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MukkTB
2013-05-15, 06:16 AM
Normally this would belong in the 3.5 section, but I put it here because its concurrent to the current argument in the 5E thread.

I have had experiences where a dungeon was run under time pressure. I've raced other adventuring parties to the loot at the end of the dungeon. I've dealt with dungeons that had only a limited time left to exist. The last dungeon I ran was an arrest on an evil wizard in his city home. By the time we found the wizard our characters were exhausted, but if wed rested before the final fight, he would have got away.

I've also been in hostile environments where just setting down to camp can be difficult. I've had monsters chase me across the map and I've found environments where random encounters occur so frequently that rest is detrimental.

On the other hand I've adventured in dungeons where time is not a concern. In general travel my party will rest when resources are running low. We're not always on the clock or anything like that. We recently did a boat campaign where the characters did little more than rest on board between trying to keep hostile things away or going on expeditions when our employers asked us.

In my thinking, the 15 minute adventuring day question is more one of tone and storytelling than of gameplay. A tense setting with no rest and constant harassment has a different tone than a race setting where two skilled groups compete to get to the treasure first. And that has a different tone than a group of adventurers on deck chairs on a boat waiting to fight off the next giant lizard like rich fishermen on a pleasure cruise. Switching it up is advisable because it gives the players tastes of different things. However from a RAW perspective, you cannot assume the players will always have a 15 minute adventuring day or that they will never have the luxury.

Rhynn
2013-05-15, 06:38 AM
The "15 minute adventuring day" has always puzzled me. It makes so many assumptions. It assumes the PCs are free to rest whenever they want. It assumes they are not doing anything time-sensitive (like trying to track someone down, trying to catch someone, protect something, find something, get somewhere, etc.). It assumes they've got access to exactly whatever spells they want, and/or are at such high levels that the "adventuring day" is a nonsensical concept anyway. (By what logic would characters with easy access to teleportation be dealing with "X encounters per day" anyway?)

To me, a big part of the whole point of running, say, the Undermountain in AD&D is survival and resource management. The PCs are going to be going deep into a hostile dungeon that lives around them and cannot be "cleared out." They're very likely to find themselves lost in unmapped territory thanks to teleports, slides, pits, and one-way secret doors. Just getting out of the dungeon is a challenge. Resting in the dungeon is mostly crazy. The whole point is that they have to think, preserve their resources, and decide when it's time to beat a retreat and live to explore another day. The choices are what makes the game, to me: do they follow the temptation of treasure just around the corner and risk being drawn deeper into a deadly dungeon, or running into monsters they can't handle? When do they decide they're beat-up enough that they need to withdraw?

Especially in 3E, I can see how it can become an issue, but it absolutely is the GM's fault. Yes, a different system might not have the problem at all, but a GM has to work with the system. (Granted, the material might acknowledge the problem and suggest ways to deal with it...) There are so many ways to not let (low-level) PCs dictate the pace of their adventuring, if you actually need to. And, conversely, if there's no logical reason for them to .

I generally don't like the notion of "X encounters per day." I prefer to make every encounter potentially dangerous or lethal (what's the point if there's no real risk someone might die?), and let the players decide how to approach encounters and when to retreat (if they can).

In games that aren't D&D, this isn't even a consideration. I think a group playing RuneQuest would look really puzzled if someone talked about how many encounters they're supposed to have per day - that's just nonsense outside of D&D (3E-4E specifically, at that).

SiuiS
2013-05-15, 07:07 AM
I agree with the OP. there's nothing wrong with it, unless the DM wants more suspense and the players are casually avoiding it by accidental full charging between encounters.

I find it to be a general non-issue. On one hand, a wizard saying "I'll be back to deal with this in the morning" has weight, because he can do these things. On the other, sleeping on an immediate problem lets the problem fester, logically. It really depends on what you're tackling and why. A sweeping understanding of the fifteen minute day does this a disservice. It only serves to either rule the DM unnecessarily or role the players unnecessarily due to a sense of entitlement on either side.

Omegonthesane
2013-05-15, 07:17 AM
I generally don't like the notion of "X encounters per day." I prefer to make every encounter potentially dangerous or lethal (what's the point if there's no real risk someone might die?), and let the players decide how to approach encounters and when to retreat (if they can).

There's a gulf a million miles wide between resource/risk management as a minigame and requiring every encounter to have "real risk someone might die". To my knowledge the intended (albeit not reached) balance point of 3.0 / 3.5 is that a CR-equal encounter should be a serious threat unless the party spend resources on it - which is normally going to mean spells, although it might occasionally be scrolls or potions. If you mean players should have to spend resources reasonably carefully between several encounters that's fine, but if they're facing significant chance of death every encounter even when using their powers you're actually quite likely to suffer a TPK and end of campaign.

prufock
2013-05-15, 07:29 AM
In campaigns I run time is always a factor, because they're story driven and things happen outside of what the PCs do, even if it doesn't affect them directly. Yes, they can rest at any time, take a vacation, or whatever, but events will march on without them.

MukkTB
2013-05-15, 07:45 AM
I'd like to point out that sometimes time really isn't a factor. A while ago my party was exploring some ancient ruins in a jungle. The ruins were underground and far away from civilization. We didn't have to worry about some other adventurers coming along and stealing our loot. The jungle itself was a 'low level zone' It didn't spit out random encounters more than CR 2 or 3. The inhabitants of the dungeon were nonsentient animals and monsters. We didn't have any pressing commitments outside of the jungle. There were no loans coming due or princesses we needed to go rescue. It was just us, some shovels, and a hole filled with monsters.

This was a nearly perfect example of a situation where the 15 minute adventuring day is in effect. Anytime we got tired and bloody, we rested.

Emmerask
2013-05-15, 07:53 AM
True, though if you take lets say a month for this adventure when the dm planned for maybe a week donīt be surprised if stuff has changed outside or that suddenly a messenger arrives (if possible) telling the adventurers to come back at once they are needed so that you canīt finish the jungle dungeon as planned :smallwink:

Jay R
2013-05-15, 10:21 AM
The 15 minute adventuring day is an (reasonable) artificial construct stemming from the artificial situation in which characters can simply turn off all dangers with a mystical light switch.

It assumes that they don't care how many nights they sleep on the ground or how long the quest takes, that they have infinite food and water, that nothing is happening in the rest of the world that they have any interest in, that nothing in the danger area is getting worse, and that no other adventurers in the world want the same quest object they want.

Put in a deadline, some wandering monsters, an enemy hunting them, or some rivals, or just track food consumption, and it goes away and people start playing as if the world were real.

[in the game I'm currently playing, our PCs must complete the quest in the next 22 days. Whenever we rest to replenish spells, the DM has one of us roll for wandering monsters. It focuses the mind.]

Hand_of_Vecna
2013-05-15, 11:26 AM
Something that people often ignore when arguing against the 15 minute adventuring day is that the origins of the game support it. Adventures like Castle Greyhawk were huge static areas maybe things occasionally changed, but it was at a glacial pace. Even the dungeons that did have time limits usually had limits just small enough to disallow going back to town or digging tunnels to get around things.

I'm not trying to say that this is the only way to play simply that I feel there is a large group that points to assumptions and themes that come from the origins of this hobby and call it "silly" and "unrealistic" or "breaking the suspension of disbelief" and "lacking verisimilitude" while calling their own games "organic" or dynamic".



It assumes that they don't care how many nights they sleep on the ground or how long the quest takes, that they have infinite food and water, that nothing is happening in the rest of the world that they have any interest in, that nothing in the danger area is getting worse, and that no other adventurers in the world want the same quest object they want.

I generally assume that my characters do care about these things, but they also care about risking their lives unnecessarily and dislike taking hp damage.

Realistic Motivations
Risk of life and limb > Discomfort
Also I'd like to note that I rp characters carrying books for pleasure reading and decks of cards as well as spending camp time learning and instructing party members in skills.

Tracking Food
Ignoring for the moment both food creation magic and survival checks, so the party carries enough food to get to the dungeon, spend a dozen days there and come back. This may require some encumberence budgeting if you don't have extra dimensional storage yet, especially if you have an 8 STR Wizard. Past level one the cash expenditure will be trivial.


Rivals etc.
So where do your adventures come from? If they're on some kind of public forum than fair enough, but if they're sent by their mentor, following an ancient map found in another hoard, investigating something they know about by happenstance. If this kind of hunting and competition becomes a regular theme the party may start spending more time on these since they seem to be a bigger threat than the dungeon denizens and if they're equiped NPC's then these could be the most profitable encounters. Huh, now that i think of it that could be a great campaign "Dungeon Claim Jumpers".

Events
So, how many pressing events do you plan to have in your campaign? Did your players sign on for dungeon crawling or for wars, politics and criminal investigations? Also this means preparing twice the material for the DM you need to create a dungeon that the PC's will have time to clear out if they move at the pace you deem appropriate and a bunch of other stuff to punish them for not moving fast enough.

Random Encounters
So, what if they hole up in a room that seems pretty secure and retrap the doors. As I go through a dungeon I always make a note of what seem like the best places to rest, because again I'm trying to think like my character.

Also "15 minute adventuring day" is a bit of a misnomer. Whether the party goes through 1 encounter, the "recommended" 4 or a dozen the adventuring day will take an amount of in game time that you can refer to in a derogatory fashion despite the fact that it jives well with the schedules of real world professional athletes, fighters and sometimes the most extreme explorers.

If it bothers you that much the best solution is to never run dungeons, have stuff like hours of hiking or mapping or checking every 10ft square for traps between "real" encounters. Of course, you can always just put a time constraint on every dungeon, but it's eventually going to start feeling "contrived"and "forced" and might even eventually be groan iducing and lead you players to call it "unrealistic" or maybe even "stretches the suspension of disbelief".

Water_Bear
2013-05-15, 11:54 AM
If the PCs are trying to achieve a goal when someone else is trying to stop them, roleplaying their enemies properly means any period of rest for the PCs is an opportunity they can exploit; whether that means shoring up defenses, calling reinforcements or setting up ambushes is up to the skills and mindset of their opponents. If the PCs are trying to stop someone else from achieving their goal and take a break, well... the enemy is probably going to have made some progress in that time.

But even beyond that, I don't really see an issue with the idea that PCs are budgeting their resources effectively; if there isn't a reason to push on past their limits, be it spell slots or HP, why should they? I've never understood the "4 CR appropriate encounters a day" guideline, and in my experience it's much more fun to let fights happen whenever they make sense regardless of how ready the PCs are.

Gavinfoxx
2013-05-15, 11:55 AM
In 3.5e, a level four Wizard with a Lesser Rod of Extend Spell and the spell known of 'Rope Trick', along with a 5' length of rope, means, 'once a day, we can hole up in an invulnerable redoubt for up to 8 hours a day'. At level 5, it bumps up to 10 hours...

If you want to do this with one item, all you need is a 1/day item of Rope Trick that lasts for 9 hours. How much gold is that? A few thousand? An Eternal Wand would also work.

Emmerask
2013-05-15, 11:58 AM
There is always this chance that something is going to happen somewhere else so they will automatically try not to waste too much time and play everything overly safe.

So you donīt even have to have a timed dungeon(s) to achieve the same effect if you have a none pc centric world.

illyrus
2013-05-15, 12:38 PM
The places where it has come up when I've been a player is when the party gets thrown up against some CR +6 to +10 encounter where we burn through about 80% of our resources in a single go struggling to keep from losing PCs. We withdraw and rest and the GM is unsatisfied so he has the monsters bunch up so the next day we face another CR +6 to +10 encounter etc.

I've GMed for the same group and given them more reasonable CRs and they've been willing to take on 3-4 in a day. When they fought super smart opponents and tried to rest early then they'd get ambushed as they went to evac/rope trick. Splitting the party like this, at least the first round or two, would make even +0 CR encounters pretty tense. They wouldn't expect a few dimensional anchors to hit as the wizard is busy touching his party for teleport to go off or for someone to stick a magical wall underneath the rope trick when only part of the party has ascended etc.

Slipperychicken
2013-05-15, 02:35 PM
I've GMed for the same group and given them more reasonable CRs and they've been willing to take on 3-4 in a day. When they fought super smart opponents and tried to rest early then they'd get ambushed as they went to evac/rope trick. Splitting the party like this, at least the first round or two, would make even +0 CR encounters pretty tense. They wouldn't expect a few dimensional anchors to hit as the wizard is busy touching his party for teleport to go off or for someone to stick a magical wall underneath the rope trick when only part of the party has ascended etc.

It gets really mean when an enemy has Transdimensional Spell (or a rod of it), allowing him to use the Rope Trick like a cage into which he dumps horrible nasty things and the occupants can't effectively retaliate for a while. Combining Wall of Stone (or other barrier) to contain a Transdimensional Cloudkill over the Rope Trick and simultaneously block its entrance should be pretty brutal.

Hand_of_Vecna
2013-05-15, 03:08 PM
There is always this chance that something is going to happen somewhere else so they will automatically try not to waste too much time and play everything overly safe.

So you donīt even have to have a timed dungeon(s) to achieve the same effect if you have a none pc centric world.

In a non-pc centric world, which has greater verisimilitude and I feel is more desirable to many groups, this is true to a point. However, if the world is truly non-PC centric then events that are more important than the dungeon crawl that need to be attended to right away are just as likely to happen on day 2 as on day 10 so it actually encourages PC's to never let themselves be tapped out.


I've GMed for the same group and given them more reasonable CRs and they've been willing to take on 3-4 in a day. When they fought super smart opponents and tried to rest early then they'd get ambushed as they went to evac/rope trick. Splitting the party like this, at least the first round or two, would make even +0 CR encounters pretty tense. They wouldn't expect a few dimensional anchors to hit as the wizard is busy touching his party for teleport to go off or for someone to stick a magical wall underneath the rope trick when only part of the party has ascended etc.

This is my experience as well, players might occasionally be a little more conservative or reckless than you'd like, but I find it's the largely the DM's fault for not foreshadowing the harder fights well enough making resting the correct amount a game of "guess what the DM is thinking".

Sutremaine
2013-05-15, 03:30 PM
The extradimensional interface of Rope Trick is immune to (single-plane) spells and the sight of creatures that can't see invisible things. Not creatures themselves, not non-spell effects or items, not any sense other than sight...

I would totally run an encounter in which something either blunders into the dimensional interface, or is able to sniff it out and try and stick a hunting appendage through it. Mrrr? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlEBM7jZwcM)

Toofey
2013-05-15, 03:40 PM
huh, I think reading this thread is going to have me thinking more about my player's enemies sleep cycles. My players press on the majority of the time. If anything I feel like they get nipped more by not taking time to at least heal themselves after fights.

Tengu_temp
2013-05-16, 02:50 AM
Some ways to get rid of the 15-minute adventure day:

1. Treat the passage of time realistically. Enemies won't just wait in the next room for the PCs to enter, they will wander around. And if the players are racing against the time, they can't afford to rest.
2. Treat resting realistically. "No, you just slept an hour ago, you're still not tired" is a perfectly fine thing to tell to the players.
3. Go with the resting mechanics that were intended all along - no matter how much you sleep, you can regain your spells/daily powers only once every 24 hours.
4. Play a game that doesn't have daily resources, like almost every other modern non-DND RPG ever.

GoddessSune
2013-05-17, 05:59 AM
The "15 minute adventuring day" has always puzzled me.

A big part is the change in how some people like the game played. For the last couple of years everyone has wanted to be a super star. And not just be a super star once in a while....but every second of the game.

It is amazing. I run a lot of games, and this is so common. After we start the game we will have that first warm up encounter (like bandits). And time after time players will go ''all out'' using up spells, abilities and such just to win the encounter. Every encounter. So after just a couple encounters, the charterer has used up a lot of stuff. This is ten times worse with ''builds''.

Then the character does not ''feel'' like the character to the player. For the simple reason that the character is just a couple things they can do. The 'Fire Mage' is no fun if he can't set the world on fire.

And then they want to rest and start the 15 minuet day cycle.

Hand_of_Vecna
2013-05-17, 07:26 AM
Some ways to get rid of the 15-minute adventure day:

1. Treat the passage of time realistically. Enemies won't just wait in the next room for the PCs to enter, they will wander around. And if the players are racing against the time, they can't afford to rest.

I understand punishing the group for just breaking out their kits in a random hallway, but what if they've actually selected an out of the way position behind a locked door, or dug a hidden cave using a summoned creature, or used rope trick, or teleported home, etc. I mean they "could" set up new defenses and organize what had been separate encounters, but why is that just happening now?

Yes, you can have a timed mission, but if the entire campaign is time sensitive dungeon crawls it's going to feel contrived.


2. Treat resting realistically. "No, you just slept an hour ago, you're still not tired" is a perfectly fine thing to tell to the players.


Sorry no, they might not be "tired" but they intellectually know they're "tapped out". They call it a day and play cards or mumblety peg, read, and share back stories over the campfire.



3. Go with the resting mechanics that were intended all along - no matter how much you sleep, you can regain your spells/daily powers only once every 24 hours.

Sure, but this depends on timed missions, which will feel contrived if piled up one after the other.



4. Play a game that doesn't have daily resources, like almost every other modern non-DND RPG ever.

Well ya, I mean you "could" do that. Though a lot of these systems "do" have spell or psionic points that come back over time.


A big part is the change in how some people like the game played. For the last couple of years everyone has wanted to be a super star. And not just be a super star once in a while....but every second of the game.

Alternatively, you could say that they "never want to be wall flowers, ever". Though I'm sure that some groups have true prima donnas that just have to blow a max level spell on a CR-2 encounter.