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13 months ago ::
Jun 02, 2012 - 11:00PM
#21
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The "problem" is that your players are used to things like internally-consistent systems and logical functions, and aren't scared off by words like metamathematics.
Requiring internal consistency: check. Requiring logic: also check, but with a capital "L". Metamath: we know an all-but-dissertation PhD candidate in the topic we've tried to get to join us... How'd you know?
To be fair, I'm one of them by both vocation and avocation; we're modellers, forecasters, and analysts for our paychecks. Of course, those skills translate frighteningly well to the non-corporate "real" world, and thus they get dragged into the fantasy worlds as well. No big surprise there.
Years ago, we actually used to keep logs of DM-rulings, to make sure to maintain that oh-so-vital consistency. By the time we decided to experiment with rulings-on-the-fly alone, it was too late. Today, we mostly don't need no stinkin' logs, we just remember anyway: recreational hazard.
Yes, these are not major problems, as we can hand-wave away the 24-hour rule in multiple ways, but it'd be nice to learn how the devs handle these questions in their internal games, since they must've run across them.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 03, 2012 - 12:48AM
#22
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Date Joined:
Oct 22, 2007
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Personally, I don't think the 1-encounter work day is an issue at all. It's about adventure design.
If there really is no time pressure on a particular adventure, it makes perfect sense for the party to go in, use its most powerful stuff on the first thing it sees and then back out and come back the next day. And if there's no time pressure, what's the problem?
Sometimes, though, it's worth creating tension to make this an invalid option. They have to stop the sacrifice that's going to happen today. They have to get a message to the king before the enemy invades. And so on.
So...adventure design is the answer.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 03, 2012 - 1:10AM
#23
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Date Joined:
Mar 26, 2008
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How does one suggest changing things to address the "80-second workday" as brought up in post #2?
Allow your PCs to purchase wands of cure light wounds. As long as they've got a spellcaster they'll need to eventually rest. But the wands will help keep them going until the spellcasters do request they stop for the day. It works for our Pathfinder games.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 03, 2012 - 2:49AM
#24
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Let's borrow your idea of a "wound" (Though I like the term "injury" better) every time you drop below zero hitpoints. I also wouldn't mind seeing "wounds" being accumulated every time you take more than half your total hitpoints in one hit but that's niether here nor there. How about every time you accumulate a "wound", you lose one HD. This loss is permanent until, as you say, the character rests for one full day per "wound". A character could still continue adventuring, while wounded, but would be start into a "death spiral" only in that his "work day" would become progressively shorter. Something that, I feel, would represent the abstract nature of hitpoints as things like endurance and morale. Yes you can soldier on through the wounds but they're -eventually- going to bring you down unless you rest up fully.
This would also allow for a more Heroic feeling at later levels through having more HD. You could press on through more injuries.
Great idea! It nicly complete with short rests, but also encourage to make longer rests in village, whitch in turn means players once going to dungeons WILL STAY THERE LONGER - no more "24-second workday"
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13 months ago ::
Jun 03, 2012 - 4:37AM
#25
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Date Joined:
May 24, 2012
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Requiring internal consistency: check. Requiring logic: also check, but with a capital "L". Metamath: we know an all-but-dissertation PhD candidate in the topic we've tried to get to join us... How'd you know?
My avatar probably gave it away, but look up John Conway's Game of Life and "the glider" if it didn't. I have an avocational interest in... well, everything. I can discourse on linguistic anthropology, firearms ballistics and the history of jazz with about equal ability; I paint about as well as I shoot, I find paradoxes both highly amusing and very interesting, and the Logical and mathematical underpinnings of mechanical systems (both the engineering sense and the game designer sense) fascinate me. I love taking things apart in order to figure out how they work so that I can make new and more interesting things. Cliff Stoll's TED Talk made total sense to me. I believe there is no phrase in English more disgusting than "uninteresting" (except maybe "no user serviceable parts inside"). I read Eric Raymond, Doug Hofstadter, Richard Feynman, Ernest Nagel and James Newman for fun. I find it a little sad that most people don't do these things.
In short, I'm One Of You.
Yes, these are not major problems, as we can hand-wave away the 24-hour rule in multiple ways, but it'd be nice to learn how the devs handle these questions in their internal games, since they must've run across them.
Next time I run into Chris or Greg, I'll ask. I'd like to know as well.
Personally, I don't think the 1-encounter work day is an issue at all. It's about adventure design.
If there really is no time pressure on a particular adventure, it makes perfect sense for the party to go in, use its most powerful stuff on the first thing it sees and then back out and come back the next day. And if there's no time pressure, what's the problem?
Sometimes, though, it's worth creating tension to make this an invalid option. They have to stop the sacrifice that's going to happen today. They have to get a message to the king before the enemy invades. And so on.
So...adventure design is the answer.
Ordinarily I'd agree, but there are two problems with this.
First problem: most DMs suck. Sorry, but it's true. Most DMs are not writers, wouldn't know dramatic tension if it bit them in the ass, and aren't mentally swift enough to improvise their way out of a wet paper bag. Perkins just wrote a Dungeon Master Experience article about this, actually.
Second problem: dramatic tension works as a narrative device because the characters are able to push past their percieved limits in order to accomplish their goals. That doesn't work in D&D, because the characters' limits are hard-coded into the system. Push the PCs to a certain point and the math will kill them, and no amount of grit or determination will change this. 4e did a very good job of simulating that grit and determination with the Healing Surge mechanic, but even that came up against the mathematical limits of character endurance eventually (about six encounters, in my experience).
In effect, your choices are to either let the PCs hole up for a day and rest between every encounter or two, or to artificially force them onward and run the increasingly-likely risk of pushing them into a TPK that they are simply too depleted to avoid. Both outcomes spoil whatever sense of tension and pacing you're trying to achieve.
Allow your PCs to purchase wands of cure light wounds. As long as they've got a spellcaster they'll need to eventually rest. But the wands will help keep them going until the spellcasters do request they stop for the day. It works for our Pathfinder games.
That's an unhelpful non-answer for several reasons. (1) Wands of Cure Light Wounds don't exist in the playtest. (2) Wands of Cure Light Wounds obviate the need for any other kind of healing mechanic, which renders much of the system's intended balance irrelevant. (3) Wands of Cure Light Wounds also destroy any sense of tension and pacing the DM is trying to achieve. (4) Wands of Cure Light Wounds merely sidestep the issue; what we want to do is fix the issue. (5) This isn't Pathfinder.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 03, 2012 - 6:38AM
#26
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Date Joined:
Oct 24, 2007
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Personally, I don't think the 1-encounter work day is an issue at all. It's about adventure design.
It's not just about adventure design though. If only certain types of adventures and situations have an incentive for the party to keep adventuring after a single fight then you can easily end up with the majority of adventures over time being ones in which fight-sleep-fight is the norm. That in and of itself wouldn't be a problem except that the classes and mechanics are intentionally balanced around the idea that party is normally doing multiple fights between long rests.
Thus on the one hand you have for instance wizards and clerics who have limited abilities that refresh every day and the number of uses of those abilities is balanced against the notion they are typically doing multiple fights per day. But on the other hand if the game system makes it so that the majority of adventure types do not provide any incentive to avoid sleeping after every fight, then these characters are only having one fight per day and using all their dailies abilities almost every fight, making them much better than intended overall.
So yes, adventures can be designed to mitigate the problem, but unless you are artificially designing every adventure specifically to avoid the issue then you can end up with the sort of imbalance described above. Thus it's not just about adventure design, it's also about when you look at the broad spectrum of common adventure designs how frequently does this issue arise.
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