Is there a name for a "no retreat" adventure?

[Douglas Muir 406]

An adventure where you must to the whole thing in one swoop -- you can't do half of it, retreat to the village to rest and heal, and then come back and finish. In the extreme case, one where you can't even rest to regain spells. There may be an actual time limit, or the limitation may be that the BBEG will organize his forces for a lethal, crushing counterstrike. But whatever the reason, you must finish it in one go, or die.

Is there a term for this?

Doug M.

[Alexander Kilcoyne]

One shot?

"Break the cauldrons and sink the boats"...

[Wasteland Knight]

Suicide Mission.

[Zombieneighbours]

Hey,

I beleive what your talking about is 'the prolonged adventure day', which is when you use events to push the PCs into choosing to continue to push on, even after their resources have become seriously stretched.

That said, whole module or AP length adventures done in using this technique would be beyond brutal ( so far beyond as to be all but unplayable.)

Hope that helps.

[hogarth]

"Running the gauntlet"?

[calagnar]

It's not that hard to do. Most of the 15 min work day is from casters. So if your runing a primarly combat group. With one divine caster and a wand of cure light wounds or two. It's not only can you do it it's not that hard to do. The bigest mastake made is in this type of adventrue is to take a caster heavy group. Alot of the AP's use this trick in some of them. Realy pushes the party hard if they are not ready for it most are not.

In adventrues like this the players need to know befor hand so they can adjust. Or they will die. Hade a TPK becous for some unknown reason the caster wanted to cast spell every round of every combat. Then was out of spell fast and we where not even 1/2 way done.

[KaeYoss]

Death trap?
Fine mess?
Balls to the walls?

There is no official title. And, as others have said, this can be anything from brutal to impossible.

For a short adventure (or part of one, depending on how you define adventure), you can withhold both sleep and supplies.

If you go for longer than that, not letting them catch their breath and get their abilities back will kill them. Healers will run out of healing, spellcasters will run out of things they can do beyond poking ineffectually at enemies.

There is a certain AP where you go for two whole volumes without being able to buy anything. Characters go from levels 9 to 13. It feels like an eternity, and when you think that eternity ends, things get even more impossible.

Even if you give out treasure, withholding shops from the party means they can't actually do anything with most of the wealth they have (unless you specifically tailor the stuff to be useful for the characters). That means their effective wealth is well below their technical wealth. And since wealth by level figures into character power, it should be taken into account.

[hogarth]

24 Hours of Le Monsters?

[FallofCamelot]

"Tomb of Horrors?"

[Black Moria]

We call them 'All In' adventures, like the poker phrase in which you are betting everything you have.

[Tom S 820]

Real Work, Grinder, Marathon, Iron man, Hard Core all come to mind.

This is the type of game that I run. Where recourse management is huge part of the table play. Basic Idea kill/disable/defeat the enemy as fast as you can but, use the lest amount of resources. Repeat again, again,ect...

Endurance and longevity is the key. Some player do not like this due to the amount of accounting that is needed. Also that them pull tricks out that are not there best and use them.(I level 9 and and using freeking cantrip and level one spells as caster) Most ov the time only one person use there big abilty in a fight so they are the star in that one but new one is right around the conner.

It not how flashy you do it. It how efficient you do it. I often have stall fight while the big boss is in the next room buffing each round that fight last. This has let to some of my player to open door in the middle of fights to stop them and bring them in to fray. Or starting to two front fight.

[Evil Lincoln]

I think you nailed it with "no retreat".

I often talk about soft timers and hard timers when discussing checks on caster power, but no retreat at all... that's "no retreat".

[Charlie Bell]

At the upper levels of play, it's my preferred playstyle to prevent caster nova. 18th level characters fresh from resting will steamroll ANYTHING, no ifs ands or buts. But after 4 fights, they start to get that nervous feeling of risk that's essential to maintaining suspension of disbelief.

STAP spoiler:

In Into the Maw, my players were right before an encounter that I figured would be moderately easy for them, which also was the last encounter of that wing of the dungeon. They were about 50% resources left (spells) and everybody was at full hp. They were also on a doomsday countdown of days, so every day they rested was one day closer to the end of the world. Even with all that, they chose to go back and rest. I was amazed. I mocked them for punking out, then rolled a random encounter on the way back from resting that took them back down to about 50% resources. The point being: the Abyss is a dangerous place, and you can't always count on being fresh for any given fight.

[gran rey de los mono]

A friend of mine (who is a vetern of the 101st Airborne) would likely refer to an adventure of this type as "Good Training".

[calagnar]

gran rey de los mono wrote:

A friend of mine (who is a vetern of the 101st Airborne) would likely refer to an adventure of this type as "Good Training".

Or one day in the life of a para trooper?

That might explan why I do this type of adventrues all the time. Or I just realy don't like my players.

[ericthecleric]

Race against the clock?

[Sissyl]

Tomb of horrors I don't get. It certainly isn't the combat that makes it hard.

[calagnar]

If you have casters in the group it's very hard to complet this type of adventrue with out deaths. So depends on how your group is made up. I run this kind of adventure all the time. But most of my players are not full casters. And the ones that loves casters makes battle cleric/oracle of battle most of the time.

Standard party
Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard
They are going to have a very hard time with this kind of adventure. 1/2 of the party needs to regain spells at some point to be usefull.

Right now the party im runing is.
Bard(Melee Focused), Oracle(Battle), Fighter(Weapon and Shield/Two Handed Weapon), Ranger(Switch Hiter), Rogue(Two Weapon Fighting)
They normaly just use a few charages off a wand of cure light wounds and there off.

[yellowdingo]

One way in and no way out: Obliette
One way in and one way out (at the far end): Gauntlet

[loaba]

"The DM hates us and wants us to Die Trying!"

That's what you call that...