Fighting while Fatigued

[Robert Kepner]

So I'm writing my next campaign, and I have a section where the players are going to be under a lot of stress. Basically, they will complete a dungeon crawl involving 5-7 combat sessions, one of them being a boss fight. The end goal is to rescue two people of import.

Immediately after the boss fight (people of import in tow), they are going to have to make a break for it. One of the NPC's makes it clear that they are not safe here, that there are a lot of forces in the area, and one of the people from the boss fight escaped, so they're going to put together people to capture the party. This NPC tells the players about a garrison that's a day's ride away, and they have to make a run for it.

The whole point of this section of the game is the chase from the dungeon to the garrison. If the players do well, they can get to the garrison before they are captured, and they'll be rescued (well, sort of, but that's for another day).

However, there is the chance that the players will be caught and will have to fight their way free to continue riding to the garrison.

Now, as I said: the heroes at this point will have spent an entire day fighting in a dungeon, then without a chance to rest they have to make a day's ride, under pursuit, to another location. I have decided that when their ride starts, they're all fatigued. This will affect any actions they take to evade pursuit, and will also have an effect on any combats that happen.

So here is my question: When putting together the combat scenarios for if the pursuers catch up to the heroes, exactly how much do I account for fatigue? Should I increase the ECL by 1 to account for fatigue, or is fatigue not THAT much of an impact on combat?

I've searched through the forums a bit, as well as other discussion boards on other sites. Most of the threads I found are about becoming fatigued while fighting, but that's not really what I'm going for. I'm looking at the players already being fatigued and then a fight happens (possibly even multiple fights, depending on how they perform).

I'm also looking at the fact that at this point in my narrative, any limited use per day abilities are going to be running low. Spell casters will probably be relying on wands and scrolls to get them through any fights, and even martial characters will most likely be low on special abilities. This adds another dimension to the challenge; not only will they be game conditioned fatigued, but they'll also be low on resources.

Any thoughts are much appreciated!

[Opuk0]

Some things to know

1. Do you mean fatigued as the condition per the rules?

2. Will the players be aware that you are using this ruling?

[Opuk0]

Additionally, what is the level of the characters?

[Glutton]

You don't "have decided that when their ride starts, they're all fatigued" that's what the forced march rules are for.

Spoiler:

Forced March: In a day of normal walking, a character walks for 8 hours. The rest of the daylight time is spent making and breaking camp, resting, and eating.

A character can walk for more than 8 hours in a day by making a forced march. For each hour of marching beyond 8 hours, a Constitution check (DC 10, +2 per extra hour) is required. If the check fails, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. A character who takes any nonlethal damage from a forced march becomes fatigued. Eliminating the nonlethal damage also eliminates the fatigue. It's possible for a character to march into unconsciousness by pushing himself too hard.

You can just rule the 3 hours in the dungeon count towards it if you want it extra brutal.

I've dealt with long overland chases in other campaigns, the real danger is the PC's can't run, therefore can't run away.

[Opuk0]

Glutton wrote:

--

Yeah, and depending on level, and assuming at least one arcane caster, the party can MAKE time for them to rest via a Rope Trick most commonly.

If the party is too low level, this is quite literally a death sentence.

[Weirdo]

Generally fatigue itself doesn't have much of an effect on combat. It's -1 to attack, damage, AC, initiative, and a few miscellaneous items. Getting pushed into exhaustion is a bigger problem - it's easy when fatigued and the penalties triple.

Exceptions: Barbarians/bloodragers (who can't rage when fatigued) and any character who tactically relies on charging (such as pouncers or cavaliers). If your party includes these characters and doesn't have a way to negate fatigue expect them to be extremely hamstrung.

Of course, the barbarians might already have run out of rage at this point.

Being low on resources may be a much bigger problem. The rule of thumb is that an encounter with a CR equal to the party's APL expends about one-quarter of the party's resources (HP, spells, limited use abilities, and consumable items). If they are going through 5-7 CR=APL encounters, they will likely not have any resources to fight back with anymore during the escape (if they haven't already run out and been defeated by the boss!) and the fatigued condition will be irrelevant. If you want the party to have enough resources to fight back with, you will need to make the encounters on the way into the dungeon crawl less challenging. Check out this article for a bit of advice on running more lower CR encounters.

Like Opuk0 I'd be very worried about running this scenario with a low-level party.

Riding should bypass the "can't run" problem with the chase, as long as they can reach the garrison before the horses tire out.

[Robert Kepner]

1) Yes, "fatigued" as in the game condition.

2) And yes, I will announce at the start of the scenario that this is the case (I don't hate them THAT much, lol)

3) Forced march doesn't really apply, as they'll have fresh mounts available (stolen from the area they're fleeing from). This also takes care of the issue of not being able to run away due to fatigue.

4) The PC's will be level 3 at this point.

As for the chase itself, I'm trying to get away from it simply being a matter of dice rolls on the players part. I've designed it so that most of the rolling will be on the pursuer's part, with the players doing whatever they can think of to make it more difficult for those chasing them (which may or may not require a roll).

I'm just not sure how much to account for fatigue on a party-wide basis when designing a potential combat. Typically, only one person at a time is suffering from fatigue, so that person has trouble but not their companions. As such, there really aren't any guidelines for adjusting combat due to fatigue. Like you said, a low level party can be devastated by something that seems small, so I don't want to just say "Fatigue isn't that big a deal" and have the party be captured within moments of being overrun (if that even happens) because I misjudged it.

[Opuk0]

Level 3 party being put through 5-7 fights and then being chased?

Yeah, fatigue isn't even gonna register on the 'we are f+@#ed' scale

[Robert Kepner]

Like I said, the chase is not in and of itself difficult.

And if they do get overrun and overpowered, it's not the end of the game; they'll just get taken back to their starting point and enter an escape scenario instead of a chase scenario (with the garrison remaining the closest place of safety).

Reviewing the crawl, I can eliminate a couple of the combats and reduce ECL of the some of the others in order to give the players more resources to use in the chase.

The chase is actually like a skill challenge, except for the pursuers and not the players. I have it structured so that every round the pursuers will make a single roll vs a DC. If they get X successes before getting Y failures (where Y is less than X), they catch up to the players and a fight ensues. Each round, before the pursuit roll, the players will each get to take an action they think will reduce the likelihood of their pursuers succeeding, imposing penalties on the pursuit roll. If that's a skill check of their own, the use of an ability or an item, casting a spell, or something less structured in game mechanics, that's up to them.

The chase is quite literally the least of my concerns.

What I need to figure out is how to build, given low resources and fatigue, an encounter that is not guaranteed to overpower the players if they get caught.

[Robert Kepner]

Weirdo wrote:

Generally fatigue itself doesn't have much of an effect on combat. It's -1 to attack, damage, AC, initiative, and a few miscellaneous items. Getting pushed into exhaustion is a bigger problem - it's easy when fatigued and the penalties triple.

So fatigue's not too much of a concern, then. For low resources, i could plan an ECL 2 encounter for if they get caught, and that would reduce the strain on remaining resources and reduce the resources of the enemy. Then I could reward as though the encounter was ECL 3 to account for the total challenge they had to overcome.

Exhaustion would be the greater risk, but from my understanding, even normal combat doesn't cause fatigue in and of itself, so really the concern would come down to an individual character, such as a barbarian, using an ability that would cause fatigue. That would be on an individual basis, however, so the whole party wouldn't be under those kinds of penalties.

[Rychard Stormfire]

I would like to point out the spell "Keep Watch"... if your party can find 8 hours in which to avoid fighting... they are rested as if they slept for 8 hours... put in a scroll or two at CL 4 and the party should be golden... make it so that they avoid pursuit for the first 8 hours as they ride... unless you want to screw them over, then I can't help you...

[Opuk0]

What does the party consist of? That would also help to know in order to plan.

[Just a Guess]

You should warn players who want to play barbarians that there might be times during the campaign when they can't rage.

If you want the PCs to be fatigued don't be angry if they have options that let them remove the condition.

[tonyz]

Generally, if you want a lot of encounters, run lower-ECL encounters than you normally would. You need things that can maybe hit the players if everything goes well, but aren't likely to hit.

Pursuing mooks work great for this. Tracking parties with dogs, for instance. These guys can catch up, attack, and run away when a few of their number fall (instead of fighting to the death -- they might fall back and sound their horns, hoping to attract more pursuers. Having more horns then sound further away and getting closer can really scare PCs.)

A flying scout or something that tracks them and signals for other pursuers (horns, fireworks, wand of dancing lights, whatever). Can they shoot it down, or lure it into range?

Archers who aim at the horses instead of the PCs (sure, the PCs can ride double if a horse or two dies, but that tires the horse out even more quickly.)

Have a couple of encounters where the PCs can try something safe and slow, or speedy and risky. If they do "safe and slow", they're likely to face another encounter; if they do "speedy and risky" then they gain an edge on their pursuers. For instance, ride a couple of extra miles to reach the bridge over the river -- or ford it right here (but they have to make Swim checks or something).

Bridges can be fun in other ways. Can they destroy a bridge to gain time? Can they trick their way past the guards on another bridge ("yes, we're pursuing those guys too!") -- allow things like Bluff or Diplomacy to work instead of just fighting.

A herd of buffalo crosses their path -- can they stampede them into their pursuers and gain some time that way? Other monsters that might be talked or tricked into letting the PCs pass ("yes, mr. bridge troll, if you let us go then the guys behind us will race right after us and you can catch them all by surprise.")

Generally, have some encounters solvable (or that can be made easier) by wits rather than brute force.

[Thanael]

Weirdo wrote:

Check out this article for a bit of advice on running more lower encounters

+1. The Alexandrian has great articles and that one is no exception.

Also maybe look into Chase rules and skill challenges ?

[Dave Justus]

I'm confused what exactly you are trying to accomplish with this. You want to make the characters fatigued...but then make the encounters easier to balance that...why not just not make the characters fatigued so you don't have to re-balance the encounters? I suspect you can find other ways to convey the idea that their characters have been through a draining and difficult time without resorting to the fatigued condition.

I also am doubtful that having the bad guys do all the rolling in the chase will make for a compelling story. If I'm a player and come up with something clever, but it doesn't work out because I roll poorly that is understandable and I move on. If I come up with something clever, but it doesn't work out because someone else rolls well that is a little more difficult to accept. Obviously it is the same thing in theory, but viscerally it feels like what I do doesn't matter and it is all out of my control. I would suggest that you turn around your chase plans, giving the party rolls to escape rather than rolling for the bad guys and having your players just wait for the result.

[Weirdo]

Agree with Dave Justus that if you run it properly the large number of encounters will feel like a marathon to the players even if they don't actually gain the fatigued condition.

Also that where possible, players should roll the dice.

In addition to reworking the encounters to be more manageably draining, strongly consider some of tonyz' suggestions for adding noncombat solutions to reduce the stress a bit.

Since the party is low level I would recommend adding a few extra consumables, particularly healing potions, to the rewards during the dungeon crawl portion in case they are unlucky or you misjudge the number of encounters necessary to wear them out. This will make it much less likely that they will die because you miscalculated something - and if they do well and don't need the consumables then they get extra loot as a reward.

[Robert Kepner]

Dave Justus wrote:

I also am doubtful that having the bad guys do all the rolling in the chase will make for a compelling story. If I'm a player and come up with something clever, but it doesn't work out because I roll poorly that is understandable and I move on. If I come up with something clever, but it doesn't work out because someone else rolls well that is a little more difficult to accept.

Wierdo wrote:

Also that where possible, players should roll the dice.

The reason I am going the route I am is because if I tell my players that they're are doing a skill challenge, then it will lose ALL elements of story or creativity, and just become an argument with me about why they're highest ranked skill should work. After that, it will just devolve into naming skills and making rolls without much explanation, all elements of story or thought removed from the process.

I have done chases in that manner before with this group, along with other skill encounters, and it's not only boring, but it kills the flavor of the chase. Whether or not that's a failing of skill encounters themselves, my group, or me as a DM, I don't know, but it's something I'm trying to avoid.

Not to mention, half the time my players will end up making attacks, using items, and casting spells as part of a "skill encounter" anyway.

And on top of that, those players don't have skills or abilities that would help the party escape will just end up aiding another and contributing as little as possible.

The way I'm trying, I'm hoping to encourage them to be more creative and not rely on what's got the highest ranks, and then put the boring "roll dice, compare to DC" on the NPC's. And since I'm not restricting the players to just skills or abilities, then those players who aren't necessarily able to contribute in terms of game mechanics can come up with other ideas, like evasive patterns, tricks to fool their pursuers, or even doubling back to take out the dogs or the trackers guiding their enemies.

I will look through the article about running more encounters at lower ECL. I will also add a more consumables to the crawl to help them keep hit points up and maybe give those who suffer more from low resources (like a wand or two for spell casters). And as Dave Justus said, perhaps the fatigue mechanic is an unnecessary element, especially given there won't be a chance to rest and regain abilities before the chase.

The multiple encounters are all mostly in the crawl itself, before the chase. The Chase will only have encounters if the heroes get overrun, and even then they have the chance to break free and get away.

And ultimately, as I said earlier, if they DO get caught, it's not party death. They'll just be captured, taken to a new location, and the campaign will have a slight detour on the way to the garrison.

Thanks everyone for the thoughts and tips, it is much appreciated!