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6 months ago ::
Dec 03, 2012 - 9:40AM
#1491
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In my experience D&D games are rarely that interesting to watch from the sidelines for most people for that long - of it were the people are probably working in the entertainment business  The exact time depends a lot on individuals and what is going on, but I doubt it is much longer than 15 minutes for most people (certainly the time I keep in mind when switching around between groups if they happen to split up).
I've never had a player sit out for an entire session (unless they didn't attend). I don't know where this notion that we're making people sit around and watch for hours comes from. I know Garthanos or someone said they were made to sit out for two sessions one time, but really who doesn't believe that is the fault of an abyssmally terrible DM? Especially given the profusion of healing in 4e I never saw a character down for more than a few minutes. Even in older editions where healing was harder to accomplish in battle, combats were much shorter. Players never sat out for very long. In cases where a character is killed, I've still never had a player sit out for long. In 4e I allowed players to take over NPCs, or even play some of my monsters. I have always encouraged players to have a folder of characters (with DDI they use Character Builder) ready to use at a moments notice. In that case it is encumbent on me to come up with a way to get them into the story as soon as possible. It isn't always necessary to have the party trek back to town and pick someone else up at the local Inn. I've had new characters written in during the same fight in which the old one died. And it isn't even that hard to do.
Kalex the Omen Dungeonmaster Extraordinaire Concerning Player Rules Bias
Show
Gaining victory through rules bias is a hollow victory and they know it.
The argument goes, that some idiot at the table might claim that because there is a "default" that is the only true way to play D&D. An idiotic misconception that should be quite easy to disprove just by reading the rules, coming to these forums, or sending a quick note off to Customer Support and sharing the inevitable response with the group. BTW, I'm not just talking about Next when I say this. Of course, D&D has always been this way since at least the late 70's when I began playing.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 03, 2012 - 9:50AM
#1492
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That's why you sculpt the flavour of the mechanic so that it feels less contrived or not contrived at all. As Dwarfslayer is found of saying (and I will paraphrase here): why should recovering magic be like resting a muscle? This is a place where I think getting a mechanic first (or a series of mechanics) and then finding ways to make sure they do not feel contrived is a better approach, especially when no matter what you do, it is going from a system that people can grok, "ah, so getting magic back is like easing my back pain," to something else.
Well because it's not. Resting is to refresh the mind so studying can be accomplished. That is explicitly stated in the rules if you bother to look. You sleep and still have no spells. Then you study, recommitting them to memory. Then you have spells. If you try to study with a weary mind, you don't remember what you studied, or remember it imperfectly. Which by the way, is not contrived, but very logical and, in fact, perfectly imitates real life.
Kalex the Omen Dungeonmaster ExtraordinaireConcerning Player Rules Bias
Show
Gaining victory through rules bias is a hollow victory and they know it.
The argument goes, that some idiot at the table might claim that because there is a "default" that is the only true way to play D&D. An idiotic misconception that should be quite easy to disprove just by reading the rules, coming to these forums, or sending a quick note off to Customer Support and sharing the inevitable response with the group. BTW, I'm not just talking about Next when I say this. Of course, D&D has always been this way since at least the late 70's when I began playing.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 03, 2012 - 11:39PM
#1493
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In my experience D&D games are rarely that interesting to watch from the sidelines for most people for that long - of it were the people are probably working in the entertainment business The exact time depends a lot on individuals and what is going on, but I doubt it is much longer than 15 minutes for most people (certainly the time I keep in mind when switching around between groups if they happen to split up).
I've never had a player sit out for an entire session (unless they didn't attend). I don't know where this notion that we're making people sit around and watch for hours comes from. I know Garthanos or someone said they were made to sit out for two sessions one time, but really who doesn't believe that is the fault of an abyssmally terrible DM? Especially given the profusion of healing in 4e I never saw a character down for more than a few minutes. Even in older editions where healing was harder to accomplish in battle, combats were much shorter. Players never sat out for very long. In cases where a character is killed, I've still never had a player sit out for long. In 4e I allowed players to take over NPCs, or even play some of my monsters. I have always encouraged players to have a folder of characters (with DDI they use Character Builder) ready to use at a moments notice. In that case it is encumbent on me to come up with a way to get them into the story as soon as possible. It isn't always necessary to have the party trek back to town and pick someone else up at the local Inn. I've had new characters written in during the same fight in which the old one died. And it isn't even that hard to do.
We are talking mid level 3.xE and most of 4E here. With each player taking 3 minutes and monsters taking 1-2 each, you could easily wait 15-20 minutes until your turn.
Nice to see that you house ruled boredom away by letting the players play your monsters, unless you want to reference the rule that makes that RAW somewhere...
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6 months ago ::
Dec 03, 2012 - 11:40PM
#1494
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Well no. See here's the thing. You can rest before doing four encounters. You just don't get your spells back. So what happens is that you can have a 10 day wilderness trip with 4 encounters and have the PCs still experience resource depletion during the journey.
Are they sleeping? Sure.
But they can't recover spells during the rest until they've completed some mechancial precondition that says "Okay we can recover spells after a rest now."
What it does is makes resource depletion a feature of every adventure without the DMing having to carefully set the pacing of his adventure to make that happen. And given that resource depletion is a balancing factor to the spellcaster classes, I think that's absolutely something we want, unless you want spellcasters to get all the advantages without any of the drawbacks.
Wow! Where is lokiare and his favorite word "contrived" when you need him?
Yes it is contrived, but no more contrived than having to sleep be able to read a book...
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6 months ago ::
Dec 03, 2012 - 11:42PM
#1495
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That's why you sculpt the flavour of the mechanic so that it feels less contrived or not contrived at all. As Dwarfslayer is found of saying (and I will paraphrase here): why should recovering magic be like resting a muscle? This is a place where I think getting a mechanic first (or a series of mechanics) and then finding ways to make sure they do not feel contrived is a better approach, especially when no matter what you do, it is going from a system that people can grok, "ah, so getting magic back is like easing my back pain," to something else.
Well because it's not. Resting is to refresh the mind so studying can be accomplished. That is explicitly stated in the rules if you bother to look. You sleep and still have no spells. Then you study, recommitting them to memory. Then you have spells. If you try to study with a weary mind, you don't remember what you studied, or remember it imperfectly. Which by the way, is not contrived, but very logical and, in fact, perfectly imitates real life.
That's just as contrived as anything else. It in no way imitates real life. You can memorize phrases and words pretty easily in real life even if you didn't just wake up from 6 hours of sleep. In fact its probably harder if you just woke up because you are groggy. Its completely contrived...
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 1:37AM
#1496
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In my experience D&D games are rarely that interesting to watch from the sidelines for most people for that long - of it were the people are probably working in the entertainment business The exact time depends a lot on individuals and what is going on, but I doubt it is much longer than 15 minutes for most people (certainly the time I keep in mind when switching around between groups if they happen to split up).
I've never had a player sit out for an entire session (unless they didn't attend). I don't know where this notion that we're making people sit around and watch for hours comes from. I know Garthanos or someone said they were made to sit out for two sessions one time, but really who doesn't believe that is the fault of an abyssmally terrible DM? Especially given the profusion of healing in 4e I never saw a character down for more than a few minutes. Even in older editions where healing was harder to accomplish in battle, combats were much shorter. Players never sat out for very long. In cases where a character is killed, I've still never had a player sit out for long. In 4e I allowed players to take over NPCs, or even play some of my monsters. I have always encouraged players to have a folder of characters (with DDI they use Character Builder) ready to use at a moments notice. In that case it is encumbent on me to come up with a way to get them into the story as soon as possible. It isn't always necessary to have the party trek back to town and pick someone else up at the local Inn. I've had new characters written in during the same fight in which the old one died. And it isn't even that hard to do.
I never said it was for a whole session. As Iokare pointed out, in 4e and mid/high levels in 3E missing even one or two rounds could mean doing nothing for at least 20 minutes (and in case of 3e missing the whole fight). Worse, even doing something could come down to doing nothing for a whole fight if what you did took 5 seconds to resolve, had little direct impact on the fight while the rest needs at least 5 minutes to resolve their rounds. Mind you, this is not directly related to the 5MWD persee, although it can happen due to a 5MWD. I just wanted to point out that arguing that "doing nothing, but observe" being fun is in practice only true to a very limited amount of time for most players and that to me sounds as a really hollow argument for allowing PCs to have a "side-kick" role.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 2:26AM
#1497
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That's just as contrived as anything else. It in no way imitates real life. You can memorize phrases and words pretty easily in real life even if you didn't just wake up from 6 hours of sleep. In fact its probably harder if you just woke up because you are groggy. Its completely contrived...
Prove it. Just because you say it doesn't make it so. I want concrete proofs.
Kalex the Omen Dungeonmaster ExtraordinaireConcerning Player Rules Bias
Show
Gaining victory through rules bias is a hollow victory and they know it.
The argument goes, that some idiot at the table might claim that because there is a "default" that is the only true way to play D&D. An idiotic misconception that should be quite easy to disprove just by reading the rules, coming to these forums, or sending a quick note off to Customer Support and sharing the inevitable response with the group. BTW, I'm not just talking about Next when I say this. Of course, D&D has always been this way since at least the late 70's when I began playing.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 2:54AM
#1498
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Date Joined:
May 19, 2011
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Yes it is contrived, but no more contrived than having to sleep be able to read a book...
Sleep to effectively study. Keep lying clown.
Last I checked it's pretty tough to study while you're sleeping. I can easily study a bit while I'm walking somewhere or riding in a cart, or just have 2-3 minutes of spare time, I don't see why a Wizard much more intelligent than I am can't.
Also, it helps to have an argument that's more than "You're lying you lying liar" and "You're argument is weak because it's weak."
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 2:58AM
#1499
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I never said it was for a whole session. As Iokare pointed out, in 4e and mid/high levels in 3E missing even one or two rounds could mean doing nothing for at least 20 minutes (and in case of 3e missing the whole fight). Worse, even doing something could come down to doing nothing for a whole fight if what you did took 5 seconds to resolve, had little direct impact on the fight while the rest needs at least 5 minutes to resolve their rounds. Mind you, this is not directly related to the 5MWD persee, although it can happen due to a 5MWD. I just wanted to point out that arguing that "doing nothing, but observe" being fun is in practice only true to a very limited amount of time for most players and that to me sounds as a really hollow argument for allowing PCs to have a "side-kick" role.
OMG! 20 minutes!! Please don't do something rash during that time, don't hurt yourself or anything! I'm sure we can find something for you to do!
You know, like watching the intensely interesting story develop. Meh. Your argument is weak, weak, weak.
Not any weaker than yours. It is al about personal experiences and what individuals get out of a game. To you 20 minutes of doing nothing is nothing, to others it means the session is ruined. Note that I never said anything about being personally irritated about doing nothing for 20 minutes, merely that I have seen people being really frustrated about it, especially when it happened several times during a single session (and yes, I have seen this happen regularly in 3e and 4e games even when I did my utmost best to prevent it as a player and a DM), but this is really edition dependend and might very well be completely different in Next. It is also simply not true that watching D&D while doing nothing is fun at least not in my experience (even less so when you actually do have a vested interest in the outcome). It is the ease with which people outright dismiss other people's experiences and play styles that is what frustrates me so much about disussion. Anyway, we are getting off-topic.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 3:43AM
#1500
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I said that you must sleep when your mind is weary in order to be able to effectively study your spell book. That is the premise, and that is what happens in real life. Can some people squeek by on all night cramming sessions? Sure. Does that mean they've retained the material? Probably not.
Moderated by
ORC_Ragnar
on Dec 04, 2012 - 05:53AM
Kalex the Omen Dungeonmaster ExtraordinaireConcerning Player Rules Bias
Show
Gaining victory through rules bias is a hollow victory and they know it.
The argument goes, that some idiot at the table might claim that because there is a "default" that is the only true way to play D&D. An idiotic misconception that should be quite easy to disprove just by reading the rules, coming to these forums, or sending a quick note off to Customer Support and sharing the inevitable response with the group. BTW, I'm not just talking about Next when I say this. Of course, D&D has always been this way since at least the late 70's when I began playing.
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