How Spell Durations Should Work in 3e

[Psychic Robot]

I saw some people posting about this in another thread, so I decided to put up my ideas. There are five basic durations that I'm thinking of.

Instant
Once the spell is cast, the effects happen instantly. All the saving throws, damage, and secondary effects begin and end on the caster's turn. (For the most part, these are offensive spells like fireball and dispel magic.)

Encounter
The spell effects last for the duration of the encounter or five minutes, whichever is shorter. (These are generally stronger buffs like polymorph or crowd control spells like wall of fire.)

Rest
The spell effects last until the caster rests and regains his spells. (These are generally weaker buffs like mage armor or minor utility spells like nondetection.)

Save Ends
Spells with a "save ends" duration do not allow a saving throw upon casting of the spell. Instead, the effects occur automatically and the targets affected by the spell can make a saving throw at the beginning of their turns. If they fail their saving throws, the spell effect continues and they can make another saving throw at the beginning of their next turn. If they succeed on their saving throws, the spell effect immediately ends. (These are generally stronger debuffs such as slow or hold person.)

Mixed
Mixed spells combine two or more durations together. The spell's description specify which aspects of the spell are categorized as which duration. (For instance, a fireball spell that does 10d6 fire damage and sets the target on fire might be instant for the damage and save ends for the burning.)

Thoughts?

[JonSetanta]

I posted something like this weeks ago. Did some changes since then.

Spell Durations

Code: Select all

Concentration       -> same
1 round/level       -> requires Swift actions by recipient to maintain
1 minute/level      -> requires Swift actions by recipient to maintain
10 minutes/level    -> lasts until Sleep of recipient
1 hour/level        -> lasts until Sleep of recipient
1 day (24 hours)    -> lasts until Sleep of recipient
Permanent           -> lasts until Death of recipient

Detrimental/debuff/offensive spells with durations greater than 1 time unit (of whichever type specified by spell effect) replace "recipient" with "caster". This means that to if a spell were to last 1 hour and apply some kind of penalty to another character, the caster must stay awake for it to continue.


I noticed you don't want to use Swift actions, PR.
I figured it cuts down on the mess of buffs and debuffs slinging around during combat, even if characters get more Swifts later on.

[Dominicius]

Why would you make buffs cost swift actions? If you want to limit buffs to one per character just say so and be done with it.

[K]

Encounter is the worst duration and should be removed from the RPG lexicon immediately.

I mean, it almost works for combat spells because you know when you leave the round by round time, but the instant you use it out of combat it's an instant argument about when the "encounter" has ended." Heck, even in combat you get an argument because someone is going to want the duration to continue while they open a door or a chest or something.

[Psychic Robot]

K: I agree completely, which is why I wrote

The spell effects last for the duration of the encounter or five minutes, whichever is shorter.

[JonSetanta]

Why would you make buffs cost swift actions? If you want to limit buffs to one per character just say so and be done with it.

See K's post for why the alternative isn't good.

Also, gotta do something with those unused actions.

[Eikre]

Encounter was a thing they came up with when they realized people were just using that as a heuristic device to measure the short term instead of taking pains to parse five-minute intervals. That's not a practice that should end but it is one that they should just tell you in a sidebar somewhere, and continue to list spell durations as in measurable terms to use as the default.

Either that or you give everyone per-encounter use abilities that refresh after a short break to give them a reason to ever declare the end of an encounter, or preparation mechanics that explicitly end the encounter if you invoke them. If you want to take a potion and ride it to the very end of the dungeon, the game thinks that's okay, the game thinks you can totally make your adrenaline last for an hour by kicking in every door and opening ever chest with supreme enthusiasm, but you'll have to make some of your innate resources stretch a little farther.

If you suck, you'll be like 4E and those encounter powers will just be a very short list of abilities in descending order of power that you'll play like a script every fucking time you show up to punch people in the throat. So don't do that.

Pains would also be taken not to let anyone just imbibe thirty +1 buffs and then run around using totally uninteresting RNG-breaking basic attacks, but that goes without saying.

[TheWorid]

K: I agree completely, which is why I wrote

The spell effects last for the duration of the encounter or five minutes, whichever is shorter.

That doesn't help "Can I have the buff I set during our fight carry over while we investigate the room?". It does provide a solution, but I'm not convinced that it's one everyone will like.

My suggestion here is "Lasts five minutes or until the caster dismisses it.", but that still leaves us keeping track of in-game minutes.

[Dean]

First of all, I think that's real clever PR. I think that is simple, easy, and totally up to par with something that could be put in a published product. However being the Den we will bitch about the encounter thing anyway

I do like the swift actions upkeep. What if we just made sure that the system had a lot of swift action upkeep stuff, including general generic Tome Monk-esque "activate this as a swift action every round to just become somewhat better". That way if everyone from every class had those abilities then you could say that "Polymorph" has an unlimited duration but requires a swift action upkeep. Making it an ability that could be used in combat but you probably wouldn't walk around with it because your swift action could be better spent doing your generic "Ready for Anything" stance.

We could also just make the "Encounter" spells have some sort of concentration roll to keep active. Make it easy so it's only failed one out of 5 rolls or so for an average character, but that way every round there's a small chance that your character just can't keep it up

[Dominicius]

Why would you make buffs cost swift actions? If you want to limit buffs to one per character just say so and be done with it.

See K's post for why the alternative isn't good.

Also, gotta do something with those unused actions.

What? I never even mentioned the encounter duration so I have no idea what you are talking about.

And if you want to give people something to waste their swift actions on then that can be done by either spells or class features.

[Bihlbo]

Encounter
The spell effects last for the duration of the encounter or five minutes, whichever is shorter. (These are generally stronger buffs like polymorph or crowd control spells like wall of fire.)

The way 4e handles these is "encounter or 5 minutes, whichever is longer" specifically to handle the issues K brought up. If it's a buff and you blast it off mid-combat, yes it lasts long enough for you to open a door - no arguments. And it works very well. Is there a reason you went with the more problematic and limited version of "whichever is shorter" rather than "- longer"?

Also, gotta do something with those unused actions.

This is complete BS. I'm playing a PF fighter right now with 4 options for his swift action, and at least 2 of those are options I want every round. However, with no ability to ever get more swift actions (sure, you can burn a standard to get another move, but you can't do anything to get more swifts) each round involves very difficult decisions which would be far easier if I could just burn a move action. But the DM so far is unwilling to go against RAW. More uses of swift actions should not be added unless your intent is specifically to prevent actions that require swift actions, not because you're looking to use up more swift actions.

[JonSetanta]

What? I never even mentioned the encounter duration so I have no idea what you are talking about.

Ah, my implication.
We could do without Swifts and it would be the same, true, but I saw them as an underused mechanic.

Bihlbo: I don't play PF. So, yeah.

[Bihlbo]

Bihlbo: I don't play PF. So, yeah.

Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that it was PF, since that element has nothing at all to do with the point. Swift actions aren't really underused, overall. Sure, it might be easy to build a character that doesn't have a use for them, but that doesn't mean there should be more swift actions in the game.

[BearsAreBrown]

Unlike a move action, you can only take a Swift Action with a Swift Action. You can't downgrade a Move or a Standard. And you're giving up your Immediate Action. Taking away a character's Swift Action is hard to justify.

Being specific to change Encounter to 5 minutes is still not useful. In fact, that's a large problem with all spell durations in 3.5e except 16+ hours. Unless you're tracking time in your games to the minute(you aren't) then most spell durations just get handwaved to become either as long as the fight or all day.

[K]

Encounter
The spell effects last for the duration of the encounter or five minutes, whichever is shorter. (These are generally stronger buffs like polymorph or crowd control spells like wall of fire.)

The way 4e handles these is "encounter or 5 minutes, whichever is longer" specifically to handle the issues K brought up. If it's a buff and you blast it off mid-combat, yes it lasts long enough for you to open a door - no arguments. And it works very well. Is there a reason you went with the more problematic and limited version of "whichever is shorter" rather than "- longer"?

Except it doesn't handle it any better because people are always going to be arguing that the encounter is longer than five minutes because they want to carry the buff into the next combat, or into the search phase when a trapped chest or something might be deflected or ablated by the buff, or whatever.... and you are still counting time, which means this is objectively worse than just counting time.

"Encounter" and any variation of "or five minutes" or some other fixed time is just bad because people will always push for the longer duration. Always.

The "encounter" mechanic is just a recipe for arguments at the table. Personally, my benchmark for rules is "is this rule going to end or create arguments." If it creates arguments, then it needs to be changed.

[Psychic Robot]

The "encounter" mechanic is just a recipe for arguments at the table.

If I were the DM, I would say, "The encounter is over once the fighting stops. End of story, full stop, etc."

[K]

The "encounter" mechanic is just a recipe for arguments at the table.

If I were the DM, I would say, "The encounter is over once the fighting stops. End of story, full stop, etc."

And then people will argue that they are still "fighting" while they rush into the next room. Or they will actually game the definition and keep some crippled monster still "fighting" so that they boost their buff time (I mean, most monsters are useless and easy to dodge when they are blinded). Heck, they might even get really metagame and summon weak-ass monsters at themselves to boost the "fighting" period.

Now, you can say that as a DM you'd put a stop to all that nonsense, but it's not going to stop the argument. The fact that you'll eventually put your foot down and win out because you hold the whole game hostage doesn't stop the ten to twenty minute shouting match portion of every encounter.

Rule 0 is not an effective ruleset, or even a particularly elegant solution to problems with a ruleset. Basically, Rule 0 pisses players off every time and each time makes your game some definable distance closer to making people tune out and want to wander off to play Smash Brothers.

Since you evoke Rule 0 every encounter, imagine what that does to your game. I mean, I've seen all these problems with Storyteller games, and I don't know why no one in the industry has learned their lesson (though I think people just assume ST games had to be really unpleasant and bitchy to stimulate angst for RP).

[Starmaker]

Heck, they might even get really metagame and summon weak-ass monsters at themselves to boost the "fighting" period.

Who needs monsters when they can fight each other?

[Eikre]

A marvelous idea.

A Pain Maiden of Loviatar comes equipped with the special ability to use a whip in a very painful but ultimately benign fashion. By attacking her companions she can push the duration of any encounter into hours. Oh yeah baby. Pick that lock, you little whore.

How exquisite.

[Ice9]

I don't see why just "5 minutes" is so bad. Yeah, it's counting time. So fucking what? Five minutes is not that damn hard to keep track of. Just make recovering HP/powers after a fight also take five minutes, and you don't even have the problem of people trying to rush through multiple fights really fast.

I'm with you to a point. Counting when 7 rounds is up is annoying. Trying to figure out if more than 80 minutes has passed is often worse. But five minutes? I can live with that, and it's better than arguments about what constitutes an encounter.

[Kaelik]

Besides of course hating encounter durations for all the reasons K has spelled out, as I say in every thread it is brought up. Swift action to maintain is especially stupid.

Seriously, D&D as a game doesn't fucking work if casting Energy Resistence before the Dragon fight means that everyone goes into the Dragon fight unable to counter, unable to use various swift abilities, and unable to benefit from even a second buff spell, like Haste.

It's dumb, and you should feel Dumb Sigma.

[tussock]

None: What the kids call Instant.
Minute: This combat, or a short chase, but not two combats. 90 seconds. 10 rounds, but only combat is in rounds and it doesn't last that long.
Turn: This is how most things in the "dungeon" are measured. 15 minutes, one area search, quick rest, or a tight section of careful exploration. Useful for limited special movement or detection.
Hours: More the wilderness/city stuff, good for protections and soft buffs. Can't use until the action nears, but lasts a huge exploration and endless series of combats. 2 1/2 hours. If you want something to be a PITA, this is where it goes.
Day: All magic passes from the world at dawn, so cast first thing. Always on but with a daily tax on the casters to make it "optional".
Curse: Curses restart themselves each day. Generally negative, but also for Permanency. Way hard to break, if dispelled will restart next day.

If you want a mechanic in the game to throw off the big nerfs, give it to PCs as an action point thing or x/day, but don't make me roll it for the monsters, because I don't care. Unique monsters get action points too, so that's fine. If you're on fire, put it out as a full-round action, interesting choice.

[RobbyPants]

So, no permanent durations then? What if it had a permanent cost?

[Bihlbo]

The "encounter" mechanic is just a recipe for arguments at the table.

If I were the DM, I would say, "The encounter is over once the fighting stops. End of story, full stop, etc."

And then people will argue that they are still "fighting" while they rush into the next room.

Yes K, it's a great point - "it's over when the fighting stops" doesn't work at all. In fact, in my 4e game the argument you describe is exactly what happened and it wasn't pretty. However, the only reason it happened is because we didn't understand the way 4e defines an encounter. In 4e you are either resting, in between the end of a rest and the start of an encounter, or in an encounter. An encounter doesn't end until you begin a short rest, at which point you are resting again.

Calling it an encounter can be confusing because we tend to think of an encounter as starting and ending within the span of the action. But in 4e it seriously does last until you feel like ending it. Could be hours. That's why there's the "or five minutes" part, so you don't cheese things out all day. If someone comes up with a clearer, less confusing term I'd love to hear it.

[virgil]

The other durations are dependent on outside circumstances to end the duration, while you have to track the five minute one on its own. I like having external events be the arbiter.

I liked the method for the X per encounter abilities being resolved by having them refreshed with a minute of 'recharging' or whatever. Here's an idea for encounter-long duration material. Use some form of fatigue mechanic similar to sprinting so that people need to periodically rest to keep fighting without penalty, and an encounter power prevents you from resting (less effort than a swift action though).