[PF] Houseruling a ban on Wands of CLW... reasonable?

[Thrair]

Heya all. I might be running a campaign with some buddies in a few weeks (It's not a certainty, yet. A friend invited me to run one if he can scrounge up enough players who can sync up schedules), and I am seriously considering a blanket ban on Cure wands.

I figure a lot of people will give me flak on this, so let me explain:
I like being able to use attrition tactics on the party, with multiple weaker encounters in a given in-game day for combat-heavy periods, especially at higher levels. Wands are so readily available and efficient for out of combat healing that they largely neuter those tactics, as well as making traps much less effective.

In addition, I feel that, because they allow players to “reset” health to full after every fight, it encourages the glass-cannon, rocket-tag style approach to combat and builds. Why build a healer or a tank when it’s so much more effective to just rack up your initiative and optimize so you can effectively end the encounter on the first round with a combination of raw damage and crowd control spells? This makes encounters a lot more binary than I'd like. If players have all optimized for maximizing the ability to end the fight in 2 rounds at the expense of defense and staying power, encounters boil down heavily to who ended up winning initiative. Tactics start mattering a lot less.

It also means a player who wants to optimize for tanking or healing (not as common as people who want to be the party face or damage dealer, but still not non-existent) feel like paper-weights compared to the rest of the party without having to design encounters specifically for them and find ways to neutralize the big guns (Which screws THEM over. Not something a DM wants to have to rely on in order for the lesser optimized players to be able to contribute.)

My big worry is that I might end up unintentionally pigeon-holing someone who doesn't want healbot into the role, but I'm fairly confident I can avoid that.


Still.... I wanted to get people's opinions on this. Because I'm sure it'd be a fairly unpopular houserule for a lot of people, and I want other people's opinions on whether or not the ban is worth, or even effective at, curbing glass cannon builds somewhat.

*EDIT* Sorry for the rambling wall of text with crappy punctuation. I kind of spat out a meandering blob of thoughts and failed to proofread it out of laziness.

*EDIT 2* Ok, I've heard a lot of arguments for and against, and I think I'm going to allow CLWs. But am going to keep an eye on them if the party ends up with someone who actually wants to run a dedicated healer. If it becomes an issue, I'll deal with it, then. A big thanks to everyone who responded in a constructive way.

[Psyren]

I don't think a ban is necessary. The healing per charge is pretty weak (1d8+1) - make them roll each use and track the charges. You can also have things attack them during their "patch" routine if they spend too long standing around dithering with their wands in the middle of a dungeon/jungle/cavern etc, forcing them to burn even more charges afterward and risk getting attacked again etc.

Eventually they will learn (a) it's probably not a good idea to stand around for minutes at a time in a combat zone and (b) less efficient but more powerful healing, as well as in-combat healing, can be valuable too.

[Winds of Nagual]

As a GM who loves attrition, I applaud the concept. But is ALL non-caster healing banned or just wands? With no other way to heal besides rest and divine, your heal-bot could quickly become the most important and responsible person in the game. And if the bot goes down ...

If you just wanted a day of non-stop action, wait until the wand is half empty and bring the hammer down and don't let up until that wand is empty. Incidentally, in my game, a wand of lesser restoration was undowithoutable.

[PersonMan]

So your problem is 'my players are using their resources on a consumable healing device'?

If we assume that they use 5 charges total per fight, and fight five times a day, the wand will last them 2 in game days.

3 charges per fight makes it last 3 days a bit into the fourth.

Let them spend their gold on wands and build glass cannon, then find out the hard way (by running out of charges or eating a crit and ending up in the negatives); or just say "hey guys I want a more attrition type game, so be aware that a wand of CLW won't last all that long" pre game.

[Captnq]

NP. I'll take a wand of lesser vigor, please. Much more effective anyways.

Before you do anything, check out my complete list of every healing spell and a breakdown by the numbers of the effectiveness of each. It has everything by scroll, potion, and wand as well as suggestions, editorial comments, and Suggested Metamagic feats.

Here (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=4829.0).

[Thrair]

As a GM who loves attrition, I applaud the concept. But is ALL non-caster healing banned or just wands? With no other way to heal besides rest and divine, your heal-bot could quickly become the most important and responsible person in the game. And if the bot goes down ...
Just wands banned. Potions are a lot less gold-efficient, are tougher to use, and take up more space in bags.



I don't think a ban is necessary. The healing per charge is pretty weak (1d8+1) - make them roll each use and track the charges.
I want to be able to wear the characters down with attrition, not the players. Mandating a roll for every out-of-combat use of the wands REALLY would bog down sessions. There's a reason you can take 20 on a lot of skills out of combat. Nobody likes having to sit there and roll constantly until you get enough 20s.


You can also have things attack them during their "patch" routine if they spend too long standing around dithering with their wands in the middle of a dungeon/jungle/cavern etc, forcing them to burn even more charges afterward and risk getting attacked again etc.

Eventually they will learn (a) it's probably not a good idea to stand around for minutes at a time in a combat zone and (b) less efficient but more powerful healing, as well as in-combat healing, can be valuable too.

True, and I will probably do this on occasion. Nothing dispels the illusion of invincibility and restores some tension than being hounded and chased while weakened. I like my players having to run away on occasion. Winning every battle unless you get TPKd gets boring or (in the case of a TPK) frustrating.

However, it's not always going to be an option, nor something I'd like to rely on.

[Thrair]

NP. I'll take a wand of lesser vigor, please. Much more effective anyways.

Before you do anything, check out my complete list of every healing spell and a breakdown by the numbers of the effectiveness of each. It has everything by scroll, potion, and wand as well as suggestions, editorial comments, and Suggested Metamagic feats.

Here (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=4829.0).

Most of that, including the Lesser Vigor Wand, is for 3.5. My buddies run mostly straight Pathfinder. Most of those who DM have a few things they'll houserule in from 3.5, but that's the exception, rather than the rule.

*EDIT*

So your problem is 'my players are using their resources on a consumable healing device'?

If we assume that they use 5 charges total per fight, and fight five times a day, the wand will last them 2 in game days.

3 charges per fight makes it last 3 days a bit into the fourth.

Let them spend their gold on wands and build glass cannon, then find out the hard way (by running out of charges or eating a crit and ending up in the negatives); or just say "hey guys I want a more attrition type game, so be aware that a wand of CLW won't last all that long" pre game.

Eh... you've got some points there. But my beef isn't with out of combat healing, in general, but rather the sheer efficiency of wands. At higher levels you can buy a lot of them. And anyone with ranks in UMD can use them.

Scrolls are fairly efficient as well, but those have their limitations. Not the least of which is being limited to having it on your class list.
Also, there are things than can interfere with scroll usage. Feeblemind, for example. (Which, off-topic, is one of the ways I tend to deal with primary casters who are gleefully breaking the game at the expense of the rest of the party).

Still, good points. Perhaps allowing wands to be used, but making them a finite resource from merchants (Dude's not going to just be "Ye Olde CLW Wand Emporium", he might only have a couple on hand), and then making them see heavy use is the way to go.

[Maginomicon]

I resolve this issue by having twice as many encounters per day and little time to recharge HP.

...That, and using the SRD's Reserve Points and Death & Dying variants.

[Just to Browse]

I think this is bad, because it will encourage players to pick a healer and force him to heal, else they will be ineffective. The one player who picks healer is going to be a) useless in a fight, and b) bored out of his mind. I don't think that's avoidable--a party with a tank/healer will always be better than one without if you ban healing wands.

Healing is a good thing, but if you want to synergize with attrition then you should look to other solutions, or compensate for the provided difficulty:
[list] Bump up daily healing, so players full-heal or half-heal each night. The original 4-day-encounter assumption is keyed off the idea that players are at max resources (all spells, full HP, full ability scores, no debuffs), so this way you preserve regular game balance while keeping attrition as a big deal.
Use dynamic objectives (chase to secure the macguffin, escape from a hunting party, defend the city from waves of orcs) and then give CLW a longer casting time, or make wand-casting take longer. This means players can still heal up, but will need to gauge if they have the opportunity or if their time would be better spent solving the objective.

EDIT: Seriously guys, Pathfinder. There is no lesser vigor. Can we not have the same empty joke brought up a third time?

[Psyren]

I want to be able to wear the characters down with attrition, not the players. Mandating a roll for every out-of-combat use of the wands REALLY would bog down sessions. There's a reason you can take 20 on a lot of skills out of combat. Nobody likes having to sit there and roll constantly until you get enough 20s.

But that's just it - making them roll every charge will be tedious for them too. Eventually, without any prodding on your part, they will settle on something quick like "let's just burn 5 charges so we can keep moving." They start the next fight at less than full health (maintaining the tension you want) but don't feel like they've had their toys taken away. They've effectively limited themselves.

This dovetails nicely with the other suggestion as well - say, if you have something attack them after 10 rounds of dithering in one spot (or moving slowly due to the need to , they will do their best to stay under 10 charges of healing per fight. Just like a real life adventuring party, they'd have to balance the desire to patch up fully with the need to keep moving. It's even believable, since the carrion/offal of their kills would be likely to attract predators. Slaughter a bunch of drow in a cave, and Ankhegs or Ettercaps are likely to come out to eat the corpses after a bit, etc.

If you do this quite a bit in the beginning, eventually the players will self-regulate and you won't have to keep secondary encounters in reserve as much (or be able to conserve them from session to session.)

[Souju]

You can also do things like have the guy selling the wands try to con them into buying a half-charged wand, or only having half-charged (or less) wands available for sale.
Banning wands might also "inspire" your party members to take classes with healing abilities, like Inquisitor, Bard, Ranger, Paladin, Cleric, Oracle, Sorcerer, Wizard...ummm
Yeah pathfinder has a lot of healing classes come to think of it...and someone able to cast infernal healing (a low-level spell that nearly all the casting classes have access to, and the ones that don't have CLW access. Some get both!) would easily compensate for the lack of a CLW wand.

The thing is, I dunno if anyone mentioned this before, but the CLW wand is kind of a "crutch character" for getting through low level play.
You don't NEED to take it away from them...just make them aware that you'll prepare for them having it. Like the plethora of monsters that hit for low damage but cause ability damage (like Soul Eaters. Dear god we lost a bunch of characters to those recently) or item damage. Not specifically damaging the WAND, though, but damaging their gear in general would create a need for them to use more charges since their armor might be toast.
Be creative...maybe the goblins have a pet ooze or rust monster now...

[Dr. Yes]

It seems to me that making hit points precious would encourage, rather than discourage, rocket tag tactics. If you know that any HP loss is going to cost your group a spell slot to repair, that makes it all the more important to disable enemies before they can have any meaningful impact on the battle. If your goal is to discourage that kind of play, I would suggest boosting your enemies' durability and having them pop up in waves. Keep in mind also that attrition doesn't have to mean losing hit points; spell slots and expendable class features get used up with or without wands.

Ban Infernal Healing too, if you're bent on doing it.

[Thrair]

But that's just it - making them roll every charge will be tedious for them too. Eventually, without any prodding on your part, they will settle on something quick like "let's just burn 5 charges so we can keep moving." They start the next fight at less than full health (maintaining the tension you want) but don't feel like they've had their toys taken away. They've effectively limited themselves.

This dovetails nicely with the other suggestion as well - say, if you have something attack them after 10 rounds of dithering in one spot (or moving slowly due to the need to , they will do their best to stay under 10 charges of healing per fight. Just like a real life adventuring party, they'd have to balance the desire to patch up fully with the need to keep moving. It's even believable, since the carrion/offal of their kills would be likely to attract predators. Slaughter a bunch of drow in a cave, and Ankhegs or Ettercaps are likely to come out to eat the corpses after a bit, etc.

If you do this quite a bit in the beginning, eventually the players will self-regulate and you won't have to keep secondary encounters in reserve as much (or be able to conserve them from session to session.)

I get your point. I do. But I really do not want to frustrate players into taking a course of action. At that point I’d rather just deal with CLW wands and try to balance around their use. Anything that frustrates players is something I want to minimize or use in moderation. If they’re not having fun, overall, I’m not doing my job as DM. Period.


It seems to me that making hit points precious would encourage, rather than discourage, rocket tag tactics. If you know that any HP loss is going to cost your group a spell slot to repair, that makes it all the more important to disable enemies before they can have any meaningful impact on the battle. If your goal is to discourage that kind of play, I would suggest boosting your enemies' durability and having them pop up in waves. Keep in mind also that attrition doesn't have to mean losing hit points; spell slots and expendable class features get used up with or without wands.

Ban Infernal Healing too, if you're bent on doing it.

Egh. You may be right. Although just boosting enemy health is something I try to avoid, if possible. Because that makes the disparity between those optimized for dealing damage and those who aren't even wider. But then again, those who aren't optimized are probably optimized for something else, like tanking, healing, skillmonkey, etc. Either way they're probably contributing somehow, so they're all feeling useful to the party. Still doesn't solve the issue of high-level rocket tag... but then again, if everyone's having fun despite it, it's not as big an issue. For the party, anyways. And as DM I'd kind of have the burden of sucking it up, to a degree.

And if someone is really breaking the game by optimizing to such a degree that it's making things less fun for everyone else, I can deal with it. I can either ask them to tone it down or hit them with some nasty save-or-suck.

Waves of mooks is something I already plan on using. Multiple weaker encounters in a day than one really tough one. With, ofc, the occasional BBEG type encounter.

Side note: I don't worry about Infernal Healing as much. Casting it is an evil act, which prohibits it's use for a lot of PCs (It won't even be on a lot of the good god's spell list, and some PCs, like the Paladin, might object to it being cast on them. Not to mention it's a lot less time efficient than CLWs.

[Psyren]

I get your point. I do. But I really do not want to frustrate players into taking a course of action. At that point I’d rather just deal with CLW wands and try to balance around their use. Anything that frustrates players is something I want to minimize or use in moderation. If they’re not having fun, overall, I’m not doing my job as DM. Period.

I don't think it's frustrating but you've made yourself clear.

Note that both the DMG and CRB include Rule Zero clauses - you are fully expected, and even encouraged in many places, to deviate from or modify the printed rules to fit your group's playstyle. So if you want a more dangerous campaign, you can tweak wands - maybe they have less charges than normal, or maybe they heal 1d4 per charge instead of 1d8. Maybe they can't be bought or crafted, or maybe using one rapidly in succession can have unintended magical side-effects. There's a lot of knobs there you can turn to make things work the way you want.

[Ansem]

Up the prices for wands, say they are rare due to being a wartorn world or whatever.... few people make them (offer and demand, basic economics).

[Eldariel]

They're already consuming resources. If it's too cheap, increase the price.

*Stalker'd*

[sakuuya]

Why not use eternal wands instead? They're in the Magic Item Compendium (so you'd have to port them over to PF) and allow two uses of their spell per day. Throwing one or two of those to your party takes a bit of the healing pressure off the party healer, but they're not spammable like regular wands are.

[Rubik]

This actually screws with mundanes more, and leaves spellcasters mostly alone.

If playing in a campaign where healing is severely restricted and/or nerfed, I'd be using necromancy, Calling, and Summoning spells to replace the party's meat shields and using them instead.

The party fighter would feel just about as useless as if they were dead (which they would be soon enough, with no healing), and nobody would have to play a walking Band-Aid.

Oh, and if that wasn't an option, I'd be hiring a few dozen clerics for healing and investing in ways to protect them. Hirelings are cheap.

If THAT was banned, there are other ways to give infinite healing, which I'd start looking into.

If all else fails, make the fighter play a cleric instead, since he'd die really fast otherwise. Playing a walking bandage is bad enough, but it's better than playing a dead character.

[Zubrowka74]

Be creative...maybe the goblins have a pet ooze or rust monster now...

You just gave me an idea for an encouter : a goblin squad that uses a catapult to fling their pet ooze(s) on the PCs....

[kaminiwa]

I think that unless you're running a high-optimization, high-combat, "hack and slash"/"munchkin" campaign, banning wands is a brilliant idea.

Why? Math!

An "equivalent CR" encounter is one that uses "about 20% of the party resources." If they pick up a Wand of CLW at 1st, that means they should be taking 10d8+10 damage per fight.

Yeah, good luck to all of them on that.

I'd much rather play without the wands, rather than force my GM to ramp challenges well above what they're comfortable and familiar with.

---

Going a different mathematical route:

50 charges x ~5 HP/charge = 250 HP/wand. At a mere 750 GP each, you're telling your players they can pay 3 GP per HP lost.

Average payout for a 1st level fight is 300 GP, of which 10% should be spent on consumables, so... 30 GP/fight, or 90 HP damage per fight.

At 1st level, unless players and GM are both pretty comfortable with combat, I call that a TPK before they reach 2nd.

---

TL;DR: Wands of healing can trivially unbalance the game and utterly ruin one of D&D's core mechanics, which is the "five balanced encounters per day" mechanic. Some groups enjoy this, but I see nothing wrong with wanting to avoid it! :smallbiggrin:

[zlefin]

there are some ways to make attrition more relevant, though I don't think any of them address rocket tag issues:

1) partial heal limit; make all healing spells only heal up to half hp (or 3/4 or whatever).

2) magic healing has limits, you need rest and doctors too - every 5th (or whatever) point of damage is special and can only be healed with rest.

Alternately, healing could simply become less effective the more of it you've had in a day.

3) side effects to heavy use of healing magic, maybe a special disease or healing intoxication.

4) healing spells no longer remove damage (lethal or non-lethal), instead they convert lethal damage to non lethal damage; which then heals at the normal healing rate for non lethal damage (1/hour/charlevel I think). Or if that's too harsh a half and half split, they remove half the damage, and convert the other half to non lethal (and can't remove non-lethal at all).

[Segev]

Er, your math is off when you estimate that "25% of party resources" means "25% of the wand."

That's "daily" party resources that are supposed to be used up. Wand charges are not "daily" resources. At 750 gp per CLW wand, the wand itself represents a hefty chunk of party resources at levels 1-3. Beyond level 3, the amount of healing it does is so small that it gets drained very fast anyway.

But anyway: wands, like other consumables, need to be measured over the course of the level(s) in which they're earned and used, rather than in terms of "1/4 daily resources."

[Grod_The_Giant]

Er, your math is off when you estimate that "25% of party resources" means "25% of the wand."

That's "daily" party resources that are supposed to be used up. Wand charges are not "daily" resources. At 750 gp per CLW wand, the wand itself represents a hefty chunk of party resources at levels 1-3. Beyond level 3, the amount of healing it does is so small that it gets drained very fast anyway.

But anyway: wands, like other consumables, need to be measured over the course of the level(s) in which they're earned and used, rather than in terms of "1/4 daily resources."
This.

If you really want to nerf healing items, only handing out eternal wands isn't a bad way of doing it. But... you say your real goal is attrition instead of rocket tag, and that... just... 3e isn't really that type of game, in my experience, except maybe at a few levels in the middle of the track. At low and high levels alike, rocket tag is the rule. There are too many save-or-dies, too many save-or-lose effects, too much damage...

[Psyren]

This.

If you really want to nerf healing items, only handing out eternal wands isn't a bad way of doing it. But... you say your real goal is attrition instead of rocket tag, and that... just... 3e isn't really that type of game, in my experience, except maybe at a few levels in the middle of the track. At low and high levels alike, rocket tag is the rule. There are too many save-or-dies, too many save-or-lose effects, too much damage...

Actually, PF boosted hit points all around and nerfed the hell out of most SoD effects, even ones used by monsters. So it's a bit less rocket-taggy than 3.5.

[Baroncognito]

Things to note:

1) It specifically says in character creation that you can't use any of your character's starting gold to buy magical items without DM permission. If you don't want them to have a wand at first level, they will not have a wand at first level.

2) At second level, WBL is 1000 and you're not allowed to spend more than half your WBL on any one item.

[Thrair]

Why not use eternal wands instead? They're in the Magic Item Compendium (so you'd have to port them over to PF) and allow two uses of their spell per day. Throwing one or two of those to your party takes a bit of the healing pressure off the party healer, but they're not spammable like regular wands are.

I actually like this suggestion. It prevents spamming dozens of heals between fights while also giving anyone with any UMD the ability to heal a little damage here and there, so nobody is stuck being the party's healbot if they do not want to heal. (I actually like making a dedicated healer now and then. I'm eager to try out a Hospitaler at some point).

So... yah. If I end up running this campaign, I think I'll ban the Cure wands, but houserule in the eternal wands as a replacement. After a few sessions I'll see how the party plays. If someone is making a dedicated healer and enjoying it, Gravy. If nobody is making a healer and someone's getting forced into the role, I'll make the next encounter drop a few eternal wands to take the pressure off. Bacon.



You just gave me an idea for an encouter : a goblin squad that uses a catapult to fling their pet ooze(s) on the PCs....

And this will be awesome. *sighs* I swear, some day I will see another Gnome-on-a-rope session.

[kaminiwa]

But anyway: wands, like other consumables, need to be measured over the course of the level(s) in which they're earned and used, rather than in terms of "1/4 daily resources."

You're right, wow, I botched my math :)

At 1st level, they should be earning 300 GP/encounter. No one seems to disagree on this.

We can assume 20% of that is consumables, which leaves us 60 GP/encounter. (If you pay attention to WBL vs WPE [Wealth-Per-Encounter], clearly some of it is being lost to consumables :))

At 750 GP for 50 charges, the "cost per charge" is 15 GP.


So at 1st level, they can budget 4 charges of a CLW wand per encounter, or ~20 HP healed per fight. I have to concede that this isn't nearly as bad as I thought :)

Still, you so totally can use WPE to determine what sort of healing resources the group would reasonably have access to on a per-encounter level.

[Occasional Sage]

You just gave me an idea for an encouter : a goblin squad that uses a catapult to fling their pet ooze(s) on the PCs....

"Bucket Brigade" gets a whole new meaning!

[NichG]

The real problem with the CLW wand/lesser vigor wand is that the balance point of those effects is somewhat based on the idea 'cheap, but slow'. In a fight, burning an action on lesser vigor or CLW is questionable at best. Out of a fight, that action has no cost, so it doesn't matter if its slow or fast. A CLW wand or Lesser Vigor wand is a no-brainer because as far as value per gold goes, its way above a lot of other things you could spend on at that level.

A very brutal rule you could use is that magical healing of all kinds is only effective within a minute of the wound being dealt. It requires a bit more book-keeping (have a 'sticky damage' column and a 'pending' column basically), but it means that slow-drip healing solutions stop working while burst healing (that usually consumes rarer resources) still works.

This way they could still have the CLW wand and could still use it during the fight or shortly after, but they can't use a slow/cheap method to heal to full between every fight. It may just mean they buy 5 CLW wands and everyone uses their own, but that still puts the price of being at full a bit higher.

[Rubik]

Honestly, you're hurting the low-tier classes the most with restricted healing. They're the ones who would be taking the most damage, and they already have enough inequitability to deal with. Why punish people who are already behind the curve?

[Lord_Gareth]

I find your question of, "Why be a tank?" interesting given the non-existence of tanking in Pathfinder. Melee 'holds aggro' HOW in your games?

[Fax Celestis]

If you're interested in attrition, you might be better served in banning traditional charged wands and going with eternal wands instead. Changes them from 50 whenever you want charges to 2 charges/day for basically the same price. That way, your players can still have wands for emergencies, but they're not dead in the water for basic healing. I would, however, suggest doing this for all wands, not just healing ones, if you're going to do this at all.

[Rubik]

I find your question of, "Why be a tank?" interesting given the non-existence of tanking in Pathfinder. Melee 'holds aggro' HOW in your games?Not to mention that these houserules encourage everyone to avoid taking any kind of damage in the first place. Who is best at that? Tier 1's, of course. Why bother healing when you can wipe out encounters without a single point of damage that matters? And no, spell-generated minions don't count.

[NichG]

Honestly, you're hurting the low-tier classes the most with restricted healing. They're the ones who would be taking the most damage, and they already have enough inequitability to deal with. Why punish people who are already behind the curve?

Not everything is about balance between the classes though. If you want to run an attrition-based game, where attrition is a big element of the gameplay, you have to do something like this.

It might make sense to do some other thing to help with class balance on top of this, for the reason you state or just because the classes are unbalanced, but its kind of an aside to this particular issue.

[Keneth]

I don't know why you would expect anyone to want to play a healer or tank if you decide to ban healing wands. If you told me about the house rule I would do the exact opposite and optimize the hell out of my character so that I can ensure we finish encounters even faster. And if things were looking grim at the end of one encounter, I'd simply leave the area and find something better to do, potentially wasting all the effort you've put into your meticulously planned adventure. Unless you plan on railroading your players into an endless stream of monsters. :smallconfused:

[Icewraith]

I personally don't mind characters paying gold to reset their HP after a fight. It's hard to throw a heavy-hitter at a party at half health without one-shotting them on a lucky crit.

Unless you're playing an all mundane (hopefully someone has UMD in that instance) party then the real measure of attrition is going to be the spell slots of the spellcasters and the amount of time the party has to complete the task. Time is really the resource you need to limit, not wand charges.

Additionally, consider your encounter design. Taking a minute or two post-fight to zap people with a CLW wand isn't a really big deal- the characters are probably going to search the bodies etc, and moving and casting is definitely a thing. You want your encounters to be challenging enough to communicate to the players a clear sense of danger, and you have an incredibly narrow rope to walk if the PCs aren't getting health back.

To get a sense of attrition, the players need to have a time limit, need to be unable to rest and recover spells, you need to have communicated at least a vague idea that this is going to be a very long dungeon with several very nasty opponents, and you need to get them to spend resources. Once you feel that the players have exhausted about half their useful arsenal of spells, with plenty of dungeon to go, you should get the effect you're looking for.

Edit: In particular, if you need to waste a wizard's resources, supply him with weaker opponents that are perfectly suited to be hit by his spells. It's hard for most wizard players to resist the opportunity to be effective.

[NichG]

I don't know why you would expect anyone to want to play a healer or tank if you decide to ban healing wands. If you told me about the house rule I would do the exact opposite and optimize the hell out of my character so that I can ensure we finish encounters even faster. And if things were looking grim at the end of one encounter, I'd simply leave the area and find something better to do, potentially wasting all the effort you've put into your meticulously planned adventure. Unless you plan on railroading your players into an endless stream of monsters. :smallconfused:

There actually is value to 'we can't handle this now, lets come back later' being a strategically valid choice though. I remember times in 1ed games where figuring out how to escape and come back later formed the meat of the session, and where figuring out how deep you could go and still successfully retreat if you had to was important.

It makes for a different kind of gameplay, but a lot of stuff can emerge from that style of game. Its better for a sandbox than a linear plotline IMO. It also helps if time is important - if leaving and coming back means that the treasure may have been moved, the monsters may have fortified or reset traps, etc, then it becomes an interesting decision 'do we press on while weak, or do we come back later at full strength but when our opposition has also regained strength?'.

Generally the point of increasing attrition mechanics in a game is to make it so that easier fights can still be meaningful - its a motion away from having single heavy-hitters. If you want to do a lot of heavy hitters and boss fights, its not a good mechanic to use.

HP attrition can also lead to spell slot attrition. The example of a cleric needing to burn slots on healing spells is an obvious one, but it can also mean that the wizard might throw some spells in a mop-up fight to prevent the enemies from scoring a few extra hits that will gradually build up. If everyone can basically heal to full for free, there's less incentive for the casters to intervene in an easy/won fight.

[nedz]

Banning wands of CLW means that you have to revoke your house rule if you don't like how it turns out. Just make them very hard (i.e. impossible) to find because of a foreign war or something. Then, if it turns out that this was a bad idea, you can make them available again — or not.

[navar100]

Will the bad guys also not be at full hit points for the non-first combat of the day? Will the enemy barbarian only have 20 hit points out of a maximum 56? Will the troll only have 28 hit points instead of 63? Will the Ice Devil only have 40 hit points instead of 161?

If your answer is no, especially because it wouldn't be a "challenge", then it is grossly unfair to deny the players the chance to be at full hit points. It is not a crime against gamedom for PCs to be at full hit points for the non-first combat of the day. It's not your job as DM to make things easier to kill PCs.

[Keneth]

Will the troll only have 28 hit points instead of 63? Will the Ice Devil only have 40 hit points instead of 161?

That would be slightly hard to achieve considering these guys have regeneration. :smallbiggrin:

[NichG]

Will the bad guys also not be at full hit points for the non-first combat of the day? Will the enemy barbarian only have 20 hit points out of a maximum 56? Will the troll only have 28 hit points instead of 63? Will the Ice Devil only have 40 hit points instead of 161?

If your answer is no, especially because it wouldn't be a "challenge", then it is grossly unfair to deny the players the chance to be at full hit points. It is not a crime against gamedom for PCs to be at full hit points for the non-first combat of the day. It's not your job as DM to make things easier to kill PCs.

It is your job as DM to create a set of challenges that are reasonable and entertaining. Its not like you have some CR budget and you're trying to do your best to kill the PCs while staying in that CR budget. The point of monsters isn't that they're 'your pieces' and the PCs are 'their pieces', the monsters are there to achieve a specific effect. It doesn't actually matter whether the party fights 4 orcs with full hitpoints or 6 orcs with half hitpoints.

Ideally you're increasing attrition so that you can lower the difficulty of encounters. The reason you'd want to do this is that a hard encounter might have a 10% shot of killing a PC and a 90% shot of doing nothing to them if you can't use attrition. This basically means PCs die because of that crapshot.

If on the other hand an encounter has a 0% chance of killing a PC, but a 50% chance of damaging them in a way that isn't easy to recover from and a 50% of doing nothing to them, then you can string a bunch of those together and have them still be meaningful without each of them having a nontrivial chance of just outright killing a PC.

Taking strong enemies and putting them at half health is a bad way to do this - they'll still have the same chance of one-shotting a PC, they're just going to have half of the time to try. It'd be better to use a lot of full health but intrinsically weaker monsters.

[Alex12]

That would be slightly hard to achieve considering these guys have regeneration. :smallbiggrin:

Maybe the last thing they killed could bypass their regeneration? Troll against a weaker fire elemental, maybe?

[Keneth]

Maybe the last thing they killed could bypass their regeneration? Troll against a weaker fire elemental, maybe?

Regeneration works differently in Pathfinder, creatures can regenerate any type of damage. Getting hit with their kryptonite only disables the regen for 1 round.

[navar100]

It is your job as DM to create a set of challenges that are reasonable and entertaining. Its not like you have some CR budget and you're trying to do your best to kill the PCs while staying in that CR budget. The point of monsters isn't that they're 'your pieces' and the PCs are 'their pieces', the monsters are there to achieve a specific effect. It doesn't actually matter whether the party fights 4 orcs with full hitpoints or 6 orcs with half hitpoints.

Ideally you're increasing attrition so that you can lower the difficulty of encounters. The reason you'd want to do this is that a hard encounter might have a 10% shot of killing a PC and a 90% shot of doing nothing to them if you can't use attrition. This basically means PCs die because of that crapshot.

If on the other hand an encounter has a 0% chance of killing a PC, but a 50% chance of damaging them in a way that isn't easy to recover from and a 50% of doing nothing to them, then you can string a bunch of those together and have them still be meaningful without each of them having a nontrivial chance of just outright killing a PC.

Taking strong enemies and putting them at half health is a bad way to do this - they'll still have the same chance of one-shotting a PC, they're just going to have half of the time to try. It'd be better to use a lot of full health but intrinsically weaker monsters.

So it's ok for, say, bugbears to be the X > 1th combat encounter at full health attacking the party at Y < 50% health but not ok for the party to have an X > 1th combat encounter at full health attacking a CR appropriate opponent at Y < 50% health because the DM hates PCs being at full health.

Why must a DM hate his party's "health bar"?

[TuggyNE]

So it's ok for, say, bugbears to be the X > 1th combat encounter at full health attacking the party at Y < 50% health but not ok for the party to have an X > 1th combat encounter at full health attacking a CR appropriate opponent at Y < 50% health because the DM hates PCs being at full health.

Why must a DM hate his party's "health bar"?

It's not about hate; in fact, it's quite the reverse. Progressive defenses like HP give you a uniquely useful opportunity to present players with a meaningfully challenging series of encounters that still has a very low chance of killing them by sheer random bad luck. In other words, it's the middle ground between "haha, curbstomp all the things!" and "oh snap, I failed a save and died. In the first round of combat. Again."

If every encounter starts out with the players at full health, then every encounter has to be life-or-death, in the sense that it has a reasonable chance of bringing a PC to -1 or worse, all by itself … or else it means nothing. And that's too swingy. This is why e.g. DMM:Persist vigorous circle is bad for the metagame.

[137beth]

You're right, wow, I botched my math :)

At 1st level, they should be earning 300 GP/encounter. No one seems to disagree on this.

We can assume 20% of that is consumables, which leaves us 60 GP/encounter. (If you pay attention to WBL vs WPE [Wealth-Per-Encounter], clearly some of it is being lost to consumables :))

At 750 GP for 50 charges, the "cost per charge" is 15 GP.


So at 1st level, they can budget 4 charges of a CLW wand per encounter, or ~20 HP healed per fight. I have to concede that this isn't nearly as bad as I thought :)

Still, you so totally can use WPE to determine what sort of healing resources the group would reasonably have access to on a per-encounter level.
WBL actually has them "saving" 90% of their wealth (it decreases to around 85% at higher levels) so 20% for consumables is too high considering they still need normal living expenses at level 1-2 (they can't create their own food and shelter as easily yet).

So it's ok for, say, bugbears to be the X > 1th combat encounter at full health attacking the party at Y < 50% health but not ok for the party to have an X > 1th combat encounter at full health attacking a CR appropriate opponent at Y < 50% health because the DM hates PCs being at full health.

Why must a DM hate his party's "health bar"?
Whoa, kinda confrontational! You seem to have a pretty strong DM vs Player mindset. The DM
a)isn't a player
b)is not trying to "beat" the PCs, he/she is trying to challenge the PCs without killing them. Attrition from weaker enemies is a lot more likely to challenge without killing than once-encounter-of-rocket-tag per day.
Also, the PCs go through more encounters in a day than monsters. The PCs are heroes.

[NichG]

So it's ok for, say, bugbears to be the X > 1th combat encounter at full health attacking the party at Y < 50% health but not ok for the party to have an X > 1th combat encounter at full health attacking a CR appropriate opponent at Y < 50% health because the DM hates PCs being at full health.

Why must a DM hate his party's "health bar"?

Its okay for the bugbears because they are literally there to be slaughtered. Their resource pools don't have any real meaning to the game beyond an encounter, because they are expected to lose and in most cases there's really no way to interact with them before their part in the game has come and gone.

I know I'd rather fight 4 bugbears at full hitpoints than 8 at half.

[Keneth]

This is why e.g. DMM:Persist vigorous circle is bad for the metagame.

Really? Sounds very opinionated to me. Who decides what good metagame is? :smallconfused:

Personally, if the encounter has almost zero risk of bringing one or more PCs to negatives, I find it not worthwhile in the slightest.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Alright but what happens when the party reaches a high enough level for magic staves? Will you band them from making a staff that contains the heal spell?

When you force PC's to spend spells per day on healing you get one encounter a day players.

[Thrair]

There actually is value to 'we can't handle this now, lets come back later' being a strategically valid choice though. I remember times in 1ed games where figuring out how to escape and come back later formed the meat of the session, and where figuring out how deep you could go and still successfully retreat if you had to was important.

It makes for a different kind of gameplay, but a lot of stuff can emerge from that style of game. Its better for a sandbox than a linear plotline IMO. It also helps if time is important - if leaving and coming back means that the treasure may have been moved, the monsters may have fortified or reset traps, etc, then it becomes an interesting decision 'do we press on while weak, or do we come back later at full strength but when our opposition has also regained strength?'.

Generally the point of increasing attrition mechanics in a game is to make it so that easier fights can still be meaningful - its a motion away from having single heavy-hitters. If you want to do a lot of heavy hitters and boss fights, its not a good mechanic to use.

HP attrition can also lead to spell slot attrition. The example of a cleric needing to burn slots on healing spells is an obvious one, but it can also mean that the wizard might throw some spells in a mop-up fight to prevent the enemies from scoring a few extra hits that will gradually build up. If everyone can basically heal to full for free, there's less incentive for the casters to intervene in an easy/won fight.

Bingo. Also: If a Mundane holds back a bit to avoid damage (say if he’s already bruised), the casters have to blow more spell slots. Even if they’re just doing what Tier 1s do, they using slots. If they’re conserving the high level slots, they’re still burning up lower level slots, presumably on summons.


I don't know why you would expect anyone to want to play a healer or tank if you decide to ban healing wands. If you told me about the house rule I would do the exact opposite and optimize the hell out of my character so that I can ensure we finish encounters even faster. And if things were looking grim at the end of one encounter, I'd simply leave the area and find something better to do, potentially wasting all the effort you've put into your meticulously planned adventure. Unless you plan on railroading your players into an endless stream of monsters. :smallconfused:

As I said earlier, I like the party occasionally deciding to book it and run away. A game where the party always wins (barring a TPK, which is bad for everyone) gets predictable. And I’m not going to railroad them into plowing through it. Some of the best moments I’ve had in Pathfinder have been caused by my party and I having to run away. It makes revenge all the sweeter. Like the time our Wizard realized we were in a losing battle in a small building, and decided the best solution was to run away and remove the building. Explosively. Funny thing about a couple Fireballs in a 3 story building: E’rebody wants to get the **** out of a burning building before it falls apart with them in it, bad guys included. Technically nobody “won” the battle, but it was fun.

Remember, in Pathfinder, you get experience for SURVIVING the encounter. You don’t need to kill everything to advance in both XP and plot.


I find your question of, "Why be a tank?" interesting given the non-existence of tanking in Pathfinder. Melee 'holds aggro' HOW in your games?

Because the DM gets to decide who the bad guys target, that’s how. I don’t run my character (on either side of the fence) as all-seeing tactical geniuses. Sure, Mook #34 might know that the enemy has a couple spellcasters, but being of a low paygrade, he’s rather more concerned with the guy right next to him swinging a sword into his face. Dealing with those dress-wearing freaks way over yonder is the job of the guys in the back with the bows and arrows, or perhaps his own team’s dress-wearing freak. Enemy side has BSFs, too.


Will the bad guys also not be at full hit points for the non-first combat of the day? Will the enemy barbarian only have 20 hit points out of a maximum 56? Will the troll only have 28 hit points instead of 63? Will the Ice Devil only have 40 hit points instead of 161?

If your answer is no, especially because it wouldn't be a "challenge", then it is grossly unfair to deny the players the chance to be at full hit points. It is not a crime against gamedom for PCs to be at full hit points for the non-first combat of the day. It's not your job as DM to make things easier to kill PCs.

Who says the DM has to be "fair"? My job is to tell a story, while challenging the PCs without actually KILLING them. If I want to kill the party as the DM, it's easy to do so. I can just say "Rocks and the Paladin fall, everyone dies. Wake up in hell to get more rocks dropped on you." Obviously, nobody wants that. So you need to balance making an encounter challenging with avoiding too great of a risk of a TPK. (In general. Sometimes the gloves come off, and a TPK is possible. It depends on the campaign, the player's/DM, and luck of the die).

As I mentioned earlier, I intend to hit the party with multiple easier encounters to wear them down over the course of the day. Repeated lower CR encounters means I can chip away at the party's health and spellslots at a more consistent pace, while also being far less likely to get kill someone outright just because they failed a save at a bad time/ate a nasty crit.

*EDIT* And I find it reasonable for most of the bad guys to be at full health when the PCs are, say, invading THEIR stronghold. What evil villain would keep a bunch of half-dead guards protecting their crap unless they recently repelled some attack?

[Lord Vukodlak]

As I mentioned earlier, I intend to hit the party with multiple easier encounters to wear them down over the course of the day. Repeated lower CR encounters means I can chip away at the party's health and spellslots at a more consistent pace, while also being far less likely to get kill someone outright just because they failed a save at a bad time/ate a nasty crit.

Then getting rid of CLW is counter intuitive the party won't trudge on to the next encounter they'll stop to rest if there battered and bruised.

[Thrair]

Then getting rid of CLW is counter intuitive the party won't trudge on to the next encounter they'll stop to rest if there battered and bruised.

Which is when I start making percentile rolls to see if a patrol runs into them.

Or, as another guy said, make it so stopping for the 8 hours is unfeasible. Say they need to hurry and rescue the MacGuffin.

It's a lot easy and believable for me to have the bad guys cook something up to challenge them in an 8-hour time period than it is in a few minutes if they're spamming CLWs. 8 hours is plenty of time for the bad guys to regroup, run away with the aforementioned MacGuffin, or summon for reinforcements.

Making them able to do so in the few minutes it takes to top everyone off with the CLWs wands.... not so much. Not unless I want to rely on Schrodinger's encounter to be both riding their ass and not riding their ass, depending on whether they attempt to stop and heal for a minute or two.

[Rubik]

And again, nixing healing is merely screwing over the lower tier characters. It's a bad decision, even if the party is nothing but lower tier characters.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Which is when I start making percentile rolls to see if a patrol runs into them.

Or, as another guy said, make it so stopping for the 8 hours is unfeasible. Say they need to hurry and rescue the MacGuffin.

It's a lot easy and believable for me to have the bad guys cook something up to challenge them in an 8-hour time period than it is in a few minutes if they're spamming CLWs. 8 hours is plenty of time for the bad guys to regroup, run away with the aforementioned MacGuffin, or summon for reinforcements.

Making them able to do so in the few minutes it takes to top everyone off with the CLWs wands.... not so much. Not unless I want to rely on Schrodinger's encounter to be both riding their ass and not riding their ass, depending on whether they attempt to stop and heal for a minute or two.

Rope Trick, Teleporting back to town and numerous other methods can provide them with safe shelter. Chipping away at spellslots for two or three encounters is still going to make the next one tougher, but taking away healing is going to make them fall back completely

What will you do if they gain the ability to craft Staves. In PF making a staff containing only a heal spell would cost just under 26,400gp. They could easily heal between two or three encounters using just that staff then the cleric can expend spell slots during the down time between adventures to recharge it.

Are you going to ban Wands of Cure Moderate Wounds too? Its not nearly as cost efficient as CWL but WCL were banded, I'd buy a wand of CMW.

[137beth]

Alright but what happens when the party reaches a high enough level for magic staves? Will you band them from making a staff that contains the heal spell?

When you force PC's to spend spells per day on healing you get one encounter a day players.

You rest 22 hours a day while the clock on the villain's plan is ticking? Or at least in the middle of a dungeon where other monsters are around? Interesting.

No, if the players are doing one encounter a day, the plot and game isn't drawing them in properly.

[Lord Vukodlak]

You rest 22 hours a day while the clock on the villain's plan is ticking? Or at least in the middle of a dungeon where other monsters are around? Interesting.
No because in our group we don't get mad because the players spend money intelligently on healing items so they can take on as many encounters a day as possible and can then devote there spells towards buffs and offensive measures.

Sometimes a lesser encounter won't really do any damage, sometimes it may do far more damage then expected. If a party doesn't have access to simple healing consumables you restrict how many encounters they can endure. If you put the party in the clock then they need those items to stay on schedule.

Adjusting the encounters to be weaker to account for the lack of healing just means the party might invest in offensive consumables instead to blow away those enemies. If you have several encounters of weak enemies in a day that's reason to invest in a staff of fire or something

[Rubik]

You rest 22 hours a day while the clock on the villain's plan is ticking? Or at least in the middle of a dungeon where other monsters are around? Interesting.

No, if the players are doing one encounter a day, the plot and game isn't drawing them in properly.There's also the point that if the party can't take another encounter, they'll die. If you, personally, were out of resources and expected to die if you got into one more scrap, what would you do?

[Thrair]

No because in our group we don't get mad because the players spend money intelligently on healing items so they can take on as many encounters a day as possible and can then devote there spells towards buffs and offensive measures.

If I'm mistaken, please correct me, but you seem to be implying I'm getting angry at my group for buying Wands of CLW. If so, this is not the case.

As I said in my OP, I'm not even yet sure if this game will materialize. So I have no group to get "mad" at. I'm just searching for opinions on some houserules in case I do end up running it. I'm attempt to work around rocket-tag issues while still providing a challenge. And in order for attrition tactics to work, damage and spellslot usage between fights has to matter.

If you think I'm going about it in a bad way or have other suggestions, then by all means: Tell me. Aside from scattered one-offs here and there, and one stretch of Co-DMIng, my actual DMing experience is fairly limited. Which is why I'm asking for advice and opinions. I already have gotten some useful advice and am now considering grandfathering in Eternal Wands to prevent anyone from being designated Party Healbot against their will. Another piece of advice that was given was to make some of the encounters as "bait" to lure the casters into using up spellslots while they get to feel awesome.

But don't just toss out veiled insults, please. If I'm wrong and am reading too much into your statement, I apologize. You don't get tone and inflection very easily over text, and Teh Interwebs r teehing cheezburgurs end cynicism.



There's also the point that if the party can't take another encounter, they'll die. If you, personally, were out of resources and expected to die if you got into one more scrap, what would you do?

Yah, that's reasonable. But I don't intend to keep throwing stuff at them until the fall over from sheer exhaustion. Going to try and strike a balance. You have a good point about nixing healing screwing over lower tier characters. Any suggestions for dealing with that? I can also target the tier ones with some save-or-sucks and other debuffs, but if you have better ideas, I'm all ears.

I had a friend at my table who's previous DM despised tier ones so much that he'd frequently focus on them nearly to the exclusion of the party. My friend stopped gaming with that DM when he ambushed the guy's PC (A cleric) at night with Teleport/Summoned Minions and a Contingencied Power Word: Stun, followed by a bunch of Coup de Grace. Then teleported back out. When he called BS, the DM suggested he roll a fighter.

While tier ones can break the game at times, I prefer fairer ways to allow mundanes/tier 3-5s to shine, rather than have to screw over the players who happened to pick a tier one or two.

[Keneth]

No, if the players are doing one encounter a day, the plot and game isn't drawing them in properly.

More like you're forcing their hand. In most cases like this, I couldn't care less about the plot. It can be the best plot in the history of D&D, but if I don't feel comfortable doing it, I'd rather be killing rats in a cellar.

[Tavar]

Ok, here's a question: do any of your players enjoy playing only a healbot?

If not, then there's probably going to be issues. Lord knows it's bad enough playing something you don't like. It's 10x worse when everyone else makes you play it in a way you don't like.

[Rubik]

Yah, that's reasonable. But I don't intend to keep throwing stuff at them until the fall over from sheer exhaustion. Going to try and strike a balance. You have a good point about nixing healing screwing over lower tier characters. Any suggestions for dealing with that? I can also target the tier ones with some save-or-sucks and other debuffs, but if you have better ideas, I'm all ears.My suggestion is that you make healing cheap and easy, and instead you find other ways to challenge them, such as with stamina runs based on time-sensitive plots and hit-and-run guerilla tactics. Let the players know what kind of adventure they're in for before they head out, and force the casters to use their lower level spells to the best of their ability, while letting the martial-type classes shine. They'll be running challenge after challenge with no way to rest, which will actually give the T3 and T4 classes their due. Much nicer overall than killing the lower tiers through lack of healing while the T1s and T2s sit behind their ablative armor and laugh.

[Thrair]

Ok, here's a question: do any of your players enjoy playing only a healbot?

I don't know for sure, yet. But one guy apparently expressed some interest in playing a Mystic Theurge. So he's a potential candidate.


If not, then there's probably going to be issues. Lord knows it's bad enough playing something you don't like. It's 10x worse when everyone else makes you play it in a way you don't like.

Yah, that's one of my worries. I'm hoping someone does enjoy healing. If not, I'll be tossing out some of the grandfathered Eternal Wands to take some of the pressure of healing off without being so spammable.

Absolute worst case scenario is I use an totally unoptimized and/or underleveled GMPC for healbot/buff duties. Possibly giving him a RP reason for not engaging in actual combat. I'm really wary of that, though. While DMPCs can work, I'd rather not risk it if I can avoid it.

Another option is to just run the game as a normal game and accept the resulting rocket tag at high level play, while asking the players to not optimize too heavily. Which will be far as fine as it goes, at least for the middle levels (7-14 or so). But primary spellcasters' main strengths aren't from feats, anyways. It's from spell selection and flexibility. Mundanes actually need a moderate degree of optimization just to compete with simple 7+th level spell slots.

*EDIT*

My suggestion is that you make healing cheap and easy, and instead you find other ways to challenge them, such as with stamina runs based on time-sensitive plots and hit-and-run guerilla tactics. Let the players know what kind of adventure they're in for before they head out, and force the casters to use their lower level spells to the best of their ability, while letting the martial-type classes shine. They'll be running challenge after challenge with no way to rest, which will actually give the T3 and T4 classes their due. Much nicer overall than killing the lower tiers through lack of healing while the T1s and T2s sit behind their ablative armor and laugh.

Time-sensitive plots is definitely a start. Already was planning on a degree of hit-and-run. So I suppose the bigger issue for attrition is burning through the high level spells slots. Tricky bit is it's a lot easier to neutralize a spellcaster outright than it is to run them out of steam.

I am starting to flip-flip between nixing CLWs and multiple-encounter days and just running a regular campaign and finding ways disrupt and panick the spellcasters as best I can. Couple superstitious Barbs with Anti-Magic fields is one classic flip o' the bird to spellcasters. Not perfect, though.

Ultimately, it might be best to just wait a few sessions and see how the players are running their characters. Not everyone optimizes their characters, and even tier ones aren't always played in a way that breaks the game and forces the rocket-tag issue. Some people play them more defensively, and others use the flashy-but-less-effective blast builds.

[LordBlades]

Honestly, I'm 99% certain that banning healing wands wouldn't have the effect you desire, if the players have at least a moderate level of knowledge about how 3/5/PF really plays.

Helaer: healing scales horribly. Trying to keep up with monster damage with only your spell slots just isn't gonna work. In a world without healing wands, I wouldn't expect people to play more healers (Because it's not effective), but seek alternate ways to mitigate damage instead (summons, undead, other kinds of expendable minions, battlefield control to incapacitate enemies etc.)

Tank: sadly, tanking doesn't really work in 3.5/PF, because there's no aggro. Only way to prevent a monster for bypassing you and going for a squishy target is to make him physically unable to do so. The best tank in D&D is a battlefield control focused wizard.

[TuggyNE]

Really? Sounds very opinionated to me. Who decides what good metagame is? :smallconfused:

Mostly, the implications and effects we can deduce or observe. "The PCs end up bored most of the time" and "PCs have trouble making any progress level- or WBL-wise with the constant death" are both observable, and to some degree predictable as well (especially the latter).


Personally, if the encounter has almost zero risk of bringing one or more PCs to negatives, I find it not worthwhile in the slightest.

OK, how about we switch it slightly from "dying" to "dead" (which, in the presence of in-combat healing, is probably more sensible)? Should most encounters have a >5% chance of killing any given PC?
Deaths/Level/PC (evenly distributed)
{table=head]% Death/Encounter/PC|1|2|3+|Overall
2|20%|3%|~0%|0.26
4|32%|8%|1%|0.52
6|37%|14%|4%|0.78
8|38%|20%|8%|1.04
10|37%|24%|13%|1.30[/table]
2% per PC per encounter is about an 8% chance of killing one or more PCs in that encounter; 4% is 15%, and so on and so forth up to 10% = 34%.

[Thrair]

Honestly, I'm 99% certain that banning healing wands wouldn't have the effect you desire, if the players have at least a moderate level of knowledge about how 3/5/PF really plays.

Helaer: healing scales horribly. Trying to keep up with monster damage with only your spell slots just isn't gonna work. In a world without healing wands, I wouldn't expect people to play more healers (Because it's not effective), but seek alternate ways to mitigate damage instead (summons, undead, other kinds of expendable minions, battlefield control to incapacitate enemies etc.)

Tank: sadly, tanking doesn't really work in 3.5/PF, because there's no aggro. Only way to prevent a monster for bypassing you and going for a squishy target is to make him physically unable to do so. The best tank in D&D is a battlefield control focused wizard.

Yah. I know Healing scaling is rubbish. Even fully optimized Healers, like a Life Oracle, tend to use healing as a secondary way of keeping the party alive.

As for aggro, I disagree. There's as much aggro as the DM decides. As I said earlier: If someone wants to build a tank, I'll focus them more than I might otherwise, just so they feel useful. And I might drive the point for the party by occasionally having the squishies get focused heavily, instead.

*sighs* Part of me wishes Spellcasters only got back a certain number of spellslots per day, just to tone down their staying power a bit without needing to throw half an army at them per day. 1/2 Level+Primary Modifier/day or some such. Doubt it'd work, though. And it'd just piss people off. Balancing primary casters vs mundanes is something they haven't gotten right in 4 and 3/4 Editions.

To quote Zapp Brannigan on wearing out full spell casters:

"On my signal, all ships will file directly into the enemy death cannons, clogging them with wreckage!"

[NichG]

It feels to me like there are people in this thread who basically will not like an attrition-based game no matter how its run. If your reaction to 'this is a time sensitive plot and we're running low on resources' is to say 'screw the plot, lets kill rats', then may I suggest that you're probably not Thrair's intended audience and his game may not be a good fit for you? If you feel that its unacceptable for the party to back down, or fail without dying (by messing up a time sensitive quest) then it may also be that you just don't like this style of game.

That isn't a reason to fillibuster on him trying to get actual help with his ideas.

Okay, that said, there is one thing in particular that's been said that I think bears repeating: players will not likely play healbots/tanks in response to this. That is not actually a problem though - that is a tactical choice on their part. As long as you adjust the campaign to be well-balanced for what they do choose to play, it should be fine. But if your players don't like playing a certain archetype, its going to be hard to get them to have fun playing that archetype.

That said, why has no one mentioned the Crusader yet? It seems like an elegant solution to these restrictions - infinitely renewable healing that happens automatically when it attacks things, so it isn't playing 'the healbot', its playing the warrior who also gives the party back a little healing.

[Rubik]

That said, why has no one mentioned the Crusader yet? It seems like an elegant solution to these restrictions - infinitely renewable healing that happens automatically when it attacks things, so it isn't playing 'the healbot', its playing the warrior who also gives the party back a little healing.No crusader in Pathfinder.

[Thrair]

Not familar with a Crusader archetype that heals while it deals damage. 3rd Party or 3.5, I take it?

Any case, while there's certainly a few archetypes that do combat healing well, I've no guarantee anyone's going to play them. There's a metric assload of class/archetypes combinations before you even get started on feats.

[Rubik]

Not familar with a Crusader archetype that heals while it deals damage. 3rd Party or 3.5, I take it?

Any case, while there's certainly a few archetypes that do combat healing well, I've no guarantee anyone's going to play them. There's a metric assload of class/archetypes combinations before you even get started on feats.Crusader is a class from Tome of Battle. A very powerful and versatile combatant that uses maneuvers that range from assisting allies with actions to dealing massive damage to enemies to healing yourself and friends to acting as an actual tank by drawing aggro using its own abilities. The ToB classes specialize in using maneuvers of various types, which are vaguely similar to spellcasting insofar as they're divided into 9 levels and are expended upon use (though they're renewable during and between combats).

The three classes are basic replacements and adjuncts for fighters, paladins, monks, swashbucklers, and a few other archetypes.

Very nice system; it definitely gives melee nice things.

[LordBlades]

Yah. I know Healing scaling is rubbish. Even fully optimized Healers, like a Life Oracle, tend to use healing as a secondary way of keeping the party alive.

As for aggro, I disagree. There's as much aggro as the DM decides. As I said earlier: If someone wants to build a tank, I'll focus them more than I might otherwise, just so they feel useful. And I might drive the point for the party by occasionally having the squishies get focused heavily, instead.

*sighs* Part of me wishes Spellcasters only got back a certain number of spellslots per day, just to tone down their staying power a bit without needing to throw half an army at them per day. 1/2 Level+Primary Modifier/day or some such. Doubt it'd work, though. And it'd just piss people off. Balancing primary casters vs mundanes is something they haven't gotten right in 4 and 3/4 Editions.

To quote Zapp Brannigan on wearing out full spell casters:

Of course you can do that with aggro, but that doesn't change the fact that mechanically there's no effective way to hold aggro in this game (which is a good thing IMO but that's beside the point. Moreover, unless you explicitly tell them, players can't know you will focus the tank unless you tell them. And even if you do, getting to tank as much as the DM feels like (you can decide at any time that a monster just doesn't focus the tank and goes for the squishies and there's very little the tank can do about it) is hardly an encouraging perspective

[nedz]

Absolute worst case scenario is I use an totally unoptimized and/or underleveled GMPC for healbot/buff duties. Possibly giving him a RP reason for not engaging in actual combat. I'm really wary of that, though. While DMPCs can work, I'd rather not risk it if I can avoid it.

So a walking, talking Wand of Curing.

Nerfing the spells which allow them to rest safely might be the trick you are looking for ? But that's more of a case of stopping the 15 minute adventuring day.

Nerfing Rocket tag is more about encounter design than removing the tools. A group of enemies spread around hiding in cover are hard to drop in 1 round.

[ericgrau]

The system is built around easy healing and you'll make a complete mess of it if you take that away. I'd much rather you give out CLW wands like candy. Seriously, if you're going to mess with an essential part of the system it's time to play something other than D&D.

Attrition can and does still work if you don't give the players a break. And really there's no sensible reason for foes to take breaks. Enclosed dungeons where you can't just camp next to the Pit of Doom work nice too. Plot based time limits also stop resting and force cure spells that are faster than CLW. Poison can work for hit and run too, with 1 minute breaks to let them take full effect. If you keep using the same tactic the cleric might prepare delay poison and lesser restoration all the time, which is fine. Foes can come back later or you can switch tactics: status effects, ability damage/drain, etc. A cleric can't prepare 10 copies of every spell. Giving foes basic intelligence in general means they can often, but not always, overcome any resting tactic. Getting away or defeating enough foes to reach a break is itself an interesting challenge.

[Eldariel]

The system is built around easy healing and you'll make a complete mess of it if you take that away. I'd much rather you give out CLW wands like candy. Seriously, if you're going to mess with an essential part of the system it's time to play something other than D&D.

What's with this sentiment? Why isn't it okay to change an essential part of the system? Why is easy healing or whatever so sacred (I hear this sentiment often with regards to magic items)? D&D has many positive traits as a system that remain unaffected, and while different, it's still recognizably D&D.

In this particular case I'd definitely be vary of the healbot syndrome but that's nothing unfixable; one change can be followed by other leading to a solid, functional whole. Hell, VP/WP system largely removes the need for healing except in extreme cases (but still allows attrition) for example.

[Aldizog]

I think this can be an excellent idea. Depending on your group, attrition may work very well. You have explained how you will combine it with plot-driven time pressures or means to discourage the 15-minute adventuring day.

I do not find the idea that 3.5/PF *requires* rocket tag to be consistent with my actual gaming experience, although I find it an extremely common perspective on this site. I know that once in the past I did a poor job running a game because I paid too much heed to the perspectives here and too little to the preferences of my group.

The Eternal Wand is a good idea, or the BD&D Staff of Healing (once per day per person). Either one is a limited resource in the way that cheap disposable wands are not. Reserve feats from 3.5 might also work.

I personally dislike the "all offense, all the time" approach to mundanes for a number of reasons. I prefer my characters to be unaware of how much plot armor they have. Saying "I'll rely on my HP to protect me and get healed up afterwards" just doesn't fit my view of any fantasy hero that I am interested in. Pathfinder offers some good defensive options for characters who want to actually avoid damage and act as if any hit from a giant's axe could be lethal. A 3-round fight in which the giant misses three times and is Crane Winged twice means no damage, compared to 1-round fight in which the giant hits once and then is dropped.

This brings the predictable argument that defensive characters can't tank and draw aggro. There is Antagonize of course, whether they have the feat or not (insulting an opponent in their language can justify drawing aggro without the feat). There is positioning, AOOs, Stand Still, Bodyguard, Broken Wing Gambit, and many other options. The very fact that you cannot move and do a full attack is MEANT to let fighters tank -- it's a feature, not a bug -- so that the fire giant has an incentive to take on the fighters in its face rather than walking around them to unload 3 attacks on the mage. And most of all there is your judgement as the DM. The amount of damage that a sword-and-board fighter does is NOT trivial enough to be ignored by an opponent. It hurts a LOT, even if it isn't rocket tag. It is not playing the monsters stupid to have them regard a sword-and-board fighter as a threat.

Good luck with your game. It sounds like a great idea and the kind of game I have enjoyed playing in.

[137beth]

No crusader in Pathfinder.


Not familar with a Crusader archetype that heals while it deals damage. 3rd Party or 3.5, I take it?

Any case, while there's certainly a few archetypes that do combat healing well, I've no guarantee anyone's going to play them. There's a metric assload of class/archetypes combinations before you even get started on feats.

There's nothing stopping you from allowing someone to use it IF you can get access to ToB.
Alteratively, wait for Path of War to come out:smallsmile:

[forsaken1111]

I don't know if its a great idea, but a game I once played in had a house rule which stated that when you are magically healed, you add 'weariness' points equal to the amount of healing received. Weariness heals at the same rate as nonlethal damage but can only be healed naturally. It represents your body's exhausted reserves from the injury and accelerated healing. If your weariness from healing ever equalled your HP total, you became fatigued. At double you became exhausted. Basically it enforced a little downtime and disallowed CLW wand abuse.

It worked out fine for us, but may not fit your game.

That DM also handed out weariness in a few other instances where it made sense, like after healing negative levels or ability damage. It was interesting.

[Segev]

Still, you so totally can use WPE to determine what sort of healing resources the group would reasonably have access to on a per-encounter level.

You're right; you can. Thanks for doing so. I was having a mental block on how to approach the problem, or I'd have suggested something like that. Good work! (I feel kinda dumb for the mental block, but hey, they happen.)

[Fyermind]

I don't know PF consumable resources per level off the top of my head, but they aren't very high. This will eventually start to hit the in the wealth by level department.

The following is for 3.5, numbers may be slightly different in PF. Expendable GP per encounter is:
([Next level WLB] - [Current level WLB])*3/40 - [Current Average Treasure value]/4
Party expendables per level are four times that.

For example a level 6 3.5 party looks like:
([19,000]-[13,000])*3/40 - [2000]/4= 50 GP per encounter.

The party would have 200 GP per encounter. Assuming this all goes to CLW wands, that is (5.5 HP/charge)*(50 charges/wand)*(200 gp/encounter)/(750 GP/Wand) or 73 and a third HP per encounter.

If they are healing more than that, they are falling behind in WBL, or if they are healing that much and using potions, scrolls, staves, alchemical items, magical arrows etc.

[Karoht]

More NPC's should try to ambush the party at night, and attempt to steal the wand/s.
Especially after combat has ended and they are huddled together healing up the boo boos. Maybe not paying complete attention, thinking they are safe. Suddenly, from the ceiling, a pair of Rogues with Spiderclimb jump down. One steals the wand, one uses a smokestick to hide them both. Move action to run back up the wall, or jump back to the ceiling.
Surprise rounds are fun, aren't they?

[Lord Vukodlak]

More NPC's should try to ambush the party at night, and attempt to steal the wand/s.
Especially after combat has ended and they are huddled together healing up the boo boos. Maybe not paying complete attention, thinking they are safe. Suddenly, from the ceiling, a pair of Rogues with Spiderclimb jump down. One steals the wand, one uses a smokestick to hide them both. Move action to run back up the wall, or jump back to the ceiling.
Surprise rounds are fun, aren't they?

A few issues. First only a few characters can use the wands so the rest of the party can be alert while they're being healed. There is also no reason the characters using the wands can't be alert while using the wands either.

So the ambush can easily fail, taking away the surprise round which would leave the rogues standing next to the party. Even if it succeeds a surprise round is only a standard action. If they fail initiative its almost as bad as having failed the ambush they're right in the middle of the party.

Stealing an object out of someone's hand would be an unarmed disarm action not slight of hand so that dramatically brings down the success rate of retrieving the wands. So they'll probably fail to even take the wands.

Even if they succeed on the surprise round, manage to steal the wand and get back up the wall.(which with spiderclimb spell requires free hands) Chances are they'll still get killed by the party before they can escape. If the room is designed for medium sized creatures someone on the ground can still hit them with a melee weapon. So the rogues can fail the ambush, they'll probably fail to disarm the wands and nothing stops the party from pursuing and killing them before they get out of point blank shot range. The smoke cloud wouldn't do much to help them escape as they're still limited in speed.

How did these rogues get into the room? where we're they doing the battle the PC's just fought how do they always appear in that minute the party is using healing wands. The chance of the rogues failing is high and it happening repeatedly seems cheesy.

[molten_dragon]

My big worry is that I might end up unintentionally pigeon-holing someone who doesn't want healbot into the role, but I'm fairly confident I can avoid that.

This was my first thought as well. Without out of combat healing that doesn't burn spells, you're going to force any characters who have the ability to cast heal spells to spend a lot more of their spells on healing than they normally would. And that's boring as hell. I certainly wouldn't want to play a divine caster in a game like that, and then you're going to end up with a party with no healing at all.

[Greenish]

If you keep using the same tactic the cleric might prepare delay poison and lesser restoration all the time, which is fine. Foes can come back later or you can switch tactics: status effects, ability damage/drain, etc. A cleric can't prepare 10 copies of every spell.But, as I've understood it, PF clerics can leave spell slots empty (like wizards) and fill them later.

Of course, that takes some time.

[Philistine]

Wands of CLW aren't the problem, or even a problem. Rather, wands of CLW are the (admittedly kludged) solution to a real problem in 3E, namely that the Cure line of spells starts out drastically underpowered and gets worse from there: at no point do they provide level-appropriate amounts of healing worth spending spell slots (let alone in-combat actions) on. Wands of CLW are merely the least inefficient means of rectifying this blunder on WotC's part; removing them without a corresponding nerf to enemy damage or buff to the Cure spells (as a start, consider straight-up replacing the Cures with the corresponding Mass Cures, probably with a larger bonus-per-CL for the higher level spells) is going to result in a situation where anyone who plays a class that potentially has access to the Cure line will be pigeonholed into doing that and nothing else (call it the "Vanilla WoW Healer Effect"). But my expectation, like that of several previous posters, is that most players with even a modicum of system knowledge would instead go even heavier on the rocket-tag aspects you're trying to get away from, because if healing is made drastically less accessible/more expensive then it's even more important to avoid as much damage as possible.

[NichG]

Wands of CLW aren't the problem, or even a problem. Rather, wands of CLW are the (admittedly kludged) solution to a real problem in 3E, namely that the Cure line of spells starts out drastically underpowered and gets worse from there: at no point do they provide level-appropriate amounts of healing worth spending spell slots (let alone in-combat actions) on.

This is kind of missing the point though. The wands of CLW aren't being used for in-combat healing in general, its between-combat healing thats the issue.

I mean, its far easier to heal up between fights in 3.5ed than it was in 1ed or 2ed. In those editions, you could very well be stuck at fewer than max hitpoints for several days in a row, even if you had a cleric who dedicated slots to healing. Healing spells were also pretty much strictly worse than they are in 3.5ed (though that may be in line with lower hitpoint totals overall)

For in-combat healing what you say is true, but in-combat healing serves a very different function than out of combat healing.



But my expectation, like that of several previous posters, is that most players with even a modicum of system knowledge would instead go even heavier on the rocket-tag aspects you're trying to get away from, because if healing is made drastically less accessible/more expensive then it's even more important to avoid as much damage as possible.

This is probably true though. You will however get less rocket tag from the enemies direction, since the enemies don't need to kill a PC to have had a significant effect anymore. Initiative will become more powerful I guess, since if you can end the fight before the enemies have a chance to go then thats a big deal.

[Lord Vukodlak]

This is kind of missing the point though. The wands of CLW aren't being used for in-combat healing in general, its between-combat healing thats the issue.

He wasn't talking about in-combat healing, he was talking about cure spells in general they just don't heal enough to be worth spending many slots on.

[Yukitsu]

It feels to me like there are people in this thread who basically will not like an attrition-based game no matter how its run. If your reaction to 'this is a time sensitive plot and we're running low on resources' is to say 'screw the plot, lets kill rats', then may I suggest that you're probably not Thrair's intended audience and his game may not be a good fit for you? If you feel that its unacceptable for the party to back down, or fail without dying (by messing up a time sensitive quest) then it may also be that you just don't like this style of game.


Well, from the actually doing things side of the equation, actually undergoing attrition means you've done something horribly stupid, and undergoing attrition doesn't mean you have harder fights in the future, it simply means you stop moving forward to consolidate when you're too weak to advance. I think DM's believe that it adds tension or something, but in all honesty, it simply makes players take the choice to stop going forward, because continuing on would be stupid.

[Philistine]

This is kind of missing the point though. The wands of CLW aren't being used for in-combat healing in general, its between-combat healing thats the issue.

I mean, its far easier to heal up between fights in 3.5ed than it was in 1ed or 2ed. In those editions, you could very well be stuck at fewer than max hitpoints for several days in a row, even if you had a cleric who dedicated slots to healing. Healing spells were also pretty much strictly worse than they are in 3.5ed (though that may be in line with lower hitpoint totals overall)

For in-combat healing what you say is true, but in-combat healing serves a very different function than out of combat healing.

The Cures are terrible for out-of-combat healing, too, if they have to be cast from spell slots. Consider the position of a level 1 Cleric: with a grand total of three level 1 spells all day (20+ Wis is required to get a fourth), if he doesn't cast anything but CLW all day, then he can cure a total of 3d8+3 (on average, 16.5) HP over an entire four-encounter day. That's just not enough. And because healing fails to scale meaningfully, it only ever falls farther behind from there... until suddenly the Cleric pops up with Heal and changes the entire paradigm.

EDIT: Ninja'd by an Edit.

[Lord Vukodlak]

The Cures are terrible for out-of-combat healing, too, if they have to be cast from spell slots. Consider the position of a level 1 Cleric: with a grand total of three level 1 spells all day (20+ Wis is required to get a fourth), if he doesn't cast anything but CLW all day, then he can cure a total of 3d8+3 (on average, 16.5) HP over an entire four-encounter day. That's just not enough. And because healing fails to scale meaningfully, it only ever falls farther behind from there... until suddenly the Cleric pops up with Heal and changes the entire paradigm.

EDIT: Ninja'd by an Edit.

1st level parties often don't four encounter days.

[NichG]

Well, from the actually doing things side of the equation, actually undergoing attrition means you've done something horribly stupid, and undergoing attrition doesn't mean you have harder fights in the future, it simply means you stop moving forward to consolidate when you're too weak to advance. I think DM's believe that it adds tension or something, but in all honesty, it simply makes players take the choice to stop going forward, because continuing on would be stupid.

Well, what's wrong with the choice to stop being a valid one? You're acting like the decision to stop is inherently a bad thing, but what's the problem if its a strategically valid choice with upsides and downsides?

Tension, after all, needs to be between two things. It could be a timed quest, so the players must decide between taking a chance of dying or allowing the quest to fail. It could just be that getting back from the dungeon isn't trivial, so its less about if you stop and more about when you stop, and if you stopped too late to survive the trip back.


The Cures are terrible for out-of-combat healing, too, if they have to be cast from spell slots. Consider the position of a level 1 Cleric: with a grand total of three level 1 spells all day (20+ Wis is required to get a fourth), if he doesn't cast anything but CLW all day, then he can cure a total of 3d8+3 (on average, 16.5) HP over an entire four-encounter day. That's just not enough. And because healing fails to scale meaningfully, it only ever falls farther behind from there... until suddenly the Cleric pops up with Heal and changes the entire paradigm.

EDIT: Ninja'd by an Edit.

For a Lv1 Cleric, thats basically the full hitpoint pools of two party members they can cure. If they use Lesser Vigor instead they'd double that to 33hp of healing, which is basically enough to take pretty much the entire party up to full from out.

For comparison, I've played that one Goodman Games module for 'Lv0 PCs' where the party's entire supply of healing was 8 Goodberries. It made things interesting and did indeed introduce tension to the game. It also meant that things like caltrop traps or enemies that did 1d4 damage weren't just a waste of time.

[Yukitsu]

Well, what's wrong with the choice to stop being a valid one? You're acting like the decision to stop is inherently a bad thing, but what's the problem if its a strategically valid choice with upsides and downsides?

Tension, after all, needs to be between two things. It could be a timed quest, so the players must decide between taking a chance of dying or allowing the quest to fail. It could just be that getting back from the dungeon isn't trivial, so its less about if you stop and more about when you stop, and if you stopped too late to survive the trip back.


Because DM's also hate the 15 minute adventuring day.

Basically, saying the players can't stop moving forward or they fail, and that they can't do anything to reasonably ensure success is simply guaranteeing party failure. If I'd heard a job was like that, perfectly in character I'd refuse it.

[TuggyNE]

I don't know if its a great idea, but a game I once played in had a house rule which stated that when you are magically healed, you add 'weariness' points equal to the amount of healing received. Weariness heals at the same rate as nonlethal damage but can only be healed naturally. It represents your body's exhausted reserves from the injury and accelerated healing. If your weariness from healing ever equalled your HP total, you became fatigued. At double you became exhausted. Basically it enforced a little downtime and disallowed CLW wand abuse.

That's rather clever, although it would have a fair number of implications. But yeah, on the whole, that seems interesting.

[NichG]

Because DM's also hate the 15 minute adventuring day.

Basically, saying the players can't stop moving forward or they fail, and that they can't do anything to reasonably ensure success is simply guaranteeing party failure. If I'd heard a job was like that, perfectly in character I'd refuse it.

In most games, failure means a TPK. If you can fail in other ways than a TPK, it makes failure a viable consequence in-game that doesn't end the campaign at the same time. But it really sounds like you have this view of 'if I'm not at full resources, I can't win'. If the encounters are also adjusted to take into account attrition, why should this be true?

Basically, I think this is just conditioning from games where attrition really isn't meaningful. If attrition is the norm rather than the exception, you should get good at recognizing when you can take something with diminished resources and when it really is 'hopeless'. But right now it sounds like you're assuming that every encounter is going to be CR+5.

[forsaken1111]

That's rather clever, although it would have a fair number of implications. But yeah, on the whole, that seems interesting.

It was done for a 'low magic' type setting where magic had various drawbacks and penalties. Was quite a lot of fun. I'd love to do another low magic game like that.

[ericgrau]

What's with this sentiment? Why isn't it okay to change an essential part of the system? Why is easy healing or whatever so sacred (I hear this sentiment often with regards to magic items)? D&D has many positive traits as a system that remain unaffected, and while different, it's still recognizably D&D.
It's not a style problem it's a mechanics problem. The whole system tips over once you have far fewer than the expected hit points for an encounter. All other non-hp effects become less powerful, some nearly worthless by comparison. Some effects become truly extraordinary to the point of brokenness. And it won't be the same from one hp effect to another as you might hope. Damage over-time gets a dramatic boost, for example. This is much worse than a flat increase or decrease in max hp would be, though that isn't 100% without its problems either. It's an uncapped complete and total balance mess across the entire system wherein the whole thing crumbles to pieces. I smell TPKs out of pure luck. PCs are a bit weary from an effect such as a damage-over-time effect that is way more powerful than you expected it to be, minor encounter comes against super low hp party, and bam time to play a new campaign.

I'm not even saying I like or dislike the hp & healing system. I'm only saying it's intertwined with the rest of the system and you can't pull it out independent of everything else without other pieces toppling over. If you want to homebrew something that doesn't destroy a basic mechanic like hp, by all means get creative and be my guest.

Anyway the system already supports wearing out PCs if you're fast & clever enough about it, so go with that.

[Yukitsu]

In most games, failure means a TPK. If you can fail in other ways than a TPK, it makes failure a viable consequence in-game that doesn't end the campaign at the same time. But it really sounds like you have this view of 'if I'm not at full resources, I can't win'. If the encounters are also adjusted to take into account attrition, why should this be true?

Basically, I think this is just conditioning from games where attrition really isn't meaningful. If attrition is the norm rather than the exception, you should get good at recognizing when you can take something with diminished resources and when it really is 'hopeless'. But right now it sounds like you're assuming that every encounter is going to be CR+5.

The reason being, in D&D barring teleport, you often can't run from encounters. The ability to flee is only as good as the slowest member of the party, and often you'll encounter enemies that have double their base movement speed. The second of course, being that it's often impossible to assess how deadly any given encounter is at first glance, and this ties in to my first point. If you can't tell how deadly an encounter is before you see it, and can't easily flee once you do, you generally should assume that you want to continue with your best foot forward.

And lastly, it doesn't need a lot of CR+5 encounters. A CR+5 encounter simply has to be a possibility. Or more realistically, a CR+3 encounter. A day could have a CR-2, CR= and a CR+1, or it could have a CR-2, CR= and then a CR+4. In the latter, I really would have liked to have rested before encountering it.

Normally, I'm fine with this existing, and have pressed forward, but that's when there is no time limit. That's because when there's no time limit, we can use resources ahead of time to scout the place, to get information, and to figure out what we're getting into before we go in there. No random CR+4 encounter that wipes everyone because we didn't see it coming. With a time limit, we can't spend a few days looking for that information.

Edit: To me, you don't lose if you get wiped. You lose if anyone at all gets killed.

[NichG]

The reason being, in D&D barring teleport, you often can't run from encounters. The ability to flee is only as good as the slowest member of the party, and often you'll encounter enemies that have double their base movement speed. The second of course, being that it's often impossible to assess how deadly any given encounter is at first glance, and this ties in to my first point. If you can't tell how deadly an encounter is before you see it, and can't easily flee once you do, you generally should assume that you want to continue with your best foot forward.

I'm not talking about fleeing from encounters though. I'm talking about making the decision between encounters of 'can we deal with the rest of this dungeon or do we need to retreat and recover?'. Or scouting out the next encounter to see if you should run.



And lastly, it doesn't need a lot of CR+5 encounters. A CR+5 encounter simply has to be a possibility. Or more realistically, a CR+3 encounter. A day could have a CR-2, CR= and a CR+1, or it could have a CR-2, CR= and then a CR+4. In the latter, I really would have liked to have rested before encountering it.

Normally, I'm fine with this existing, and have pressed forward, but that's when there is no time limit. That's because when there's no time limit, we can use resources ahead of time to scout the place, to get information, and to figure out what we're getting into before we go in there. No random CR+4 encounter that wipes everyone because we didn't see it coming. With a time limit, we can't spend a few days looking for that information.


The point of the attrition thing is that you don't actually need the CR+4 encounter at all. You could have a dungeon that has six CR= encounters - a hard day, but no single encounter is likely to kill anyone. And you get a lot more feedback of 'can we do another?' than if its just like, wandering around and suddenly there's a CR+5 as the sole encounter that day, because anything less than a CR+5 is basically pointless to run.



Edit: To me, you don't lose if you get wiped. You lose if anyone at all gets killed.

Then you should actually be favoring the attrition model, since it has less chance of just outright randomly killing a PC.

Basically your reaction of 'I'm weakened, we should turn back' is exactly the point. The alternative is that you don't have a chance to make that strategic choice and you're just randomly killed or you manage to survive with very little leeway in between.

It just happens that you need to have some negative consequence for turning back to make the choice interesting. Then it becomes an issue of 'is this worth risking our lives for or not?', which is a question that does not necessarily have an obvious answer, especially if what's at stake is more than just a payday.

[navar100]

If I'm mistaken, please correct me, but you seem to be implying I'm getting angry at my group for buying Wands of CLW. If so, this is not the case.

As I said in my OP, I'm not even yet sure if this game will materialize. So I have no group to get "mad" at. I'm just searching for opinions on some houserules in case I do end up running it. I'm attempt to work around rocket-tag issues while still providing a challenge. And in order for attrition tactics to work, damage and spellslot usage between fights has to matter.

If you think I'm going about it in a bad way or have other suggestions, then by all means: Tell me. Aside from scattered one-offs here and there, and one stretch of Co-DMIng, my actual DMing experience is fairly limited. Which is why I'm asking for advice and opinions. I already have gotten some useful advice and am now considering grandfathering in Eternal Wands to prevent anyone from being designated Party Healbot against their will. Another piece of advice that was given was to make some of the encounters as "bait" to lure the casters into using up spellslots while they get to feel awesome.

But don't just toss out veiled insults, please. If I'm wrong and am reading too much into your statement, I apologize. You don't get tone and inflection very easily over text, and Teh Interwebs r teehing cheezburgurs end cynicism.



Alright, and some of us are telling you it's a bad idea with some of us (not me) using better words than others (me) to tell you why but you get offended your idea is not universally loved.

[Rubik]

My suggestion is that you make healing cheap and easy, and instead you find other ways to challenge them, such as with stamina runs based on time-sensitive plots and hit-and-run guerilla tactics. Let the players know what kind of adventure they're in for before they head out, and force the casters to use their lower level spells to the best of their ability, while letting the martial-type classes shine. They'll be running challenge after challenge with no way to rest, which will actually give the T3 and T4 classes their due. Much nicer overall than killing the lower tiers through lack of healing while the T1s and T2s sit behind their ablative armor and laugh.Hey, OP (Thrair), did you have anything to respond with to this post?

[Yukitsu]

I'm not talking about fleeing from encounters though. I'm talking about making the decision between encounters of 'can we deal with the rest of this dungeon or do we need to retreat and recover?'. Or scouting out the next encounter to see if you should run.

Then you're not getting into the hard choices, you're getting into bad guesswork. Scouting, for reasons similar to why running from an encounter is difficult, is often difficult without also causing an encounter. Unless you have a ring of invisibility on a guy with true sight perhaps.


The point of the attrition thing is that you don't actually need the CR+4 encounter at all. You could have a dungeon that has six CR= encounters - a hard day, but no single encounter is likely to kill anyone. And you get a lot more feedback of 'can we do another?' than if its just like, wandering around and suddenly there's a CR+5 as the sole encounter that day, because anything less than a CR+5 is basically pointless to run.

A flat set of 6 even encounters every day for days gets really dull. The reason I like to see an occasional +3, 4 or even 5 encounter is that at the very least, it's going to be something vastly different from what we're used to dealing with. And even when you are keeping a perfectly flat even CR campaign for every single encounter the entire time, some can be dramatically harder at the same CR than others.


Then you should actually be favoring the attrition model, since it has less chance of just outright randomly killing a PC.

Not really. I like an untimed model, as it lets me consider all of the variables, and when we finally do go in, we simply wipe up to even a dozen encounters in a day by hitting them with a well thought out plan. When you're doing things that way, healing only happens if you're really unlucky, but it takes a lot of preparation time, time in the market, spells used and regained etc.

Alternatively, if we are on a timer, being able to quickly replenish our resources rather than just cutting my losses is more interesting, as I pretty much always opt to cut my losses if we can't recover our resources, and then the rest of the party gets into a TPK-1.

Remember, I view engaging in attrition as a failure in and of itself. Fighting in a manner where no attrition occurs is the best way to get into a fight.


Basically your reaction of 'I'm weakened, we should turn back' is exactly the point. The alternative is that you don't have a chance to make that strategic choice and you're just randomly killed or you manage to survive with very little leeway in between.

It just happens that you need to have some negative consequence for turning back to make the choice interesting. Then it becomes an issue of 'is this worth risking our lives for or not?', which is a question that does not necessarily have an obvious answer, especially if what's at stake is more than just a payday.

If it's more than a payday at stake, the damn clergy had better be willing to come with so I don't have to worry about the cure light wands in the first place. There's a bit of a rational disconnect where you absolutely need this utterly doomed group of 4+ murder hobos, and absolutely no one is willing to help stop the world from ending.

Frankly, the choice isn't interesting to me. I just say no and find another job to do.

[navar100]

The Cures are terrible for out-of-combat healing, too, if they have to be cast from spell slots. Consider the position of a level 1 Cleric: with a grand total of three level 1 spells all day (20+ Wis is required to get a fourth), if he doesn't cast anything but CLW all day, then he can cure a total of 3d8+3 (on average, 16.5) HP over an entire four-encounter day. That's just not enough. And because healing fails to scale meaningfully, it only ever falls farther behind from there... until suddenly the Cleric pops up with Heal and changes the entire paradigm.

EDIT: Ninja'd by an Edit.

One of my groups uses a house rule that all healing outside of combat heals the max for the ability that does the healing. Channel Energy 5d6 heals 30, Cure Light Wounds heals 13, etc. It does mean using up less resources for healing, but we (including the DM) don't resent the party being at full hit points for the non-first combat of the day.

We actually do need the health, and it's been more than once my Life Oracle has been named MVP even when all I did was heal in combat. One combat we were hit by 4 Ice Storms in 2 rounds. All I did was Channel Energy that combat, but it gave us the win. I kept the party alive allowing them to go all out on offense to kill the bad guys as fast as possible. I actually enjoy playing the heal-bot, but I do more than just healing. However, for that combat, I knew healing was the most important thing for me to do. PCs would have died had I not.

[Thrair]

My suggestion is that you make healing cheap and easy, and instead you find other ways to challenge them, such as with stamina runs based on time-sensitive plots and hit-and-run guerilla tactics. Let the players know what kind of adventure they're in for before they head out, and force the casters to use their lower level spells to the best of their ability, while letting the martial-type classes shine. They'll be running challenge after challenge with no way to rest, which will actually give the T3 and T4 classes their due. Much nicer overall than killing the lower tiers through lack of healing while the T1s and T2s sit behind their ablative armor and laugh.

Hey, OP (Thrair), did you have anything to respond with to this post?

It's a good idea for the end-game, definitely. Rocket tag issues at end-game are usually the result of tier 1 spellcasters warping reality on the first round or two anways, not healing between battles trivializing hp damage. So wearing down spellslots becomes more important than health. I still want to have at least some attrition type sessions where HP becomes and issue, but you (and others) are definitely convincing me there's better alternatives. And I'd definitely provide less spammable alternatives if I do end up banning them, now. (Like passing out of a few Eternal Wands, perhaps).


Alright, and some of us are telling you it's a bad idea with some of us (not me) using better words than others (me) to tell you why but you get offended your idea is not universally loved.

Yah.... I'm going to go ahead and rescind my apology, you're definitely being rude, here. Just because someone disagrees with me or thinks an idea I have is a bad one does not offend me. But I do tend to take offense at people who take on a patronizing attitude because they don't like someone else's houseruling. And, hell.... potential house ruling at that.

[LibraryOgre]

If you don't want them heal-botting, control the tempo of the game. Why do they spend money on healing? Partially out of fear ("I don't want my character to die") but also because they can't wait until the next encounter... they keep pushing on. Put in some delays. Give them time to rest and heal between major events, so they'll stop thinking of wands as necessities. They may still want them... they're hella useful items... but they're not going to be investing in them heavily.

4e suffered from this style, because it let people go nova (i.e. Blow all their Dailies on a single major encounter). PF doesn't have to, especially if the campaign isn't a daily grind into deep danger, but rather, a more subtle set of dangers that, occasionally, have to be met with overwhelming force.

[Thrair]

A flat set of 6 even encounters every day for days gets really dull. The reason I like to see an occasional +3, 4 or even 5 encounter is that at the very least, it's going to be something vastly different from what we're used to dealing with. And even when you are keeping a perfectly flat even CR campaign for every single encounter the entire time, some can be dramatically harder at the same CR than others.

Heh... ain't that the truth. Check out the Worm that Walks template. It's a lot of nasty for a mere +2 CR. At higher levels, it's less of an issue... but slapping that onto a CR5-7 encounter... woof.


Not really. I like an untimed model, as it lets me consider all of the variables, and when we finally do go in, we simply wipe up to even a dozen encounters in a day by hitting them with a well thought out plan. When you're doing things that way, healing only happens if you're really unlucky, but it takes a lot of preparation time, time in the market, spells used and regained etc.

Alternatively, if we are on a timer, being able to quickly replenish our resources rather than just cutting my losses is more interesting, as I pretty much always opt to cut my losses if we can't recover our resources, and then the rest of the party gets into a TPK-1.

Remember, I view engaging in attrition as a failure in and of itself. Fighting in a manner where no attrition occurs is the best way to get into a fight.

You make a lot of good arguments, but you also seem to favour an entirely different sort of a playstyle. You seem like the guy to hand a Wizard's Toolset to and say "Research X, and slam them with a pre-emptive strike so nasty they wake up in 2nd edition."

Not everyone likes that type of play, though. I've known more than one DM who bans Scrying for that type of reason (Which I don't really agree with, but can understand their perspective.)

[Yukitsu]

You make a lot of good arguments, but you also seem to favour an entirely different sort of a playstyle. You seem like the guy to hand a Wizard's Toolset to and say "Research X, and slam them with a pre-emptive strike so nasty they wake up in 2nd edition."

Not everyone likes that type of play, though. I've known more than one DM who bans Scrying for that type of reason (Which I don't really agree with, but can understand their perspective.)

I do this sort of thing with for example, a paladin too. There's always tools in a party to be well prepared, and there's no real excuse for jumping into a bad encounter when you have the time to scout it, or at worse, to heal for it. I don't really need to be a wizard to manage any of this, and it's not always "pick the perfect spell" to make our way really safely through an encounter.

[Tavar]

Not sure if PF changed this, but I've found Melee combat, especially unsupported melee combat, to be the most rocket tag prone. Especially as you get higher in level, due to monsters having...high raw damage outputs. Spellcasters, in my experiences, are generally less likely to invoke rocket tage: they instead buff allies/debuff enemies/control the battlefield/summon more meat-shields, and in doing so protect the fragile frontliners.

You can certainly account for this(for instance, making casters stock healing spells), but it largely seems to me to be "spellcasters, stop having fun"(especially at mid to high levels, they're basically have the choice of filling their slots with healing, or using those slots for stuff that will help the party win encounters). Which....seems to be a rather questionable decision, especially if you want attrition.

[NichG]

Well another aspect is, this rule wouldn't ban potions, right?

At high levels there's enough gold floating around the party that even a very expensive mode of healing like Cure Light potions would become feasible again. I'd expect the casters to put spell slots towards giving melee damage avoidance rather than towards healing. Stoneskin, Displacement, etc become very valuable uses of slots of those levels compared to just using healing there, if you consider that Stoneskin might save a few thousand gold over the course of the dungeon in Cure Light potions.

Anyhow, for an idea of how this would really play out, I think the best thing to do is just look at the Dungeon Crawl Classics modules. They have fixed parties provided, and usually those parties are not given things like full wands of CLW, so healing/etc is in short supply. They're pretty brutal runs, meant for competition/tournament style play, but they are doable.

[Andrewmoreton]

Basically, saying the players can't stop moving forward or they fail, and that they can't do anything to reasonably ensure success is simply guaranteeing party failure. If I'd heard a job was like that, perfectly in character I'd refuse it.
So if raiders hit a village and run off with 50 slaves your response would be , "chasing them down would put me under a little bit of stress so instead I'll do something else because when the universe does not stop moving when I want to it is too much trouble to get out of bed"
May work for neutral or evil characters but even then there are times when the hero has stolen your amulet of doom and run off or is summoning an angel and you have only 24 hours before the ritual is finished.

I would not ban wands of CLW but would not object too much if my GM did. I see it as an illogical but not game breaking decision

[TuggyNE]

Stoneskin, Displacement, etc become very valuable uses of slots of those levels compared to just using healing there, if you consider that Stoneskin might save a few thousand gold over the course of the dungeon in Cure Light potions.

Well, sort of; the most stoneskin can save is 150 HP per 250gp casting, and at 50gp per 1d8+1 (5.5 HP average), that comes out to around 27 potions saved, for a net of … huh. Maybe as much as 1113gp if the stoneskin is as effective as possible.

[LordBlades]

So if raiders hit a village and run off with 50 slaves your response would be , "chasing them down would put me under a little bit of stress so instead I'll do something else because when the universe does not stop moving when I want to it is too much trouble to get out of bed"
May work for neutral or evil characters but even then there are times when the hero has stolen your amulet of doom and run off or is summoning an angel and you have only 24 hours before the ritual is finished.



I think you're greatly overstating what Yukitsu said.

As I understand it, it's more along the lines of : you're level 10, and the evil epic level lich has 24 hours left until he completes his 'destroy the world' ritual.

If you stop, you fail, but if you continue there's no realistic way (Barring DM fiat) to give yourself even the slightest chance of success.

[Enguebert]

Well, if you don't like CLW wands, make them rare

Even if players have the cash, CLW wand is not found in every shop

Between each adventure, i allow my players to try to buy magical items

They send me the list of what they search, and i roll. For each item.

Chance of finding it is based on the price.
100%, minus 1% per 100 GP of price
Then you add area modifier
0% for capital
-10% for very large city
etc...
And you add modifier for amount.
If they want 5 potion of fly, 1st one has mod of 0%, second has mod of -10%, third has -20%

With this system, they can usually buy low level items and basic scroll/potions
With luck, they will need 4-5 adventure to buy the average item
For more important items, they are restricted to items they find during adventure, craft the item themselves or research/ask it during adventure (Usually when they work for a boss or an organisation, as reward, they can have an item for an amount X from the usual gear for the organisation

And they can't stock on some particular ressource. They will have a stock of healing potions, a stock of magical arrows, a stock of useful scrolls, maybe a minor wand or two. But they will not be infinite and know that even if they have a CLW wand, they will not use all charges because maybe they will have no more wand for next adventure

[forsaken1111]

Or make Cure spells a divine-only spell, no arcane version. Any wands sold come from the churches of good gods and you must be a member in good standing of the clergy to buy one, possibly performing services for the church.

If you try to use one to heal a nonbeliever, it simply fails and the charge is wasted as the god does not allow it.

[nedz]

Hmm, well you could give out wands of Faith Healing [SpC]; that's a maximised CLW which only effects followers of the casters deity; though this is probably not the OP is looking for.

[PersonMan]

Or make Cure spells a divine-only spell, no arcane version.

This is how it normally works, nobody has suggested otherwise as far as I can tell.


Any wands sold come from the churches of good gods and you must be a member in good standing of the clergy to buy one, possibly performing services for the church.

Could work, but if they only work on the "right" people anyways, there's no point in limiting sales.


If you try to use one to heal a nonbeliever, it simply fails and the charge is wasted as the god does not allow it.

This doesn't work if it comes from the church of a good god.

"Good" god: Oh, you need to be healed so you can press on and save the world? Screw you, you don't pray to me!

Yeaah, for an Evil god that'd work. Neutral one, maaaaybe. Good? Pffft.

EDIT: This also just brings in same aspect as Faith Healing.

Healer: "Ok, I've got this spell...what deity do you worship?"
Heal-ee: "Uh, I dunno."
Healer: "Say you worship [my god] so I can use the spell on you."
Heal-ee: "Uh, ok. I worship [that god]." *Writes on sheet*

[Person_Man]

In earlier editions of D&D, hit points and limited memorized spells were meaningful resources. Players would enter dungeon, explore, search for treasure and/or try to accomplish the per-determined plot goals, avoid or bypass traps and combat as much as possible so as to avoid damage and death, solve the occasional riddle or puzzle, maybe interact with a few prisoner NPCs (at least one of whom may or may not be a Succubus or other disguised monster who will try and kill you as soon as you free them), and then try to escape with their lives before random monsters (of which there were many) kills everyone. It was taken for granted that you couldn't just stop and rest to memorize spells in the middle of a game (wandering monsters will probably attack you while you sleep, and Rope Trick and Secure Shelters didn't exist), leaving the dungeon to rest and coming back is something you only do in the most dire of circumstances (the DM would just repopulate it with new monsters and traps, but not treasure), and there were no mechanical tricks for infinite or cheap healing.

If you want to play that style of D&D, more power to you. It's a very fun game.

But just banning Wands of Cure Light Wounds and similar exploits won't accomplish that. You basically need to cut off all sources of cheap healing, and more importantly, make it impossible for players to rest and replace spells (the most meaningful source of healing) in the midst of an adventure. And your players need to be fully aware about the type of game they're playing, or they will all get killed.

On the flip side, if you want to play default 3.5 or Pathfinder, hit points and spells are easily renewed resources. They are minor limiting factors in a combat and roleplaying game, not the most important resources in resource management and exploration game. In the context of modern roleplaying games, eliminating Wands of Cure Light Wounds is just an annoying inconvenience which detracts from the fun of the game.

For example, why do you think most RPG video games feature free regenerating health by waiting a few seconds in cover and/or after every combat? It's because having players collect and manage a massive ever shuffling pile of healing potions is tedious and doesn't change the overall dynamic of combat.

If you're going to have healing on demand, make it easy. If not, don't. But in between is just an annoying mess.

[forsaken1111]

This is how it normally works, nobody has suggested otherwise as far as I can tell.Bard has it as an arcane spell, no?

[Yukitsu]

So if raiders hit a village and run off with 50 slaves your response would be , "chasing them down would put me under a little bit of stress so instead I'll do something else because when the universe does not stop moving when I want to it is too much trouble to get out of bed"
May work for neutral or evil characters but even then there are times when the hero has stolen your amulet of doom and run off or is summoning an angel and you have only 24 hours before the ritual is finished.

I would not ban wands of CLW but would not object too much if my GM did. I see it as an illogical but not game breaking decision

There's no timer on that, so I can go at it with whatever plan or angle I want. If they're going to be killed for no good reason in 24 hours, and I'm barred from everything that lets me fight waves of slavers all day without getting ground down and killed, then screw them. If the idiots in the city I'm helping want me to get their citizens back they'll send some healers. And if their supposedly good aligned clergy won't come along, then yeah, don't really care what happens to their entire civilization.

[Eldariel]

I'm not even saying I like or dislike the hp & healing system. I'm only saying it's intertwined with the rest of the system and you can't pull it out independent of everything else without other pieces toppling over. If you want to homebrew something that doesn't destroy a basic mechanic like hp, by all means get creative and be my guest.

Really, cheap healing isn't intrinsic to HP. See AD&D for instance; it also uses HP but it's far harder to restore (and thus you avoid battle more). The cost of HP simply changes the way the players should approach the game. Really, VP/WP works just as well too; removes the need to heal as much, keeps the risk of death with a buffer, largely similar. None of this makes the game unplayable or anything, it's just a bit of a different style from cheap healing (though even there, if the campaign is laid out with real danger, PCs should avoid combat if they can).

[Person_Man]

Really, cheap healing isn't intrinsic to HP. See AD&D for instance; it also uses HP but it's far harder to restore (and thus you avoid battle more). The cost of HP simply changes the way the players should approach the game. Really, VP/WP works just as well too; removes the need to heal as much, keeps the risk of death with a buffer, largely similar. None of this makes the game unplayable or anything, it's just a bit of a different style from cheap healing (though even there, if the campaign is laid out with real danger, PCs should avoid combat if they can).

+1

Old school D&D is about exploration and resource management, with combat being a quick and painful drain on your resources. Newer versions of D&D are about combat, with exploration acting simply as a bridge between combat encounters.

In early editions, players would stop listen at every freaking door in the dungeon, search for traps, ask the DM to describe the room in detail so that they didn't miss any riddles or puzzles or hidden portals or glyphs, poke everything with a 10 ft pole, and only then would they extinguish their torches, attempt to Open Locks (because breaking it would alert monsters and make them attack you), and if you succeeded carefully open the door 1 inch, try and spot what was in the darkness of the next room, have your Thief (who was hopefully a demihuman race with darkvision) carefully move silently and hide in shadows into the next room, search that room for trouble, and if he found enemies he would probably attempt to Pickpocket them and then retreat without revealing himself. Only then would the party re-light their torches and carefully proceed, or if the monsters were present and menacing, try and retreat without alerting them in order to find another way through the dungeon through weaker enemies.

[Icewraith]

Here's two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Players fight a climactic encounter. Players start at full health from wands of CLW but with whatever spell slots and per day abilities they've managed to preserve from the rest of the dungeon.

Scenario 2: Players fight a significantly toned down climactic encounter. Players start with whatever HP, spell slots etc they've managed to preserve from the rest of the dungeon.

In scenario 1, if you crit a player he's got a shot at surviving. Players have to work to use whatever resources they have available, but they've got the HP to put a plan of action. If they fail because they didn't conserve enough resources from the rest of the dungeon it's their fault (unless you really overtuned the encounter). If their character dies it probably goes down swinging and a TPK is unlikely even if player death is likely.

In scenario 2, if you crit a player he's probably dead. Your monsters are starting at full health and depending on how good your PCs luck is, they may be very low on health indeed. The danger doesn't really stem from the encounter, it stems from how lucky the DM's dice are tonight, and the monster needs to be something that the PC probably could have beat down if they had encountered it at the start of the dungeon with full health. If they fail, especially if they fail horribly, it's very easy for them to place the blame on you for changing how the system works since no matter how careful they are, **** tends to happen unless they're using the high-op T1 enemy negation strategy mentioned in other posts.

Either they beat up an anemic version of a normally impressive monster (since they probably start at half HP or less and you have to adjust the monster's damage output to compensate) or the boss monster wipes the floor with them. It's entirely likely that the whole party will get smoked with one fireball or dragon breath and some bad rolls, or that the giant cleaves the party to death. Instead of going down fighting, they're quickly and unheroically being reduced to paste on the dungeon wall with the enemy's first turn.

TL,DR: When you limit cheap out of combat healing you're basically gimping your own encounter design. Combat, especially with powerful enemies, is already difficult to keep from devolving into rocket tag without forcing the PCs to be at an increasingly bad HP disadvantage. While players will be looking to avoid combat, if they know their resources are constrained and they can't just go rest and regain spells they will (or at least should) be doing it anyways without the wand nerf. Do note that if players are completely avoiding combat they're still not experiencing the diminishing-resource related tension you're trying to generate.

[NichG]

There's no timer on that, so I can go at it with whatever plan or angle I want. If they're going to be killed for no good reason in 24 hours, and I'm barred from everything that lets me fight waves of slavers all day without getting ground down and killed, then screw them. If the idiots in the city I'm helping want me to get their citizens back they'll send some healers. And if their supposedly good aligned clergy won't come along, then yeah, don't really care what happens to their entire civilization.

If you're a Lv10 character living in a Lv15 city and being sent to save people who were captured from a Lv5 village, sure, ask them to send a healer along. In fact, why not do that? Its a reasonable request, it absolves other players of being the healbot, and its still going to make attrition meaningful in the sense that you've paid a full portion of the reward to bring along an NPC to provide a service you needed, and that healing from spell slots is drained far more quickly than from a wand.

At the same time, maybe in that Lv15 city there are enough adventurers who would do it for Good's sake that you just never get hired, because you're too expensive and you're not bringing enough to the table compared to the (from your PoV) fools who are willing to rush in and actually risk their lives? The cold calculus of 'this is what would be rational for my character to do' can get you in a position where there's no game for you to participate in because you're playing a character who is too mercenary to engage in the interesting things that are available. Just a fair warning.

But, what if there is no Lv15 city? What if you guys are the Lv10 characters in the setting, or the only ones for a few hundred miles? And there's no rich city asking you to help their village, its just the village asking you to help them against a far stronger foe than they are able to deal with? There's no healing to send along with you, because you're the only notable characters in the area - those Lv10 guys a few hundred miles away either have their own problems to deal with, or more likely they're thinking like you: "This job doesn't pay enough for us to go out there and handle".

Or, what if this isn't just standard heroism fare, but is more directly important to you and your own personal gain?

- A competing adventuring group has beat you to the person who knows the location of a great treasure - either you have to rush through the wilderness in pursuit, or the opportunity will be lost.

- The doorway to another world has opened, a place of strange and new magics. However, it will only be open for a few days.

- The Temple of Ascension has been discovered, the site of an ancient battle where two gods slew eachother and their divinity warped the surrounding land. Those who reach the center first may try to claim that divinity for themselves.

Do you just ignore these because 'eh, I don't want to take a risk?'. Or more to the point, are you really satisfied sitting back and opting out of a session while everyone else goes and has an adventure?

[PersonMan]

Bard has it as an arcane spell, no?

Ah, forgot that. It's an odd choice, though, since they can't actually craft wands until level 2 at the earliest. Clerics do it earlier and easier if you want non-min CL wands.

@NichG: If you live in some kind of funky world where there are the level 10s and the level 1s with nothing in between, sure.

He's not saying "send me a healer on my power level". A pair of level 5 clerics with their level 1 adept apprentice will probably be enough.

[nedz]

+1

Old school D&D is about exploration and resource management, with combat being a quick and painful drain on your resources. Newer versions of D&D are about combat, with exploration acting simply as a bridge between combat encounters.

In early editions, players would stop listen at every freaking door in the dungeon, search for traps, ask the DM to describe the room in detail so that they didn't miss any riddles or puzzles or hidden portals or glyphs, poke everything with a 10 ft pole, and only then would they extinguish their torches, attempt to Open Locks (because breaking it would alert monsters and make them attack you), and if you succeeded carefully open the door 1 inch, try and spot what was in the darkness of the next room, have your Thief (who was hopefully a demihuman race with darkvision) carefully move silently and hide in shadows into the next room, search that room for trouble, and if he found enemies he would probably attempt to Pickpocket them and then retreat without revealing himself. Only then would the party re-light their torches and carefully proceed, or if the monsters were present and menacing, try and retreat without alerting them in order to find another way through the dungeon through weaker enemies.

This is false, more of a stereotype. This does describe a certain playstyle but that has nothing to do with the edition in question. I'm sure you could play 3rd, or even 4th editions this way. You could play 1st and 2nd editions with a wide variety of playstyles. Maybe you've been reading too much AGC :smallamused:

[Yukitsu]

If you're a Lv10 character living in a Lv15 city and being sent to save people who were captured from a Lv5 village, sure, ask them to send a healer along. In fact, why not do that? Its a reasonable request, it absolves other players of being the healbot, and its still going to make attrition meaningful in the sense that you've paid a full portion of the reward to bring along an NPC to provide a service you needed, and that healing from spell slots is drained far more quickly than from a wand.

Actually, they don't get paid the same as what a full, in combat PC would be getting paid, and frankly, I'd be annoyed at the clergy if I had to pay them to save their citizens at all. If they aren't fighting, and I'm betting they wouldn't, you pay them travel fees and spell service costs.

And more importantly, the main thrust of the issue isn't "wands of healing" in particular. It's the ability to go into every encounter in a day at 100% health. With a bunch of random clerics or whatever, you still can continue through a day with 100% health for every encounter. This should be an available option every single time you're looking at something dangerous enough to threaten an entire city or the world or whatever.


At the same time, maybe in that Lv15 city there are enough adventurers who would do it for Good's sake that you just never get hired, because you're too expensive and you're not bringing enough to the table compared to the (from your PoV) fools who are willing to rush in and actually risk their lives? The cold calculus of 'this is what would be rational for my character to do' can get you in a position where there's no game for you to participate in because you're playing a character who is too mercenary to engage in the interesting things that are available. Just a fair warning.

I say "let the town guard deal with that" all the time in campaigns. If the DM is expecting us to act like fool hardy idiots for a few scraps of money and the charity of our own hearts, but at the same time every single member of that society is some money grubbing **** who won't help us help them, I generally just go off and join the evil guys because there's only so much idiocy I can handle from a society before I just figure they're all better off under what is apparently better organized management.

And for the record, I've taken those jobs for free on several occasions. I simply won't if I'm pretty certain we'd end up dead trying.


But, what if there is no Lv15 city? What if you guys are the Lv10 characters in the setting, or the only ones for a few hundred miles? And there's no rich city asking you to help their village, its just the village asking you to help them against a far stronger foe than they are able to deal with? There's no healing to send along with you, because you're the only notable characters in the area - those Lv10 guys a few hundred miles away either have their own problems to deal with, or more likely they're thinking like you: "This job doesn't pay enough for us to go out there and handle".

We don't need a level 10 healer. You need several level 1 NPC acolytes. If the setting has 0 level 1 NPC acolytes, no wands, no potions, and the DM is putting timers on stuff, again, it's just not worth it. You know what's going to happen to that village? They'll get wiped out by orcs the week after. Or they'll get attacked by raiders again. Getting those guys back doesn't solve anything, it's not helping at all. You're just delaying things a little.


Do you just ignore these because 'eh, I don't want to take a risk?'. Or more to the point, are you really satisfied sitting back and opting out of a session while everyone else goes and has an adventure?

Considering every single adventure I opted out of ended with a party wipe, yes, I'm absolutely fine sitting those bad adventures out. And frankly it's not like I fall off the face of the planet while the rest of the group is on their short leash timer, their arbitrary lack of support and resources. It's a scenario where I can go somewhere where you can think through a problem, and the people who you are trying to help are willing to provide help in return.

[Thrair]

Here's two scenarios:

Scenario 1: Players fight a climactic encounter. Players start at full health from wands of CLW but with whatever spell slots and per day abilities they've managed to preserve from the rest of the dungeon.

Scenario 2: Players fight a significantly toned down climactic encounter. Players start with whatever HP, spell slots etc they've managed to preserve from the rest of the dungeon.

In scenario 1, if you crit a player he's got a shot at surviving. Players have to work to use whatever resources they have available, but they've got the HP to put a plan of action. If they fail because they didn't conserve enough resources from the rest of the dungeon it's their fault (unless you really overtuned the encounter). If their character dies it probably goes down swinging and a TPK is unlikely even if player death is likely.

In scenario 2, if you crit a player he's probably dead. Your monsters are starting at full health and depending on how good your PCs luck is, they may be very low on health indeed. The danger doesn't really stem from the encounter, it stems from how lucky the DM's dice are tonight, and the monster needs to be something that the PC probably could have beat down if they had encountered it at the start of the dungeon with full health. If they fail, especially if they fail horribly, it's very easy for them to place the blame on you for changing how the system works since no matter how careful they are, **** tends to happen unless they're using the high-op T1 enemy negation strategy mentioned in other posts.

Either they beat up an anemic version of a normally impressive monster (since they probably start at half HP or less and you have to adjust the monster's damage output to compensate) or the boss monster wipes the floor with them. It's entirely likely that the whole party will get smoked with one fireball or dragon breath and some bad rolls, or that the giant cleaves the party to death. Instead of going down fighting, they're quickly and unheroically being reduced to paste on the dungeon wall with the enemy's first turn.

TL,DR: When you limit cheap out of combat healing you're basically gimping your own encounter design. Combat, especially with powerful enemies, is already difficult to keep from devolving into rocket tag without forcing the PCs to be at an increasingly bad HP disadvantage. While players will be looking to avoid combat, if they know their resources are constrained and they can't just go rest and regain spells they will (or at least should) be doing it anyways without the wand nerf. Do note that if players are completely avoiding combat they're still not experiencing the diminishing-resource related tension you're trying to generate.


Hm. This is probably the best-written summary of counter arguments in the thread. And it's got a bunch of damned good points.

I think I'm sold on it, with one possible caveat: If someone WANTS to play healbot and makes a character optimized for it, I might still limit CLWs wands to a degree to keep an cheap and readily available consumables from stepping on his toes, although I probably won't ban them, even then.


Thanks for the advice, guys. Hoping we can get enough people on the same schedule for this to happen, as I'm really looking forward to it.


P.S.
On a side note: I don't think it's unreasonable for NPCs to not want to come with their heroes. Even a 5th level adventurer is far and away above what average joe schmoe can do. High level villains could slaughter them by the cartload, and they wouldn't really be able to make a difference.

I mean, sure... those 1st and 2nd level acolytes and warriors *could* come with you to help take down the epic level sorceror... but what if the last time the town tried to mount a militia against him, he tossed out a couple fireballs and killed half of them instantly? And then those dead were risen as zombies.

The townsfolk and local guard probably know they're way out of their league.

[Yukitsu]

P.S.
On a side note: I don't think it's unreasonable for NPCs to not want to come with their heroes. Even a 5th level adventurer is far and away above what average joe schmoe can do. High level villains could slaughter them by the cartload, and they wouldn't really be able to make a difference.

I mean, sure... those 1st and 2nd level acolytes and warriors *could* come with you to help take down the epic level sorceror... but what if the last time the town tried to mount a militia against him, he tossed out a couple fireballs and killed half of them instantly? And then those dead were risen as zombies.

The townsfolk and local guard probably know they're way out of their league.

The way I manage this with leadership is they stay a few rooms back, lock themselves in somewhere secure, and we just go back for the heals when we get through an encounter. They shouldn't really be getting into fights. In the event they are ambushed by something, often your highest level followers can send you a warning in some manner to get you back before all your tower shield hiding clerics get killed.

Edit: And equivalently, it's reasonable for me to not care if their entire civilization gets wiped off the face of the planet if I don't think I can win anyway.

[Person_Man]

This is false, more of a stereotype. This does describe a certain playstyle but that has nothing to do with the edition in question. I'm sure you could play 3rd, or even 4th editions this way. You could play 1st and 2nd editions with a wide variety of playstyles. Maybe you've been reading too much AGC :smallamused:

I disagree.

I grew up playing various early editions of D&D, and what I wrote in my posts in this thread was typical of my gaming experience, the gaming experience of my group, and the gaming experiences I encountered when I went to game conventions. I also subscribed to and avidly read Dragon and later Dungeon magazines, and this was also typical of the articles presented that described gaming experiences.

Now, I fully acknowledge that many gaming groups used D&D as a framework for many different types of games. But these were variants, not the default play style supported by the rules of the game. Some gamers spent a lot of time roleplaying. Some DMs who would hand out healing potions and scrolls like candy so that players could just hack through monsters without worrying about resource management.

But the "kick in the door" style of playing was a sub-genre of playing D&D specifically because the default style of playing D&D involved careful exploration and resource management typified by carefully the careful Find Traps/Listen/search/ask DM 20 questions to make sure he's not hiding anything/carefully proceed process that players would do at every freaking door. Go read through some of Gygax's modules, and explain to me how a party could possibly survive something remotely like the Tomb of Horrors (which was the first of a series of similar adventures) with a different play style.

Of course, I'll also be the first to admit that as time went on, "kick in the door" became more and more popular, and 2nd edition AD&D published eventually published so many supplements and alternate campaign worlds that any play style could easily be supported, and that when WotC went to write 3.0, they picked up on and expanded on that style while still trying to keep the basic elements of exploration intact. But that doesn't negate the fact that less healing and more deadly combat = more cautious exploration, and that earlier editions of the game had less healing and more deadly combat.

[nedz]

I disagree.

I grew up playing various early editions of D&D, and what I wrote in my posts in this thread was typical of my gaming experience, the gaming experience of my group, and the gaming experiences I encountered when I went to game conventions. I also subscribed to and avidly read Dragon and later Dungeon magazines, and this was also typical of the articles presented that described gaming experiences.

Now, I fully acknowledge that many gaming groups used D&D as a framework for many different types of games. But these were variants, not the default play style supported by the rules of the game. Some gamers spent a lot of time roleplaying. Some DMs who would hand out healing potions and scrolls like candy so that players could just hack through monsters without worrying about resource management.

But the "kick in the door" style of playing was a sub-genre of playing D&D specifically because the default style of playing D&D involved careful exploration and resource management typified by carefully the careful Find Traps/Listen/search/ask DM 20 questions to make sure he's not hiding anything/carefully proceed process that players would do at every freaking door. Go read through some of Gygax's modules, and explain to me how a party could possibly survive something remotely like the Tomb of Horrors (which was the first of a series of similar adventures) with a different play style.

Of course, I'll also be the first to admit that as time went on, "kick in the door" became more and more popular, and 2nd edition AD&D published eventually published so many supplements and alternate campaign worlds that any play style could easily be supported, and that when WotC went to write 3.0, they picked up on and expanded on that style while still trying to keep the basic elements of exploration intact. But that doesn't negate the fact that less healing and more deadly combat = more cautious exploration, and that earlier editions of the game had less healing and more deadly combat.

I still say this is a playstyle thing, and I'm sure you experienced it like you say. I've played with a number of groups over the years and we moved beyond Gygax style modules very early on. I don't know much about published modules I'm afraid though I seem to recall a very short attempt to run G1, shortly after it was published, which involved simply torching the place from the outside :smallcool:

I tended to run sandbox games with a wide variety of situations mainly based around exploring outdoors in the so called "Wilderness". I'm not saying that traps and locks didn't feature on occasion, but they were the exception rather than the rule.

I have played Kick in the Door games too, but they were the exception. The 2nd time I played G1 it was run like this.:smallamused: I've never player G1 'as intended'.

[NichG]

And more importantly, the main thrust of the issue isn't "wands of healing" in particular. It's the ability to go into every encounter in a day at 100% health. With a bunch of random clerics or whatever, you still can continue through a day with 100% health for every encounter. This should be an available option every single time you're looking at something dangerous enough to threaten an entire city or the world or whatever.


The point, I feel, is to create a game where there are meaningful choices. If being 100% healed up is basically free, then that removes a meaningful choice from the game - whether to be heroic and push on despite the risk, or be pragmatic and turn back/regroup/whatever, or to be sacrificing and spend a lot of resources on giving yourself the best chance to succeed. If healing is very cheap and easily available, then the answer is strongly biased towards 'push on', at least until the casters complain about spell slots (which at moderate levels basically won't happen). It removes a choice from the game and it also means that basically you might as well just skip to the boss fight all the time, because those prior encounters won't have had a meaningful effect on the game.

So if you have to tithe 20% of your treasure to the church to get them to provide a healing squad, thats at least a meaningful choice. You've paid a not-insignificant cost to be entering encounters at full health. The exact percentage should, ideally, be chosen to be whatever makes you go 'ehh, do I really need this?', so that there's not an obvious 'right' choice. Its just the same as in character building systems - if there's a feat that no one in their right mind would pass up, you might as well just give it to people automatically as a class feature and get rid of the feat, because its basically just a tax or a trap at that point.



I say "let the town guard deal with that" all the time in campaigns. If the DM is expecting us to act like fool hardy idiots for a few scraps of money and the charity of our own hearts, but at the same time every single member of that society is some money grubbing **** who won't help us help them, I generally just go off and join the evil guys because there's only so much idiocy I can handle from a society before I just figure they're all better off under what is apparently better organized management.

At least joining the evil guys is engaging with the campaign, which is better than showing up and then doing nothing. But its not like you're going to get much help from them either.



And for the record, I've taken those jobs for free on several occasions. I simply won't if I'm pretty certain we'd end up dead trying.


You're making this huge jump from 'I'm not at max hitpoints' to 'I'm certain we will die'.



We don't need a level 10 healer. You need several level 1 NPC acolytes. If the setting has 0 level 1 NPC acolytes, no wands, no potions, and the DM is putting timers on stuff, again, it's just not worth it. You know what's going to happen to that village? They'll get wiped out by orcs the week after. Or they'll get attacked by raiders again. Getting those guys back doesn't solve anything, it's not helping at all. You're just delaying things a little.

Considering every single adventure I opted out of ended with a party wipe, yes, I'm absolutely fine sitting those bad adventures out. And frankly it's not like I fall off the face of the planet while the rest of the group is on their short leash timer, their arbitrary lack of support and resources. It's a scenario where I can go somewhere where you can think through a problem, and the people who you are trying to help are willing to provide help in return.

See, I don't get this. A character is just a character but your out-of-character time is real. If I didn't like the kind of game being run, I just wouldn't show up to play - I wouldn't waste my time going there and hanging around while everyone else has fun with the game. Or I'd shrug and say 'screw it, Jonas the Barbarian may get slaughtered but I'm here to play D&D, and I can still have fun even if he meets a messy end'.

Or if you're suggesting that the DM should run a side-plot for you because you decided not to follow the hook, then thats pretty selfish of you.

Frankly, it sounds like you basically just don't want to play this kind of game at all, but you're being passive aggressive about it rather than just saying 'I would not stay at a table running a game like this' or 'warn me when its going to be like that so I don't show up that week' or whatever. Its fine to have personal tastes and not play in some kinds of games, but its pretty boorish to insist that someone else shouldn't try to run a game that you personally wouldn't like, or that its somehow 'doing it wrong'.

[Yukitsu]

The point, I feel, is to create a game where there are meaningful choices. If being 100% healed up is basically free, then that removes a meaningful choice from the game - whether to be heroic and push on despite the risk, or be pragmatic and turn back/regroup/whatever, or to be sacrificing and spend a lot of resources on giving yourself the best chance to succeed. If healing is very cheap and easily available, then the answer is strongly biased towards 'push on', at least until the casters complain about spell slots (which at moderate levels basically won't happen). It removes a choice from the game and it also means that basically you might as well just skip to the boss fight all the time, because those prior encounters won't have had a meaningful effect on the game.

So if you have to tithe 20% of your treasure to the church to get them to provide a healing squad, thats at least a meaningful choice. You've paid a not-insignificant cost to be entering encounters at full health. The exact percentage should, ideally, be chosen to be whatever makes you go 'ehh, do I really need this?', so that there's not an obvious 'right' choice. Its just the same as in character building systems - if there's a feat that no one in their right mind would pass up, you might as well just give it to people automatically as a class feature and get rid of the feat, because its basically just a tax or a trap at that point.

To be honest, it costs about 20% of a single character's income most runs I've done to get a wand of cure light wounds anyway. Or if we're tremendously higher level, magical healing becomes a bit more awkward due to the gigantic HP pools compared to the much larger income pools, so we either end up spending far more or far less on them. It's still a "This is an essential part of our ability to keep moving forward" purchase process that's an essentially necessary item tax.


At least joining the evil guys is engaging with the campaign, which is better than showing up and then doing nothing. But its not like you're going to get much help from them either.

There's a bitter irony in that more often than not we get more official support when we side swap than from the peasants that for some reason are constantly trying to rip us off for no good reason. I have absolutely no idea why that is. It almost brings me to the conclusion that we started working for the villains, and someone simply never told us.


You're making this huge jump from 'I'm not at max hitpoints' to 'I'm certain we will die'.

Not really. There comes a breaking point where you're at like, 15% HP or thereabouts where next encounter, you can pretty much be sure you'll get killed. In a situation where you can stop for X days to naturally heal, this is fine, but when you have a deadline where you can't stop, you have a system where there is no real convenient magical healing, unless you're lucky enough to have someone willing to play a heal bot, you will die. It stops being a question of whether, but when, how and who.

Alternatively, as Icewraith better articulated, you get day after day of relatively samey encounters based around the same sort of level of power where the only tension behind the encounter is that you're already so crippled that you have to rely on the dice not swinging against you.


See, I don't get this. A character is just a character but your out-of-character time is real. If I didn't like the kind of game being run, I just wouldn't show up to play - I wouldn't waste my time going there and hanging around while everyone else has fun with the game. Or I'd shrug and say 'screw it, Jonas the Barbarian may get slaughtered but I'm here to play D&D, and I can still have fun even if he meets a messy end'.

Because attrition based play is boring. It's either inevitable failure, or for the reason that Icewraith better articulate, results in watered down encounters. You just keep mindlessly pressing forward and hoping that your die rolls are better than the DMs. 99% of the encounters a DM tries to run aren't like that, or they try to avoid that. When you have 0 preparation time, 0 scouting time, and 0 ways to refresh your resources, that's what the encounters become. A gradual grind forward where every single encounter is a direct head on clash. It's not that I'm opposed to the method, I'm opposed to the fact that it has functionally become the only method.


Or if you're suggesting that the DM should run a side-plot for you because you decided not to follow the hook, then thats pretty selfish of you.

Frankly, it sounds like you basically just don't want to play this kind of game at all, but you're being passive aggressive about it rather than just saying 'I would not stay at a table running a game like this' or 'warn me when its going to be like that so I don't show up that week' or whatever. Its fine to have personal tastes and not play in some kinds of games, but its pretty boorish to insist that someone else shouldn't try to run a game that you personally wouldn't like, or that its somehow 'doing it wrong'.

No, I use the time to either do downtime magic item crafting, or find a rare item at the shop. Actual by the book item crafting is BS in terms of how long it takes, so I generally have to sit parts out to craft for the party whether it's my preference or not.

Also, I tend to have to be around when they do get wiped as the group usually makes me help them make characters, which is sort of neither here nor there.

Also, for the most part, I end up in the role of party leader for a variety of reasons. Most of the time, when I elect to refuse a job and explain why I've refused it both in and out of character, the rest of the party follows, so there's rarely a reason for me to do this. I think over the years I've only survived 6 TPKs because of this. If I weren't, and the group was content to just keep running head first into party wipes, I'd probably be more inclined to go along, but on the other hand, I very well may have left by now.

[137beth]

You're making this huge jump from 'I'm not at max hitpoints' to 'I'm certain we will die'.

Not really. There comes a breaking point where you're at like, 15% HP or thereabouts where next encounter, you can pretty much be sure you'll get killed.
...So then, you're making this huge jump from 'I'm not at max hitpoints' to 'I'm at like, 15% HP':smallsigh:


Because attrition based play is boring. It's either inevitable failure, or for the reason that Icewraith better articulate, results in watered down encounters. You just keep mindlessly pressing forward and hoping that your die rolls are better than the DMs.
So, in your opinion, you, personally, don't like that playstyle. Which was exactly what he said. That doesn't mean other people who do enjoy it are doing it wrong, or that you have to complain about other people having fun.


99% of the encounters a DM tries to run aren't like that, or they try to avoid that.
Not in my experience anyways...maybe you are projecting a bad gaming experience from a poor DM onto all other attrition-based games? Or is this another formum-style "take an idea, and assume that the DM will always implement it in the worst possible way, and conclude that the idea must have sucked because it is theoretically possible to do badly"?

[Yukitsu]

Not in my experience anyways...maybe you are projecting a bad gaming experience from a poor DM onto all other attrition-based games? Or is this another formum-style "take an idea, and assume that the DM will always implement it in the worst possible way, and conclude that the idea must have sucked because it is theoretically possible to do badly"?

So what you're telling me is most encounters you didn't have options other than "you both start here, roll spot, roll initiatives, no you don't know who, what or why. Now roll some dice until one of you gets below 0."

I get in a lot of those encounters, but nearly every single one I know that I had the option to do more to prepare for it, or scout it out, or hear rumours about it or essentially anything that could have made it easier, bypassable, or which could have let me talk our way out. It's not that I never want to get into that direct, perfectly even ground fight, it's just uninteresting when that is 100% of my option for every encounter from now until forever.

[ericgrau]

Really, cheap healing isn't intrinsic to HP. See AD&D for instance; it also uses HP but it's far harder to restore (and thus you avoid battle more). The cost of HP simply changes the way the players should approach the game. Really, VP/WP works just as well too; removes the need to heal as much, keeps the risk of death with a buffer, largely similar. None of this makes the game unplayable or anything, it's just a bit of a different style from cheap healing (though even there, if the campaign is laid out with real danger, PCs should avoid combat if they can).

It's fine if the entire system is built around it. It's not fine if it isn't. This ignores my statement that it's a mechanics issue not a style issue. The mere existence of hp doesn't address it.

Rewriting an entire system is beyond the capabilities of almost everyone. At that point it's time to select another existing system. I have nothing against going back to 2e for a campaign.

[NichG]

So what you're telling me is most encounters you didn't have options other than "you both start here, roll spot, roll initiatives, no you don't know who, what or why. Now roll some dice until one of you gets below 0."

I get in a lot of those encounters, but nearly every single one I know that I had the option to do more to prepare for it, or scout it out, or hear rumours about it or essentially anything that could have made it easier, bypassable, or which could have let me talk our way out. It's not that I never want to get into that direct, perfectly even ground fight, it's just uninteresting when that is 100% of my option for every encounter from now until forever.

What does this have to do with attrition though?

I mean, if anything in a game where attrition is meaningful it should be far more common to do scouting ahead, bypassing encounters, etc. Because even if the encounter was 'easy', there is still some value in not fighting it dumb. Whereas, if you can heal up for free between encounters, there's no reason to play smart against things that can't actually kill a PC.

Its like the old dilemma with traps. With lots of healing available, either a trap kills a PC outright or it might as well not have been there. If healing is dear, then a trap that does 4hp of damage to the guy with 120hp is actually still meaningful - thats one less hit he can take later on.

There's this huge middle ground of completely workable situations that don't even have the problems that you claim to have with attrition that you're ignoring to focus on one or two extremes, including conflating attrition with aspects of the campaign design that fundamentally are completely orthogonal to it.



It's fine if the entire system is built around it. It's not fine if it isn't. This ignores my statement that it's a mechanics issue not a style issue. The mere existence of hp doesn't address it.

Rewriting an entire system is beyond the capabilities of almost everyone. At that point it's time to select another existing system. I have nothing against going back to 2e for a campaign.

In my experience, changing systems is more damaging to a group than reworking systems. It is not nearly this hard to change things, even fundamental things, about D&D. It is very hard however to get players for a system they haven't heard of before, and to teach players a completely new system.

Every system has its quirks - there are also things about 2ed that are just as hard to change but that one would want to change to get the best possible experience.

Compared to other RPGs out there, D&D 3.5 is by far the most flexible yet still mechanically complex RPG I've ever encountered. Even in terms of official 'mods' for it like d20 Modern and Star Wars d20, they change large swaths of the game and the thing still manages to hold together much better than if you were to try to do the same thing to, e.g., 7th Sea or World of Darkness. I've played quite a few 3rd party takes on D&D that utterly change the feel and even the mechanical balance of the game, and surprisingly none of those games have crashed and burned for mechanical reasons. The mechanical 'sensitivity' of D&D 3.5 is greatly, greatly exaggerated.

For comparison, I tried to run a game based on a rewrite of the 7th Sea engine and the thing crumbled the second the PCs got outside of the power-level that 7th Sea expects and is balanced around.

Part of the reason for this is that inherently there's such a huge span of power-levels you can attain just by building your character differently in D&D. This gives the players and the DM the tools to adapt to a game that is harder, easier, or just plain different than expected. I've played E6 games, games where by the end of the campaign we had stats in the triple digits, games where you can cast spells all day long and everyone is a spontaneous caster with no real limit to spells known, and everything in between. It all held together remarkably well.

[Yukitsu]

What does this have to do with attrition though?

I mean, if anything in a game where attrition is meaningful it should be far more common to do scouting ahead, bypassing encounters, etc. Because even if the encounter was 'easy', there is still some value in not fighting it dumb. Whereas, if you can heal up for free between encounters, there's no reason to play smart against things that can't actually kill a PC.

Its like the old dilemma with traps. With lots of healing available, either a trap kills a PC outright or it might as well not have been there. If healing is dear, then a trap that does 4hp of damage to the guy with 120hp is actually still meaningful - thats one less hit he can take later on.

There's this huge middle ground of completely workable situations that don't even have the problems that you claim to have with attrition that you're ignoring to focus on one or two extremes, including conflating attrition with aspects of the campaign design that fundamentally are completely orthogonal to it.


It's less the lack of healing, more the addition of a timer.

Lack of healing to reduce attrition does nothing at all if there's no impetus to go quickly ahead (instead of 5 minutes rest to use wands, you get 8 hours rest to heal naturally when low, or even days if it's bad enough.). To go along with a lack of healing to cause attrition, you need to add time constraints. This severely limits your ability to for example, gather information (which takes hours per check) or prepare divinations (and entire day, then another to regain your divination spell slots).

The synergy between having to go into every encounter half cocked without any semblence of a plan beyond "we have to get there fast" and an inability to heal is what makes this form of adventure so dull. You simply can't have the breadth or width of dangerous encounters when you have to guarantee that each encounter is only about 12.5% of the party's resources.

[Icewraith]

I never said attrition based play wasn't fun or possible, I just said tossing out cheap after combat healing isn't the way to do it. It really is all about plot pacing and encounter design.

I've run several successful adventures of my own devising where the characters are unable to rest and regain spells until they manage to achieve their objectives or escape the dungeon. I was able to acheive this even in a group of powerful high level characters. There was definitely tension at the table, especially after I tricked the major spell-slinger in the group into blowing nearly half his complement of spells on what turned out to be a very cunning ambush and distraction. In fact, I would argue that ideally the characters need to achieve a certain level of power and independance before shaking them up like this for maximum effect.

Anyways, once the characters realized their situation, the lights came on and they suddenly started playing much better instead of brute-forcing everything. In particular, I don't think I've ever seen the spellcaster mentioned previously make such smart, efficient use of his remaining spells before or since that adventure. However, if they hadn't been able to use consumables to replenish their HP between fights there's no way I could have gotten away with the ridiculous amount of stuff I threw at them. (To give you an idea, ambush number two was a small legion of chained extended greater invisible chained extended greater magic weapon arrow demons obtained via extensive use of the planar binding spell and years upon years of paranoia.) If I hadn't thrown a ridiculous amount of stuff at them it would have made the BBEG seem lame, powerless, and unprepared.

(Especially in the case where the BBEG is a powerful Conjurer, and he knows the PCs are coming for him, and the PCs know he knows they're coming for him, and he knows the PCs know he knows they're coming for him.)

The other thing is to be absolutely sure, and to be able to say to your players you are absolutely sure (and not be lying), that with intelligent play they should be able to complete their objectives within the dungeon and make it out alive. Then remind them that within those parameters you're going to do your damndest to kill their characters as the NPC that controls the dungeon in question is playing for keeps.

[Thrair]

Yah. I've come to the conclusion now that simple health attrition just isn't enough at higher levels. You need to burn up their spellslots, too.

You're not going to really manage that without them eating a lot of HP damage. Not with the large number spellslots available at high levels.

At lower levels, limiting CLW wands might still work for giving the party their "Wow, we're really beaten to hell, here. Gotta be careful now." But now I think, that it might be counterproductive to getting attrition in high levels. Certainly runs the risk of it.

Regardless, I have decided not to decide things for sure until I see the party in action for a bit. See how they play. How optimized they are. Etc.


As for making sure they can win, you're damned sure I will make it possible. A TPK means SOMETHING went horribly wrong. Both in and out of game.

[137beth]

Yah. I've come to the conclusion now that simple health attrition just isn't enough at higher levels. You need to burn up their spellslots, too.

You're not going to really manage that without them eating a lot of HP damage. Not with the large number spellslots available at high levels.

At lower levels, limiting CLW wands might still work for giving the party their "Wow, we're really beaten to hell, here. Gotta be careful now." But now I think, that it might be counterproductive to getting attrition in high levels. Certainly runs the risk of it.

Regardless, I have decided not to decide things for sure until I see the party in action for a bit. See how they play. How optimized they are. Etc.


As for making sure they can win, you're damned sure I will make it possible. A TPK means SOMETHING went horribly wrong. Both in and out of game.

Yea, limiting wands of CLW (and others) at low levels works pretty darn well for attrition. May I suggest simply raising the prices of healing wands/potions? This has the effect of making it harder to get at low levels, when hp alone is a good resource to wear down, but the cost of out-of-combat healing still becomes irrelevant at higher levels.

[NichG]

It's less the lack of healing, more the addition of a timer.

Lack of healing to reduce attrition does nothing at all if there's no impetus to go quickly ahead (instead of 5 minutes rest to use wands, you get 8 hours rest to heal naturally when low, or even days if it's bad enough.). To go along with a lack of healing to cause attrition, you need to add time constraints. This severely limits your ability to for example, gather information (which takes hours per check) or prepare divinations (and entire day, then another to regain your divination spell slots).

Lets say you have a 48 hour time limit to 'explore structure X'. Your approaches to learning about the challenges ahead all involve time-consuming methods. But the thing is, what if you just eat the spell slot cost and limit your divinations to fewer than a complete binary search? This is another form of attrition - getting casters to burn through more of their slots is part of what the OP is trying to accomplish.

And/or, spend the 4 hours on the Gather Information out of your 48. If it saves you from having to rest and recuperate in the dungeon, you make back that time easily.

Once you're there, knock out one of the enemy combatants rather than go for the kill and interrogate them. Send a scout ahead with Invisibility - avoided fights will pay for the spell slot cost.

Even better is if the DM actually goes and makes the dungeon/environment contain accessible information about challenges further ahead - a good DM will generally try to do this, and its also pretty common in the better modules.

The other kind of time-sensitivity is a 'living dungeon'. In this kind of model, before you get there nothing moves, but once you start interacting with it you only have so long before things change around you in response to your presence. Your objections about not having the ability to research the challenges ahead of time don't apply at all to that model.



The synergy between having to go into every encounter half cocked without any semblence of a plan beyond "we have to get there fast" and an inability to heal is what makes this form of adventure so dull. You simply can't have the breadth or width of dangerous encounters when you have to guarantee that each encounter is only about 12.5% of the party's resources.

See, I'd argue that you're missing out on a lot of possible nuance to those lesser encounters if you don't have attrition. I've run campaigns where every fight is a boss fight and the party has one encounter a week. They can be interesting, but they're very all or nothing. I've found I'm decent at making bosses that will take one or two PCs to the edge of death and systematically die in the last round before they can actually confirm a kill, but that is a very difficult skill to master - yet, you basically have to do that every single time to make something feel like a 'serious' fight; its even worse in high level D&D where there's basically no line between 'out' and 'dead'.

When I compare those campaigns with times I've run modules with fixed parties, older edition games, or even just dungeons with parties who don't know to bring wands for easy healing, I realize that there are foes who basically would be meaningless in my 'boss run' campaigns but who become significant in attrition runs. They don't have to kill a PC, they just have to do something that is debilitating and costs resources to reverse - a little stat damage, a negative level, or a chunk of hitpoints. Even if the party stomps them out, instead of being just a forgettable throwaway popcorn encounter they're 'that damn shadow that dropped by Strength by 4 before it died' or 'that annoying drow with his stat damage poison - I can't believe I failed the save'.

I've found - for me - that the same thing is true as a player. I've played in campaigns where I can basically be at full after every fight. But there is something distinctly different, more visceral and, honestly, interesting, about situations where I have to seriously consider if I want to fight this guy I can beat, because it'd leave me too weak for what's to come. I remember an endurance run in a Slayers campaign - a game where basically you can cast all day no problem - where by the end of it I was running out of spellpoints and casting from my hitpoints and suddenly the big boss showed up. It was awesome - rather than rush into battle, I looked for a way to get out of there and succeed without direct confrontation, because I knew I couldn't win the direct fight.

Another such game was a run of Crypt of the Devil Lich, where we got zapped by shadows and we were only able to keep above 0 Strength because of our last 4 charges on a Wand of Bull's Strength - it was awesome! I'm glad that our high level heroes had been built without such resources as a fully charged wand of Restoration, because otherwise I wouldn't have those memories and that story.

My point is though - I enjoyed those things. It didn't make us rush into the next encounter without preparation, it made us think far more carefully about how we really wanted to deal with the next encounter. Because if we didn't, we couldn't possibly win.

[LordBlades]

Another possible issue with attrition-based gameplay is that the party has to enjoy it, and 'buy in' so to say.

If they don't, you might end up with a very unfun game, where you're trying to enforce attrition based gameplay, and the players try to avoid it by layering layers after layers of defenses on their characters.

It's not impossible to make chars that never fail saves, almost never get hit and with a bit of effort aren't even really there when they're adventuring (Lesser Planar Binding on a Nightmare gives you Astral Projection at level 9 for example) or can turn even a TPK into a minor inconvenience (like the Save Game trick).

[Yukitsu]

Lets say you have a 48 hour time limit to 'explore structure X'. Your approaches to learning about the challenges ahead all involve time-consuming methods. But the thing is, what if you just eat the spell slot cost and limit your divinations to fewer than a complete binary search? This is another form of attrition - getting casters to burn through more of their slots is part of what the OP is trying to accomplish.

And/or, spend the 4 hours on the Gather Information out of your 48. If it saves you from having to rest and recuperate in the dungeon, you make back that time easily.

Once you're there, knock out one of the enemy combatants rather than go for the kill and interrogate them. Send a scout ahead with Invisibility - avoided fights will pay for the spell slot cost.

Even better is if the DM actually goes and makes the dungeon/environment contain accessible information about challenges further ahead - a good DM will generally try to do this, and its also pretty common in the better modules.

The other kind of time-sensitivity is a 'living dungeon'. In this kind of model, before you get there nothing moves, but once you start interacting with it you only have so long before things change around you in response to your presence. Your objections about not having the ability to research the challenges ahead of time don't apply at all to that model.

48 hours is a pretty huge amount of time. I'd have to wonder how long such a dungeon is intended to be, and also how many low CR encounters it's supposed to contain. I did a pre-made pathfinder dungeon, which was essentially something that has taken our characters something like 9 days to fully complete, and it had over 60 mind numbingly dull CR 3 for an ECL 3 party encounters. Scaling that back to two days you're talking maybe 14 encounters? That could be manageable, but I'd still rather adventure for maybe an hour, rest for 16, adventure for an hour, rest for 16 again. Scouting properly unfortunately takes a lot of hours, that 4 hour gather information check is unlikely to net me knowledge of more than 1 encounter, or a single string of encounters if I'm asking the right questions.

A living dungeon doesn't really change gathering information or pre-scouting by the way. What matters is less which specific room each encounter is in, but where static ones are (traps) and what sorts of encounters are there. Unless the DM's idea of a good living dungeon is "every single goblin stacks up in one room to overwhelm you with numbers", which would just as reliably happen if you were trying to blitz the place as if you kept going back to rest after every encounter.

I should note as a tangent however, that when another DM mentioned that his party snuck past encounters, and then subsequently griped about the encounter's they bypassed still eventually hearing, finding and attacking them, the majority of people in the thread found that response of the encounter to be reasonable. Looking at it from that angle, and I think you generally should, bypassing an encounter in that fashion not only cost you a spell, but it also made you fight them later at a potentially unreliable time.


See, I'd argue that you're missing out on a lot of possible nuance to those lesser encounters if you don't have attrition. I've run campaigns where every fight is a boss fight and the party has one encounter a week. They can be interesting, but they're very all or nothing. I've found I'm decent at making bosses that will take one or two PCs to the edge of death and systematically die in the last round before they can actually confirm a kill, but that is a very difficult skill to master - yet, you basically have to do that every single time to make something feel like a 'serious' fight; its even worse in high level D&D where there's basically no line between 'out' and 'dead'.

When I compare those campaigns with times I've run modules with fixed parties, older edition games, or even just dungeons with parties who don't know to bring wands for easy healing, I realize that there are foes who basically would be meaningless in my 'boss run' campaigns but who become significant in attrition runs. They don't have to kill a PC, they just have to do something that is debilitating and costs resources to reverse - a little stat damage, a negative level, or a chunk of hitpoints. Even if the party stomps them out, instead of being just a forgettable throwaway popcorn encounter they're 'that damn shadow that dropped by Strength by 4 before it died' or 'that annoying drow with his stat damage poison - I can't believe I failed the save'.

I've found - for me - that the same thing is true as a player. I've played in campaigns where I can basically be at full after every fight. But there is something distinctly different, more visceral and, honestly, interesting, about situations where I have to seriously consider if I want to fight this guy I can beat, because it'd leave me too weak for what's to come. I remember an endurance run in a Slayers campaign - a game where basically you can cast all day no problem - where by the end of it I was running out of spellpoints and casting from my hitpoints and suddenly the big boss showed up. It was awesome - rather than rush into battle, I looked for a way to get out of there and succeed without direct confrontation, because I knew I couldn't win the direct fight.

Another such game was a run of Crypt of the Devil Lich, where we got zapped by shadows and we were only able to keep above 0 Strength because of our last 4 charges on a Wand of Bull's Strength - it was awesome! I'm glad that our high level heroes had been built without such resources as a fully charged wand of Restoration, because otherwise I wouldn't have those memories and that story.

My point is though - I enjoyed those things. It didn't make us rush into the next encounter without preparation, it made us think far more carefully about how we really wanted to deal with the next encounter. Because if we didn't, we couldn't possibly win.

My question is, how do you know what to do in your next encounter, without knowing exactly what the encounter will be if you have such a limitation on resources and time. Because when my characters don't have time and don't have resources, I certainly can't manage anything approaching careful consideration or planning.

And I'm not really bothered that you enjoy that solution to the problem the DM is presenting to you. I am arguing against it being the only solution the DM is allowing, which a time and resource limit does.

[Enguebert]

Unlimited healing make minor encounter useless and restrict the DM options to give challenging options.
It also give players a feeling of invulnerability towards people/monster under their challenge.

If you have a group of level 6 adventurer that need to travel 1 week to reach place of adventure and no dangerous encounter during travel, they can fight every day. And you nerf classes that have non-fighting abilities


Ranger reports : there are 2 ogres making a BBQ 1 mile to the north

Group A : Unlimited healing.
" Let's kill them and get their loot, they are not strong enough to be a danger."
Or even worse, no need to scout, we can blast any average encounter and heal after

Group B :
No healer in the group. Limited healing ressources.
"Perhaps we can avoid them because ogre hit hard and we better need to keep our healing for the dangerous area. Let's move silently and we avoid the ogres"
Then you can have some interesting discussion between players, the good guy wants to remove a danger to local farmer while other prefers to focuse on main target

Group C :
A healer in the group
Yes, we can take the ogres. And if you get hurt too bad, you will have to wait until tomorrow. And if tomorrow i need to use more healing spells, that means no buff during combats, or no hold person, or ...


The problem exist for wands of cure wounds, but also for wand/scoll/potion of restoration, fireball, knock, invisibility, fly, ....

The group may have access to those ressources, but have them in limited (according to their level) so they have it when they need, but players must know that they will not have them for every combat.

Also DM and players should be aware that unlimited access to some magical items make some players useless

unlimited CLW wand make healers useless (or make players who can heal focuse ONLY on fight spells, making encounters easier)
unlimited wands/scrolls of clairaudience/clairvoyance (or divination) make scout useless
unlimited wayu of summoning make meat shield useless
etc...

As DM, i usually never ban items, but i try to control and keep ressources to an ok amount (they are present to help you if things goes wrong or players made a mistake, but if you use them all the time, you will run out of them and have soon a problem)

And for key roles (healing or a tank), if nobody in the group want to play one, there is a NPC (managed by players), around same level as group who join the group and fill a passive role. Out of fight, this NPC do nothing unless required by one player, and during fight he is managed by one of the player
And if one character die/prisoner/out of adventure for some reason, this npc is played by the player until the character is rescued/end of session/adventure where a new character can join the group

[NichG]

Another possible issue with attrition-based gameplay is that the party has to enjoy it, and 'buy in' so to say.


'Know your players' is always good advice for any campaign, whether you're running combat-heavy, intrigue, exploration, attrition-based, whatever. There's lots of different preferences.


48 hours is a pretty huge amount of time. I'd have to wonder how long such a dungeon is intended to be, and also how many low CR encounters it's supposed to contain. I did a pre-made pathfinder dungeon, which was essentially something that has taken our characters something like 9 days to fully complete, and it had over 60 mind numbingly dull CR 3 for an ECL 3 party encounters. Scaling that back to two days you're talking maybe 14 encounters? That could be manageable, but I'd still rather adventure for maybe an hour, rest for 16, adventure for an hour, rest for 16 again. Scouting properly unfortunately takes a lot of hours, that 4 hour gather information check is unlikely to net me knowledge of more than 1 encounter, or a single string of encounters if I'm asking the right questions.


Well no reason that the dungeon has to take all 48 hours and go down to the wire. I'd probably use a 48 hour time limit for a dungeon with 4 core encounters (things that I expected the players to not bypass or at least have to deal with in some way that costs resources), 2 ancillary (skippable encounters with possible additional benefits), and 2 'random encounters' for if the party dawdles or lets the denizens regroup.

The meta-game point of the 48 hour limit isn't necessarily to get down to the wire. Its to make it so that 'gross' usages of time lead to failure - if you sleep for a day after every encounter, you won't make it in time, but you can hole up and rest once during the adventure without actually losing the ability to complete it. But basically, you can't take time completely for granted.



A living dungeon doesn't really change gathering information or pre-scouting by the way. What matters is less which specific room each encounter is in, but where static ones are (traps) and what sorts of encounters are there. Unless the DM's idea of a good living dungeon is "every single goblin stacks up in one room to overwhelm you with numbers", which would just as reliably happen if you were trying to blitz the place as if you kept going back to rest after every encounter.


The point I was trying to make about the living dungeon is that its an example of a timer that only starts ticking when you first set foot inside, so if you want to do your divination prep work you can without impacting the attrition aspects of 'once you've uncorked it, you have to deal with it all at once'.

My take on a living dungeon is that basically once you've killed the first guard, there's some amount of time before their failure to report will be noticed even if you eliminate all witnesses. Call that an hour, lets say. This means that the goblins/etc aren't going to all collect in one room for their defense until that time has passed. Or, rather than finding the goblins all armed and ready to repel invaders, if you hurry you find that half of them are busy with meals/sleep/whatever, and you can get the element of surprise. Or, if you take too long after slaughtering an entire guard contingent, the high-up goblins flee with the good bits of treasure, leaving hapless guards to slow your pursuit.



I should note as a tangent however, that when another DM mentioned that his party snuck past encounters, and then subsequently griped about the encounter's they bypassed still eventually hearing, finding and attacking them, the majority of people in the thread found that response of the encounter to be reasonable. Looking at it from that angle, and I think you generally should, bypassing an encounter in that fashion not only cost you a spell, but it also made you fight them later at a potentially unreliable time.


Well its more strategic choices to make. Sorry for sounding like a broken record, but the choice is obvious in the absence of attrition - if you can fight a battle where you have no chance of death, you should always choose to fight it - you will win and lose no permanent resources, but your opposition loses permanent resources in the process (troops).

With attrition, there's some point at which the safety of not leaving enemies alive behind you is equally balanced against the loss of resources involved in taking them out. This is especially true if you have some way of using your knowledge of where they are to control their ability to respond - for example, by collapsing a tunnel that they could use to follow you, jamming a door, etc. Its not as absolute as taking them out, but if it could cost less than taking them out then it makes for a meaningful strategic decision.



My question is, how do you know what to do in your next encounter, without knowing exactly what the encounter will be if you have such a limitation on resources and time. Because when my characters don't have time and don't have resources, I certainly can't manage anything approaching careful consideration or planning.


Planning is almost entirely an OOC time factor, and there's so much give between IC and OOC time that I don't see time limits as even touching on it. Preparing is another story perhaps, but you can plan without being able to prepare (e.g. construct a plan using only the resources you have on you, and make sure that you basically kit out towards versatility rather than a specific course of action).

Again though, there's a large middle you're excluding between 'we have to get the idol in 18 seconds!' and 'we have infinite time to prepare'. The 48 hour dungeon example above is part of this middle - you have plenty of time to make some preparations, but not enough time to do everything you might want to - instead you have to budget your time and make decisions as to how to spend it.



And I'm not really bothered that you enjoy that solution to the problem the DM is presenting to you. I am arguing against it being the only solution the DM is allowing, which a time and resource limit does.

Its just another type of scenario and challenge. Not all games are the same; I personally would find a world that is completely passive except for the little bits I poke (that wait patiently for me to poke them) absolutely dull. I could go on and on about why I wouldn't like it, but the thing is - thats my taste, and if you want to play that kind of D&D then who am I to stop you?

I'm happy to debate objective things about the attrition model - what behaviors it will result in and what effects it will have on balance, how things should be designed, etc. I think that sort of discussion is helpful to all involved, even if one side of the debate takes an opposing viewpoint or focuses on problems.

But I think we need to separate what can objectively be said about the various models and situations, and things that amount to taste. I'd also like it if we could stop presuming worst-case scenarios - for every worst-case scenario of a DM running a hell-hole attrition game I can posit the same kind of worst-case scenario of a DM running a non-attrition game, and we get nowhere with it.

For anything that is going to be useful to real campaigns, I think the ideas need to be considered in the context of a DM who is actually trying to make it work and players are on board with the idea, rather than assuming a DM who is going to use it to 'stick it to the players' or players who would rather be doing something else as a matter of taste.

Or at least, lets not consider the worst-case scenario as a given, but instead use it as a boundary.

Instead of 'this is bad because given only six seconds you can't plan or prepare', I feel its better to say 'you need to make sure that they have enough time to do some sort of useful planning or preparation'. Instead of 'attrition means I'll be starting a fight at 15% of my hitpoints and we'll TPK', its better to say 'if you're using attrition then watch out at around 15% of max hitpoints, because thats when crits will start getting lethal'.

[ericgrau]

Yah. I've come to the conclusion now that simple health attrition just isn't enough at higher levels. You need to burn up their spellslots, too.

You're not going to really manage that without them eating a lot of HP damage. Not with the large number spellslots available at high levels.
That's a good point. You can still often heal to full without the wands anyway.

Unless they don't have enough time then the lower level slots aren't worth the time. And nor are CLW wands. But the system expects this.

[LordBlades]

Also DM and players should be aware that unlimited access to some magical items make some players useless

unlimited CLW wand make healers useless (or make players who can heal focuse ONLY on fight spells, making encounters easier)
unlimited wands/scrolls of clairaudience/clairvoyance (or divination) make scout useless
unlimited wayu of summoning make meat shield useless
etc...



On the other hand, the most dependent on magic items (consumable or not) are the ones at the lower end of the power spectrum.

If a wizard can't buy a potion of Fly and he expects a need to fly tomorrow, he can just prepare Fly himself (or write a scroll if he hasn't traded away Scribe Scroll).

If a fighter can't buy a potion of Fly and he expects a need to fly tomorrow, tough luck, he's quite screwed.

Also, the most effective from a mechanical standpoint course of action in a world without cheap healing isn't 'use spell slots to heal' but rather 'use spell slots/class features' to produce as many expendable minions as possible, that require little/no healing afterward. A 3rd level spell slot can be used to cast a Cure Serious Wounds, for 3d8+5 (average 18.5 HP healed), or can be used for Summon Monster III, to summon a creature that can absorb slightly more than 18.5 damage, and can also dish some damage back, unlike said Cure Serious Wounds.

[Person_Man]

It's fine if the entire system is built around it. It's not fine if it isn't. This ignores my statement that it's a mechanics issue not a style issue. The mere existence of hp doesn't address it.

Rewriting an entire system is beyond the capabilities of almost everyone. At that point it's time to select another existing system. I have nothing against going back to 2e for a campaign.

To be fair, I think you could pull it off in a 3.5 or PF context if you just house rule away all healing items, and come to a gentleman's agreement with your party that they won't use infinite healing tricks and will not rest unless they're safely back in town.

Though to agree with LordBlades and others, you definitely need the buy in of the entire party to do this. They have to want to play an attrition based exploration game for it to be fun and for it to work well.

[forsaken1111]

Heh, eternal wand of summon monster 1 = find all the traps?


To be fair, I think you could pull it off in a 3.5 or PF context if you just house rule away all healing items, and come to a gentleman's agreement with your party that they won't use infinite healing tricks and will not rest unless they're safely back in town.

Though to agree with LordBlades and others, you definitely need the buy in of the entire party to do this. They have to want to play an attrition based exploration game for it to be fun and for it to work well.

That actually sounds kind of fun. Anyone up for an attrition/survival/exploration game? :)

[MukkTB]

There have been a lot of threads on the matter, but everyone agree's that there was at least an intention to balance low tier and high tier characters by making the high tier abilities limited in use while a low tier character can hammer on all day. Some people think this does help the mundanes. Other people argue that the casters are so good, it doesn't actually work. I think a lot of it comes down to what level they play at. As someone who does a lot of low level play, my experience has been that this effect levels the playing field a bit. By no means does it make low tiers just as good as high tiers, but it does help them out.

When you nerf healing the way you are proposing, this is a nerf to the lower tiers resource management more so than anybody else.

The target you really want to go after for attrition, is magic. It is the Wizard's spells and the other limited abilities that wreck encounters. By time the Wizard (or Cleric) is out of magic and the only option is to send in the (full HP) Fighter, the encounter has become really hard compared to the ones before when the Wizard just dominated them. When the Wizard realizes that he can't just blind every monster or web them into place, then he's going to have a decision to make. Either he conserves spells, or he tries to convince the rest of the party to adopt a 15 minute adventuring day. If he conserves spells then he's playing your game of attrition and the problem is solved.

If our Wizard asks for the party to do a 15 minute adventuring day he runs into some problems. First the Fighter will say, "I'm at full health. Let's keep going." Then there may be an argument about whether the Princesses purity will remain intact if she remains the captive of the Evil Wizard Donny for another night. Our Wizard is not guaranteed to have his way, and most dramatic adventures contain an element of time pressure. If our Wizard is leading the party in the exploration of some ancient ruins in a jungle somewhere, when no one else knows where they went, and nothing is pressing, more power to him. I guess you could run attrition against the group's supplies, but that's not the setting where attrition against combat resources is thematically appropriate.

Lets go back to the Evil Wizard Donny and his captured Princess. Whatever he does with her in the meantime, we know he will sacrifice her to the great 8 legged GORGO! on the 1st of Thrune. We have three days to rescue her. So our party Wizard sucks it up and starts using his spells sparingly. In fact he may be be really stingy if he thinks he's going to be in a battle of Wizards with Donny sometime that day. Suddenly full HP Fighter guy is running into combat without much spell support. Then full HP Fighter guy gets hit really hard repeatedly. This requires a lot of use of the cure light wounds wand to fix up before he does it again. In turn this blows through party gold at a much higher rate.

It doesn't matter that Fighter Guy is at full HP when it comes to Donny though. Fighter Guy either gets bogged down by Donny's minions or caught in the area of a save our suck spell. Either way he's unlikely to be sticking the pointy end of his sword into Donny anytime soon, and his full HP bar isn't much of a factor in the combat. In fact our Wizard and Donny have decided to play a game of Buffs, Debuffs, and Save or Sucks trying to gain control of the battlefield and knock each other out of action. It doesn't matter that both Donny and our Wizard are at full HP. The winner won't be the one who blows away the other's HP. The winner will be the one who forces the other into a position they cannot recover from. The loser is likely the one who failed his saving throw against a save or suck. Your current HP has no effect on your ability to make a saving throw by the way.

For completions sake we can say that while this is happening the Party Cleric is melting through Donny's stocks of Zombies and the party rogue is sneak attacking Donny's apprentice in the next room over. Of course that's all before GORGO! shows up.

[Dimers]

When you nerf healing the way you are proposing, this is a nerf to the lower tiers resource management more so than anybody else.

Sooooo ... make wands only work if your build is T4 or below? :smalltongue:

[Greenish]

Sooooo ... make wands only work if your build is T4 or below? :smalltongue:Better yet, make everyone play Healer the class. They won't be overpowered, they'll have plenty of spell slots to burn on healing (since the class list has basically nothing else) and none will resent their fellow players for forcing them to play a healer.

Plus all of them get to ride pretty unicorns.

[Fax Celestis]

"Army of Unicorns" sounds like a badass metal band.

[Person_Man]

There have been a lot of threads on the matter, but everyone agree's that there was at least an intention to balance low tier and high tier characters by making the high tier abilities limited in use while a low tier character can hammer on all day. Some people think this does help the mundanes. Other people argue that the casters are so good, it doesn't actually work. I think a lot of it comes down to what level they play at. As someone who does a lot of low level play, my experience has been that this effect levels the playing field a bit. By no means does it make low tiers just as good as high tiers, but it does help them out.

I agree, somewhat. For example, assuming an old school style adventure, spellcasters generally suck rocks at very low levels, and could alter space and time like it was their play thing at high levels, with a sweet spot in the middle.

But it depends more on the DM and how he designs his campaign.

A typical old school adventure (ie, amount of time everyone is moving forward trying to achieve their quest goals without resting) might have 10-30ish different encounters, plus some % of random wandering encounters (the in game justification to prevent players from resting while adventuring). Many of those encounters will be combat. But many more should also be NPC interactions, traps, puzzles, riddles, environmental and/or magical hazards, hidden portals, mazes, multiple choice encounters (you see a pack of hungry looking wolves - do you fight them, try and evade them, try to befriend them, tie some meat to a fishing pole and lead them towards the goblin encampment), etc. This has a lot of implications:

1) Because you spend a ton of time just roleplaying, exploring, and interacting with the game world outside of combat, the players themselves are more important then the abilities of their character. You could play as a 1st level Warrior in a 20th level game and still contribute tremendously to many aspects of the game. (And in fact, combat can still be fun. It just changes. Instead of trying to kill the enemies, your mini-game becomes about avoiding and protecting yourself from them). For example, if you were to have a campaign based on the Lord of the Rings, there's a very high probability that someone will want to play a Hobbit, even though they suck compared to every other "class" in the game. Some players are ok with being challenged this way.

2) If you have access to the right spell, then magic can basically bypass the encounter. But you have to GUESS what spells will be useful to memorize or learn, and it is assumed you won't have a chance to rest and reset them until the adventure is complete. Being higher level helps a lot (in that you have a lot more spells to guess with), but it's still hard to cover every contingency.

3) The DM will also be using magic, and can target or counter magic users with it. If you're in the dungeon of the ancient Arch Lich Wizard, he has definitely taken the time to set up some anti-magic fields, magic eating monsters, swarms of bees which disrupt spellcasting, anti-scrying protections, etc.

4) Magic can bypass or solve many encounters, but it's not great at doing it repeatedly throughout the adventure. Knock can be used to open that locked and possibly trapped door you really want to bypass. But if you're in a castle with 30 locked and possibly trapped doors, and then find out that it's just the entrance to a massive dungeon filled with many more locked doors, realistically you're not going to use Knock all of them.

5) Players are human beings. Human beings can usually be reasoned with. Yes, through a combination of the right domains, PrC, and Persisted spells, Bob the Cleric could probably do everything that Joe the Rogue could do and more. But you can have a conversation with Bob the player, and ask him to respect Joe's niche as the Skill Monkey. Honestly, 99% of optimization cheese can be solved just by buying your players pizza and beer and making your characters together while having some respect for each other and the game.

6) The DM is a human being capable of changing the adventure on the fly, not a computer running the players through hard coded encounters. If the Wizard kills the Red Dragon with the ultimate spell on the first round, then the DM can have another Red Dragon's return to the cavern from it's daily hunting routine just as the players slay it's mate. Smart DMs can adjust their game as needed so that players to win easily sometimes, win balanced encounters sometimes, and face really difficult odds sometimes, while making the game as fun as possible for player regardless of their class. And in fact, doing so well is a big part of the fun for many DMs.

[navar100]

Ranger reports : there are 2 ogres making a BBQ 1 mile to the north

Group A : Unlimited healing.
" Let's kill them and get their loot, they are not strong enough to be a danger."
Or even worse, no need to scout, we can blast any average encounter and heal after

Group B :
No healer in the group. Limited healing ressources.
"Perhaps we can avoid them because ogre hit hard and we better need to keep our healing for the dangerous area. Let's move silently and we avoid the ogres"
Then you can have some interesting discussion between players, the good guy wants to remove a danger to local farmer while other prefers to focuse on main target

Group C :
A healer in the group
Yes, we can take the ogres. And if you get hurt too bad, you will have to wait until tomorrow. And if tomorrow i need to use more healing spells, that means no buff during combats, or no hold person, or ...




Group D:
Irrelevant if healer in the group or not.
Ok, let's just avoid them. They aren't bothering us. No need to bother them. As far as we know they have nothing to do with our mission.

[Yukitsu]

Well no reason that the dungeon has to take all 48 hours and go down to the wire. I'd probably use a 48 hour time limit for a dungeon with 4 core encounters (things that I expected the players to not bypass or at least have to deal with in some way that costs resources), 2 ancillary (skippable encounters with possible additional benefits), and 2 'random encounters' for if the party dawdles or lets the denizens regroup.

The meta-game point of the 48 hour limit isn't necessarily to get down to the wire. Its to make it so that 'gross' usages of time lead to failure - if you sleep for a day after every encounter, you won't make it in time, but you can hole up and rest once during the adventure without actually losing the ability to complete it. But basically, you can't take time completely for granted.

It's a delicate balance. Players can't tell if it's going to go down to the wire with any given time limit, and that taking the time to do anything else would end up ruining them. That requires far more knowledge of the run than any DM has been willing to give me. If it takes over an entire day just to explore a place, let alone get through all the encounters, the reasonable player response is dramatically different from one that has in your example, 8 encounters and plenty of time to rest twice.

The thing is, a player doesn't know which of these it will be. You could always go along by just outright telling players things without them having to work for it, but that sort of makes one thing interesting by making another less interesting.


The point I was trying to make about the living dungeon is that its an example of a timer that only starts ticking when you first set foot inside, so if you want to do your divination prep work you can without impacting the attrition aspects of 'once you've uncorked it, you have to deal with it all at once'.

Well, yeah, that's exactly what I prefer. If you have strong enough information gathering, a nearby store and creativity, you can usually blitz the entire thing in like, a day.


My take on a living dungeon is that basically once you've killed the first guard, there's some amount of time before their failure to report will be noticed even if you eliminate all witnesses. Call that an hour, lets say. This means that the goblins/etc aren't going to all collect in one room for their defense until that time has passed. Or, rather than finding the goblins all armed and ready to repel invaders, if you hurry you find that half of them are busy with meals/sleep/whatever, and you can get the element of surprise. Or, if you take too long after slaughtering an entire guard contingent, the high-up goblins flee with the good bits of treasure, leaving hapless guards to slow your pursuit.

My view of them has always been all that takes 0 rounds unless you're quiet. Hence why like I said, I prefer to take several days to prepare and then blitz the entire thing, but as I've also mentioned, intel is slow. I think a lot slower than some people expect. One game, we spent over three weeks in character gathering functional intel before hitting a CR+14 encounter that was literally impossible to beat in a frontal confrontation. It took three weeks because that's how long it took to get the crucial bits of information we needed.


Well its more strategic choices to make. Sorry for sounding like a broken record, but the choice is obvious in the absence of attrition - if you can fight a battle where you have no chance of death, you should always choose to fight it - you will win and lose no permanent resources, but your opposition loses permanent resources in the process (troops).

I should point out that if you're talking strategy here, attrition is always to be avoided. And from that strategic point of view, you should withdraw if you don't have adequate intelligence on the enemy. It's also not a strategic choice to put yourself between the main body of the enemy and another force because you're weakened.


With attrition, there's some point at which the safety of not leaving enemies alive behind you is equally balanced against the loss of resources involved in taking them out. This is especially true if you have some way of using your knowledge of where they are to control their ability to respond - for example, by collapsing a tunnel that they could use to follow you, jamming a door, etc. Its not as absolute as taking them out, but if it could cost less than taking them out then it makes for a meaningful strategic decision.

I'd consider that to completely bypass the encounter, you'd be using enough invisibility to cover an entire party plus the silence, the cost is probably higher than a surprise assault to both eliminate them at the cost of the same resources.


Planning is almost entirely an OOC time factor, and there's so much give between IC and OOC time that I don't see time limits as even touching on it. Preparing is another story perhaps, but you can plan without being able to prepare (e.g. construct a plan using only the resources you have on you, and make sure that you basically kit out towards versatility rather than a specific course of action).

Yes, but you don't have any in character knowledge about what you're planning for. In any instance that I try to plan for something, it doesn't materially matter that I have a plan, I need to have a plan for an approximate situation. I can spend 50 hours OOC planning for a room we're about to enter, but unless I can figure out what's on the other side, my plan is likely to be faulty.


Again though, there's a large middle you're excluding between 'we have to get the idol in 18 seconds!' and 'we have infinite time to prepare'. The 48 hour dungeon example above is part of this middle - you have plenty of time to make some preparations, but not enough time to do everything you might want to - instead you have to budget your time and make decisions as to how to spend it.

The middle ground doesn't largely matter here unless you have perfect in character knowledge either because your DM outright tells you, or you are metagaming. The "we have 48 hours to get there" could vary anywhere from it will take us 48 hours running to get there, or you could have "it will take 5 minutes, no need to hurry." and it's impossible for a player to form a strategy based around either without guessing. Even a situation where it would take about 16 hours of actual adventuring is dramatically different from it taking 32. At that point you're mostly just guessing. Guessing isn't really sound strategy.

What I could get behind is something like "in two weeks X will happen where we have a 48 hour window to do Y." That gives flexibility and options. "You have 48 hours, try to guess if you should try to rush it or if you should gather intel" does not.


Its just another type of scenario and challenge. Not all games are the same; I personally would find a world that is completely passive except for the little bits I poke (that wait patiently for me to poke them) absolutely dull. I could go on and on about why I wouldn't like it, but the thing is - thats my taste, and if you want to play that kind of D&D then who am I to stop you?

Like I said, I don't require it be passive. What I require is that you have options. Having a timer and attrition combined eliminates options, mostly because, well, attrition is a style of combat too. It doesn't occur if you have preparation time, and it's the kind of combat that you're supposed to always avoid. Especially when you have a smaller group than what you're up against.


I'm happy to debate objective things about the attrition model - what behaviors it will result in and what effects it will have on balance, how things should be designed, etc. I think that sort of discussion is helpful to all involved, even if one side of the debate takes an opposing viewpoint or focuses on problems.

But I think we need to separate what can objectively be said about the various models and situations, and things that amount to taste. I'd also like it if we could stop presuming worst-case scenarios - for every worst-case scenario of a DM running a hell-hole attrition game I can posit the same kind of worst-case scenario of a DM running a non-attrition game, and we get nowhere with it.

Would you argue that creating the game such that it can only be played in a single way is superior to creating it and balancing it so that a multitude of strategies are valid? Would you argue that players should act based around metagame or DM granted knowledge rather than in character knowledge?


For anything that is going to be useful to real campaigns, I think the ideas need to be considered in the context of a DM who is actually trying to make it work and players are on board with the idea, rather than assuming a DM who is going to use it to 'stick it to the players' or players who would rather be doing something else as a matter of taste.

Or at least, lets not consider the worst-case scenario as a given, but instead use it as a boundary.

Instead of 'this is bad because given only six seconds you can't plan or prepare', I feel its better to say 'you need to make sure that they have enough time to do some sort of useful planning or preparation'. Instead of 'attrition means I'll be starting a fight at 15% of my hitpoints and we'll TPK', its better to say 'if you're using attrition then watch out at around 15% of max hitpoints, because thats when crits will start getting lethal'.

It doesn't have to be any of the numbers I use to be the point. I've seen people go from 50% to dead from a crit at even fairly medium levels. I've similarly seen people at like, 10 health survive 2 crits in a row. The point is, as the day progresses, the odds that luck causes someone to drop dead dramatically increases without any way to heal. If an entire adventure is framed like that, it's an inevitability, not something that can be worked around. It doesn't have to be a limit to planning time at all. It's time to get the information to formulate a plan, which can take days. Another day or two to get any supplies that you may require.

Basically, asking me to scale back from these supposed extremes doesn't really change anything. As each encounter grinds down your health, you find yourself facing dramatically increasing odds that you'll die from some unlucky hit, and not die due to fighting an encounter you shouldn't really have fought. Any time limit dramatically constraints the player unless they are just granted a significant amount of out of character knowledge. Combined with a limit to resources, you essentially have to play in one specific way.

Edit: Like I've said, I don't have any problem with players playing this way. I've done it, it can be fun. What I'm unhappy with here is that you can't change it up by for example, thinking through encounters instead, or having those days where you spend like, 2250 gp on three healing wands to have a single completely badass day of endless conquest.

[Aldizog]

I've found - for me - that the same thing is true as a player. I've played in campaigns where I can basically be at full after every fight. But there is something distinctly different, more visceral and, honestly, interesting, about situations where I have to seriously consider if I want to fight this guy I can beat, because it'd leave me too weak for what's to come. I remember an endurance run in a Slayers campaign - a game where basically you can cast all day no problem - where by the end of it I was running out of spellpoints and casting from my hitpoints and suddenly the big boss showed up. It was awesome - rather than rush into battle, I looked for a way to get out of there and succeed without direct confrontation, because I knew I couldn't win the direct fight.

It's not exactly the same situation, but I have also had some very thrilling endurance runs. My absolute favorite campaign ever, a 3.5 game that went from 1 to 20, started with an adaptation of module B10, Night's Dark Terror. That siege, along with the DM's skill at pacing, set the tone. Attrition was a real factor throughout the campaign and added to the excitement. This kind of game isn't for everyone, but with the right DM and the right players it can be a LOT of fun. There's a certain optimal-fun level of planning for me that is neither "kick in the door" nor "scry-buff-teleport," and this game had it.

"Know your players" and "have fun" are the most important principles.

[NichG]

It's a delicate balance. Players can't tell if it's going to go down to the wire with any given time limit, and that taking the time to do anything else would end up ruining them. That requires far more knowledge of the run than any DM has been willing to give me. If it takes over an entire day just to explore a place, let alone get through all the encounters, the reasonable player response is dramatically different from one that has in your example, 8 encounters and plenty of time to rest twice.

The thing is, a player doesn't know which of these it will be. You could always go along by just outright telling players things without them having to work for it, but that sort of makes one thing interesting by making another less interesting.


Well one element of this is just having experience with a particular DM. If your DM consistently does one thing or another, you can get a feel for it. Even beyond that, if you have no idea, you're still just balancing two risks.

Consider your previous statement, that you'd just outright refuse a job that you thought would be too tightly timed to succeed in. It costs you very little to, instead of outright refusing, spend say 1/4 your available time researching it, make a decision based on how much time you think it will take you, and then decide whether to accept or refuse it. You've lost half a day if you end up refusing, but you've also given yourself the chance to determine that you can in fact do it.

This sort of choice 'how much time do I spend in prep versus how much time do I spend actively pursuing the goal' can be strategically interesting as well. And if the price of failure is 'well you just don't get the treasure this time', then its not actually all that bad if you end up making the decision incorrectly, since you wouldn't get the treasure anyhow if you just refused the job.



My view of them has always been all that takes 0 rounds unless you're quiet.


This is kind of what I was talking about when I was complaining about assuming the worst. There's no reason this has to be true, and if it not being true makes for better gameplay, then the DM can and should go make it not true.

If these are the guys at the front of a bandit camp, sure. But if you're talking about subterranean tunnels that extend down over three dungeon levels with hundred-meter passages connecting them, the noise from a fight at the entrance shouldn't be audible to everyone.



Hence why like I said, I prefer to take several days to prepare and then blitz the entire thing, but as I've also mentioned, intel is slow. I think a lot slower than some people expect. One game, we spent over three weeks in character gathering functional intel before hitting a CR+14 encounter that was literally impossible to beat in a frontal confrontation. It took three weeks because that's how long it took to get the crucial bits of information we needed.


That's a different kind of scenario - not a bad one, but I don't really feel like a CR+14 encounter would be appropriate for an attrition-heavy scenario.

And I would expect lots of player fatigue in the sort of campaign where every enemy was CR+14 - in my experience at least. I had a campaign where there was a single adversary like this (required lots of planning/intelligent strategy/etc to defeat because it had very strong direct advantages over the party) - from first contact to victory took three sessions, and by the third session the players were basically sick and tired of it and essentially just started giving up.



I should point out that if you're talking strategy here, attrition is always to be avoided. And from that strategic point of view, you should withdraw if you don't have adequate intelligence on the enemy. It's also not a strategic choice to put yourself between the main body of the enemy and another force because you're weakened.


I'm guessing you're using this in the military strategy sense. Attrition means something very different there - its measured in dead bodies. For hitpoints, a better analogy would be supplies of ammunition.

The other thing is that the D&D squad-level stuff is pretty different from e.g. large-scale army maneuvers or even necessarily overt military actions. If you are vastly outnumbered by the enemy but still 'really need' to accomplish something in the center of their strength, then stealth and avoiding battle becomes the only viable option.



I'd consider that to completely bypass the encounter, you'd be using enough invisibility to cover an entire party plus the silence, the cost is probably higher than a surprise assault to both eliminate them at the cost of the same resources.


That could depend on a lot of details of both the party and the scenario. In a lot of dungeon modules, for example, there might be two paths or three paths to get to the same place. I ran Labyrinth of Madness for a laugh and that module basically has a titan who wanders around in the dungeon and utterly destroys anyone who overtly confronts him, but in general who is easy to avoid because you can see him coming and there's lots of ground-cover that human-sized people can hide in (my group TPK'd when they picked a fight with him, but he's completely avoidable and absolutely worth pretty much any resource cost you can pay in order to avoid)



Yes, but you don't have any in character knowledge about what you're planning for. In any instance that I try to plan for something, it doesn't materially matter that I have a plan, I need to have a plan for an approximate situation. I can spend 50 hours OOC planning for a room we're about to enter, but unless I can figure out what's on the other side, my plan is likely to be faulty.


This kind of thing is why older editions had a lot of people listening at doors, sending the thief to scout ahead, etc. Similarly, the 'capture a prisoner and interrogate' suggestion I gave a few posts back solves this problem.



The middle ground doesn't largely matter here unless you have perfect in character knowledge either because your DM outright tells you, or you are metagaming. The "we have 48 hours to get there" could vary anywhere from it will take us 48 hours running to get there, or you could have "it will take 5 minutes, no need to hurry." and it's impossible for a player to form a strategy based around either without guessing. Even a situation where it would take about 16 hours of actual adventuring is dramatically different from it taking 32. At that point you're mostly just guessing. Guessing isn't really sound strategy.


The thing is, its just an incomplete information game. You can do better than random at incomplete information games, and in fact they tend to have lots of interesting quirks you don't get in complete information games.

I disagree that you need perfect knowledge to make strategic decisions, and I'd argue that aside from highly asymmetrical modern warfare situations where there's things like satellite coverage and you're on the technologically superior side, that kind of perfect knowledge isn't realistic. More Sun Tzu, less CIA analyst. Leverage what information you can get and then make the best/most robust decisions you can given that information, rather than giving up when you don't have complete information.

You could argue 'well its dumb to risk my life on a job where I have to make compromises for incomplete when I can take a job where I don't' but I'd argue that comes down to personal taste in playstyle rather than anything objective as far as player enjoyment. Lots of - dare I say most - campaigns involve people who are playing characters designed to engage with the scenario, even if that means a degree of brashness/foolhardiness/risk-seeking behavior that might get their characters killed.

Objectively speaking, the safe way to get rich in D&D is to cheese out Craft, but that has little impact on what people actually want to play.



What I could get behind is something like "in two weeks X will happen where we have a 48 hour window to do Y." That gives flexibility and options. "You have 48 hours, try to guess if you should try to rush it or if you should gather intel" does not.

Like I said, I don't require it be passive. What I require is that you have options. Having a timer and attrition combined eliminates options, mostly because, well, attrition is a style of combat too. It doesn't occur if you have preparation time, and it's the kind of combat that you're supposed to always avoid. Especially when you have a smaller group than what you're up against.


I don't get this claim that attrition doesn't occur if you have preparation time. Where does that come from exactly?



Would you argue that creating the game such that it can only be played in a single way is superior to creating it and balancing it so that a multitude of strategies are valid? Would you argue that players should act based around metagame or DM granted knowledge rather than in character knowledge?


My general feel about strategic validity is that there's an 'edge of chaos'. You don't want only one option to be valid, but at the same time you don't want every option to be equally valid either. Too many valid options and basically there is no actual strategic challenge anymore, just picking how you'd like things to resolve. Too few options and there's no creativity, the challenge is too hard, or it becomes a game of 'read the DM's mind'.

My general thought about metagame knowledge is that there's a time and a place for it. I'm a big fan of the idea that you can play a high-Wis character by using your OOC observations about things your DM likes/dislikes. I also accept the view that in-character knowledge encompasses more things than can possibly travel down the narrow bandwidth of the DM describing the world to the players, and so there's some leeway for players to say 'well I could have noticed this or that'. But I'd tighten it up for a tournament module and give more slack for a home game - its a style thing.

I would say that what a DM does to mold an existing game at their own table doesn't need to be generalizable to all play experiences. Adjusting the game to suit your own table means that you can sacrifice generalities in the host system in exchange for benefits to local preferences in play.

In other words, if I and my players want to play a game about bulky people beating people up, then cutting the Wizard class from the game is a good idea. But that doesn't mean that cutting the Wizard class from 'everyone's D&D' is a good idea - I'm customizing to suit particular tastes. But if we want to reasonably discuss the consequences of cutting the wizard for my 'bulky people beating people up' game, we both need to buy into the general concept at least for the sake of argument, or the discussion basically gets frozen forever at 'well I like wizards so I don't think you should cut them'/'the game isn't about wizards', instead of moving on to things like what to do about the sudden lack of magic weapons and items.



It doesn't have to be any of the numbers I use to be the point. I've seen people go from 50% to dead from a crit at even fairly medium levels. I've similarly seen people at like, 10 health survive 2 crits in a row. The point is, as the day progresses, the odds that luck causes someone to drop dead dramatically increases without any way to heal. If an entire adventure is framed like that, it's an inevitability, not something that can be worked around.


At low levels, an orc with a great axe can kill a character in a single crit. That is not a property of attrition, thats a property of the great axe. What you call an inevitability is actually far worse in a game without attrition, because the enemies have to be different.

In the attrition game, you might fight kobolds - they can't kill a full hitpoint character with a crit, or even one at half. If you're down to 50% of your hitpoints, you now have the option to use different tactics in the fight - stay away from the front line and plink with a boy, let summoned monsters do the tanking, whatever. At some point you have few enough hitpoints that the kobolds can now crit-kill you. At this point, it is your choice to wade into the thick of combat - if you get killed, its a direct consequence of your choice.

It also just has a certain percentage chance of happening - lets call it P_attrition.

In the non-attrition game, you're fighting the orc with class levels and a great axe. His crits are going to be worse than the kobold crits, because he has to represent a tangible threat to a party of 4 fully-healed characters within the ~2 rounds he has to live. This orc may hit you in round 1 and then hit you again in round 2. That second hit could kill you. The first hit could be a crit, and that might kill you if you're the wizard. This also has a certain computable chance of killing you, call it P_full.

It is factually incorrect to say that it is impossible to make P_attrition = P_full. At the end of the day, both are 'I have this % chance of dying on this adventure given some model of how I choose my actions' and whether the game was attrition or not that percentage chance can be set to be exactly the same.

The difference is in how much control the player has over that probability. In an attrition game, every choice made throughout the day - lets call that 12 combat rounds - contributes to P_attrition. In the game where every fight is done at full resources, you only have 3 combat rounds in which your decisions can actually affect P_full.

Your argument assumes the unwillingness or inability of the DM to adjust encounters to appropriately tune these probabilities. If I applied the same standards to 'your' D&D, I would also conclude that it will chew up characters like popcorn.



It doesn't have to be a limit to planning time at all. It's time to get the information to formulate a plan, which can take days. Another day or two to get any supplies that you may require.


This is all personal preference though. All you're saying is that it takes you this much time to come up with a solution that you would feel comfortable with. The plans you are comfortable with and the plans you construct are not universally representative of how the game is played. We can go back and forth on anecdotal examples and counter-examples, but I don't feel like we'll make any progress this way.



Edit: Like I've said, I don't have any problem with players playing this way. I've done it, it can be fun. What I'm unhappy with here is that you can't change it up by for example, thinking through encounters instead, or having those days where you spend like, 2250 gp on three healing wands to have a single completely badass day of endless conquest.

This is back to matters of taste I think. I disagree that players should always have the luxury of complete control over the scenario - there are elements in the scenario that limit what strategies work and what strategies fail, and you shouldn't always be able to use the same standard operating procedure to deal with every situation. I also disagree with your assertion that you can't 'think through encounters' in this model, because it supposes that doing meaningful thinking under the constraint of imperfect information and resource availability is impossible, which is just untrue.

Edit: Wow, the post lengths are doubling with each iteration...

[Thrair]

Thanks for all the input guys. Ok. I think this is my finalized list of campaign rules and houserules I'll be using. I ditched the ban on CLW wands.


Paizo Official only. No third party. I’m currently also not including anything from 3.5 (except Practiced Spellcaster), but as the game progresses and I see how things end up, I might start allowing things from 3.5 on a case-by-case basis.

Races & Stats
1) 25-Point buy for stats.
2) Non-core races are fine, but any RP cost in excess of 10 is taken from the point buy.
-This is to keep high RP Race PCs in line with core-race PCs.
3) HP is max for first level, as normal. Additional levels are average rounded up.
-d6=4, d8=5, d10=6, d12=7, etc.


Traits & Drawbacks
1) 2 free traits each, as standard. Only one of these can be Dangerously Curious or a flat stat-boost (Such as +2 Initiative or +1 X Save traits).
-I prefer at least one of the traits a player has be for characterization, and it keeps everyone from having the same traits every game and helps people flesh out character personality a bit.
2) Players can buy an additional trait (even a stat-boost one) if they take a drawback, but I do except them to use it in characterization and roleplay.
-I know this is a bit harsh and restrictive. It can just get a little old when someone selects a trait/flaw from a powergaming standpoint, then ignores the flaw outside of it’s pure in-game mechanics. Especially since a lot of drawbacks are highly situational and can be traded for potent overall boosts.

Character Creation & Mulligan
1) After a couple sessions with their character, everyone gets a free use-it-or-lose-it mulligan to tweak their character a bit if they’re not quite happy with it. This also applies for replacement characters if there was a cause to reroll.
-This isn’t really intended to completely change a character. It’s just to allow a player a chance to test-drive the character a bit before finalizing everything and having it set in stone.
2) If you end up having to reroll a character because your original died, it has be different in notable ways from the old character. If you want to keep the character, get them rezzed. Don’t pull out their long-lost identical twin that was separated from them at birth.

Houserules
1) Everyone gets a minor bonus feat. Examples of minor feats are things like Improved Unarmed Strike, Endurance,Eschew Materials, Breadth of Experience, Cypher Script, Master Craftsman, etc. In general, eligible feats are either out-of-combat/skill-monkey type feats, highly situational, or just a blatant feat tax.
-This allows for a little extra customization in grabbing some minor feat without worrying about blowing one of your actual feat slots on it, or to lessen the feat tax penalty on a cool feat-chain.
2) PCs get additional negative hitpoints equal to their character level. In the case of Diehard and related abilities, you still fall unconscious if you drop below your natural negative HP.
-I like hitting the party with tough encounters. At high level with just core, it’s easy to go from “heavily wounded” to “dead” without hitting the unconscious stage. Especially if it’s a crit that does the deed.
3) Practiced Spellcaster (+4 to Caster Level, up to your current HD) feat from 3.5 is houseruled in.
-Multiclasses have it bad enough without losing this feat from 3.5E. And Magical Knack exists with a +2 to CL, which fits in with Paizo’s “trait is half a feat” rule-of-thumb. And, frankly, a multiclass spellcaster is generally far less of a risk for high-level game-breaking shenanigans than a primary spellcaster, anyways.
4) After the game starts, magic items will, on occasion, be available in a form outside of their normal slot. While you won’t start with any items outside of official (this is just to make double-checking things at the start easier), items will sometimes drop as loot or have a chance to be found in cities that are customized into a different slot. So you might be able to get a Ring of Natural Armor +3, or a Amulet of Mighty Constitution +2, etc.
-I think it’s a bit daft to assume no wizard has ever figured out how to place an enchantment to boost the wearer’s strength on anything but a belt. Do note that these “after-market” style items will be less common, and possibly more expensive if purchased or commissioned from a merchant.
-It also prevents the issue where PCs can’t get a useful item bonus because that slot that provides said bonus is desperately needed for something else. Prime example is Monks being forced to choose between and Amulet of Mighty Fists and and Amulet of Natural Armor, when they already have issues being able to achieve a balance of damage and AC.


Now. As for my DMing style:
1) I do reserve the right to invoke Rule Zero. Though I try to avoid doing so, unless it’s to the party’s benefit.
2) While I am not trying to “win” against the players, I intend to make encounters challenging. The character creation under this setup is quite generous for making powerful characters. If the bad guys aren’t up to par, things get boring.
3) I don’t like the 15-minute adventure day system. While those types of combat sessions will happen, I will also toss in occasional marathon-style adventure days or situations where you aren’t able to stop and rest for spells for whatever reason.
4) Not every fight the party gets into will necessarily be “winnable”. Some encounters will be “talk this out or get the hell out of dodge”. If every encounter can be solved by sticking the pointy end into them, things get very predictable. I like to keep players guessing and have a reason to not just say “screw diplomacy, charge”. However, if the party bites off more than they can chew, I try to give them a way out, rather than risk a TPK. Worst-case scenario is, if nothing else, not every enemy will try to kill them. They might take them prisoner instead. Or be more concerned with their own issues to stop and make sure all the unconscious PCs are actually dead.
5) While optimizing is fine, if some of the party is getting outshined, I might ask a player to tone it down a bit. Failing that, I will try and tailor some encounters/situations to the strengths of the outshined player/s. Last resort if someone’s breaking the game at the other players’ expense will be generous applications of save-or-suck directed at the offending player. I avoid save-or-die, though.

This look like an acceptable list of houserules?