the challenges you've set for them. If you've set up a series of encounters that you expect them to go through in one shot or else dire things happen, but those encounters are too tough and the PCs burn too many resources, then not letting them rest is not setting them a challenge, its giving them a failure.
Insurmountable odds means that they can't be surmounted. You don't beat that....you just fail. That's what it means.
This is a cooperative storytelling game. Savvy? You are supposed to make it possible to win.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I keep hearing about this "15-minute adventuring day." As if it were a problem.
Well, there's a simple solution.
Make combat rounds last 5 minutes. Lots of feints, and maneuverings, with one or two blows likely to count. A monk with flurry of blows could stagger someone with almost a punch every minute!
Instead of wizards burning through spells in 15 minutes, it'd take something like, ah, 20. Maybe even 25.
Problem solved!
EDIT: What?!
Since an adventure that takes into account infinite resources will most certainly be absolutely lethal to PCs that do try to press onward without resting and an adventure that assumes you'll complete it in one go is a cakewalk for PCs that make use of the infinite ammo code.
That I don't believe. (At least the last part).
Infinite resources don't make you win battles....which is why Post 1 of this thread is about letting people use wands and recharge them for free. Sure, some battles get easier. A surprising number of DnD monsters aren't designed to beat a flying caster that can fireball ten times.
But most encounters don't change. People still fight battles by tossing thier best effect as often as possible. Healing still takes place after combat.
Hand someone a wand thats a little less powerful than their best attack spell, and they'll save their best attack spell for when they need it, especially if you let them know that its a timed adventure.
That's true, but the problem with the 15 minute adventuring day is that you get your most powerful attack, all the time, so you can always come at the enemy with your most powerful stuff.And that has a huge effect on encounter design.
I don't think people want the 15-Minute Adventuring Day, or do it as some kind of grand strategy.
I think they notice that as a 6th level Wizard, when your 3rd and 2nd level spells are gone, you are a 1st level Wizard....and that means the next CR 6 thing the party fights is getting almost no help from you. Or the party cleric looks over and says "umm, I can't actually heal us again and the fighter is still hurt. Someone is dying in the next encounter if we take as much damage."
They may want to rest before a big fight, but nobody with a heart in his chest feels good about resting after Mook Party #4 and before Mook Party #5, knowing the BBEG is after Mook Party #8.
From a wizards point of few, i think a 15 minutes adventuring day seems underprepared and not well thought thru.
A real wizard will take time to scry, scout, hired rogue's to get information, so that he can learn hose spells he needs casts them within 3 to 5 rounds and then has dealt with his problem, foes ect.
So any real wizard dont get out of his tower except for like 3 to 5 rounds every week or month or year as the chalanges grow.
Yes. The game is built so that people can only fight a few encounters a day before a TPK is assured. If you, as a DM, have set up too many encounters, then its your failure that the PCs rest. Punishing the PCs for your failures is just Gygaxian.
You're joking, right?
If the PCs don't know when to flee, it's their failure. If they burn through their spells in a single encounter and then whine because the evil DM is being unkind to them, it's the player's failure.
If the DM lets himself be whined into submission - that's his failure, I give you that.
On another note, real adventurers have Rings of Sustenance (2 hours to rest!).
Yeah, they help. Unless you're an arcane spellcaster because they still need 8 hours of rest.
Yes. it is punishing players.
Players like that need to be punished. It's for their own good.
If you've set up a series of encounters that you expect them to go through in one shot or else dire things happen, but those encounters are too tough and the PCs burn too many resources, then not letting them rest is not setting them a challenge, its giving them a failure.
You seem to ignore the real problem. The real problem is not parties having enough hard encounters thrown at them within 15 minutes of them setting out that they have to rest early.
The problem is players burning through their resources like idiots, thinking this is Diablo and you win by clicking the mouse as quickly as possible. They don't think, they just cast from the top down, attacking goblins (the standard 1st-level warriors from the MM) with meteor swarms.
Then, after a couple of easy encounters (that the DM probably put there to warm the players up, or for flavour reasons), they're out of spells before they even had a half-decent encounter, and they cry for rest.
And even if they face more or less appropriate challenges, their overkill will make things easy in the first couple of battles, and then they're empty and need to rest - and if the DM doesn't have the monsters back off and give the players their 10 hours beauty sleep, he's failing.
Yeah right.
And even if they face more or less appropriate challenges, their overkill will make things easy in the first couple of...
Thats called "being a crap DM".
Here's how the game works: the longer combats go, the more HPs you lose and more chances for a crit of a save or die to kill a character. That means that players have every incentive to finish combats quickly.
So, if players see a group of orcs, they might fireball them. Considering that this single 3rd level spell can prevent three times as much damage in healing for the party healer to do, this means this is a good deal.
This is not a video game. Players don't know if a single orc is a 1st level Warrior or a 20th level Fighter, so asking them to not finish combats as quickly as possible is just setting them up for failure. They don't know that the first fireball did enough damage that all the orcs are down to 1-3 HPs and a single magic missile can finish them all. Those orcs might be powerful Rogues and the next turn is a sneak attack-filled TPK, so they will fireball again.
You are the DM, and you do know. Punishing them for things they don't know and can't find out is just senselessly cruel.
And, as a DM, you should be making adventures to fit their play style. If they want to blast, blast, blast and then get beers, thats what you do. You don't toss three hours of puzzles at them and try to kill them at every turn because you think they should be playing differently.
This is a game, man. No one is supposed to get punished here.
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Hi, y'all. This here is a serious post.
It's possible to set up an adventure where the party really does have plenty of time. I'm thinking of the exploration of the Egyptian pyramids in the early 1800's. In D&D terms, Acerak's Tomb of Horrors. Take days, weeks of time; no problem.
My opinion: In those cases, there's no reason not to be as careful as possible. A 15-minute workday is reasonable.
But in most adventures, there are living (or, I guess, undead) people who might not want the party to succeed, and who might take steps to foil them. This always imposes time pressure.
- Current dungeon inhabitants fighting for their homes.
- A rival party that'll race ahead of the PC's during their 23-hour siestas.
- The BBEG who will complete his Gate to the Darklands next Monday.
- Dopey but lucky monsters who stumble onto the area where some delicious PC's spend their days.
The storyline: that's what serves as the check against the "15-minute workday". I don't think there is a fix in the game mechanics.
Look, players who want to stop and rest after their characters throw three spells because they don't want to fight stuff with sub-optimal spell selections, are still going to want to stop and rest if you give them more sub-optimal spell selections. The only way to use gamem mechanics to make them happy is to allow them their top tier of spells back, for every encounter.
And that, I think, is going to screw up game balance more than anything else.
A few years ago a poster on the Wizards boards named Szantany offered a similar solution to the original posters wand idea. His (I say his but I don't actually no the gender) basic fix was pretty elegant, but required new spell tables for all the classes. He stunted their max spells by 2 levels, but in return gave them the ability to cast come invocations (spells without using spell sots)....at half caster level.
see the altered wizard here
so yes a level 20 wizard could cast a fireball all day long without using a spell slot... as a 10th level caster. Most level 20 challenges are probably going to make that save so it becomes effectively a 5d6 attack (3.5 x 5 = 17 hp damage per round average, range 5 to 30). The wizard is still using magic all the time so they feel wizardy without the need for a wand, they still get consistant damage each round, and they still must maintain their per day spells. It kind of comes down to a choice of.. do I want to do a full attack action or a standard attack action in a sense (with respect to what a fighter would choose).
Spells use the full caster level and invocations use half the caster level but no spell slots.
I personaly think it is fairly elegant. Wish is no longer a problem because, well you never get 9th level spells. You are still effective without blowing all your resources, even at low levels... and you still must manage your resources in your big attacks (spells used vs invocations).
Of course, at that point there is no reason a DM can reasonably not mandate a 24 hour rule for refreshing spells. You always have your invocations if you've blown your wad already.
P.S. casting fireball all the time with it's huge radius is actually not a very good idea tactically in many situations. At first my players thought it was an aweoms idea. Free fireballs.. woo woo! Then they remembered that half caster level means most any equal level challenger will propably make the save. Then, they realised that that burst pattern so big that it's not even as useful as it first appears. they decided magic missile was one of the best invocations you could have.
And, as a DM, you should be making adventures to fit their play style. If they want to blast, blast, blast and then get beers, thats what you do. You don't toss three hours of puzzles at them and try to kill them at every turn because you think they should be playing differently.
If that's the way everyone in the group wants it, and the DM is supposed to do it the way the players want, then the "15-minute adventuring day" isn't a problem for the group and this thread doesn't apply. No fixes are needed.
If the party knows ahead of time that the bad guys aren't going to twiddle their thumbs every time the group takes a rest break, then there is no problem making the bad guys do things when rest breaks are taken. It doesn't really matter that the players didn't know the level and class of the enemies. If the spellcaster throws away his best stuff without some indication that he needs to, leaving the rest of the party untouched while he suddenly needs a nap-time, then he obviously has not managed his resources. That is not the fault of the DM unless the DM did something to trick the spellcaster into wasting those resources. And I have not seen anyone advocating vindictive DMing here.
The groups I've played in have typically tried to keep in mind the basic fact that it is far easier for the group to return a fighter to full form then it is to do the same for a spellcaster. If the spellcasters go nova early on, then they're holding everyone else up later in the game and risking death if something gets past the fighters when they're running on fumes. To expect the players to keep this in mind is not punishing them for things they don't know, unless it's their very first game and they've stocked up on only big-ticket spells that are useless in support of the rest of the party.
And, as a DM, you should be making adventures to fit their play style. If they want to blast, blast, blast and then get beers, thats what you do. You don't toss three hours of puzzles at them and try to kill them at every turn because you think they should be playing differently.If that's the way everyone in the group wants it, and the DM is supposed to do it the way the players want, then the "15-minute adventuring day" isn't a problem for the group and this thread doesn't apply. No fixes are needed.
Fixing the mechanics changes the kinds of stories a DM can tell. Its the extra "blast, blast" in the "blast, blast, blast, rest" scenario.
The more flexible the rules are, the better it is able to keep people happy.
Thats called "being a crap DM".
And even if they face more or less appropriate challenges, their overkill will make things easy in the first couple of...
Or perhapes an excilent DM, in a style of play very different to that which you are used to.
Here's how the game works: the longer combats go, the more HPs you lose and more chances for a crit of a save or die to kill a character. That means that players have every incentive to finish combats quickly.So, if players see a group of orcs, they might fireball them. Considering that this single 3rd level spell can prevent three times as much damage in healing for the party healer to do, this means this is a good deal.
This is not a video game. Players don't know if a single orc is a 1st level Warrior or a 20th level Fighter, so asking them to not finish combats as quickly as possible is just setting them up for failure. They don't know that the first fireball did enough damage that all the orcs are down to 1-3 HPs and a single magic missile can finish them all. Those orcs might be powerful Rogues and the next turn is a sneak attack-filled TPK, so they will fireball again.
That is how the game works if you are running the game as a narritive skirmish game, rather than a simulationist or Story driven roleplaying game.
The discription of any NPC should provide clues and hints as to how much of a threat they are. Three orc's are not just three orcs, they are 'lanky, painfully thin examples of their species dressed in rags and armed with rusty improvised daggers' or they are 'well fed and well muscled, they have clearly done well for them selves within the tribe, having horded the best of the equipment for themselves. Each is armed with a wicked dagger, clearly crafted to peice deep into the flesh of their enemies. The wear clearly well made, if dirty suits of studded leather.
Equally, a fried, down to 3hp orc should look very different to an enraged, 15hp super orc.
You are the DM, and you do know. Punishing them for things they don't know and can't find out is just senselessly cruel.
No, if your not giving them infomation based on your discriptions. Letting them gather infomation via scouting, leg work and research.
If your not providing them choices other than combat. It is you who is failing as a DM.
And, as a DM, you should be making adventures to fit their play style. If they want to blast, blast, blast and then get beers, thats what you do. You don't toss three hours of puzzles at them and try to kill them at every turn because you think they should be playing differently.This is a game, man. No one is supposed to get punished here.
Not entirely true, part of the responciblity of DM is to Stretch your players, offer them something a little different occational. Its part of how you keep players on their toes and interested in the game.
And, as a DM, you should be making adventures to fit their play style. If they want to blast, blast, blast and then get beers, thats what you do. You don't toss three hours of puzzles at them and try to kill them at every turn because you think they should be playing differently.If that's the way everyone in the group wants it, and the DM is supposed to do it the way the players want, then the "15-minute adventuring day" isn't a problem for the group and this thread doesn't apply. No fixes are needed.
Fixing the mechanics changes the kinds of stories a DM can tell. Its the extra "blast, blast" in the "blast, blast, blast, rest" scenario.
The more flexible the rules are, the better it is able to keep people happy.
You seem to be arguing that there is no problem with any player blowing all their resources in every fight, that there is no problem with that player forcing everyone to rest afterwards, and that any DM who expects otherwise is a crappy DM (especially if the DM rules that there are costs for that playstyle). Resting doesn't take any real time away, and the monsters are in time-out during rests so there's no drawback to it (since if the bad guys act intelligently in such an event then that is punishing the players, and we can't have that). If that's really how you want to play, all it takes is an "ok, you guys rested" and everyone is happy. What's to fix?
You started this thread with the statement that your proposal was to allow "the Wizard or Cleric [to] save spells for when they need them". But you're now arguing against the people who are saying that those characters should be saving those spells for when they need them. How does giving the spellcasters bottomless resources prevent them from going nova in a battle without penalty, as you've argued they should be allowed to... unless the bottomless resources are just as powerful?
And, if the DM is making the adventure fit the play style, then there are plenty of ways to provide those resources to the characters. Where's the inflexibility of the rules?
Or perhapes an excilent DM, in a style of play very different to that which you are used to.Thats called "being a crap DM".
And even if they face more or less appropriate challenges, their overkill will make things easy in the first couple of...
Nope. Crap DM. Punishing people for making reasonable choices is bad form all around. Gygax is dead, so we can officially stop playing that way.
The discription of any NPC should provide clues and hints as to how much of a threat they are. Three orc's are not just three orcs, they are 'lanky, painfully thin examples of their species dressed in rags and armed with rusty improvised daggers' or they are 'well fed and well muscled, they have clearly done well for them selves within the tribe, having horded the best of the equipment for themselves. Each is armed with a wicked dagger, clearly crafted to peice deep into the flesh of their enemies. The wear clearly well made, if dirty suits of studded leather.
Sure, that works with some orcs if you regale your PCs with long-winded descriptions and they take notes to figure out what your personal code is, but what about giant spiders? Can you tell a CR 5 and a CR 15 spider apart?
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The goal here is to give PCs a little flexibility....maybe let them play a published adventure or two.
If the cleric runs out of healing spells, they'll stop. If the Wizard runs out of useful spells, they'll stop. But, if the Fighter and Rogue are healed, and the Wizard blows his best spells in the first few encounters but he can still make a real contribution, they'll keep going.
Healing Wands and Fireball Wands will keep your game going and make for happier players. Punishing them for built-in biases in the game will make them UNhappy. Its very simple.
you can already buy wands and scrolls, they work, they are even fairly good. you don't need to change the way they work.
Not to mention that wizards, sorcerers and bards can contribute with ranged weapons, alchemicial substances and scrolls. And that clerics are almost as good at trucking on in hand to hand as a fighter.
As for the spider question, special markings, relative size and skill checks to identify all are relatively good ways of providing such info.
you can already buy wands and scrolls, they work, they are even fairly good. you don't need to change the way they work.
There are two problems with wands and scrolls:
1. Either your DM counts them as part of your share of the treasure, adn you are perpetually losing wealth compared to other characters because your magic items explode. This is the RPGA approach.
2. Or, you DM tries to keep your character at a fixed wealth relative to the other party members, which means he has to find way to give you more treasure to make up for the fact you are destroying your items by using them. This approach cheeses off people.
My suggestion is to make them permanent items. Then, when you buy or take one as your share, you aren't the sucker who is buying power now so that he can have less later. They can still have charges, but you can just make it so that your PC can recharge it at no cost.
Not to mention that wizards, sorcerers and bards can contribute with ranged weapons, alchemicial substances and scrolls. And that clerics are almost as good at trucking on in hand to hand as a fighter.
At 2nd level. After that, your missed attack roll and single digit damage is just one more thing slowing down combat.
As for the spider question, special markings, relative size and skill checks to identify all are relatively good ways of providing such info.
"Aaaa, it s CR 7 Spider....don't use you best spells guys..." OK, thats lame.
Nope. Crap DM. Punishing people for making reasonable choices is bad form all around. Gygax is dead, so we can officially stop playing that way.
Blowing your big spells on situations that do not require them is not a reasonable choice, unless you already expect to be able to recover those spells before you need them again. In my experience, players don't play that way unless they are either extremely new to roleplaying or already know they can convince the DM to let them do it with impunity (or think they can convince the DM).
And if you want to play that way, you can. That doesn't mean the core rules need to make that the default.
The goal here is to give PCs a little flexibility....maybe let them play a published adventure or two.
So, the published adventures aren't balanced for a nova (or pulsar, maybe) playstyle and the core game mechanics need to change to fix that? Perhaps there was a reason they tend to be balanced the way they are? I hate to bring up the specter of house rules, but otherwise you seem to be advocating something completely opposite of backwards compatibility.
Blowing your big spells on situations that do not require them is not a reasonable choice, unless you already expect to be able to recover those spells before you need them again. In my experience, players don't play that way unless they are either extremely new to roleplaying or already know they can convince the DM to let them do it with impunity (or think they can convince the DM).Nope. Crap DM. Punishing people for making reasonable choices is bad form all around. Gygax is dead, so we can officially stop playing that way.
Players rarely know when to use their big spells, unless you tell them "this is a frost giant with no class levels" and they remember the monsters stats. Most people use their biggest attacks when they don't know how powerful something is.
And they shouldn't be punished for that.
So, the published adventures aren't balanced for a nova (or pulsar, maybe) playstyle and the core game mechanics need to change to fix that? Perhaps there was a reason they tend to be balanced the way they are? I hate to bring up the specter of house rules, but otherwise you seem to be advocating something completely opposite of backwards compatibility.
The goal here is to give PCs a little flexibility....maybe let them play a published adventure or two.
Published adventures aren't balanced for anyone. I've played many of them, and they are set at the level of "blow a pile of scrolls and wands and do a crap-ton of sneaky stuff or else you'll die". I mean, have you every played in the RPGA?
Play through Red Hand of Doom, or Undermountain, or any of the other big published adventures and try to survive without a lot of resting. You'll die.
you can already buy wands and scrolls, they work, they are even fairly good. you don't need to change the way they work.There are two problems with wands and scrolls:
1. Either your DM counts them as part of your share of the treasure, adn you are perpetually losing wealth compared to other characters because your magic items explode. This is the RPGA approach.
2. Or, you DM tries to keep your character at a fixed wealth relative to the other party members, which means he has to find way to give you more treasure to make up for the fact you are destroying your items by using them. This approach cheeses off people.
My suggestion is to make them permanent items. Then, when you buy or take one as your share, you aren't the sucker who is buying power now so that he can have less later. They can still have charges, but you can just make it so that your PC can recharge it at no cost.
Not to mention that wizards, sorcerers and bards can contribute with ranged weapons, alchemicial substances and scrolls. And that clerics are almost as good at trucking on in hand to hand as a fighter.At 2nd level. After that, your missed attack roll and single digit damage is just one more ting slowing down combat.
As for the spider question, special markings, relative size and skill checks to identify all are relatively good ways of providing such info."Aaaa, it s CR 7 Spider....don't use you best spells guys..." OK, thats lame.
Or the group all donate a little bit of cash to grab together a supply of a few more wands for the group.
Even small contributions are contributions, so low level scrolls, crossbows and alchemicial agents do have uses, even relatively late on in the game. Even more so if your running something other than a Narrative skirmish
No its not a CR 7 spider, its 'a spider the size of a house.'
Published adventures aren't balanced for anyone. I've played many of them, and they are set at the level of "blow a pile of scrolls and wands and do a crap-ton of sneaky stuff or else you'll die". I mean, have you every played in the RPGA?
Ah, you mean just the way an adventure should be.
Its not about 'punishing players' its about telling a story. if they do something wrong, thats part of the story, so are the consiquences. Fun can be found in that.
Published adventures aren't balanced for anyone. I've played many of them, and they are set at the level of "blow a pile of scrolls and wands and do a crap-ton of sneaky stuff or else you'll die". I mean, have you every played in the RPGA?
Ah, you mean just the way an adventure should be.
Its not about 'punishing players' its about telling a story. if they do something wrong, thats part of the story, so are the consiquences. Fun can be found in that.
If I have to cheat, then the game is not balanced correctly.
If I have to cheat, then the game is not balanced correctly.
Published adventures aren't balanced for anyone. I've played many of them, and they are set at the level of "blow a pile of scrolls and wands and do a crap-ton of sneaky stuff or else you'll die". I mean, have you every played in the RPGA?
Ah, you mean just the way an adventure should be.
Its not about 'punishing players' its about telling a story. if they do something wrong, thats part of the story, so are the consiquences. Fun can be found in that.
If other people don't have to cheat, there may be something else happening.
And again, you're the DM. You've already told us the DM is supposed to be tailoring the adventure to the player playstyles. If you aren't doing that... well, you've already applied a label to that option.
If other people don't have to cheat, there may be something else happening.And again, you're the DM. You've already told us the DM is supposed to be tailoring the adventure to the player playstyles. If you aren't doing that... well, you've already applied a label to that option.
So why make the DM's work harder? Where's the advantage to that?
So why make the DM's work harder? Where's the advantage to that?
If other people don't have to cheat, there may be something else happening.And again, you're the DM. You've already told us the DM is supposed to be tailoring the adventure to the player playstyles. If you aren't doing that... well, you've already applied a label to that option.
You just don't seem to be grasping the fact that the pulsar playstyle isn't universal. If it were, the modules would be balanced towards it, and we wouldn't be having this discussion (unless your players continued to squander their resources even more, as would be likely).
I guess in your world, every adventure is a Tomb-of-Horrors-style deathtrap.
Going back to your suggested "fix", to give the characters rechargeable wands... Which is easier - for you to do this for your players, or for every other DM to completely re-work their modules because their players are complaining that it's boring because they're steamrollering through everything that appears? Especially since you'd throw the CR/EL system (as iffy as it is) out the window, so no one would have any guidelines to work from without massive amounts of playtesting?
So why make the DM's work harder? Where's the advantage to that?
If other people don't have to cheat, there may be something else happening.And again, you're the DM. You've already told us the DM is supposed to be tailoring the adventure to the player playstyles. If you aren't doing that... well, you've already applied a label to that option.
You just don't seem to be grasping the fact that the pulsar playstyle isn't universal. If it were, the modules would be balanced towards it, and we wouldn't be having this discussion (unless your players continued to squander their resources even more, as would be likely).
I guess in your world, every adventure is a Tomb-of-Horrors-style deathtrap.
Paizo has blogs and such that actually tell you how professional designers fare in their own adventures. "High fatality" is a good descriptor.
I'm not saying that every adventure is that way. But if you want people to fight all day, they need anything that works all day. You don't have to "nova" or "pulsar"...you'll run out of spells if you do too many encounters in a day.
Going back to your suggested "fix", to give the characters rechargeable wands... Which is easier - for you to do this for your players, or for every other DM to completely re-work their modules because their players are complaining that it's boring because they're steamrollering through everything that appears? Especially since you'd throw the CR/EL system (as iffy as it is) out the window, so no one would have any guidelines to work from without massive amounts of playtesting?
The CR/EL system only works per encounter. It doesn't fit entire adventures. Cure spells don't let you win encounters, because monsters do more damage per round than a cleric can heal per round. A cure is actually a wasted action in combat.
Wands of attack spells less powerful than your best spells means that you can blast something once in a while....but the rest of the time you'll have some baseline ability.
Wands will just let you do more encounters per day. No one is going to steamroll anything.
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Published adventures aren't balanced for anyone. I've played many of them, and they are set at the level of "blow a pile of scrolls and wands and do a crap-ton of sneaky stuff or else you'll die". I mean, have you every played in the RPGA?
Play through Red Hand of Doom, or Undermountain, or any of the other big published adventures and try to survive without a lot of resting. You'll die.
Hello, K. (I'm excited. I've never addressed an actual letter of the alphabet before!!)
It's true that player characters need to rest in Red Hand of Doom. It's also true that they're under a serious deadline. The bad guys are moving, more or less inexorably, and the good guys have a few weeks, more or less, to stop them.
If the PC's somehow take three days to go through the first major encounter area, the bad guys will probably destroy the you-know-what, the allies will probably not get you-know-where in time, and the heroes will probably, you know, lose.
Other big published adventures?
- "Sons of Gruumsh" has a pretty tight timeline.
- "Barrow / Spire / Fortress" and "Eyes of the Lich Queen" are supposed to feel like they're on a tight schedule (and there are dungeons in those adventures where the PC's really are on the clock once they enter).
- Bruce Cordell's "Heart of Nightfang Spire" was voted one of the best D&D adventures, and it has the lovely mechanic that the undead keep regenerating every three days.
- On Paizo's side, two of the most popular GameMastery Modules so far have been "Entombed with the Pharaohs", with the race against the NPC tomb-robbers, and "Carnival of Tears", where stopping halfway through and resting for 23 hours is a terrible idea.
Really, most published adventures don't give the PC's much of an opportunity to hit every encounter with the spellcasters at full power. The answer to the "15-minute workday" is to force the PC's on.
The only mechanical "solution" would be to allow the spellcasters to regain their entire suite of powers for every encounter, and that implies much heavier rules re-writes to re-balance the classes.
Thanks for reading.
Published adventures aren't balanced for anyone. I've played many of them, and they are set at the level of "blow a pile of scrolls and wands and do a crap-ton of sneaky stuff or else you'll die". I mean, have you every played in the RPGA?
Play through Red Hand of Doom, or Undermountain, or any of the other big published adventures and try to survive without a lot of resting. You'll die.
Hello, K. (I'm excited. I've never addressed an actual letter of the alphabet before!!)
It's true that player characters need to rest in Red Hand of Doom. It's also true that they're under a serious deadline. The bad guys are moving, more or less inexorably, and the good guys have a few weeks, more or less, to stop them.
In RHoD, we animated a chimera with a scroll we bought and beat the clock by flying and not walking anywhere. We also forced everyone in the party to take Hide and Move Silently and buy Potions of Sneaking so that we could start every encounter from surprise because we couldn't afford to rest to recover any damage, and at one point had over 60 potions of healing in a Handy Haversack. Even then, we almost died several times.
Thats kind of crazy crap.
PCs don't "force onward". They quit. I've played an RPGA game were the other players said "hey, we don't have enough spells. I'm not fighting the last encounter without rest." Then we got punished with less XP and gold because half the party decided to quit.
It blows. Wouldn't it be better if we had a game where that doesn't happen?
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You guys all need to relax. This problem does exist but it doesn't require a game rule to edit. There is a reason for the CR system and the ECL in 3.5, it allows the DM to come up with different challenges that drain various resources of the PC's. A 1st level spell may be useless against a 10th level monster but you could use that spell against one of 10 1st level monsters. An average adventuring day should have these big gaps in CR/ECL encounters. It's what the game is designed around. If it's not the encounters causing the problem, then the players need to definately learn some resource managment, another aspect of the game. An easy way for a DM to help the players is to make the player roll an Int check or Wis Check when he is about to waste a spell. Depending on the result, you could mention to this player that this power may be a bit over doing it and that his character would not waste such a spell at this point, he might use one of his lower level spells, to test the waters so to speak. Eventually, the player will get the idea that he may want to conserve. In my experience, I have seen the 15min adventure day fluxuate. It just depends on the group and your DM style. That is the real issue. It must be up to the DM and the group to handle such game issues.
As for your proposed change, it already sort of exists in path finder.
Bonded Items. Without investing in feats and at half creation cost, wizards can easily store large numbers of spells in their bonded wand.
PCs don't "force onward". They quit. I've played an RPGA game were the other players said "hey, we don't have enough spells. I'm not fighting the last encounter without rest." Then we got punished with less XP and gold because half the party decided to quit.It blows. Wouldn't it be better if we had a game where that doesn't happen?
This isn't a computer RPG. You didn't get "punished" because of the game rules, and you didn't end up low on resources because of the rules. Decisions were made by the players and the DM that created that situation. It will happen in any game where failure is an option, and I think you'll have a really hard time pushing to remove that option from the game.
K, here's the problem: you cannot fix module difficulty by changing the core rules. The module designers aren't just throwing darts at a list of monsters and rooms (leaving aside some of the modules that really are random), they're basing the module on the general difficulty level they (and a large amount of the people who buy the modules) want. If you radically change the rules, all you will have done is make the old modules easier... the new modules will just become more difficult.
Module difficulty is something the DM needs to work with no matter what the rules are, however. The 15-minute problem is when the players blow through resources without the need to, and then force the rest of the party (who may still have plenty of resources) to rest so they can blow through their resources again. This can be related to module difficulty if the players are expecting every encounter to be a TPK, but otherwise it really has more to do with the player's playstyle than the modules themselves. If that playstyle can be fixed with a rules change, I'm all for it.. but let's not muddle the issue by trying to "fix" every published adventure that has a high difficulty level in the process.
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How about allowing spellcasters to theoretically cast an unlimited amount of spells per day. However, every spell they cast over their daily limit requires a fortitude save of DC 10+spell level+number of spells over the limit. Failure means they are fatigued. A second failure means exhausted. Or failure could mean taking 2 points of CON damage.
I just though of this now, but I intend to implement it as a houserule immediately.
If I have to cheat, then the game is not balanced correctly.
Published adventures aren't balanced for anyone. I've played many of them, and they are set at the level of "blow a pile of scrolls and wands and do a crap-ton of sneaky stuff or else you'll die". I mean, have you every played in the RPGA?
Ah, you mean just the way an adventure should be.
Its not about 'punishing players' its about telling a story. if they do something wrong, thats part of the story, so are the consiquences. Fun can be found in that.
Where does cheating come into it?
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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How about allowing spellcasters to theoretically cast an unlimited amount of spells per day. However, every spell they cast over their daily limit requires a fortitude save of DC 10+spell level+number of spells over the limit. Failure means they are fatigued. A second failure means exhausted. Or failure could mean taking 2 points of CON damage.
Hi, Jal. Good thinking. That keeps a caster active in a particular battle longer and favors the split class spellcasters who have better fortitude saves than their pure wizard or sorcerer allies. That's a really nice effect.
Myself, I'd favor the CON damage (or some sort of mental damage), and maybe make the fatigue mandatory. Fatigue by itself isn't much of a threat, especially for someone who, say, is immune to fatigue. (Most Horizon Walkers, for example.)
And I might make the save something like 10 + 2x spell level with a cumulative -1 modifier. This effect is better than a Pearl of Power (Wizards don't have to have prepared the spell in question, for example. Clerics might be able to cast any clerical spell up to their maximum level, at will.)
But I don't think it solves the particular problem. Some players want their characters to face every encounter at full power. Requiring a CON save every time they "re-cast" a spell isn't the same thing as "full power". Those players are stil going to want to sit out the rest of the day.
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Myself, I'd favor the CON damage (or some sort of mental damage), and maybe make the fatigue mandatory. Fatigue by itself isn't much of a threat, especially for someone who, say, is immune to fatigue. (Most Horizon Walkers, for example.)
That is better mechanic, that way no matter what you are fatigued, which gives you some minor penalties. Extra casting should be stressful.
And I might make the save something like 10 + 2x spell level with a cumulative -1 modifier. This effect is better than a Pearl of Power (Wizards don't have to have prepared the spell in question, for example. Clerics might be able to cast any clerical spell up to their maximum level, at will.)
Actually that is pretty good. I wanted to set the base DC at 10 so that any character has a CHANCE to over-cast at least once. I feel it is easier to say "+1 to the DC" than "-1 to the save" for each attempt. And it goes without saying, as we both have, that you fail to cast the spell if you fail the save.
But I don't think it solves the particular problem. Some players want their characters to face every encounter at full power. Requiring a CON save every time they "re-cast" a spell isn't the same thing as "full power". Those players are stil going to want to sit out the rest of the day.
It might not eliminate the problem, as it is mostly a player problem, but I think it creates a mechanic that allows players to use their resources without breaking the game, as even NPCs/Villains can attempt this.
The game is not limited to 4 encounters or TPK. The game is limited to four victorious CR appropriate combat encounters or TPK.
A DM who expects his players to think and manage resources can easily add additional encounters that can be overcome by stealth, diplomacy, good thinking, skill checks, exploration, etc. The DM is not required to make all encounters 'doable' by straight attack which is what the CR system is based on.
So I may have eight possible encounters in a dungeon in which the players will have no chance to rest. Several of them can be avoided by stealth, talked through with diplomacy or deception, or completely overcome through the use of a single ability or skill (like turn undead or wild empathy)etc. The players are awarded experience for overcoming a challenge so they still get XP for bypassing these encounters without fighting them. So there is no incentive for them to mine experience by attacking an encounter they could bypass through non-resource burning means. Skill checks are all that are required to bypass most traps and they are a non-depleting resource for which the party is awarded XP.
Additionally the DM can seed the dungeon with things that allow the players to partially recoup if necessary. Perhaps there is an encounter with animals that the druid can recruit with wild empathy to bolster the weakened party. Perhaps a magical fountain will replenish one of the arcane caster's highest spell slots if he drinks from it. Perhaps they find the enemy's stash of healing potions, whatever.
The game is not four encounters and then the bad guys are expected to roll over and let the party rest. AND the game would suck if it did expect this to the level that some posters are claiming that it does.
It never even occurs to my players to rest in mid-dungeon because they are always under time pressure from other things going on in the campaign world. They always need to finish up this dungeon fairly quickly so that they can move to the other three things on their plate before they get out of hand.
K, here's the problem: you cannot fix module difficulty by changing the core rules. The module designers aren't just throwing darts at a list of monsters and rooms (leaving aside some of the modules that really are random), they're basing the module on the general difficulty level they (and a large amount of the people who buy the modules) want. If you radically change the rules, all you will have done is make the old modules easier... the new modules will just become more difficult.
You really can. Some modules are built on the philosophy that PCs will do crazy things to rest like rope tricks. Others are not. Some are built on the philosophy that the party starts the adventure with a pile of scrolls and healing wands and that the treasure they get will compensate them for permanently burning those resources. Again, others are not.
My suggestion is to bring them into line with each other. This is a game about resource management, so we should probably be responsible about the kinds and amounts of the resources we expect people to have.
And yeah if your PCs yell "OH LOOK A RAT!!!" and blow a bunch of spells because it could be some kind of vorpal paragon pseudonatural rat of doom (or maybe an epic druid in wildshape with natural spell). Then yeah, they deserve to get punished for poor resource management. Players have fought giant spiders and scorpions before. It's a pretty reasonable assumption to go by difficulty = size until proven otherwise.I mean if the game turns into just using your best spells all the time, then you might as well not even bother giving wizards low level spells, because they're never supposed to use them.
I mean either you want resource management in this game, or you don't. And if you don't, then you shouldn't even have spell slots for combat spells, mages should just be able to run around casting their best combat spells every battle.
But there are lots of things in the game that you don't know how powerful it is. For example, undead range from less than CR 1 human skeletons to death knights, and until you see some special effects you have no idea how powerful it is (a description of "its a skeleton in a suit of armor" is not going to work). Crazy outsiders, aberrations, constructs, oozes...the list goes on. None of those have an easy "oh, it's a CR2 monster because it doesn't have a masterwork sword" tag on it, and skill checks won't tell you the number of HPs, saves, or other truly important details of a monster. I tend to be a conservative player with a huge knowledge of DnD stats, but I can't fault players who blast anything unfamiliar.
And in my experience, Wizards don't use their low-level slots for combat. They put utility spells in those slots because the DCs and damage on low level spells are not viable as a level-appropriate combat actions.
Where does cheating come into it?
Any adventure where I have to come up with a crazy plan counts as cheating to me. I've had many adventures where the opposition was CRed badly and the only way to survive was by some elaborate plan (which sometimes literally involved ropes and pulleys).
Basically, if you are successfully fighting well outside of your character level and EL, then on some level you are cheating.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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When Zombieneighbours wrote:
Where does cheating come into it?
Any adventure where I have to come up with a crazy plan counts as cheating to me. I've had many adventures where the opposition was CRed badly and the only way to survive was by some elaborate plan (which sometimes literally involved ropes and pulleys).
Basically, if you are successfully fighting well outside of your character level and EL, then on some level you are cheating.
Ah. Thank you for the explanation. I think you're runing into people here who (a) disagree, and (b) think that "crazy plans" count as not only fair, but the game at its best, at its most fun.
And you're going to have to convince them that insightful planning, negotiating, and "lateral thinking" use of resources isn't a legitimate way to play the game.
When Zombieneighbours wrote:
Where does cheating come into it?
Any adventure where I have to come up with a crazy plan counts as cheating to me. I've had many adventures where the opposition was CRed badly and the only way to survive was by some elaborate plan (which sometimes literally involved ropes and pulleys).
Basically, if you are successfully fighting well outside of your character level and EL, then on some level you are cheating.
Ah. Thank you for the explanation. I think you're runing into people here who (a) disagree, and (b) think that "crazy plans" count as not only fair, but the game at its best, at its most fun.
And you're going to have to convince them that insightful planning, negotiating, and "lateral thinking" use of resources isn't a legitimate way to play the game.
I'm saying that stuff fails. One of the reasons people generally don't play published adventures is because the designers may expect you to be brilliant at some point, and if you aren't, then you fail.
If you want a resource management game, then you need to set the bar so that players can achieve it without some flash of brilliance.
While those flashes of brilliance often make the session memorable and fun, I've been to conventions where grown men have almost been reduced to tears because they couldn't figure out a way to survive (and I'm not even talking about winning). This is just a game, so everything should be up front about what is expected of everyone and there should be a chance that competent play will win the day for you.
A player should lose when he takes a bad risk, or even a bad roll or two puts him in a coffin. He should not lose because he couldn't figure out how to beat an adventure that his class features and character level ordinarily would never let him beat.
K, here's the problem: you cannot fix module difficulty by changing the core rules.
You really can. Some modules are built on the philosophy that PCs will do crazy things to rest like rope tricks. Others are not. Some are built on the philosophy that the party starts the adventure with a pile of scrolls and healing wands and that the treasure they get will compensate them for permanently burning those resources. Again, others are not.
My suggestion is to bring them into line with each other. This is a game about resource management, so we should probably be responsible about the kinds and amounts of the resources we expect people to have.
No, no you can't.
As you said, some modules are built on different philosophies, with different ideas of starting equipment. Others aren't. You can't change that by changing the core rules and giving the PCs lots of extra resources by default... then the low-challenge modules become simple, the high-challenge modules become merely a low challenge, and the designers scale up any future modules to take the bigger and better characters into account. The end result doesn't fix anything, it's just pure power creep.
The rules don't dictate the challenge of the module or the starting equipment of the characters (both assumed and actual), the module designer and the DM do. And it's still irrelevant to the 15-minute adventure day problem.
Basically, if you are successfully fighting well outside of your character level and EL, then on some level you are cheating.
Perhaps you could just avoid modules with that sort of challenge? Clearly, the designer thought there were ways to get out of the problem if they put the players into that sort of situation. If you think those ways around the problem are cheating, then don't do them.
The one really memorable TPK I've been in happened because the DM accidently ran our group through a module geared for a higher level. We didn't do so well. That's not the fault of the rules, and it wasn't "cheating" when we tried to come up with ways to avoid the horribly gruesome death we ran into. It's the fault of the challenge being wrong, and no matter how you tweak the rules there's always going to be challenges that are too big for the characters. That's really the point.. otherwise, why bother with character levels at all?
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If you want a resource management game, then you need to set the bar so that players can achieve it without some flash of brilliance.
While those flashes of brilliance often make the session memorable and fun, I've been to conventions where grown men have almost been reduced to tears because they couldn't figure out a way to survive (and I'm not even talking about winning). This is just a game, so everything should be up front about what is expected of everyone and there should be a chance that competent play will win the day for you.
Thanks for the example, K. When I think of role-playing, my default is the week-in, week-out home campaign. Convention play is an odd duck, because there's such a tight real-time window with its attendant time pressure to succeed at any individual encounter, and because the DM and players are mostly strangers with unfamiliar play-styles.
(Most of the events in the Gen-Con booklet are "classic" RPG events, with pre-designed characters to play. So if you are insufficiently clever and lose that 8th-level rogue to the black-pudding encounter, at least it isn't the character you lavished the last two years developing.)
(("Living Campaigns" --where you do indeed subject your beloved long-term character to the vagaries of a convention module, surrounded by strangers, with a DM who may have never read the adventure before sitting at the table-- are their own even odder kind of duck. It's been my experience that they usually do try to provide baseline success for simply competent, uninspired play. ))
But I don't think that Pathfinder Society, the Living Campaign that Nick is deviously plotting, is the right baseline expectation for the Pathfinder RPG's intended campaign. Jason's not designing Arcanis. He's designing a game to handle, in the main, week-in week-out adventure path home campaigns.
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But there are lots of things in the game that you don't know how powerful it is. For example, undead range from less than CR 1 human skeletons to death knights, and until you see some special effects you have no idea how powerful it is (a description of "its a skeleton in a suit of armor" is not going to work). Crazy outsiders, aberrations, constructs, oozes...the list goes on. None of those have an easy "oh, it's a CR2 monster because it doesn't have a masterwork sword" tag on it, and skill checks won't tell you the number of HPs, saves, or other truly important details of a monster. I tend to be a conservative player with a huge knowledge of DnD stats, but I can't fault players who blast anything unfamiliar.
Knowledge skill checks let you "identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster.
For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information."
- Knowledge (Nature) for animals, fey, giants, monstrous humanoids, plants, vermin)
- Knowledge (Religion) for undead
- Knowledge (Arcana) for constructs, dragons, magical beasts
- Knowledge (Dungeoneering) for aberrations and oozes
- Knowledge (The planes) for outsiders and elementals
From the D20 srd.org
My players usually ask to make the check. When they don't, and I know that they may underestimate or overestimate the challenge, I make the check in secret for them and drop a gentle hint. If they fail the check and then the mystery monster shows the distinctive SFX, they get another roll. But I may be too nice.
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If there's no time limit to achieving a goal, there's no way to stop players from divvying up the task into small parts and resting between each piece, going full power in each one.
If there's a time limit, then things get more interesting. I like modules that give you one or two rest periods, so you have to think about how to ration out your sleep a little more interestingly.
Personally, I really hate dungeons that are so large that the module is essentially forcing you to rest in the middle of it. Invading an enemy fortress, and bedding down for the night? It just destroys all plausibility.
K, here's the problem: you cannot fix module difficulty by changing the core rules.
You really can. Some modules are built on the philosophy that PCs will do crazy things to rest like rope tricks. Others are not. Some are built on the philosophy that the party starts the adventure with a pile of scrolls and healing wands and that the treasure they get will compensate them for permanently burning those resources. Again, others are not.
My suggestion is to bring them into line with each other. This is a game about resource management, so we should probably be responsible about the kinds and amounts of the resources we expect people to have.
No, no you can't.
As you said, some modules are built on different philosophies, with different ideas of starting equipment. Others aren't. You can't change that by changing the core rules and giving the PCs lots of extra resources by default... then the low-challenge modules become simple, the high-challenge modules become merely a low challenge, and the designers scale up any future modules to take the bigger and better characters into account. The end result doesn't fix anything, it's just pure power creep.
The rules don't dictate the challenge of the module or the starting equipment of the characters (both assumed and actual), the module designer and the DM do. And it's still irrelevant to the 15-minute adventure day problem.
Yes, you can.
High challenge adventures that assume weird resting tactics or hoards of scrolls means that giving parties something comparable is necessary give players a chance of beating the adventure. My wand suggestion is comparable to rest, or a hoard of items.
Since my suggestion for wands puts you at the point where you can play these adventures, then you don't have to do anything to the adventure itself. Its perfect backwards compatibility, and it eliminates the need for resting so the 15-Minute Adventuring Day problem is solved too.
For low challenge adventures, healing and attacks from Wands still don't mean that anything has to be changed. People are getting plenty of rest periods anyway in these adventures, so it doesn't matter if you heal by wand or rest or use attack wands or your own spells. Characters can't breeze through these adventures because the combats are still just as hard, and healing wands and attack wands won't prevent that.
Essentially, not a word in any kind of adventure changes, but now players can play the full range of published adventures. Saying "don't play hard adventures" is no solution because generally you play whatever the DM provides. If he makes a mistake and this is a hard adventure, learning by TPK is enough to end a campaign and make people go play Shadowrun.
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A player should lose when he takes a bad risk, or even a bad roll or two puts him in a coffin. He should not lose because...
This is a specific mode of thinking, namely the one where D&D is a game that you "win" or "lose". That is not the fault of the adventure writers, it is one of the players and DM not researching the adventure before playing.
From my point of view, if my character dies that is part of the story. If the DM feels he messed up bad, then it is time for some Deus Ex Machina...or some nice bonus goodies when I roll up a new character.