Players resting after every encounter

[gogogome]

How can I penalize this? I'm using premade adventures and they don't mention any time constraints or random chance of an attack during rest, and I'm pretty sure if they get attacked when they rest it's going to be a total party kill.

This is levels 1-3 by the way.

[Surpriser]

The straightforward solution is playing the creatures and NPCs in the adventure like real, intelligent creatures (unless they aren't).
If the PCs fight one group of enemies, their friends will wonder what happens and scout around. If they then find the PCs resting, the resulting ambush is not DM vindictiveness, but the natural consequence of their actions.
Even if that is not the case, most creatures will somehow react on the actions of the PCs. That may include setting up fortifications, calling for reinforcements, or simply packing up and disappearing together with all the loot.

Many adventures don't give a lot of guidelines apart from "if the PCs enter this room, inhabitant X does Y". If you have enemies remain passive and just wait for the PCs to come to them, then the "15 minute adventuring day" will be the go-to solution for your PCs. Instead, show them that the creatures in your world will react on their constant resting.

[bjoern]

Have the difficulty of everything you throw at them increase proportionaly. For every day they adventure for 15 minutes and then rest, have the challenges "level up" at a rate 32x that of the players. 8 hrs divided by 15 minutes. While the players are busy being lazy dead beat couch potatoes for 23hrs and 45 minutes a day, the opposition is doing the proper normal work day of 8 hours and gaining experience at a faster (actually normal rate)

Alternatively, you could divide all xp the party gets by 32. Mechanically this may be easier.

[Thurbane]

Don't forget Divine casters only get their spells back once/day at a specific time, regardless of how much they rest.

Also, any spells cast within 8 hours of spells being replenished are not replaced.

Wandering monsters should encounter the resting party fairly often, unless they go to lengths to avoid detection.

[Surpriser]

Also, even if the adventure does not mention time constraints, that does not mean that none exist in your adaptation. You can find a reason to hurry for virtually any adventure.

This is possible even on an encounter-to-encounter basis:
Once the goblins have noticed the intrusion of the PCs, they have 15 minutes to find the hostages and free them, otherwise they only find the corpses and otherwise empty rooms.

[Karl Aegis]

Levels 1-3 suck. If they don't rest every 15 minutes they risk dying horribly every time they take a step. Levels 1-3 is more luck than actual skill and a stray hit is almost guaranteed to kill someone.

[lsfreak]

Levels 1-3 suck. If they don't rest every 15 minutes they risk dying horribly every time they take a step. Levels 1-3 is more luck than actual skill and a stray hit is almost guaranteed to kill someone.

Yea, the appropriate way of dealing with things at those low of levels isn't to punish it. Use a vitality system (which while more lethal at higher levels, increases survivability very low ones), add readily available healing (maybe make a skill called Heal that lets you actually, you know, heal? :smallsigh:), increase the number of spells per day so your casters aren't turned into poorly trained marksman after a single encounter, and/or make enemies react more appropriately (i.e. they know combat is dangerous and do damn near anything to avoid physical conflict, just like [mentally sound] real people do, thus encounters can be solved without spending limited resources).

[jaydubs]

First thing to ask - are your players resting because there's no consequences to doing so, in order to always come into fights at 100 percent? Or are they resting because they've honestly exhausted a lot of their character resources after a single fight? Because those are two very different problems, that call for different responses.

If they're just being uber cautious, in an effort to avoid any risk, then yeah. You need need to add some consequences to resting after every fight. Or even better, just add something that makes them want to move forward right now. For instance, ask for a perception check. Tell them they hear some creatures in the next room, and it sounds like they're preparing something. Or maybe they hear some prisoners being tortured. The consequence of waiting doesn't have to be them getting attacked during the night, or the next encounter being more difficult. It can just as easily be that something unfortunate happens in the broader scheme of things (enemies get word out, or escape with a McGuffin), or NPCs they care about being hurt (the next room has commoners inside that just recently died, if only they had gotten there sooner...). You don't even have to actually change anything, so long as the players think something bad happens when they delay too long. For instance - when they get to the loot room, talk about how it looks all ransacked, and someone here had time to gather up a lot of the treasure and leave with it. That will motivate them to move faster the next time, even if you didn't actually reduce the loot at all from the module.

But if they're resting because not resting is going to get them all killed, you need to approach it differently. That means they're either being inefficient or the encounters are too hard. If the encounters are just plain too hard, tone them down or allow them to keep resting. If they're just bad at tactical combat, have some of the enemies demonstrate better tactics. Or talk to them about it. Or direct them to some guides. Or if you don't care to try to teach them tactics, same as above - allow them to keep resting, or tone down the difficulty.

[Blackhawk748]

Ok, heres an appropriate question, do they need to rest after every encounter? Because if they do it may be to hard for them, or they are novaing to hard, if they dont you need to attack them while that wait. Battles are loud and things in other rooms probably hear them, they will most likely investigate, find the PCs, get backup, and attack.

Edit: Ninja'd


Levels 1-3 suck. If they don't rest every 15 minutes they risk dying horribly every time they take a step. Levels 1-3 is more luck than actual skill and a stray hit is almost guaranteed to kill someone.

And i seriously question this. If your party has competent tactics you should be fine. For example, the party im in just fought through 3 encounters in rapid succession (they were so close together we could almost call it one encounter) and fought a total of 16 goblins, one of which had 3 levels in warrior (ya not really impressive but it makes him a leader) we lost a grand total of 10 HP combined, this is because everyone stayed by the Crusader with Iron Guards Glare, thus making it almost impossible for the goblins to hit anyone but the (AC 20) Crusader. And before you say "why didnt they throw alchemists fire or target his Touch AC some other way", his touch AC is 16 because of Shield Parry. Also the goblins werent being stupid, they used basic tactics, they shelled us with arrows before we got there, and they tried to bury us in numbers.

In short if your party has any grasp of tactics they should be ok, if they are dumb they need to rest more.

[gogogome]

It's more like they're not holding anything back.

So like the wizard memorizes magic missiles, expends them against the 3 hobgoblins in the encounter, then rests. The wizard is super powerful in one encounter and is rendered worthless in the following encounters, but that is negated by resting after every fight. A normal wizard would pick spells like sleep so he can afford to cast only one spell every encounter.

[Afgncaap5]

Why don't you have non-threatening, but definitely competitive, other adventuring groups with more motivation wander through if they do it too often?

"You guys are just... sitting here? With the eye of... I mean, the possible rumored treasures just down the hall? Okay there..."

Feel free to add secret passages with death traps for the other adventurers to find once they've served their purpose.

[jaydubs]

It's more like they're not holding anything back.

So like the wizard memorizes magic missiles, expends them against the 3 hobgoblins in the encounter, then rests. The wizard is super powerful in one encounter and is rendered worthless in the following encounters, but that is negated by resting after every fight. A normal wizard would pick spells like sleep so he can afford to cast only one spell every encounter.

Is he new? Because that's the way a lot of new players think wizards are supposed to be played. Memorize a bunch of blasting spells, and then just keep casting them. And then of course, they run out of spells, and don't want to keep playing a sub-par crossbowman.

I think in this case, the best thing to do is to talk to the group about how you don't want them resting after every combat, and that there will start being consequences to doing that. That way they aren't taken by surprise when you suddenly add those consequences, when they weren't present before.

Also, since it's actually a very reasonable concern not to want to play a crossbowman for 90 percent of a session when you roll a wizard, take that player aside privately and talk to him about it. Explain that he's nova-ing, and that it won't be sustainable over the long term. And explain some of the alternatives. Because again, "memorize magic missile and cast it at things" is actually the kind of strategy a lot of new players assume is the way a wizard is supposed to be played. Taking sleep or color spray instead, isn't nearly as common sense for a new player as it is for someone who reads D&D forums.

Repeat with any other players with nova-ing tendencies.

Another approach, which doesn't quite fall into attacking them while they're resting but is still very reasonable, is to bring the individual encounters to them. An entire area of enemies massed up will wipe them. But the 2-4 they're supposed to fight, in succession, might not. Those individual squads of enemies hear the fight, and approach, but for whatever reason don't team up before doing so. Then they don't have the option to rest, but also aren't overwhelmed.

[Blackhawk748]

Is he new? Because that's the way a lot of new players think wizards are supposed to be played. Memorize a bunch of blasting spells, and then just keep casting them. And then of course, they run out of spells, and don't want to keep playing a sub-par crossbowman.

I think in this case, the best thing to do is to talk to the group about how you don't want them resting after every combat, and that there will start being consequences to doing that. That way they aren't taken by surprise when you suddenly add those consequences, when they weren't present before.

Also, since it's actually a very reasonable concern not to want to play a crossbowman for 90 percent of a session when you roll a wizard, take that player aside privately and talk to him about it. Explain that he's nova-ing, and that it won't be sustainable over the long term. And explain some of the alternatives. Because again, "memorize magic missile and cast it at things" is actually the kind of strategy a lot of new players assume is the way a wizard is supposed to be played. Taking sleep or color spray instead, isn't nearly as common sense for a new player as it is for someone who reads D&D forums.

Repeat with any other players with nova-ing tendencies.

Another approach, which doesn't quite fall into attacking them while they're resting but is still very reasonable, is to bring the individual encounters to them. An entire area of enemies massed up will wipe them. But the 2-4 they're supposed to fight, in succession, might not. Those individual squads of enemies hear the fight, and approach, but for whatever reason don't team up before doing so. Then they don't have the option to rest, but also aren't overwhelmed.

This. Preparing 3 magic missiles is ok, its a valid play style, but he doesnt need to cast every round of every fight. At low levels playing an Arcane Caster involves a lot of "Waiting", most of the time the Fighters are wrecking the mooks and you only cast at other mages or archers that are out of reach. For instance, lets say you have 2 Magic Missiles and a Grease. You win Init. Hold action to cast Grease when something approaches. That thing will probably fall over. Now you could cast Magic Missile next turn, but why? One guy fell over and the rest have to walk around the grease pool you made. Congrats you have made this encounter so much easier for the rest of the party.

In the above scenario i would hold my Magic missiles for two things; Enemy caster, held to interrupt their spells, and for incorporeal targets (shadows are freakin nasty and may show up at level 2 or 3). Other than that 1d4+1 wont do a lot to your average mook, so your better off saving it for a priority target.

[Karl Aegis]

And before you say "why didnt they throw alchemists fire or target his Touch AC some other way", his touch AC is 16 because of Shield Parry. Also the goblins werent being stupid, they used basic tactics, they shelled us with arrows before we got there, and they tried to bury us in numbers.

Actually, I would ask why the goblins weren't using their naturally fast land speed to simply move away from someone they are aware threatens them and why they wouldn't use cheap slings and javelins instead of expensive bows? Why wouldn't they use the withdraw action and the run action to put some distance between you and try to consolidate their forces into one group instead of 3 separate groups? Why would creatures weak in melee combat engage in melee combat at all without their worg mounts? Why didn't they have circumstance bonuses from higher ground? Eventually someone would have died from a critical hit. 16 goblins throwing sling bullets or javelins every other round should have gotten enough critical hits to kill your entire party. If an orc crit you at a low level you die. That's just how the world is.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

As already mentioned, divine spellcasters can only recover their spells 1/day, but they don't even need to rest to do it. They just get their spells back at the same time every day.

Arcane spellcasters (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm#rest) must rest for eight hours to get his spells back, and every interruption including movement during that eight hours adds an additional hour to the required rest time. Furthermore, "To prepare any spell, a wizard must have enough peace, quiet, and comfort to allow for proper concentration."

It's easy enough to have the entire dungeon filled with tunnels between the rooms and halls so small that a tiny size creature would need to squeeze to fit through. Kobolds with their slight build (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060420a) trait can squeeze through, and it's easy enough to have kobolds throwing rocks/spears, flinging burning oil, and just causing sufficient harassment to completely prevent the party from resting. There should be enough sudden noises in the dungeon to make them jump and be constantly on their guard. Monsters aren't going to just sit in one place until the PCs 'pull' them like it's an MMO, they'll carry on with their lives, which may include wandering through rooms the PCs have already cleared. If the PCs are leaving the dungeon to rest, those monsters will discover their fallen comrades and alert others to the presence of intruders, so the PCs may discover a coordinated defense when they return. If they use Rope Trick to rest, it's simple enough to have a kobold peeking out of every hole and tunnel, and when they see the party climb a rope an disappear they'll gather their friends and build a fire under the spot they disappeared, filling the space with smoke and forcing the PCs out into a fight.

It's easy to prevent PCs from resting, you just have to be willing to make the opponents adapt to the situation.

[Brova]

How can I penalize this?

I don't know that you really want to do this. The game doesn't care on any level if the time between encounters is long enough to walk to the next room, or an entire day. If the Blood Crypt of Orcus, where the Goreblade is guarded by demons, undead, and traps just sits there being a dungeon, that's fine. Your game is not worse if players explore it in ten fifteen minute workdays or one 150 minute workday. There's a certain argument to be made for encouraging people to push on as a balanced mechanism (Wizards get worse over the course of the day, Rogues don't), but that ends up being ignored, feeling bad, or penalizing people for playing certain classes.

The fundamental issue here, in my view, is that people have different resource management systems with respect to the workday. While having Wizards and Warblades play differently within an encounter is cool, having them require arbitrarily different workdays is not. D&D basically has classes that start each encounter with all their resources refreshed regardless of what they did last time, and classes that don't. And both of those models are reasonable. Having the party crash through the dungeon in one go is cool and thematic, but gives up the ability to have timed adventures in a single dungeon. Having people expend resources on a daily basis is good for attrition and timed adventures, but does have the rest every battle problem (unless every dungeon is a race to stop the cultists). Where you have a problem is in parties with characters from different resource management schemes. You either end up with the Cleric feeling bad because he's used up all his resources and feels worthless for the rest of the encounters, or the Rogue feeling bad because he was balanced around a larger number of encounters, and has worse actions in each encounter as a result.

[Blackhawk748]

Actually, I would ask why the goblins weren't using their naturally fast land speed to simply move away from someone they are aware threatens them and why they wouldn't use cheap slings and javelins instead of expensive bows? Why wouldn't they use the withdraw action and the run action to put some distance between you and try to consolidate their forces into one group instead of 3 separate groups? Why would creatures weak in melee combat engage in melee combat at all without their worg mounts? Why didn't they have circumstance bonuses from higher ground? Eventually someone would have died from a critical hit. 16 goblins throwing sling bullets or javelins every other round should have gotten enough critical hits to kill your entire party. If an orc crit you at a low level you die. That's just how the world is.

See we always say "you should get enough crits to kill you" except that doesnt happen. They dont crit 1/20 of the time. Hell i was hit a grand total of three times that entire session, and we fought a grand total of 26 goblins, and they did consolidate numbers, the survivors ran into the big group, which threw all kinds of ranged attacks at us. The goblins that engaged us in melee were keeping us away from the archers. Combine this with the fact that we are in a cave nearby a city which is why there were no worgs. They were trying to stay under the radar. Also not all Goblins ride worgs and not all goblins are tactically intelligent enough to get a height bonus, not to mention the fact that there was no way to get one.

And yes an orc can kill you on a crit, it can also roll a one and do all of 8 damage to you. Luck is still a factor and im aware of this, but i have never had to rest after every encounter and i love playing at low levels because its about tactics and not how much power one individual has.

[Crake]

As already mentioned, divine spellcasters can only recover their spells 1/day, but they don't even need to rest to do it. They just get their spells back at the same time every day.

Arcane spellcasters (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm#rest) must rest for eight hours to get his spells back, and every interruption including movement during that eight hours adds an additional hour to the required rest time. Furthermore, "To prepare any spell, a wizard must have enough peace, quiet, and comfort to allow for proper concentration."

It's easy enough to have the entire dungeon filled with tunnels between the rooms and halls so small that a tiny size creature would need to squeeze to fit through. Kobolds with their slight build (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060420a) trait can squeeze through, and it's easy enough to have kobolds throwing rocks/spears, flinging burning oil, and just causing sufficient harassment to completely prevent the party from resting. There should be enough sudden noises in the dungeon to make them jump and be constantly on their guard. Monsters aren't going to just sit in one place until the PCs 'pull' them like it's an MMO, they'll carry on with their lives, which may include wandering through rooms the PCs have already cleared. If the PCs are leaving the dungeon to rest, those monsters will discover their fallen comrades and alert others to the presence of intruders, so the PCs may discover a coordinated defense when they return. If they use Rope Trick to rest, it's simple enough to have a kobold peeking out of every hole and tunnel, and when they see the party climb a rope an disappear they'll gather their friends and build a fire under the spot they disappeared, filling the space with smoke and forcing the PCs out into a fight.

It's easy to prevent PCs from resting, you just have to be willing to make the opponents adapt to the situation.

That all kinda assumed the party is resting INSIDE the dungeon, which may not always be the case.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

That all kinda assumed the party is resting INSIDE the dungeon, which may not always be the case.

You must have missed it:


Monsters aren't going to just sit in one place until the PCs 'pull' them like it's an MMO, they'll carry on with their lives, which may include wandering through rooms the PCs have already cleared. If the PCs are leaving the dungeon to rest, those monsters will discover their fallen comrades and alert others to the presence of intruders, so the PCs may discover a coordinated defense when they return.

[endur]

So let the PCs know that you are rolling on a wandering monster table. If you don't have a wandering monster table, just pick a random chance, and if there should be an encounter, have one of the nearest monster room's monster wander into the party. Also, you can have new monsters move into the dungeon, replacing slain monsters, and forcing the Party to re-clear rooms (i.e. monsters are respawning).

[kpumphre]

Supplies matter. Not a lot of gold at those levels. Have them track rations and so they need to hurry or starve

[Ephemeral_Being]

Levels 1-3 suck. If they don't rest every 15 minutes they risk dying horribly every time they take a step. Levels 1-3 is more luck than actual skill and a stray hit is almost guaranteed to kill someone.

I don't know where people get this idea. I run campaigns from level one all the time. They'll do 3-5 encounters in a "day," and if they prepare correctly there's no problem. If not, well. They'd die if they were at higher levels, too.

Free tip? Remind your party that they can buy Healing Belts from the MIC. Or Wands of Cure Light Wounds. They will save a low-level party. That's what they're there for. And even at higher levels, giving the Rogue the ability to heal himself is a really handy tool.

[Curmudgeon]

At levels 1-2 a Wizard should probably be starting every encounter by firing their loaded heavy crossbow. It's a perfectly reasonable action to take as it works at greater distances than Short- and Medium-range spells, and it also saves those limited spells. It's all part of learning to adapt play to the character's capabilities. Resting for a day after every encounter is a much less effective adaptation.

[Flickerdart]

Are they leaving the dungeon and then going home to rest, then coming back? Add random encounters on the way to/from the location. Also, maybe their fight drew the attention of some monsters from further down the dungeon, and now those monsters are coming to investigate, or following the PCs back to where they're stopping to rest and then robbing them.

[Arbane]

Remind the wizard they can use a sling or something. Yes it sucks, but being out of spells in hostile territory sucks a LOT more.

[Metahuman1]

Remember in that case the Wizard has just become a complete Liability to the entire party more so then to his enemy's unless he wasted 2 feats up front to be a lack luster combatant who even then won't contribute much if at all.



Honestly, level 4 is the absolute earliest I'd even entertain more then 1 encounter that isn't utterly trivial per day. Maybe even as high as 6th before you start upping the anti on that front.

I MIGHT reconsider if the party is a competent Gestalt and everyone has enough resources geared toward go all day to actually go all day, or if there REALLY heavily optimized with not running out of resources as a major facet of that.

[Tvtyrant]

You could always just give them some spell slots back after each encounter, or a free at-will ability. If they are casting magic missile you probably don't need to worry about them overpowering other players.

[Maglubiyet]

This is why wandering monster tables were invented. They create a real detriment to procrastinating.