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 assure you, there are many, many DMs with whom this is a very reasonable tactic. I've got a great story about a pseudonatural dire squid, for example.
"More than meets the eye" is a very popular element of monster design. There is no such thing as overkill; there is only "open fire" and "I need to reload"..
Yes, more than meets the eye(MME), is a cool and venerable concept in encounter and monster design. It can be traced back into fairy tale, rather and myth.
But your missing exactly what makes it an interesting challange in the game. What makes M.M.E. type monsters interesting is what is called a malign paradigm shift. This is where something you beleive you understand about the setting/encounter/event on a fundimental level is shown to be wrong. It creates, when used well, an unnerving sense of creeping fear.
When encountering a rat, your characters should treat it as just that. Because, it most likely is just a rat. However, in the malign paradigm shift of M.M.E. rat, your characters maybe walking though an under city complex of sewers,, utility tunnels and sub basements. Well used, such an encounter will have build up. Firstly, the normal paradigm is re-enforced. Rats scuttle away, fleeing the light and noice of the party.
However, when they come to the monster, thing slowly start to change. intially is behaves as it would appear to be, going to hide in pipes or in backing into a corner.
But then you change things, it speaks or it starts to use magic, or (if you using shock tactics ontop of a M.P.S.) sneak attacks a characters face from a pipe sticking out of the wall.
It is the very fact that the creature changes the expectation of the players, after they have already labled it as something unimportant, that makes such a creature dangerous and scary. That is why it is a main stay of monster design. If your group deals with every rat they see as through it is a M.M.E. monster, they are either metagaming or your DM is over using them, and probably not giving them the justice they deserve.
This thread simultaneously amuses and depresses me. It seems like there's a lot of people who feel that the petulant DM who crafts unreasonable challenges is doing it right, and I'm guessing that these are the people who wonder why people play World of Warcraft instead of Dungeons and Dragons. Here's a tip: you are the reason. If you were developing encounters that would kill your players instead of developing encounters that play to their strengths, you're doing it wrong.
Firstly, WOW is popular for a number of reasons.
- It is a computer game, easy to play and requires little mental effort to get into.
- WoW is designed to be pychologicially addictive, all MMPORPG's are. Multiple small repetative actions which are given small rewards. The very foundation of a habit forming activity. It is just like CCG's and 'one armed bandits' in this respect.
-The fact that you can logon any time and get a game, and that you can play for half an hour a night, or all day every day, and not have to worry about what your gaming group's time constraints.
Compared to these factors, the behaviour of any DM/GM/ST/Keeper/Ref is insignificant.
Secondly, their is nothing unreasonable about running a game in such a way that villians behave as they should. A villian should always act in an internally consistant manner, based on.
- His Intelligence
- His alignment
- His personality type
- His agenda
- His control over his minions
- What intel he has on threats to him
- Personal habits
- The influences of other NPC's upon him
- His flaws
It is unreasonable to assume that an intellignet, patiant and cowardly master mind with multiple, slowly maturing plots would hang around and fight a group of adventures, if they give up an assult on his home half way through.
Their are many reasons why they might give up half way through. Perhapes they didn't gather the assistance of local NPC's and organisations to aid them, perhapes they didn't do the leg work to find out the weaknesses in the masterminds defences. Perhapes they let slip infomation to one of his spys, didn't seduce the masterminds daughter and seek her aid in entry, or didn't wait for an occation when the mastermind was in the open or a sizeable portion of his defences are away(such as guarding the daughter at the opera house.)
Challanges that cannot be undertaken by the player, are not unreasonable. Unless their they are either the central challange of a
game, or cannot in some way be mitigated.
Example:
Confronting first level characters with an assult on a city by a powerful red dragon is not unreasonable. They may flee.
Expecting them to fight said red dragon, toe to toe as their only means of escape would be unreasonable.
Providing a challange that on its face is completely beyond your characters is in no way unreasonable. Providing that their are means to mitergate the challange. Such as said beautiful daughter of the evil master mind.
Here's a quiz. Your players all rolled up the characters they wanted to play, and there's a cleric, a fighter, a warlock, and a wizard. Should the dungeon have traps? If you answered "yes, because they should have known better than to not have a rogue", please relinquish your DM screen. If nobody wants to play a rogue, make sure your party isn't punished for that. If your party feels the need to rest frequently because, for whatever reason, they don't feel comfortable with adventuring at half strength, make sure they aren't punished for that.
To many people, the answer would be. 'Would the Creator of this enviroment have installed traps.' if the answer to that is yes, then you should certainly include traps.
Would you then build adventures with hundreds of leathal pits of snake filled death? Ofcause not, but the occational trap is still entirely appropreate.
Equally, if a party is investigating the hidden tome of Fard Norganfrak, and are there as tome robbers. Then sure, they can 'Nova, Loot, Rest, Repeat' all they like. Their is no logicial reason why they could not.
But, if they only have 24 hours to save the world....its not such an option.
The problem with the 15 minute adventuring day isn't that it exists; the problem is that some people think it's a problem, instead of recognizing it as a way people like to play the game.
It is not a problem for you. Thats your play style. However, for most of us here it seems. It is something that we do consider a problem, because it damages suspension of disbeleif.
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Zombieneighbors, that was a terrific post. You articulated a position I agree with, far better than I could have done. Thank you.
Strangely enough, though, I don't consider the "nova-rest-repeat" cycle a problem that's fixable through the rules. I've played with several players with this kind of attitude and, as we were assuring K, the problem isn't that they want to stop when they've run out of magic. They stop way before that: as soon as they're sub-optimal. If they're playing a 7th-level wizard with one prepared 4th-level spell, and they cast that spell in the first combat of the day, they want to rest then, even if they're carrying a wand of lightning bolt.
As you say, a time deadline keeps them moving. If they want to stop and rest, it doesn't have to break verisimmilitude.
- Without the antidote, the town succumbs to the poison.
- With no active opposition, the competing team of tomb robbers makes off with the haul.
- With the party just sitting in the third room off the great hall, the bugbears recover their composure, send word to the Priests of Hextor, and quietly prepare countermeasures.
My caveat here is that you really need a timeline. In another thread, I posted my favorite kind of adventure design, where the DM knows the villains' timeline and how the PC's actions can disrupt the villains' plans. ("Carnival of Tears" is an example of this design. Mark Acres was fond of it when he wrote adventures for DC Heroes.) If the players take their own sweet time getting back with the antidote, the village isn't dead as a punishment by the DM, they're dead because the poison was set to do 1d6 CON damage per day, and it finished working its way through the townsfolk on Moonday, two days ago.
I will agree with one of Burrito Al Pastor's points: when people sit down and design characters, they are voting on what aspects of the game they like. (I think I came upon this idea in Erick Wujcik's Amber book.) One guy whips up a paladin, the woman next to him stats up a ranger with favored enemy: evil outsiders, and the DM knows what they want out of this campaign.
If nobody designs a character that's any good at trapfinding (either a rogue or a cleric with find traps) --or any other aspect of the game, from diplomacy to healing to arcane magic-- then they're voting that they don't want that particular aspect to play a big part of the campaign.
I will agree with one of Burrito Al Pastor's points: when people sit down and design characters, they are voting on what aspects of the game they like. (I think I came upon this idea in Erick Wujcik's Amber book.) One guy whips up a...
Amber is really interesting for this, and burning wheel also do something related to player imput on world design.
However, I am going to give a few little thoughts on the concept of choice.
When you play a class based game, your choice of class says a lot less about what you don't like, than what you do like.
Example: The fighter, might well enjoy traps and rogue based encounters, but he really wanted to play a fighter this time.
Secondly: Concept fueled class choice.
In my group, choice of character hinges far less on class and party build, than on individual character concept, from 'Avant garde student' to 'gruff bare knuckle boxer.' We decide what we want to play and they choose a class that fits it best. So, when we choose concepts, we arn't actually voting on the challanges we want to face, in the same way that you state class choice dictates.
Even with this being the case. One should only give these encounters less importance, not remove them all together.
Amazing. The junk I have read about in this thread is the reason why a reasonable role-player should throw away their books in disgust. It makes the game sound like an arcade game, just pump in more quarters and keep going. When is the last time one of you had a character heal naturally? Magical healing devices shouuld be hard to come by, not come in gross lots at any trading post. An organic body should be put under stress from magical healing, limiting how many times it will be benficial.
Oh, I forgot. Limits are what we work around.
Fighters. They should be the best at using swords, bows and armor and shields. Did non-proficiency penalties disappear? If other classes are too good at what fighters are for then tone them back. Spiralling upward of abilities does not help the situation. A lone fighter of X level pitted against a monster of equivalence should win sometimes, but only with a few hit points left. The team is there for support. A single character of any character class should not be able to take down a monster of their level and not break a sweat.
Every time I log on and read posts, I feel like what's being discussed is another version of Mortal Combat for PS3. That's not what its about. If that is the kind of game you want, pull out your PS3, and stop polluting my hobby.
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Hello, orkface. (laughs) Welcome to Third Edition.
One of the basic shifts from AD&D: healing magic is easily available if you've got the gold for it. And in wand form, 50 cure light wounds are reasonably affordable.
I remember 2nd-Edition AD&D DM advice that ridiculed that idea (going so far as to illustrate a pointy-hatted wizard in a "magic shop" wheeling a little wheeled cart arounds displays of wands and staves). But that battle was lost 8 years ago.
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Hello, orkface. (laughs) Welcome to Third Edition.
One of the basic shifts from AD&D: healing magic is easily available if you've got the gold for it. And in wand form, 50 cure light wounds are reasonably affordable.
I remember 2nd-Edition AD&D DM advice that ridiculed that idea (going so far as to illustrate a pointy-hatted wizard in a "magic shop" wheeling a little wheeled cart arounds displays of wands and staves). But that battle was lost 8 years ago.
CAVEAT: Every town has a gold piece limit. If the DM decides a particular item is not available in their town, then it is not available (or vice versa). It is the DM's responsibility to ensure verisimilitude by maintaining the world and the people in it.
Therefore, the shop full of magic items is realistic, in a city of 60,000 people, of which there may be one in your entire world.
Firstly, WOW is popular for a number of reasons.
- It is a computer game, easy to play and requires little mental effort to get into.
- WoW is designed to be pychologicially addictive, all MMPORPG's are. Multiple small repetative actions which are given small rewards. The very foundation of a habit forming activity. It is just like CCG's and 'one armed bandits' in this respect.
-The fact that you can logon any time and get a game, and that you can play for half an hour a night, or all day every day, and not have to worry about what your gaming group's time constraints.Compared to these factors, the behaviour of any DM/GM/ST/Keeper/Ref is insignificant.
Secondly, their is nothing unreasonable about running a game in such a way that villians behave as they should. A villian should always act in an internally consistant manner, based on.
- His Intelligence
- His alignment
- His personality type
- His agenda
- His control over his minions
- What intel he has on threats to him
- Personal habits
- The influences of other NPC's upon him
- His flawsIt is unreasonable to assume that an intellignet, patiant and cowardly master mind with multiple, slowly maturing plots would hang around and fight a group of adventures, if they give up an assult on his home half way through.
Their are many reasons why they might give up half way through. Perhapes they didn't gather the assistance of local NPC's and organisations to aid them, perhapes they didn't do the leg work to find out the weaknesses in the masterminds defences. Perhapes they let slip infomation to one of his spys, didn't seduce the masterminds daughter and seek her aid in entry, or didn't wait for an occation when the mastermind was in the open or a sizeable portion of his defences are away(such as guarding the daughter at the opera house.)
Challanges that cannot be undertaken by the player, are not unreasonable. Unless their they are either the central challange of a
game, or cannot in some way be mitigated.
I don't quite agree with this.
Games like WoW have taken such a large part of the gaming community simply because lots of people just want to fight monsters, collect loot, and have a good time with friends.
Lots of the DMs craft villains that the players don't want to fight. The players don't want to worry about complicated plans involving seducing anyone daughter (which, for me, is RP that makes me uncomfortable around my male friends). They'll quit before pushing a bad position because its just not fun to have PCs die.
The DM has to judge the involvement of his PCs. A mastermind villain may never be their speed, so including one in an adventure is just counter-productive.
Or, if he does, then this villain has some reasons to stay around. Maybe he's very arrogant and assumes that he beat the PCs back, or he just doesn't have any place to go thats more defendable than his current lair, or he can't call on more troops. For every "story" reason that the DM can find to make an encounter more difficult, he could just as easily find one to make it easier.
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Well at least you understand the problem. Though I'm curious why you don't think it's best to fix it in the rules itself?I mean time deadlines are alright and all but it gets very contrived when every adventure has one (especially when that deadline is always within 1 day).
Sometimes, like in Red Hand of Doom, it's the entire campaign that has a hard deadline. It would be easy to sit down with, say, Savage Tide or Age of Worms and do the same. Let the party know that the BBEG is going to manifest on Earth / trigger the doomsday device in 180 days. On your mark, get set, ....
And when you don't have time constraints, building a balanced adventure is almost impossible, because different adventuring groups are playing entirely different games. Some are playing with wizards with effectively infinite spells, others are playing where wizards have limited magic. Clearly spell conservation was a key design principle to D&D and the players that are constantly resting and getting infinite spells are pretty much cheating.So why not just close the rules loophole?
'Cause I don't think they're cheating, and I don't think the loophole is found in the rules.
If time is indeed no object (think "Tomb of Horrors") then parties would be reckless to press ahead without their full resources. You say that spell conservation is "clearly" a part of the game, but I think you need some better support for that.
The only rules-change I can imagine that would effectively deny spellcasters the opportunity to rest and recover would be to make spell recovery periods much longer, say on a week-by-week basis rather than day-by-day. (Even then, I can imagine sorcerers adamantly bringing lunchpails of holding filled with months of rations, prepared for the "15-minute workweek".
AD&D's answer was the threat of "wandering monsters," but even that tool was more in the DM's purview than the DMG's.
It's an issue that needs to be resolved around the table. One of the finest controls over the "15-minute workday" I've seen is where it's the other players who decide to push forward, leaving the recalcitrant wizard behind.
Games like WoW have taken such a large part of the gaming community simply because lots of people just want to fight monsters, collect loot, and have a good time with friends.
There is some turth to this, however, if you look at the two of the best Published campagns in gaming history. The enemy within campaign and the masks of nyolethotep(both of which have recieved numerous acilades, especially in popular votes). You don't find adventure built along these lines. People don't just want 'kill the monsters, loot the monsters.' they settle for it. Give players something a little more in depths, and almost any gaming group will grow into it and learn to love better gaming.
People have been tricked into thinking that 'Nova, loot, rest repeat' is a good thing. And if thats the way you want to play it, sure go ahead, but I and three of the four gaming groups i have played in in the last six years won't be joining you.
Strangely enough, though, I don't consider the "nova-rest-repeat" cycle a problem that's fixable through the rules. I've played with several players with this kind of attitude and, as we were assuring K, the problem isn't that they want to stop when they've run out of magic. They stop way before that: as soon as they're sub-optimal. If they're playing a 7th-level wizard with one prepared 4th-level spell, and they cast that spell in the first combat of the day, they want to rest then, even if they're carrying a wand of lightning bolt.
Well at least you understand the problem. Though I'm curious why you don't think it's best to fix it in the rules itself?
I mean time deadlines are alright and all but it gets very contrived when every adventure has one (especially when that deadline is always within 1 day).
And when you don't have time constraints, building a balanced adventure is almost impossible, because different adventuring groups are playing entirely different games. Some are playing with wizards with effectively infinite spells, others are playing where wizards have limited magic. Clearly spell conservation was a key design principle to D&D and the players that are constantly resting and getting infinite spells are pretty much cheating.
So why not just close the rules loophole?
It's a lot better than forcing the DM to always have some crazy contrived time limit on every adventure.
I don't think it needs a mechanicial fix. After all, some people are going to want to do these thing, some game groups are going to want to do it that way.
Personally i think they are wrong, but a DM with half a brain or more, and a back bone can thing of numerous ways to fight this bad habit.
From the assassins in the bed chamber method to the the deadline, there are a huge number of ways to convince a group of pc's to resolve a threat, before resting on their lorals.
Games like WoW have taken such a large part of the gaming community simply because lots of people just want to fight monsters, collect loot, and have a good time with friends.
There is some turth to this, however, if you look at the two of the best Published campagns in gaming history. The enemy within campaign and the masks of nyolethotep(both of which have recieved numerous acilades, especially in popular votes).
That's funny, because I've never heard of those and I've been playing DnD since the red box.
I don't think that the "nova, then rest" tactic is something players have been "tricked" into. I think its a natural response to adventures built on four encounters. While the "lose 20% for an encounter with an EL according to your level" is an ideal, in practice all it takes is a few bad rolls and you have suddenly expended 50% of your resources. DMs seem to think that if they don't almost kill you with every encounter then its not "dramatic."
Masks sounds cthulu-ish, but I don't know it.
The Enemy Within was the original campaign for the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. It was pretty good at points. Towards the end it was pretty horrible. The beginning was pretty iffy, since that was a guidebook more than a module, and there was just a short intro adventure tacked on the end. The middle ones were great fun- Shadows over Bogenhofen, and Power behind the Throne were excellent mystery/cultist/city adventures, and Death on the Reik was a fun adventure with lots of mayhem and a fair amount of creepy horror.
Masks sounds cthulu-ish, but I don't know it.
The Enemy Within was the original campaign for the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. It was pretty good at points. Towards the end it was pretty horrible. The beginning was pretty iffy, since that was a guidebook more than a module, and there was just a short intro adventure tacked on the end. The middle ones were great fun- Shadows over Bogenhofen, and Power behind the Throne were excellent mystery/cultist/city adventures, and Death on the Reik was a fun adventure with lots of mayhem and a fair amount of creepy horror.
SoB and DotR are solid adventures, while TPBTT is just astonishingly good. Enemy does go down hill after that, but still has a lot of excilent stuff in it. it suffers because, after the awesomeness of TPBTT, something rotten in kislev and empire in... are bad. Masks is Call of cthuhlu.
Personally i think they are wrong, but a DM with half a brain or more, and a back bone can thing of numerous ways to fight this bad habit.
From the assassins in the bed chamber method to the the deadline, there are a huge number of ways to convince a group of pc's to resolve a threat, before resting on their lorals.
And the only thing going through my head when a DM pulls out these tired old saws is 'I just want to have fun, you jerk', right along side 'This, again? How many assassins live in this kingdom'? I have this thing about having full access to my class features, so a DM pushing some arbitrary deadline is more annoying then fun, if I can't get back rages/spells/craft items.
Its not that these things are sometimes appropriate, its just that I get tired of seeing the absurdly obnoxious resting mechanics used as a weapon by the DM... usually against the characters he deems 'too powerful'
And the only thing going through my head when a DM pulls out these tired old saws is 'I just want to have fun, you jerk', right along side 'This, again? How many assassins live in this kingdom'? I have this thing about having full access to my class features, so a DM pushing some arbitrary deadline is more annoying then fun, if I can't get back rages/spells/craft items.
Personally i think they are wrong, but a DM with half a brain or more, and a back bone can thing of numerous ways to fight this bad habit.
From the assassins in the bed chamber method to the the deadline, there are a huge number of ways to convince a group of pc's to resolve a threat, before resting on their lorals.
I never said that those example where not slightly tright, but they are well know and easy examples
In a well written deadline, is never abitary.
In a well written deadline, is never abitary.
When you're killing demons or dragons on a deadline, its *always* arbitrary.
When you're killing demons or dragons on a deadline, its *always* arbitrary.
In a well written deadline, is never abitary.
Sorry, i have to ask my good friend to cut in here and add something.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Arbitrary is a term given to choices and actions which are considered to be done not by means of any underlying principle or logic, but by whim or some decidedly illogical formula."
Within a story, if there is a logicial reason for there to be deadline, it by definition, cannot be arbitrary.
If a evil cultist is trying to summon great cthulhu, and it has to be done on the winter solstice, because that is when the stars are right. Then the PC's have until the winter solstice to stop him. This is not an arbitrary deadline.
Zombieneighbors, I disagree with you. A fifteen minute adventuring day is a result of poorly scaled encounters, or poor resource management. The root of this problem lies at that table. If you are so unhappy with spells per day then there are a number of non Vancian magic systems out there, why not use one of them? .
I have seen wizards blow through their spells early and then have to rely on the rest of the group for the rest of the day. I have seen wizards conserve their spells until the rest of the party was too weakened (or dead) to continue. It is hoped that even a dungeon is a dynamic environment with NPC's that react and interact with the the players and the consequences of the players actions.
K, I wanna play in your game. Seducing daughters of villains and other such RP sounds like a blast!
Zombieneighbors, I disagree with you. A fifteen minute adventuring day is a result of poorly scaled encounters, or poor resource management. The root of this problem lies at that table. If you are so unhappy with spells per day then there are a number of non Vancian magic systems out there, why not use one of them? .
I have seen wizards blow through their spells early and then have to rely on the rest of the group for the rest of the day. I have seen wizards conserve their spells until the rest of the party was too weakened (or dead) to continue. It is hoped that even a dungeon is a dynamic environment with NPC's that react and interact with the the players and the consequences of the players actions.
K, I wanna play in your game. Seducing daughters of villains and other such RP sounds like a blast!
I...mmm.. think you got those names the wrong way around ;)
A 15 minute adventuring day is a problem of adventure design. Static dungeons only encourage the PC's to leave and come back when rested. If a group does that the intelligent denizens of a Dungeon Complex need to address this. Either they reinforce the already "cleared" sections or the become proactive and find out where the attackers came from and counterstrike.
Nothing gets PC's a bad reputation more than pissing off the Goblinoids of the Caves of Chaos and heading back to the Keep only to find that the hobgoblins and bugbear bosses of the Caves come out after them and raid the village, burn some fields, or steal some livestock and kill some farmers/merchants/experts.
PC's use a Rope Trick to rest in the dungeon? Good, sound tactic that should serve them well for at least a little while. Eventually however the bad guys should try to track them down in the dungeon. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!
A Monstrous ranger or even simple guard animals with scent can be used to Track PC's. When the trail just disappears into thin air even the crudest of humanoids will assume magic is at work. Enter the shaman/cleric/mage of the tribe. A Spellcraft check in combination with a Detect Magic can solve a lot of problems as can simple divinations like Augury. Setting up a discreet watch on the area a group of PC's disappeared from should be an easy enough matter as could a well placed Alarm spell.
Exactly! The 15 minute adventuring day is a fault of not the players - but the DM. You want to go save the world? You need to do it soon.. because the BBEGs work longer than the first hour of the day.
I don't care what level the party is - the circumstances will always be equal (unless they hunting things outside their level) and as such baddies should and will take precautions.
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Yeah, because we all know every adventure has to be total railroad city where the DM ensures that PCs have almost no time to complete it and the world constantly blows up if they fail every adventure.Sooner or later you'll just get PCs who get frustrated and decide to just call your bluff and fail the adventure. You should never put yourself in a position where if the PCs do what you don't want them to do, you have to kill them. That's just plain bad DMing.
With respect, I think you're setting up a strawman argument, Swordslinger.
There are all sorts of natural consequences for taking a very long time to plough through an adventure. We've covered them already on the list. Here are a few more:
- The party is hired by a patron to investigate a missing shipment. He believes the task should take a day or two. After ten days with no report, he assumes that the PC's are dead and either moves on or hires replacements.
- The evil-aligned rival team of tomb-robbers, moving more swiftly, win the prize. Then, on their way out, they set deadly traps.
- The giants' reinforcements arrive.
- The party gets a reputation as very slow and unreliable.
There's a happy medium between "the PCs hav[ing] almost no time to complete" a job and having no time pressure. Let's say the gnomes of a remote village have contracted a virulent disease and need rare herbs for the antidote. If the adventure looks to have, say, two days of travel and 15 combat encounters, make sure the party understands that they have six days to get back with the McGuffin leaves. That provides time to rest, but not after every encounter.
And stick by that. If they manage to get back in four days, that's even better. If they take three weeks, the village is empty of all but grotesque corpses.
If the PC's "call [the DM's] bluff and fail the adventure", then the village suffers from it, and there are good role-playing opportunities. How will that failure influence the rest of those characters' careers?
If the entire phase of the campaign has a deadline, like Red Hand of Doom, and the party lets the bad guys conquer territory and summon their Infernal patroness to Earth, then the party has to deal with that.
That's what people are suggesting here. Not adventure-after-adventure with no rest time at all, but some reasonable time pressure to create dramatic tension and keep parties moving and depleting their resources.
And I'll bet you do that, yourself.
Exactly! The 15 minute adventuring day is a fault of not the players - but the DM. You want to go save the world? You need to do it soon.. because the BBEGs work longer than the first hour of the day.
Yeah, because we all know every adventure has to be total railroad city where the DM ensures that PCs have almost no time to complete it and the world constantly blows up if they fail every adventure.
Sooner or later you'll just get PCs who get frustrated and decide to just call your bluff and fail the adventure. You should never put yourself in a position where if the PCs do what you don't want them to do, you have to kill them. That's just plain bad DMing.
Na...i think your missing that their are other options here, i'll list what i can think of the top of my head.
- Static enviroments.
Allow them to take the 15 minite adventure day approach without consiquences, this works under conditions where enemys are unintelligent and the enviroment is static. compensate by raising difficulty levels over all. Tomb robbery and the like. The fifteen minite adventure day make sense here. However, even here, their is an insentive to work faster, make use that you keep track of expences such as rashions and boarding, the pay of henchmen such as diggers or cartographers.
- Fluid enviroments:
Have enemies behave in fluid manner. BBEG escapes or has thugs attack the pc's on his terms
- Temperal reprocusions:
The longer it take, the more damage the Antogonists do. PC family members or friends are caught in the cross fire, assets are lost to vandalism or arson and allies are turned against the players by proganda and smeer campaigns.
- Postitively reinforced deadlines:
The parties patron offers bonus in pay if they achieve the goal of an adventure in under a few days.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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The main drawback to this approach is the large amount of calculation work required, and the fact that the PCs can easily throw a wrench in your plans when travel time is involved.
OK, so it's a 6 day window with a 2 day travel time. What if the PCs decide to force march or run their horses into the ground to get there and back faster? Each time they do that, they buy themselves another day to rest.
Once you start getting into bean counting, your PCs will get into bean counting and will start shaving off their travel time to get more rest days.
Well, yeah. There's six days. If the two wizards spend the first day, say, scribing teleport scrolls, or the clerics cast spells on the horses to get them to go faster and longer, then that's good play and the party has bought itself an extra time cushion.
Seems perfectly reasonable. At least, it's the way I encourage my players to think. But then, I ask them to keep track of encumbrance, expendibles like rations and ammo, and experience points, too. If accounting for travel time isn't part of your D&D fun, then my campaign would probably strike you as terribly mundane.
Not to mention it's not even 1 day per round. It takes only 9 hours of rest to get [a wizard's] spells back, so that means that you can be dealing with 2 attempts per day.
Divine casters are once every 24 hours, of course. So it depends on which characters are insisting on going into every encounter fully loaded.
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It takes only 9 hours of rest to get your spells back (at least for a wizard), so that means that you can be dealing with 2 attempts per day.
I really hate having to repeat myself, but...
You get X spells/day, as long as you're rested.
X spells/day is the amount of spells you can prepare/cast per day.
If you're rested, you get them.
If you're not rested, you don't.
The rested criteria is an additional criteria, not the only criteria.
You can sit down with your spellbook, and prepare some spells at any point of the day (eg, to benefit from better scouting information), but only if you left those slots free at the start of the day.
When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, she can repeat the preparation process as often as she likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. She cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because she has cast a spell in the meantime.
That last bolded sentence is there, specifically, to prevent a player blowing his spells and starting again during the same day. Whether this is due to realising the enemy are immune (illusions vs undead, etc), finding a new spellbook, or just wanting to double his firepower, it just isn't allowed.
Any character is free to lay his bedroll on the floor, and park himself down for eight hours, whenever he likes, even if it's 15 minutes after entering the dungeon, but it doesn't change his daily spell allotment, his daily PSPs, his daily uses of Smite, his daily domain powers, his daily wild shapes, his daily rage, or his daily anything.
It just means he's sat on his arse.
Having said all that; yes, you may get to cast during the tail-end of one day, and the early part of the next. But I don't think that was what was being implied, reading later comments re 'cast, rest 8 hours, cast, rest 8 hours, cast, etc'.
Sooner or later you'll just get PCs who get frustrated and decide to just call your bluff and fail the adventure. You should never put yourself in a position where if the PCs do what you don't want them to do, you have to kill them. That's just plain bad DMing.
Well, I agree it will happen but not that its bad DMing. I can think of a number of times I've DMed TPKs because the players did something stupid or just had unlucky die rolls. While a few players got discouraged and left, most bounced back, were cool with it, and started fresh. Usually they played better the next time around. I admit to a couple exceptions, though.
I didn't mean that if they don't do X they're dead. I just meant that if they don't do X - the story still moves ahead without them.
I try and create a very realistic world.. meaning that say I'm running a long campaign that when they're 15th or so level off in a nearby cave that they're told about or whatever.. a dragon lives there.
If they go there at level 1... the dragon still lives there.
I just meant I don't shape my world in the aspect that it's on the players time. I don't railroad them into decisions.. but if they decide to rest, not do something etc... the BBEG could possibly win.
That's all I meant really.
Well, I agree it will happen but not that its bad DMing. I can think of a number of times I've DMed TPKs because the players did something stupid or just had unlucky die rolls.Well sure, I'm not saying never kill the players, I'm just saying it's bad as a DM to set up a scenario such that making choices that seem rather logical, like resting a lot, leads to getting killed.
And while one can still have the campaign world advance without the PCs, remember that the story is always about the PCs. If you have them fail quests that way, you as a DM only put more work on yourself because while it may mean that the village burned to the ground, it means that their next quest involves going somewhere else, and the rest of your adventure is wasted. So really, PCs failing the quest isn't even a great solution, because again, it's a bluff that you'd prefer the PCs don't call.
Thats the thing, its not a bluff.
If they fail, they fail, it has an effects on the characters reputation and they have to decide what they are doing next.
Ok, i have to put asside an adventure, but i try to have two or three plotlines running within a game at anyone time. The players move on to one of those.
Thats the thing, its not a bluff.
If they fail, they fail, it has an effects on the characters reputation and they have to decide what they are doing next.
Ok, i have to put asside an adventure, but i try to have two or three plotlines running within a game at anyone time. The players move on to one of those.
It is a bluff because it's not a choice that you really want the PCs to make, even though you're putting it forward as a possible option. So you're creating the illusion of an adventure branch that you really don't want to use (because it's a bad situation for the DM). So really, you present it as an option, but it's not one you want to take.
It's like saying "Do this and I'll TPK you". Now some DMs may actually go ahead and do it, but it's not healthy or good for your game, and it's certainly intended as a bluff pretty much. You're saying something like that solely in hopes that the PCs don't call the bluff. Now if they do, you may just have to do something spiteful like kill them, or you can back down.
In any case, moving your defense forces to DEFCON 2 is not always a great idea, and something you should try to avoid. There are sometimes you have to use this escalating bluff method. But sometimes you may find yourself in a nuclear war.
Better to just have the rules so that it's not something you have to worry about.
No, because for me its not a case of it being something i want or don't want them to do. If they do something or fail, i give them the consiquences of their actions, thats all.
You can warn some one of the consiquences with out it bing a bluff. If your groups pretty strong to begin with, its not anissue in the first place.
No, because for me its not a case of it being something i want or don't want them to do. If they do something or fail, i give them the consiquences of their actions, thats all.
Trust me, if you set a failure consequence for the PCs and they end up failing early on the quest by just blatantly ignoring the time limitation, you'll get rather upset when you have to toss the rest of your adventure.
It happens to me, not that regularly, but it doesn't bother me much.
I don't toss it, i put it aside, then after the session, strip it down and put the unused encounters in a folder for future use.
Any character is free to lay his bedroll on the floor, and park himself down for eight hours, whenever he likes, even if it's 15 minutes after entering the dungeon
You don't need to rest again for 8 hours to fill an unused slot. Just the 15 minutes base time and any more fractional amount of 1 hour based on what spells slots he's filling.
Arguably, he might have to have a minimum of 1 hour of 'rest' because the whole adventuring day could count as an interruption. But that's not required RAW. I'll tell you why.
The last 2 sentences from the paragraph you quoted, but stopped just before, read [regarding filling used slots or replacing unused, prepared spells] "That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest." and [regarding filling unused slots] "Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of her spells."
So there are (at least) 2 sorts of prep. The first is a brand new memorisation, requiring 8 hours sleep. The second is to fill up unused slots throughout the day, requiring a proportion of 1 hour.
Thanks!
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some stuff clarifying what I meant to say
"You don't need to rest again for 8 hours to fill an unused slot. Just the 15 minutes base time and any more fractional amount of 1 hour based on what spells slots he's filling.
So there are (at least) 2 sorts of prep. The first is a brand new memorisation, requiring 8 hours sleep. The second is to fill up unused slots throughout the day, requiring a proportion of 1 hour.Yes, that's right, I forgot to specify the shorter time for the second type of activity.
My original post was in response to the many posters on this, and other threads who actually believe that they can get up to 3 days worth of spells in any 24(and a bit)-hour period, or (God help us...) some folk on these boards, who have the bizarre notion that they can totally refuel after just 15 minutes(!), based on a misreading of that passage I quoted from the PHB. So, you have;
Fifteen minutes adventure; fifteen minutes reading your spellbook; fifteen minutes adventure; fifteen minutes reading your spellbook; fifteen minutes adventure; fifteen minutes reading your spellbook; fifteen minutes adventure; fifteen minutes reading your spellbook; fifteen minutes adventure; fifteen minutes reading your spellbook;
fifteen minutes adventure; fifteen minutes reading your spellbook;
fifteen minutes adventure; fifteen minutes reading your spellbook; etc, etc, ad nauseum.
A practice, that, if allowed, would lead to casting one month's worth of spells in a fifteen-hour day.
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Just butting in here, but I would like the people posting in this thread to read over the last 5 pages and see just how circular this conversation/argument has become. Even when people post something that should stop the bickering (contend/dispute/debate/quarrel/quibble/spat/squabble/whatever) one or two people either ignore it and keep defending a point that is dead and covered in carrion crawlers or they find a nit-pickey detail and start it up again.
I know I'm probably about to be blasted for this but please, for sanity's sake! :)