Less Rests, More Feats

[Whiskeyjack8044]

So here is another hairbrained stream of consciousness idea for you guys to pick apart.

My Goal: Get players to take more risks and use more resources during an adventuring day without resting after every encounter.

I use Milestone instead of experience because I hate keeping track of points and I want more control over power scaling. That doesn't have anything to do with this, its just for context.

The Idea: A scoring system that can be redeemed for feats or for quests that lead to things players want.

So they way it works would be simple once we figure out how to balance it. Every time the party completes an encounter, Combat, RP, Exploration, or Puzzle, they get a point. After 2 encounters each point earned is doubled, after 4 encounters each point earned is tripled. These points can be used to "buy" feats or magic items.

Let's arbitrarily say 10 is the cost of a feat. After 5 adventureing days of 1 or 2 encounters Per-day you can get a cool new feat without having to level up and give up an ASI. If you push yourself and tackle 4 encounters a day you can earn that cool new feat in just a couple of adventuring days. If you go crazy and complete 6 you could get a feat in a single session. After purchasing a feat in this was the cost would double for the next one.

Now I think it would be a bit strange if you used these points to just out right give a player a magic item mid session, but if they wanted to spend their points for that item I'd create a side quest for them to find it, or put it somewhere that makes sense in the dungeon for them to find. And this doesn't even have items, it could be a cool mount or even a pet or a NPC agent/contact of some sort.

The major problem I see is that if the numbers become too big or if this get too complicated then I've just recreated EXP and given two different progression tracks to keep up with. Your thoughts as always are welcomed!

[Mith]

I don't know your campaign style, but would it work for you to do just gold and then down time to train skills and feats? Basically pay extra in down time costs to take the time to focus on the skill/feat.

[Jerrykhor]

The problem is you would devalue the ASI (and feats) of Fighters since having more ASI/feats supposed to be one of their strengths.

I'm not sure why you would want to encourage your players to take more risks. Sure they would after you implement this, but most likely its because they become so powerful by having a ton of feats.

Do you really want to see a Paladin with GWM, PAM, Tough, Lucky, Sentinel, and Mounted Combatant?

[SiCK_Boy]

You should try asking your players why they rest after every encounter. That should inform the incentive you decide on.

If they are just too afraid of dying, for example, your incentive could take the form of easier resurrection magic rather than feats.

If it is driven by character resources (spells, etc.), maybe that is what your incentive should address.

I’m not advocating for one solution being better than others, but I think you need more insight into your player behavior before you come up with an alternative reward / progression system.

One last thing to consider is encounter difficulty. Your point system should account for difficulty. If players knew in advance the difficulty level of encounters, they could make a more informed decision about continuing for “one more encounter before we rest.” But without knowing, they may decide the risk of a deadly encounter outweight the potential point gain; if they systematically presume deadly as the baseline encounter difficulty, then the system may fall apart anyway.

[Whiskeyjack8044]

I disagree that it weakens ASI/Feats for fighters. Even if Fighter only take ASI because they already have the feats they like, they will have higher stats (and sooner) than the other classes which is generally better than a feat anyway. Otherwise they can just have a butt ton of feats of they want to keep up with that for some reason.

I think I'd only use this in dungeons specifically. It really undercuts the tension and decision making if the party boards up a room and rests after every encounter. You can only have the monsters beat down the door so many times. This is a way to incentivize the party to keep pushing and makes that last fight more dramatic as they have less resources.

[SiCK_Boy]

I disagree that it weakens ASI/Feats for fighters. Even if Fighter only take ASI because they already have the feats they like, they will have higher stats (and sooner) than the other classes which is generally better than a feat anyway. Otherwise they can just have a butt ton of feats of they want to keep up with that for some reason.

I think I'd only use this in dungeons specifically. It really undercuts the tension and decision making if the party boards up a room and rests after every encounter. You can only have the monsters beat down the door so many times. This is a way to incentivize the party to keep pushing and makes that last fight more dramatic as they have less resources.

The reason you can only have the monsters beat down the door so many time is because normally, the dungeon runs out of monsters and the players “win”. Boarding up against a bunch of dopes monsters who come one after the other in a straight line may just be sound strategy.

You do what you want, you game and your fun in the end, but I still think you should talk with your players first, and maybe also consider reviewing your dungeon design and/or monster strategies before adding a system whose main reward will be a major power increase for your players.

Also curious to know if there is any other reason, besides not wanting to do the calculations and keeping track of stuff, why you use milestone instead of XP (and if there was a discussion with your players about what levelling system they’d rather use as part of your session 0).

[AHF]

I disagree that it weakens ASI/Feats for fighters. Even if Fighter only take ASI because they already have the feats they like, they will have higher stats (and sooner) than the other classes which is generally better than a feat anyway. Otherwise they can just have a butt ton of feats of they want to keep up with that for some reason.

I think I'd only use this in dungeons specifically. It really undercuts the tension and decision making if the party boards up a room and rests after every encounter. You can only have the monsters beat down the door so many times. This is a way to incentivize the party to keep pushing and makes that last fight more dramatic as they have less resources.

Another way to do that is to have quests be time sensitive. If there is a ticking clock then there is a consequence for over resting such as the person they are attempting to save already having been sacrificed; the magic item they are questing to recover having been removed; the bad guy having fled; etc.

[TexasSkiandFish]

Another way to do that is to have quests be time sensitive. If there is a ticking clock then there is a consequence for over resting such as the person they are attempting to save already having been sacrificed; the magic item they are questing to recover having been removed; the bad guy having fled; etc.

This.

We typically have 4-6 encounters per short rest and 1 short rest per day. Usually 8-12 encounters per long rest.

If we tried to a rest after every encounter then the effects that AHF described would happen to our party.

[rlc]

Don’t do feats. Have things be time sensitive, or make each item rarity require a different number of points.