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Hzurr
2010-03-25, 04:16 PM
So my players and I were discussing some options for our 4E game, reguarding monster HP, combat time, and what Mark Hall lovingly refers to as the "slap-n-nap" (a.k.a the 15 minute adventuring day). One possible suggestion that was pointed out was using the rules that Yakk posted on rpg.net (and I believe here as well). Essentially, powers and HP are regained based on story rather than on time.

Here are the rules:
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*Extended Rest*: Identical to a short rest, except it takes 6 hours, and each character may make an endurance vs DC 10 check (with a bonus equal to the max. healing surges of the character) to regain a healing surge.
For each 10 they beat this check by, they regain an additional healing surge.

Then throw out the existing milestone rules.

*Milestone*: Every 2 encounters or so you should have a milestone. They can also be attached to plot points, and they can occur within an encounter if it suits the dramatic needs of the game. Extra hard encounters might have a milestone both before, and after the encounter.

When the players reach a milestone, the following things happen:
* All encounter powers are immediately refreshed
* The players regain 1/2, rounded down, of their max healing surges
* The players may each spend 1 healing surge as a free action
* For each expended daily power, roll 1d6: On a 456, the daily power refreshes.

*Short Rest*: No change.

*Gain a Level*: When players gain a level, *all daily powers refresh*.

---------------------

Again, let me stress that I'm not the one who came up with these, I simply really liked them, and am interested in using them.

I was curious to see if anyone was implementing rules like this, and how it was going in your game.

Tiki Snakes
2010-03-25, 08:25 PM
Well, If I recall correctly, you simply cannot take another extended rest 15 minutes into the day. You can sleep, do nothing and otherwise while away the 8 or 12 hours or so till it begins to count as an extended rest again, in theory, but you are just asking for trouble if you do so.

That said, though it might be a case of use-with-caution, I doubt it would significantly break the game.

Thajocoth
2010-03-25, 08:29 PM
According to the PHB, you must wait 12 hours after an extended rest to take another one. You may sleep while extended resting, but if you do not, you must have slept 6 hours within the past 24 hours. (Or tranced or be a Warforged)

So you can't slap-n-nap to begin with (at least not by RAW).

A battle is 5 minutes. A short rest is 5 minutes. Lets say you're in a dungeon, and between searching for stuff, traveling and trying to sneak occasionally, a battle or skill challenge is started on average every 15 minutes (perfectly reasonable). Assuming an infinite sized dungeon, this means 48 battles that day. Recommended daily allowance of battles is... about 4, I believe.

So, really, when the PCs can rest is more up to the DM than the players. Maybe a room looks safe enough... Maybe the PCs have the key to the door forward, and it's not going to open on it's own for a week... And then there's the idea of adding time limits. Maybe that evil summoning spell is going to finish is 3 days. Do the PCs want to be late for that? That's the way you do it. GP for nothin' and your elves... Err... Wrong line.
I want my... I want my... I want my... E.X.P...
-----

I don't mean your houserule is bad. I'm just saying the system as is isn't all that broken. Personally I find your houserule too complex for my play style. But TETO, right?

rayne_dragon
2010-03-25, 11:19 PM
I'm pretty happy with the rules for resting as they are now. I think the 5 minute rests can seem a bit silly at times - unless we're rushed, the party will always take one after every fight and nobody (well, maybe that's mostly nobody) likes having to fight with only at-wills, so limiting the refreshing of encounter powers is a bit of an irritant. The rules for extended rests and the limitations on dailies and healing surges caused by them makes, in my opinion, for a much more interesting adventure. You need to be careful to not overexert yourself and it can give the feeling that adventuring is very stressful and dangerous work.

LibraryOgre
2010-03-25, 11:34 PM
Tiki, the idea of the 15 minute adventuring day is that's all you put into it... not that you literally get in one fight then immediately take an extended rest, but rather that you you don't do anything else that would require you to rest. Do something, dump your dailies, and the hole up for a day. Or keep traveling. Unless the DM wants to make a campaign out of a month-long journey, giving you 2-3 encounters a game day, you can easily go nova each encounter. If you've got a city based campaign, you can retreat to fortified areas.

Sure, it means that each encounter eats up a day of game time. But in a large number of scenarios, that's not going to matter.

Tiki Snakes
2010-03-26, 12:28 AM
Tiki, the idea of the 15 minute adventuring day is that's all you put into it... not that you literally get in one fight then immediately take an extended rest, but rather that you you don't do anything else that would require you to rest. Do something, dump your dailies, and the hole up for a day. Or keep traveling. Unless the DM wants to make a campaign out of a month-long journey, giving you 2-3 encounters a game day, you can easily go nova each encounter. If you've got a city based campaign, you can retreat to fortified areas.

Sure, it means that each encounter eats up a day of game time. But in a large number of scenarios, that's not going to matter.

I think I follow, and I've had a similar effect in my most long running campaign as a player. But then, mostly because we usually have about a single combat encounter for every in-character fortnight. :smallbiggrin:

But, really. Retreating to a locked room after a single skirmish just gives your enemies plenty of time to plan an ambush, or frame you with the local guards, or generally have free run of the city for the other 23 hours and 45 minutes a day, so it's not really a tactic without risk.

Hell, suppose it's all been going well and good, you do your 15 minutes of fighting, sorting out problem X, and Nova as you usually do. When you return to the stronghold, you stumble into the ambush that they put in-place the moment you were gone. Which they easily did, because you have become predictable. :smallwink:

Jerthanis
2010-03-26, 12:41 AM
Sure, it means that each encounter eats up a day of game time. But in a large number of scenarios, that's not going to matter.

I almost cannot think of a situation where you can afford to not do a whole dungeon at once.

Maybe if it's a dungeon full of mindless undead bound to the rooms they died in, or a dungeon which is almost entirely traps and oozes.

Any time you're in a dungeon which is also occupied by sentient life, any time you have any sort of deadline, any time the PCs are stuck in the dungeon without infinite food supplies (like if they were actually prisoners in the dungeon)...

I'd almost be interested to hear what kinds of dungeons you play/run where the PCs can hole up after each fight and not expect redoubled resistance further in, instances of harrying in the night, the objective being moved, or other party stymieing actions on the part of the antagonists being given virtually unlimited time by the PCs.

Kurald Galain
2010-03-26, 03:49 AM
I think Yakk's rules look interesting, but if you actually have a narcoleptic party then you have bigger problems than can be resolved with a simple houserule.



Any time you're in a dungeon which is also occupied by sentient life, any time you have any sort of deadline, any time the PCs are stuck in the dungeon without infinite food supplies (like if they were actually prisoners in the dungeon)...
To be fair, it is both very easy in 4E to get infinite food supplies, and very easy to survive for a long time without eating as much as a single bite.

Intelligent dungeon inhabitants responding to PC actions is indeed what a good DM would do, but is rarely if ever what is mentioned in a printed adventure. Indeed, 4E design depends on inhabitants not responding intelligently, because otherwise they would more than likely slaughter the PCs. For instance, if the guards in room A are an appropriate challenge to the PCs, and so are the guards in room B, then if the guards were to do the smart thing and all move to the same room, this would easily result in a TPK.

(note that to most parties, an "equal level encounter" is a cakewalk, and that by "appropriate challenge" I mean something a few levels higher)

Yakk
2010-03-26, 07:45 AM
The rules aren't about solving (just) that possible problem.

They also make 1 encounter per week adventuring work, and have resource issues. And 20 encounter days work, without each encounter being trivial.

This makes the DM's job easier: they can set up a dungeon with 20 encounters in it, and not have to reduce individual encounter difficulty, provide a place for PCs to rest up, or provide a reason why players retreating-and-returning is feasible.

They can just have the players have a mad-cap day where they explore the dungeon from top to bottom.

I at least strongly recommend the "when you get a milestone, players can immediately consume a healing surge as a free action, and all encounter powers recharge". That, by itself, makes dungeon delving more interesting: you can go from one encounter to the next whenever you hit a milestone without the 5 minute rest. It also works really well when the BBEG shows up in the middle of an already tense fight -- simply hand out a milestone.

BobTheDog
2010-03-26, 12:24 PM
When I face a "slap-n-nap party", I sometimes go with the "simpler" route: give them harder encounters. More (and more) monsters, or all monsters are a few lvl highers than originally, reinforcements arrive, or some traps/hazards etc.

Basically, make them NEED to rest after every encounter. Then, after a few of these, go back to "normal" encounters. They'll finish the fight without spending many resources and most likely than not, decide by themselves that "hey, we might as well go on and take the next room".

If they don't, you get back on "hard mode".

Jerthanis
2010-03-26, 01:09 PM
Intelligent dungeon inhabitants responding to PC actions is indeed what a good DM would do, but is rarely if ever what is mentioned in a printed adventure. Indeed, 4E design depends on inhabitants not responding intelligently, because otherwise they would more than likely slaughter the PCs. For instance, if the guards in room A are an appropriate challenge to the PCs, and so are the guards in room B, then if the guards were to do the smart thing and all move to the same room, this would easily result in a TPK.

I'm running a 4E module right now that spells out that if the PCs rest, the remaining monsters in the dungeon either hole up in one or two of the two most defensible rooms or send raiding parties. It mentions when a room is a safe room to rest in, and gives justification for why it's safe.

So if it's rarely mentioned overall, I've just got an exception in terms of module design.

Which 4E modules have you read which don't spell this out?

Hzurr
2010-03-26, 01:13 PM
They also make 1 encounter per week adventuring work, and have resource issues. And 20 encounter days work, without each encounter being trivial.


This is the biggest reason that I'm considering implementing it. When the PCs are travelling somewhere, they shouldn't have 4 random encounters a day (as Mark Hall mentioned). Similarly, they might be in a dungeon where they really need to clear out everything in a day, but there are too many encounters or combat situations for PCs to deal with in one 24 hour period.

I like the rules because it doesn't tie power regen to a time-line, and if I want to do one encounter a week, I can, or if the PCs need to do 20 encounters in a row, we can do that too.




When I face a "slap-n-nap party", I sometimes go with the "simpler" route: give them harder encounters. More (and more) monsters, or all monsters are a few lvl highers than originally, reinforcements arrive, or some traps/hazards etc.


I've done this, and the biggest issue is that to make combats that are big enough and hard enough to be the only combat of the day, is that they tend to be very long, very deadly, or very long and very deadly. It's good everyso often, but not week after week. I've also tried putting a time limit on the PCs to get them to press forward more. Again, this works well, but gets old if I do it time after time.

Edea
2010-03-26, 01:53 PM
I dislike the 'roll 1d6 for daily recharge' portion (not the recharging part, the random part); since you no longer control when you can get your dailies back, it heavily favors at-will buffing and encounter utilities (like they weren't favored to begin with), which is solid but incredibly boring. I would -never- take a daily utility in this system, and I probably wouldn't play a controller, period. If it were instead "choose (1 at heroic/2 at paragon/3 at epic) daily powers you possess and have expended, you recover those powers," I'd be much more amenable to this alternative.

Itomon
2010-03-28, 04:46 PM
Itomon's suggestion: considering the comment above.

Here are the rules:
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*Short Rest*: unchanged.


*Extended Rest*:
- Duration: An extended rest is at least 6 hours long.
- No limit per day: In one day, you can take as many extended rest as you wish (provided the time to do so).
- No Strenuous Activity: You need to rest during an extended rest. You normally sleep during an extended rest, though you don't have to - you can stand guard, sit in place, ride on a wagon, or do other tasks that doesn't require much exertion.
- Healing Surges: At the end of an extended rest, you make an Endurance check. You regain a number of surges per day equal to your check result divided by 10 (rounded down, minimun 1). Divide the result by 5 if you have good rest and healing conditions during the extended rest. Then, you can spend any number of healing surges, as if taking a short rest.
- Renew Powers: At the end of an extended rest, you regain all your encounter powers and daily powers.
- Using Powers while You Rest: If you use a daily power (to benefit from its healing effects, for example) you need another short rest to renew it; in other hand, you may use encounter powers "at-will" (be reasonable!).
- Action Points: At the end of an extended rest, you lose any unspent action points, but you start fresh with 1 action point.
- Interruptions: If anything interrupts your extended rest, such as an attack, add the time spent dealing with the interruption to the total time you need to spend in the extended rest.


*Milestone*:
Every 2 encounters or so you should have a milestone. They can also be attached to plot points, and they can occur within an encounter if it suits the dramatic needs of the game. Extra hard encounters might have a milestone both before, and after the encounter.

When the players reach a milestone, the following things happen:
- Action Points: You gain 1 action point.
- Healing Surges: You gain 1 surge per day (2 surges/day at paragon tier, 3 surges/day at epic tier). You can also spend a healing surge to regain hit points as a free action.
- Encounter Powers: You renew all your encounter powers, including your "second wind" usage.
- One Daily Power: You may choose to regain one of your spent daily attack powers (or spent daily utility powers) so that you can use it again. On other hand/alternatively [sorry, no english speaker], you may instead choose to gain one additional use of a magic item daily power, provided it is from an unused daily magical item (PHB, p.226 for more information).

*Gain a Level*: No changes.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Use this to make your D&D game more "deadly", and to provide players a long-term campaing - even as heroes, they need rest (sometimes, a couple of days resting) to fully recover their resources.

I actually did not test it, but sounds fair and reasonable for "dark fantasy" campaings (I like it).

Cheerfully,
Itomon

Reluctance
2010-03-28, 06:35 PM
Yakk's rule is based on divorcing the narrative flow from the flow of game time. If you're only looking to tone down the high fantasy aspects, it might be better to simply redefine "short rest" to mean a full night's sleep and "extended rest" to mean a significant chunk of downtime. Redefining "encounter" to "day" and "day" to "adventure" seems better aligned with certain peoples tastes.