Rest Mechanics

[Harshax]

The recent thread about AS&SH inspired me to go over my copies of the documents. It is indeed a good piece of heartbreaker fappery and I might run it soon as a one off to see how things go.

But with ever iteration of games derived from 0e, I'm exasperated by alpha strikes and constant resting to restore resources.

Does anyone have or know of a good place to look to take hit points, spells per day and the action economy and turn them into resources that have a scene, session and story arc refresh mechanism?

On the one hand, I could just take try mapping the classes to archetypes and go full FATE on this setting, but I think my players like the fiddly mechanics and number crunching of various components of traditional D&D. While they won't completely balk at the idea of using FATE, they do fap over arranging stats and tallying bonuses.

So I'm trying to mind fuck them, let them have the firm definitions of roles. Make them kit out for the adventure, but avoid the situation where they're probing everything with a ten foot poll, barricading themselves every 20 minutes for downtime and being equally overly confident or cautious about their hit points and spell slots.

[Username17]

Scene based usage limits don't make a lot of sense. Scenes are not and cannot be well defined, and having it game mechanically matter when they begin and end encourages players to shit on the natural flow of narrative time. And that is fucked. You can make abilities with cooldown timers that are longer than you expect combats to be but not much longer than that (such as "five minutes") but of course that gets real weird for non-combat abilities.

Session based usage limits have the advantage of being absolutely the easiest system to track, because you don't ever have to remember how many charges you used last session. They do encourage players to end sessions early, which is bad. But I can see the argument that the ease of accounting makes up for it.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

The classic D&D method to prevent constant resting is wandering monsters – fights worth no treasure or XP that interrupt rest. They are unfortunately super-cumbersome and also have a classic bypass in Rope Trick.

The best method to hurry people along is time-based narrative consequences. The magic rose's petals are falling, the armies of the dark are marching, the knights whose life force sustains the young queen are dropping dead, and every time the PCs sleep on the job, the sadder the ending of the story gets.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Scene based usage limits don't make a lot of sense. Scenes are not and cannot be well defined, and having it game mechanically matter when they begin and end encourages players to shit on the natural flow of narrative time. And that is fucked. You can make abilities with cooldown timers that are longer than you expect combats to be but not much longer than that (such as "five minutes") but of course that gets real weird for non-combat abilities.

So... how do you handle cooldown timers for combat abilities vs non-combat abilities? What about abilities that don't fit neatly into one or the other (which is most of them, hopefully)? Is measuring things in objective time (5 minutes vs "a scene", for example) the best way to go for non-metapower heavy games? Am I even asking a question that isn't totally retarded?

[K]

I've been kind of impressed with Dungeon Crawl Classics version of the Cleric.

They use press-your-luck mechanics for spells. Each time you cast, there is a random chance of pissing off your god. As points of pissed-off-god accumulate, your normal spell roll gets an increasingly large chance of something bad happening, and things get worse the more points you have accumulated.

So it's a little resource-management, a little press-your-luck, and a little fumble table all in one. Tends to keep people from using things too often, but still using them consistently.

Unfortunately, the only mechanic I'm seen to avoid alpha strike that I've seen is Frank's Winds of Fate idea.

[Harshax]

The classic D&D method to prevent constant resting is wandering monsters – fights worth no treasure or XP that interrupt rest. They are unfortunately super-cumbersome and also have a classic bypass in Rope Trick.

So instead of getting hung up trying to define the scene or session as a refresh timer, I should define quality of rest and maybe the frequency or limits to when these types of rests are applicable.

quick: The moment combat ends. You've got a chance to take a few breaths, and listen for new dangers approaching. (near instant)

short: unsling the pack. drink some water. consult a map. have a smoke. crack some jokes. (15 minutes)

guarded: this is nights rest with guards posted. Even if you're not one of the night's guards, it isn't as regenerative as a long rest. (4-6 hours)

long: a relatively comfortable and safe rest with fresh meals and no imminent threat. (6-8 hours)

pleasant: a long rest, with opportunities for pursuits of fancy and passionate. (1-2 days)

opulent: an even more regenerating rest than pleasant. MOWR HEALIG! (at least a week)

Then I can say that a 5th level wizard with 3/2/1 spells can regain spells along the following triggers:

quick: 1/0/0
short: 2/0/0
guarded: 3/1/0
long: 3/2/1

The same can be done with hit points. Or other expendables.

[Harshax]

Let me keep riffing here.
Quick Rest: Recover 10% of lost resources. Allows for a fast Skill Check.
Short Rest: Recover 15% of lost resources Allows for Skill Checks that require extra time.
Guarded Rest: Recover 25% of resources.
Long Rest: 50%
Pleasant: 75%
Opulent: 100%

This resource recovery is limited to certain tiers of resources. Hit Points and Spell Points. Items that activate 3-5x per day.

Certain levels of spells (let's say 3 - 4) and Items that can be activated 1x per day can only be recharged during long rests.

Spells of level 5, 6 and Items that can be activated weekly can only be recharged with pleasant or event opulent rests.

[K]

If your party is already risk-adverse, removing full rests could easily lead to them leaving adventures altogether.

I used to see it a lot in Living Greyhawk. Parties would leave before the final fight because they weren't at full resources, but had gotten some XP and treasure.

[deaddmwalking]

quick: 1/0/0
short: 2/0/0
guarded: 3/1/0
long: 3/2/1

The same can be done with hit points. Or other expendables.

So how does that discourage taking long rests after every fight?

If your goal is to prevent a nova-strike, you're probably better off approaching it as a 'charge up ability'. There are a lot of ways you could do something like that - metaphysically channeling magical energy could be damaging and you have to build up your 'charge'. Thus you cast a 1st level fire spell, then a second level fire spell, then a 3rd level fire spell, but if you skip directly to a 3rd level spell without 'building up', you make some type of check against failure/damage/taking yourself out of the fight. Then you can 'recharge' all those abilities after every fight because you still have to build up.

That's only one example - another way you could approach it is that every time you successfully target an opponent with a spell (ie, hit them if it requires a ranged touch attack or they ATTEMPT a save), the DC to resist YOUR spells goes up by +2. Hitting someone with a couple of rays of frost before you hit them with Slay Living suddenly makes sense.

Any mechanic that only gives people back their best abilities after a long rest encourages them to take long rests - there is some incentive not to use your higher level abilities UNNECESSARILY so you can recover your other resources more easily and in less time, but if you DO use your higher level abilities, you're just reinforcing the 5-minute workday.

[Chamomile]

And here I was worrying I may have gone too far having a grand total of three distinct rest lengths in my current project.

Having really granular rest lengths isn't going to convince the party to take anything less than the maximum one. If you want the party to take fewer rests, you need time to be a limited resource.

[...You Lost Me]

I'm going to do that annoying thing that people do on the internet where they echo what someone said directly above them. I think Chamomile is exactly right about the problem you're facing, Harshax. I think your players have realized a flaw in a lot of RPG adventures -- namely, resting doesn't have a downside. Your attempted solution doesn't seem to address that problem.

Resting needs to have some kind of downside. It can be that enemies run away and take their loot with them, or the whole dungeon prepares for an alpha strike on the players, or random encounters disrupt the party's sleep, or another party is racing them for treasure.

Fundamentally, I think resting abuse is a adventure design issue, not a rules engine issue. Games should recommend proper adventures where resting doesn't work... or create adventures where alpha strikes are recommended.

[OgreBattle]

But with ever iteration of games derived from 0e, I'm exasperated by alpha strikes and constant resting to restore resources.

How is your gameplay session hurt by the alpha strikes, is it a matter of you the game master not having enough to keep everyone entertained for X hours, the players feeling it's too easy?

Does anyone have or know of a good place to look to take hit points, spells per day and the action economy and turn them into resources that have a scene, session and story arc refresh mechanism?

3-5 minute out of combat breathers, 1 round catching your breath, 6-8 hours rest seems the most straightforward method and easy to understand as all of us know what it feels like to get winded, then stand for a bit, then not be winded.

Scene based powers really need a game built around that or they get weird.

How exactly is the story structured in your game? In my last RPG class we did DnD5e campaigns but everyone decided that it's pretty weird to murder some goblins in the goblin caves and then the goblins 100 meters away don't notice.

Maybe we can look at resource expenditure as "avoiding combat" "avoiding detection" too. Like once combat begins or the foes are alerted, they stay alerted (MGS hard mode instead of MGS default mode).

So you can actually plan for an alpha strike and attack head on, or resources can be spent to gain a tactical advantage via stealth ambush in favorable terrain, or perhaps avoid combat altogether... if players would be disappointed by a bloodless victory then have neck stabbing stealth kills, or cut off communications fights to do setpiece to setpiece battles.

A FATE based game I ran that was well recieved had the scope "defend the town", with multiple threats at multiple directions that require time to move from threat to threat, so resources were spent solving one threat knowing they needed to rush to the next threat without charging. Just not having rest seems to work.

[Kraydak]

A counterintuitive solution is to massively clamp down on recovery mechanisms, while also (and this is key) reducing combat encounter difficulty. I first started to understand this around Eberron: the published adventures were set-piece battle after set-piece battle. This is in comparison to, say, 1e adventures which have a lot more "filler" encounters. It is absolutely vital to understand this in terms of adventure design.

One way of looking at it is that in AD&D 1e, Cure Light Wounds was 1d8 hp flat, you couldn't cast it with 2nd level spells, and Cure Serious Wounds was a 4th level spell. The HP on the party's character sheets was much larger than the implied amount in their memorized spells, and "healing to full" could take days, even with magic. This flipped with 3e.

The basic sequence you want to avoid is:
1) Recovery is easy enough that it doesn't come at a huge cost.
2) DM: oh look, that encounter was too easy, a waste of game time. I guess I'll ramp up the per-encounter difficulty.
3) Players: oh look, life it getting harder, we need to spend more resources each encounter.
Rinse, repeat until players insist on resting after any decent encounter just in case they run into a massive set-piece that they aren't prepared for.

The fixes are:
1) Difficulty refreshing abilities and reduced character flexibility. 3e thought that allowing Clerics to spontaneously cast Heals would increase their ability to prepare non-combat spells. 3e was wrong: it just meant that because Clerics had a larger pool of Heals, more spells went to healing.
2) Mostly Easy Combat Encounters (!!!). This isn't a waste of game time. In AD&D 1e, post Unearthed Arcana, with Fighters who could just mow down enemies, an encounter with 2 ogres was a good way for the party fighters to show off while taking relatively little game time. Because most combat encounters aren't set-piece multi-hour affairs, this also opens up adventure design space for different things. This reinforces fix number 1 by allowing casters to prepare non-combat spells.
3) Non-Combat Encounters. You want to drive spell casters away from preparing only combat spells, so include lots of environmental or social challenges. This further reinforces fix number 1 by incentivizing spell casters to prepare non-combat spells.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

3e thought that allowing Clerics to spontaneously cast Heals would increase their ability to prepare non-combat spells. 3e was wrong: it just meant that because Clerics had a larger pool of Heals, more spells went to healing.

Wait, what the fuck? Are you telling me that people doubled down on healbotting even though they had spontaneous fucking healing?

[Harshax]

Recovery mechanics are as much about adventure design as it is about genre thematic.

AS&SH, as AncientHistory pointed out is among other things, Conan with the serial numbers shaved off. It is thematically interesting that characters are more durable than D&D usually accommodates. Characters don’t take days or weeks to heal from injuries. It is also thematically interesting that characters are overly indulgent in their down time.

I believe that the rest mechanic should work to keep the game moving forward as well as service the sword and sorcery genre.

So, saying that characters immediately recovery 10% of lost hit points when they catch their breath is good for the game and keeps the adventure moving.

Saying that 1st and 2nd level spells can be recovered even in uncomfortable periods of downtime makes their usage both thoughtful but not a handicap to the players effectiveness.

A debilitating injury, like temporary ability score damage or other penalty might take a nice evening or two in an inn.

Saying that 5th and 6th level spells require significant rest and resources, in the form of weeks or months long sabbatical keeps the choice of using those spells interesting and the time mechanic relevant to the adventure.

These are all FATE-ish mechanics working under the hood. Players still manage their resources. Powerful resources are mechanically difficult to recover.

[Kraydak]

3e thought that allowing Clerics to spontaneously cast Heals would increase their ability to prepare non-combat spells. 3e was wrong: it just meant that because Clerics had a larger pool of Heals, more spells went to healing.

Wait, what the fuck? Are you telling me that people doubled down on healbotting even though they had spontaneous fucking healing?

No, what I mean is that DMs naturally understood that, for encounters to have tension, the party needed to get low on resources. In 1e, a Speak With Animals spell wasn't a combat resource (and, being a 2nd level cleric spell, was NEVER fungible with healing), so the DMs didn't feel like they needed to drain the party of them. In 3e, that Speak With Animals was actually a disguised Cure Moderate Wounds, a resource needed to be drained for the party to feel threatened. And so, the encounter difficulty started getting ratcheted up, and the promise of being able to not healbot was not only thwarted, but the situation was actively made worse. DMs (and I emphasize DMs over players) will use all the healing that the party has, so making any resource fungible with healing means that it will mostly be used for healing.

[merxa]

the dreaded wand of cure light wounds.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

DMs (and I emphasize DMs over players) will use all the healing that the party has, so making any resource fungible with healing means that it will mostly be used for healing.

Ah, I get it now. This would explain why my GM in Blades in the Dark last night had me randomly get attacked by ghosts after I pulled off yet another heist without getting hurt during the actual heist. Like I didn't really "earn it" if I didn't bleed for it. As a GM, I've been there, but I eventually got the fuck over it.

I understand that people want their players to go through a challenge when they play, but if they get past the challenge unscathed... isn't that good on them? Assuming the challenge is vaguely appropriate for the PCs, of course.

[Username17]

A counterintuitive solution is to massively clamp down on recovery mechanisms, while also (and this is key) reducing combat encounter difficulty.

This is broadly correct. For between-combat attrition to matter there needs to be a combat after this one and there needs to be persistent attrition from this combat that lasts through to the combat that is coming. The choice to have a "next combat" is as much the players' as the MC's, so if you want that to happen you need player buy-in that they want to press on and have another combat.

This is true whether you're trying to do a D&D style "daily spell charges" system or not. Whatever resources you're expending on a per-battle basis, you're really looking to convince the players that having a next encounter and an encounter after that is somehow better than just going back to town and getting drunk.

There are other resources you could use. I mean, if your fundamental game is one of limited adventure time rather than one of limited resources per "day" then people are going to drag each day out as much as possible instead of having a five minute workday. In Agricola players never leave workers unassigned even if there's not much for them to do but dance for charity or whatever. If the fundamental limitation is "you have three days of water for this expedition" that involves very different play patterns from "you have three level appropriate attack spells to use each day."

-Username17

[K]

I'd vote against the "mostly easy encounter".

Combat just takes way too long in most games. My last session literally had us asking the DM "can we just assume that we win this since the boss for this adventure is dead?"

Twice. Gotta love pre-canned adventures.

Gloomhaven is a tactical boardgame, but it does have an interesting mechanic. Each turn you spend cards, and then you can refresh your hand with diminishing returns until you finally have no cards left and are out of the adventure, so you try to use all your cards before you refresh. You use everything multiple times, and can do some limited alpha striking, usually by making those cards unrecoverable by the refresh mechanic.

[Kraydak]

I'd vote against the "mostly easy encounter".

Combat just takes way too long in most games. My last session literally had us asking the DM "can we just assume that we win this since the boss for this adventure is dead?"

Twice. Gotta love pre-canned adventures.

And there you have the crux of the issue: in most RPGs, you want there to be tension about whether the party will succeed or fail. In a D&D style game, that allows for two limits. In one, resource recovery is difficult, but the party probably has enough resources (assuming good play, and with a little bit extra for insurance) to succeed (and extract themselves) in one go. The tension comes from whether or not they actually have enough resources/get too unlucky/have to decide whether to bail. In the other, the party recovers all resources between every encounter, and the tension comes from whether the party has enough resources to beat the encounter. Note that the 5 minute work day is a player decision to force a slow recovery system into a fast recovery model, generally invoked because adventures have trained them to.

In the latter model, used by, e.g., MMORPGs, too easy encounters have no tension, so are a waste of time. In an MMORPG though a combat can be very quick and exciting, so having lots of semi-difficult encounters is fine. In a table-top however, this means having every combat encounter being a set piece affair that takes a huge amount of time, dominating the session. This is terrible. In the former model, even an easy combat can attrit the party's limited pool of resources, slowly building up tension similarly to pulling easy pieces from a jenga tower. And even a normally easy encounter can be nerve-wracking when the party, having beating the boss, is down to single digit hp and has 3 levels worth of spells remaining across all casters and needs to sneak back past a pack of guards...

[Stubbazubba]

There are ways to incentivize continuing instead of resting, instead of just limiting resources in a way players can't control to force a new resting rhythm. The most obvious would be XP: if an XP multiplier applied for more encounters between long rests, then your average group would push through another encounter or two, especially if encounters are generally not deadly.

So if every encounter after the first was worth 20% additional XP than the one before, and encounters were usually short and not deadly, then you would want to mop up as many of them in the same adventuring day as possible to maximize the XP earned.

[Dogbert]

If you don't want your players to go into "5 minutes workday" then perhaps don't make of each and every encounter a "fierce battle to the death where the heroes barely escape doom by the skin of their teeth." Just saying.

[K]

If you don't want your players to go into "5 minutes workday" then perhaps don't make of each and every encounter a "fierce battle to the death where the heroes barely escape doom by the skin of their teeth." Just saying.

Except that's not possible. The fight that is easy at 100% resources is deadly at 25% resources. That's just baked into this kind of game.

If resource allocation is at core of a binary success/failure decision, then you always want to have enough resources to succeed instead of fail.

And in the modern RPG, losing a fight generally means the adventure ends for the party or the player. The penalties of failure are so big and incentive to push your luck are so small, you don't push your luck.

Honestly, the real answer here is to NOT make the tension of losing your character the only thing that makes a fight interesting. Resource allocation as method of creating tension is pretty simple to implement, but not that fun as this thread demonstrates.

[Username17]

Except that's not possible. The fight that is easy at 100% resources is deadly at 25% resources. That's just baked into this kind of game.

That depends on what your resources are.

Think about Diablo II. You have the red globe and you have the blue globe. As a Barbarian, you mostly care about the red globe, because you're all up in the faces of monsters and your attack routine should probably be mana neutral. If you're at 25% health, you probably need to back the fuck up and rest or drink potions or go back to town or whatever. If you're a Sorceress, your attack routine uses up a good chunk of mana, and having three quarters of your blue globe empty means that you'll have to rest or drink potions or whatever after your next fight.

-Username17