So I will be DMing again soon, and one of the things I want to do is represent the PCs crossing a massive expanse of very nasty desert (something akin to Dark Sun). I'm working up the flavor for the area so that it's essentially land that was cursed and is now savage and hostile to all but very unusual lifeforms (aberrants and some reptiles and insects).

My idea is to represent this by telling the PCs that, although they must take extended rests to stave off the negative effects (such as fatigue, etc), because of the environment, they will not be able to gain the benefits of an extended rest until they finish crossing the desert.

My reason for this is that I want the desert to feel big, and the trek to feel long. I intend for this to take up about a third to half a level's worth of encounters, but I don't want them to end up with an extended rest between each encounter, because then I'd either have to bump up the difficulty or just have the encounters be more cakewalk.

Does this seem fair? I fully intend to give them all of this information before they enter the desert, so I'm planning to allow for contingencies such as them finding a way around this, but I'm hoping it will work. 

I wouldn't outright disallow extended rests, but I would write a skill challenge in which they'd have to participate in order to find a place (or prepare a place) to rest. In a desert, you're only going to be travelling during the early and late parts of the day and sitting around trying to find shade the rest of it. And at night it's probably freezing. That sitting around during the hottest part of the day or huddling together for warmth at night probably doesn't make it easy to rest, especially if ferocious desert creatures are attracted to campfires.

So really an extended rest would either occur at the hottest part of the day or the coldest part of night. Preparation would be required (the skill challenge) to find a decent spot, make some shade, and resupply during the day; or, find a decent spot, make some shelter to protect from the cold, and watch for stalking predators at night. For either day or night, throw in some kind of challenge or skill checks related to the strangeness of the place - Arcana, Religion, etc. so that characters with those skills can participate. Succeed, and you can rest. Fail and either the sun saps you and you can't rest or you're attacked by a feral creature at night.

The oasis is a good idea as that's very deserty. If you succeed on your skill challenge to find an oasis, you can rest. If you fail, you're screwed and can't. The benefit to this is you can repeat the skill challenge to find multiple oases (for a multi-day track) just like you can repeat the skill challenge idea above. The best option is to combine the two - finding the oasis, setting a camp, scrounging for supplies of food or water, dealing with the strange effects of the desert, and watching for predators, could all be one big complex skill challenge (in stages). What's more, it is the PCs' choice to participate in it. They won't have to if they don't need an extended rest because they cakewalked the encounters. Optional = seemingly more choices for the players = good game.

I recommend you watch some Bear Grylls before you run the game and steal liberally from his desert episodes, especially on foraging or when and how to travel so you can bring it to life during the game. When we played Dark Sun, I used to put one of his desert episodes to get everyone in the spirit and give them a frame of reference.

Oct 2, 2011 -- 9:57AM, CorrinAvatan wrote:

I think it would be easier to have a skill challenge going on, where the party healing surges are reduced in value if they fail and/or take penalties to attack rolls would do the same thing you're talking about.

It sounds like you're suggesting I give them a skill challenge every time they rest, and punish them for failing it. That's not really what I'm going for.

Typically, this group runs 3-6 encounters between extended rests. However, that would require a full two levels worth of encounters just to represent the first quarter of the overall adventure, and I'm only DMing for, at most, four levels (probably closer to three).

I think I will have a skill challenge prepared to enable the party to find some sort of rest should they decide they absolutely need to recharge daily resources. I will probably at some point just prior to them starting this leg of the adventure flat out tell them, out of character, what's going on, so that they know what I'm looking for. The group is pretty good with that sort of thing, as most of my players also DM. 

taken from the compendim under Environmental Danger:

Environmental Danger

The Endurance skill determines how well a character can withstand such dangers. Every eight hours within an area of environmental danger, the character must succeed on an Endurance check. Each time a character fails, he loses one healing surge. If a character has no healing surges left when he fails a check, he loses hit points equal to his level.

The adventure sets the DC for the Endurance check. Here are some useful benchmarks. When designing your own environmental dangers, rely on the Difficulty Class and Damage by Level table and your common sense.

Condition	Endurance DC
Severe weather	20
High altitude	21
Extreme altitude	26
Cold	22
Frigid cold	26
Heat	22
Stifling heat	26
Pervasive smoke or ash	26
Pervasive necromantic energy	31

If a character takes an extended rest while in an area of environmental danger, he recovers healing surges lost in combat but not those lost from failed Endurance checks. During the six hours that include extended rest, the character gets a +2 bonus to Endurance checks because he’s resting and not exerting himself.

If two or more environmental dangers apply at the same time (such as climbing a mountain in a snowstorm), characters make Endurance checks against each danger.



Looks like this type of scenrio has been thought of.

This makes sense to me for your scenario, being I think your reason for not allowing extended rests is so that they wouldn't just pop back up to full hit points again, even though they would still be physically depleted. Dehydration, hunger, heat stroke, hypothermia, etc would not go away after a night spent in a crude shelter in the middle of a desert.

You thinking Death Valley kinda desert (cliffs, caves, dried river beds, minor plant life) or Sahara (endless sand dunes, no cover)?

FWIW I came across a nice mechanic while playing LFR lately. The adventure CALI3-3 Agony of Almraiven use a system of Fatigue point for a cross in the hot desert which really well represented the heat and exaustion this harsh environement represented. 

It may be worth a look if you are looking for inspiration

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