|
7 months ago ::
Oct 31, 2012 - 10:30AM
#1301
|
Date Joined:
Oct 30, 2012
|
Imagine this:
Party A enters the dungeon, clear one room, return home to recharge.
DM decides that, since the remaining NPCs are alerted, they will pursue the party and attack while they're resting.
---
Party B enters the dungeon, clear thre-four rooms, return home to recharge.
DM decides that, since the remaining NPCs are alerted, they will pursue the party and attack while they're resting.
In my games, the party will almost NEVER benefit from frequent rests.
Around the beginning of the adventure, the party is given a quest. Let's say the goal is to enter the Rocky Caves and Defeat the Boss Baddy. To do this, they have to explore several rooms, and defeat (let's say) eight rooms worth of monsters. That is what they have to overcome before any rests or damage has been taken at all.
If they take out one room's worth of monsters, and then decide to leave and rest. When they return, one of two things will have occurred:
1. The monsters in the Rocky Caves now have greater numbers than they did when the party first arrived, like a negative attrition. They have called allies to their aid. This could also be done with improved defenses instead of numbers, barricades, traps, that sort of thing. The bottom line is that the cave is now more difficult than when the party first started. And that's because, after tipping the monsters off, they left and let them fortify.
All right more experience and treasure! Unless of course you house rule that stuff away.
2. Boss Baddy and all his goodies have split. The party fails the quest. All because they insisted on doing the moronic action of tipping off the enemies, and then giving them time to fortify or leave.
Oh well, NEXT! When that happens we just go to the next quest or dungeon, no skin off our backs. There is adventure everywhere.
In both cases, the party was worse off for taking a 5MWD. It's simply bad tactics. The 5MWD only works if the DM permits them to 'wear down' the adventure. "Encounter one completed? Check. Time to rest, then on to encounter two." It rarely, rarely works that way in any living adventure.
The party must treat the adventure, or at least the adventuring day, as a whole. If the day is a single encounter, then the party can simply use everything they have every fight. Just start with the strongest power and go down the list. The fun is lost. "Should I use this daily or save it?" always becomes use it. That's boring.
In both cases my group wins. We also have fun frustrating the DM in this way.
|
|
|
|
7 months ago ::
Oct 31, 2012 - 10:50AM
#1302
|
Date Joined:
Jul 12, 2003
|
I have suggested a mechanic that is far more subtle. The first encounter is worth 2/3rds xp, the second and third normal xp and the fourth and further encounters pay off at 1 1/3rd normal XP. A little more math to be sure, and the numbers are not fixed, they are just an example. What this does is make further adventureing incentivised, but not so much that it encourages suicidal actions.
Knowing they have to have 4 encounters to break even encourages good management resources, and even makes sense thematically since you learn more when you push your limits.
I don't hate this... and think that it, at the very least, warrants a sidebar in the DMG.
This is a very interesting idea, would need playtesting, but nice
|
|
|
|
7 months ago ::
Oct 31, 2012 - 10:51AM
#1303
|
Date Joined:
May 25, 2012
|
Bat you just don't understand. But that is ok. I guess. But please note I never said the wizard blows everything all at once (because that rarely ever happens beyond levels 1-3). I said he uses 33% more resources than normal. I also said the setup of the dungeon was made such that PCs would be out of resources after 4 encounters (you know the guidelines given for how to achieve class balance and challenge your group).
... or, perhaps, you don't understand. I said that I look at the set up as 40 potential encounters, and that the party (including the wizard) would have to plan accordingly... which means that if, in my scenario, they're planning for four encounters then they're planning to fail.
Of course, I'm not looking at how the mechanics tell me to achieve balance... I'm looking at what the story tells me to expect, and about how I should prepare for it.
Now a group with no caster may find themselves in a pickle if they try to rest in the middle of the dungeon.
... which is why "take a nap in the dungeon, after every fourth encounter" isn't part of my battleplan.
That is of course why they could trek back to town.
... unless some "unforseen" circumstance makes that impossible.
The caster however has an answer to everything so he prepares a single low level spell called "rope trick".
... and you are assuming that this option exists.
This wasn't an option in 4E. Is there any evidence that this will be an option in DDN?
If your players want to be suicidal however and take on all 40 rooms of the dungeon despite only having enough resources to take on 4 then by all means let them die.
The players are already suicidal if they're going into what is potentially 40 encounters, with enough resources to handle four.
The smart players will take the dungeon on 3 rooms at a time with an overpowered wizard to minimize risk.
... again, in your scenario, you assume that setting the pace like this is an option. In mine, it is not.
|
|
|
|
7 months ago ::
Oct 31, 2012 - 10:56AM
#1304
|
|
|
Swamp in both cases the party wins. Also in both cases your logic has failed.
Example 1) Monsters don't magically gain numbers when you just slaughtered 25% or more of them. If they are guarding an important location they won't do so half assed. To assume that they can all of a sudden get more numbers is purely illogical metagamey DMing.
Example 2) the party is tasked with removing the monsters from a cave. They accomplish this with nothing more than a single fight. Sounds like the best case scenario if you ask me. Greatest reward with the least risk...
|
|
|
|
7 months ago ::
Oct 31, 2012 - 11:03AM
#1305
|
Date Joined:
Oct 25, 2010
|
I have suggested a mechanic that is far more subtle. The first encounter is worth 2/3rds xp, the second and third normal xp and the fourth and further encounters pay off at 1 1/3rd normal XP. A little more math to be sure, and the numbers are not fixed, they are just an example. What this does is make further adventureing incentivised, but not so much that it encourages suicidal actions.
I've done something similar before. I went with 50%/50%/150%/150% as an XP modifier, so you're heavily rewarded for going into encounters 3-4 and punished for trying to stick wtih just encounters 1-2.
The only place it gets tricky is with fluctuating difficulty in encounters. I'd really like for some method of accounting for Easy/Medium/Hard encounters, and the main problem happened to be if there was a tough battle early in the day and they got only limited credit for it.
|
|
|
|
7 months ago ::
Oct 31, 2012 - 11:13AM
#1306
|
Date Joined:
Oct 31, 2009
|
Perhaps reduce first encounter by half an easy encounter xp, add half an easy encounter xp to encounters afterwards. At first in next that would be 20 xp varience. so 20/45/80 for easy/average/hard. Still appropriate for level of encounter, and it balances regardless of the order in which encounters are experienced.
|
|
|
|
7 months ago ::
Oct 31, 2012 - 11:18AM
#1307
|
Date Joined:
Oct 30, 2012
|
So then it really isn't the 5mwd that is the huge issue, it's the rule that people are abusing. So, why is the rule that people are abusing a huge issue?
Well, I don't know about you, but when I get sick, I don't sit around cursing these rude microbes for multiplying in my personal space, I sit around wishing I didn't have a runny nose and a fever.
I'm just wondering what is the bigger priority here, because I think I'm starting to hear two messages, one about the 5mwd, and one about abusing a rule. Interestingly enough I actually have a mother of a cold right now so your analogy strikes a chord within me.
Vitamin C and D in mega doses cures that quickly. (the cold will remain for the duration, but the symptoms will almost completely be gone).
|
|
|
|
7 months ago ::
Oct 31, 2012 - 11:22AM
#1308
|
|
|
Vitamin C and D in mega doses cures that quickly. (the cold will remain for the duration, but the symptoms will almost completely be gone).
*lurches around the corner*
Brrrraaaaaaaaagggghhhhh!!!!!
*staggers forward and bites off two of Vegetakiller's fingers*
(Vegetakiller has been bitten by a zombie! The Zeta Virus fights to claim another victim. See my sig for details.)
Boraxe wrote: "Knowledge of the rules and creativity are great attributes for a DM, but knowing when to cut loose and when to hold back, when to follow the rules and when to discard them, in order to enhance the enjoyment of the game is the most important DM skill of all."
Keeper of the Sacred Kitty Bowl of the House of Trolls.
Resident Kitteh-napper.
|
|
|
|
7 months ago ::
Oct 31, 2012 - 11:29AM
#1309
|
Date Joined:
Oct 30, 2012
|
In that case I find it rather like someone who buys something that requires assembly, disregards the assembly instructions, and is angry when the product doesn't look like the picture on the box when they are done.
Unfortunately the world is filled with these kinds of people and they make up a good portion of player and DMs of any edition, as witnessed by the number of posts that start out with "Oh, I must have gotten that rule wrong then because we didn't play that way".
If I had my way you wouldn't be able to graduate from the 1st grade if you were unable to demonstrate the ability to follow basic instructions. Unfortunately it isn't up to me.
Setting that all aside, the rules in no way discourage a 5 minute workday. In fact in previous editions with spells like Rope Trick, Stone Shape, Teleport, Mansion, Hut, and others the rules actually encourage the 5 minute workday. Anyone arguing otherwise is not reading the rule books.
|
|
|
|
7 months ago ::
Oct 31, 2012 - 11:33AM
#1310
|
Date Joined:
Oct 30, 2012
|
I can understand the desire to reduce rules bloat, it is admirable, but appearently the 5MWD is such a prevalent problem Mike Mearls plan to deal with it is to give tips and advice, theoretcally spanning more than a small section, in the DMG for dealing with the 5MWD. This was stated in the column adressing the 5MWD. It seems to me introdcing a rule or rules module makes it easier on the DM, saves space in the rule book, gives concrete ways to stop the issue, and most of all reduces complications that arrise due to the issue. For me the reducing rules bloat argument would hold more water if wizards wern't planning on giving advice for work arounds in thier published rules book. They either need to adress the issue and resolve it, admit it not a problem so they don't need to advise work arounds (unfortunately we all know the rules allow and encourage mechanically the 5MWD, wether or not we experience the phenominon ourselves), or explain to us why a rule that resolves an issue can not work in thier game (I don't see one, do you?). Any other answer is sticking thier heads in the sand.
Much like the advice provided in this thread, I doubt the advice in the DMG will even be acceptable to some people here.
I agree with Mearls on the subject, the 5MWD is not a pervasive issue with the system. It's the situational issue that the DM can resolve. In much the same way that I'd expect the DMG to warn about handing out too little or too much treasure, I'd also expect it to warn about ignoring in game consequences. IMO, if you play a strictly mechanical game then 5e might not be the system for you.
If the 'suggested advice' infringes on several play styles including political intrigue, ancient dungeon crawls, long journeys, murder mysteries set in cities, or realistic dungeons that respond in a realistic way to intrusions. Then yeah, you are right we won't use them.
|
|
|
