| krazmuze |
To combat players healing for hours between encounters in another thread it was proposed to use a tension die pool to pace the GM's random exploration that would lead to random encounters. Several had issue with this being complicated, this is because dice pools do not fit in with PF2 streamlined dice mechanic of d20 rolls opposed by DC.
If you follow the DM encounter tables in the GM section, you quickly realize serial encounters quickly turn deadly because the system was designed for the 10m breaks between encounters. Someone coming from D&D5e may not realize that serial encounters are more dangerous in PF2e, because D&D5e was designed for multiple encounters before a short rest.
The issue is RAW Medicine Treat Wounds limits you to hourly use (disregarding any feats), which means the GM could throw six encounters at you in the hour, despite people having lost their ability to do 10m Treat Wounds.
I suggest RAI are that hourly Medicine limit is only for that exploration phase, and that it should reset every new exploration after an encounter. The GM can only throw six lacky per hour at you before it turns deadly, and that makes for a very boring slog to death. The crawl can have more interesting encounters in that hour if they are allowed the 10m heals. The fact that no published encounters are doing six lackys an hour pacing suggests that this is RAI.
So allow everyone to Treat Wounds in a 10m break after each encounter, disregarding that they healed in the last 10m break. Instead use a lull DC to add tension to decisions for taking longer breaks. For crawls fictional positioning to make sense you really do not want the players taking hours to heal or even sleep after every encounter.
Someone else suggested that longer than 10m breaks should be called lulls for the lolZ. So I adopted that name for this houserule
The lull DC is a countdown that tracks player healing hours. The DC is set to 20 when a player first spends more than 10m to heal, and is lowered for every heal that takes more than 10m. If they decide to overnite camp during the crawl then that DC is getting cut in half as that is a lot of hours for the NPCs to fictionally reposition. If they decide to push on for serial encounters, that DC can be raised back up.
At the end of a lull GM rolls a d20 against the lull DC, on a success the NPCs will be doing their own exploration during the lull that may result in an encounter. Follow the exploration/encounter rules to see if initiative happens or not - if nobody notices each other than no encounter. Keep in mind if players are healing - they are noisier than if they are stealth hiding. If they decides all four PC needs an hour of heals after every encounter - then they do so with the tension of the lull DC stepping quickly down to 17, 13, ...
If you really want to add the tension to the table, use one of those big Magic d20 spindown die out in the open to track the lull DC. For those that think this idea should be more deadly, start the lull DC spindown with a d12 or worse!