Mechanics Cross-Pollination Thread

[Beoric]

Hmmm I like this, and the numbers make sense to me.

Just wondering. Ogres individually have 4+1 HD in 1st. So 10 ogres would be about 40 HD. You have 18 here. If we account for their damage resistance, that's an 'effective hit dice' of 36 vs. individuals, certainly close enough for me. Do you think it would be different if we skipped that special ability and just gave the squad 36-40 straight up HD? I suppose this must be balanced against the damage each unit deals against other units as well as against individual PCs.

How does this conversion table of yours work that you mentioned above? I have never played 4th but perhaps it might be useful to those of us who like juggling things around between various editions.

The table is more art that science, largely because 1e's progressions are more art than science. It is way easier to convert from 3e or 5e.

You can't assume it will work to just add hit dice because HD aren't just a measure of hit points, they are also a measure of accuracy, and they have an impact on XP calculation. Your other measure is XP, but XP increases geometrically (more or less), while monster power does not increase geometrically. So there is no baked in way to figure out how much tougher a single creature is than 100 creatures working together. And there is also no baked in way to relate the increase in power caused by a larger number of low level creatures to the increase in power caused by a PC gaining levels. I tried relating the two using the Appendix C numbers for how many creatures of a given "monster level" you use on lower levels of a dungeon, and it just doesn't work. You may encounter twice as many orcs on level 2, but a level 2 party is not twice as tough as a level 1 party.

In 4e it is different. With 4e mechanics it is possible to say, for example, that 64 level 2 orcs are exactly 64 times tougher than one level 2 orc. There is also a known relationship that both monster power and PC power doubles every four levels. So I can estimate with a fair level of confidence that 2 orc raiders (a level 3 standard monster) are about the match of one level 3 fighter, 4 orc raiders (possibly rebuilt as level 11 "minions") are a match for a level 7 fighter, and 8 orc raider "minions" are a match for a level 11 fighter. I can also take 16 orc raider minions and make them into two fifteenth level swarms that would together be a match for a 15th level fighter.

Because 4e power levels are easy to manipulate, and I have a reasonable amount of confidence in my conversion chart, it was easier to convert a single creature to 4e, figure out the power level of a swarm of the appropriate number of creatures, and convert it back.

So, about my conversion chart. The first thing you have to know is that "low level" in 4e covers about twice as many levels as it does in 1e. The big limiting factor is access to utility spells, because that determines the sort of adventure you can go on. For instance, levitate, water breathing and fly change the game. Most level 1 utility spells, which are available at 1st level in 1e, are not available until 2nd level in 4e. Likewise, 2nd level utility spells, which are available at 3rd level in 1e, are not available until 6th level in 4e. And 3rd level utility spells, which are available at 5th level in 1e, are not available until 10th level in 4e. After that they tend to progress at roughly the same rate (until you get to 9th level spells where it all breaks down).

The point being that a level 1 PC in 1e is the equivalent of a level 2 PC in 4e. That was a fixed point for me. A level 3 PC in 1e should be roughly equivalent to a level 6 PC in 4e, and a level 5 PC in 1e should be roughly equivalent to a level 10 PC in 4e, but the relationship is more shaking because 1e classes rise at different rates from each other, and power level varies wildly in 1e depending on what magic items you have.

Figuring out power level is even worse with monsters, because a monster with n HD and no special abilities is considerably weaker than a monster with n HD and a ton of special and extraordinary abilities. The only number that seemed to rise consistently with power level is monster XP value. So I decided to relate 4e monster level to 1e XP value.

I figured that in 1e a hobgoblin is about a match for a first level fighter. They have about the same AC, do about the same damage, and have about the same chance to hit and the same number of hit points (well, before Unearthed Arcana, anyway). So I decided that a 1e monster with 31 HP was the equivalent of a 4e PC of level 2, or a 4e elite monster of level 2. I then searched around for other touchstones so I could start building a progression, and did module conversions with the numbers to see if the resulting calculations matched my expectations.

What surprised me was that, using the progression, a number of 1e monsters ended up having exactly the same power level as their 4e equivalents. The best example of this was Demogorgon. The "on the prime material plane" XP value for Demogorgon ended up equating to the 4e "Aspect of Demogorgon" with the exact same power level.

Other 4e creatures ended up being exactly half as powerful as their 1e counterparts, likely because 4e preferred battles with more opponents - so you would encounter them at the same relative level, but there would be twice as many of them. The ogre is a good example of this.

I ended up having to use a different progression for monsters of 1 HD or less; it turns out that a 1e orc, which is worth half as many XP as a hobgoblin, is also half as powerful. This probably resulted because fighters over 1st level get multiple attacks against groups of monsters with less than 1 HD.

Anyway, with the ogres, I established that a 1e ogre is equivalent to a 4e level 6 elite monster worth 500 XP. 1 ogres therefore form a swarm with 5000 XP, which would be a level 23 standard monster. A 4e level 23 standard monster is roughly equivalent to a 1e monster with 10,000 XP. I then tinkered with the number of HD, taking into account the value of the special abilities the unit had, until I ended up with an XP value as close as I could get to 10,000.

To figure out values for attacks on heroes and other monsters, I made a guess at how many ogres could attack an adjacent medium creature without breaking formation (1 or 2, so 1.5), and how many could attack an adjacent creature of the same size (3), and went through the same procedure to figure out their equivalent hit dice for the chances to hit smaller targets. Because if a hero attacks the ogre unit, he isn't attacking the whole unit at once, and not every ogre in the unit can attack him without breaking formation.

Now, the ogre unit has less hit points than the sum of the hit points of 10 ogres, but (a) hit points are an abstraction; (b) they take half damage from melee attacks from the PCs; and (c) the hit points are not the total required to slaughter every ogre, but the total required to break up the unit and have the survivors flee, retreat or surrender.

The one thing I couldn't do was determine damage from unit-on-unit attacks, because I haven't played 1e since the 90s and don't know it intuitively. I could look at examples and try to figure out what damage I expect a 18 HD monster to do, but I figure the people who might actually can probably figure out that number easier than I can.

 

[Beoric]

So @Yora was posting recently about how D&D doesn't work for his style of play. Some of the concerns expressed are flavour-based, which I won't comment on except to say that Yora's experience is different from mine. However there are also some mechanical issues expressed which I think are worth talking about.

I gather the mechanical issue is that D&D tends to be attrition based, requiring the management of resources (primarily spells and hit points) over the course of a day. By default this requires an in-world environment where the opportunity for/risk of combat occurs frequently over the course of a day. Dungeon's tend to provide such an environment, but outside of the dungeon it is harder to reasonably create such an environment unless the world becomes a very dangerous place - like walking around in a town that uses the Appendix C random encounter tables where it seems like half the town wants to steal from you or pick a fight. (Really, I don't know how all those 0-level NPCs survive.)

This doesn't work very well if you are running a campaign where fights are less frequent. On the one hand, if your players have a reasonable expectation that they don't have to conserve resources, after level 3 it becomes hard for DMs and players to estimate what the PCs can handle, since they have the same number of hit points but are more or less free to blow every spell they have. On the other hand, if the PCs get in the habit of blowing their resources and end up in a second encounter, or a third, they can be screwed. Because the system (Vancian magic in particular) doesn't contemplate a situation where PCs mostly recover between fights.

Now, when my group used to play AD&D this wasn't an issue with us, even though the campaigns tended to be very much like what Yora describes. Fights were infrequent, and resource conservation wasn't really a concern. But just because it wasn't an issue for us doesn't mean Yora's not right about what the mechanics tend to bring to the game. Because the reason it wasn't a problem for us is that each of the people who usually DMed (there were 3 regular DMs) had tinkered with experience (in 3 different ways, naturally) so that neither combat nor treasure was the best method of gaining experience. And no-one really worried about whether the fights were challenging, they were just a narrative event, and often merely a diversionary or delaying tactic. So they basically (and unconsciously) dealt with the issue by removing the elements that made it an issue.

Now, I run a more traditional game in the sense that I grant XPs for defeating enemies (not necessarily by combat) and for goal achievement (which usually means acquiring treasure). So I would also have this problem, except I now play 4e, which has different assumptions regarding attrition. Because there is a lesser reliance on Vancian magic; and because attrition of healing surges replaces attrition of hit points, meaning that the PCs bring most of the same resources to each fight of the day until they are completely spent. This makes it much easier to judge what they can handle, because 4e PCs don't have quite the same ability to throw an inordinate amount of resources at a single fight as they do in other editions.

But I run into a different problem, which Yora doesn't mention, when it comes to overland travel. If the players are travelling significant distances certain assumptions about the game break down. If you continue to check for encounters a few times a day, and/or check to see if each 6 mile hex may be occupied by some monster, then travel moves at a slow crawl and the PCs may end up with more experience than you would like (or wasting more experience than they would like if they stop gaining until they train) by the time they get to the destination.

If you handwaive that, and check much less frequently, than the assumptions surrounding attrition change since they may only have a fight every few days, which leads to the "all-in resource" fight problem and little meaningful drain on resources at all (since you can stock up on healing magic and blow it on the off days).

Also, random encounters fail to meet their required function because they don't drive behavior (the decisions regarding route and mode of travel having largely been made at the commencement of the journey, and the fights don't serve as a means of applying consequences through attrition). This means you need another method to make the choice of route and mode of transportation meaningful, as you can't rely on established game structures. Here are a few possibilities I thought of:

1. Like Alexis Smolensk, you play out every hex, and it takes years of real-world play to actually get anywhere.

2. You react to choice of route/mode with wanderers as usual, but you use less of them, and make the individual encounters more dangerous (higher risk of TPK, frequent use of save-or-die and save-or-suck, expect to see medusas, basilisks and level draining undead).

3. You have fewer encounters, but each "encounter" is really a mini-adventure, so that the assumptions regarding attrition function inside of the encounter. Because you have time to write adventures to occur between your adventures.

4. You tell the PCs they arrived without significant incident (thereby making choice of route/mode essentially irrelevant, and making your players wonder why a month long journey through the frontier is safer than the area immediately surrounding your average village).

I'm not really happy with any of these. So I am asking whether you have problems like I have described regarding either the game outside of the dungeon, or regarding lengthy overland travel, and if so how you deal with them.

 

[Two orcs]

Roll reaction for wilderness encounters, most do not attack right away and can be avoided. I pre-roll encounters so I can make a little doodle for a lair and roll up treasure. The problem with the wilderness isn't the density of monsters but rather the lack of decision points between monsters. I think if hexes were made like dungeon rooms, with Empty, Monster, Trap and Special there might be a legit choice in what route you take and if monsters lairs are pre-placed and have a patrol radius players can intelligently maneuver after they learn or guess the lair's location (certain monsters wander more, the inverse of %liar gives you their likelyhood to be on patrol any given moment).

Another thing, the wilderness is so dangerous that you should travel with a retinue of mercenaries. Encounter should be more like full blown skirmishes between squads than dungeon fights. A dragon finds you? Not a problem if you have 60 crossbowmen.

 

[Beoric]

Roll reaction for wilderness encounters, most do not attack right away and can be avoided. I pre-roll encounters so I can make a little doodle for a lair and roll up treasure. The problem with the wilderness isn't the density of monsters but rather the lack of decision points between monsters. I think if hexes were made like dungeon rooms, with Empty, Monster, Trap and Special there might be a legit choice in what route you take and if monsters lairs are pre-placed and have a patrol radius players can intelligently maneuver after they learn or guess the lair's location (certain monsters wander more, the inverse of %liar gives you their likelyhood to be on patrol any given moment).

Another thing, the wilderness is so dangerous that you should travel with a retinue of mercenaries. Encounter should be more like full blown skirmishes between squads than dungeon fights. A dragon finds you? Not a problem if you have 60 crossbowmen.

I do pretty much all of that, in some iteration or another. The "treating hexes like dungeon areas" is something I've talked about here before, and it could help if the hexes were big enough. I note that what you are describing is more like generating content (similar to my suggestion #3 above) rather than using wandering monsters.

You have actually solved the attrition problem by making the issue attrition of mercenaries; if you need a small army to survive, then you can only survive as long as you have a small army. I think that could work in some areas of my campaign, but not in the areas that are civilized or semi-civilized, where you could attract unwanted attention. Also, beyond a certain level they don't add that much, and there are other reasons why people might be travelling without an escort in my campaigns, so I still need a solution in addition to this one.

 

[Two orcs]

Some ways of adding back PC attrition:
1. vigilance - when you are on the watch for intrigue and assassins regaining spells and hp takes a full week of rest, if you lower your guard an assassin with the proper tools/luck slitting your throat in your sleep is fair game
2. attrition - one spell per day (maybe always highest level cast) and one full HD of hp per day lost is exhausted and may only be regained through a full month of non-adventuring downtime.

 

[Two orcs]

One way of scaling it by level is connecting standard of living to recuperation, living like a vagabond is fine for 1st level adventurers but unless the gp is spent on living expenses proper to the characters level they don't heal the hp/spell. And the comforts of a higher lifestyle must be physically present in the form of comfortable tents, servants, surplus mounts, good food, expert trainers and assistants etc. so that going low profile works as long as you don't burn your resources but keeping up a campaign at your full potential requires ostentatious luxury.

I require 2% of xp in gp per month or they don't get the full benefits of their level.

 

[Two orcs]

Why does even a low ranking knight have like four guys travelling with him just to panper his horse and clean his armor? Because he's a 2nd level fighter and must spend 40+ gp on the wages of servants to gain the full benefits of his level.

 

[squeen]

I keyed the wilderness (pre-generated and placed the major lairs/encounters) and made the random monsters that appeared appropriate to the surroundings (per-region tables). Also, the little corner of the world in which they have been traveling for that last 6 years, is sparsely civilized...but does have trade routes. The roads are far safer (and faster) so the PC's usually stick too them, and they mostly follow along side rivers.. Going from town-to-town becomes a quasi-point crawl. Going into the deep wilds is far more dangerous and almost always guarantees an encounter as you penetrate the domain of the local powers.

Despite this relative ease of movement, it still takes about a 2 weeks of travel (one way, game-time) to go from the capital city out to the "Keep on the Borderlands" where they started, and another 2+ weeks of travel in the opposite direction to the mega-dungeon, which is in a deep mountain gorge that also channels movement. Along the way there are about two dozen known points-on-interest the party has become familiar with via encounters and side-excursions. We don't hand-wave it.

In six years, they have made it "there" (mega-dungeon) and "back" (Keep) only one-and-a-half times. As a result, they are quite excited they they had (recently) gotten to high enough level so that teleportation-type magics have increased their global mobility. It ends up happening (no coincidence in terms of 1e game mechanics, I'm sure) after:
(a) they have slowly gotten to know enough about the world to know where to go, and
(b) become sufficiently entangle/pivotal in region politics (through play) to have a reason to go places

"there" was slow (years), but the journey was in many ways the destination (technically trying to find the Lost City/mega-dungeon)
"back" was much quicker (<1 year?), a campaign/world event was the motive

So, to your point:

By default this requires an in-world environment where the opportunity for/risk of combat occurs frequently over the course of a day.
...
3. You have fewer encounters, but each "encounter" is really a mini-adventure, so that the assumptions regarding attrition function inside of the encounter. Because you have time to write adventures to occur between your adventures.

I guess I did #3 here, but I totally did not adhere to your opening premise. My players tend to avoid combat if possible. It's 1hp/day & spells recovered if you get a good night's sleep, even while traveling. What's dangerous for a 0-level human is not as dire for an armed party of 3rd-level PCs. Attrition was not a problem or a design-goal unless they were penetrating something more forbidding. They absolutely loved taking on threats that were "beneath" them---it lets them flex their muscle a bit and gives a sense of progression.

That said, their motives in-world are generally not XP/level-advancement, which is slow anyways (every 10+ play sessions or so after and usually requires a deep-dive into the Unknown). They just want to get where they are going, and along the way see and do cool stuff, i.e. make allies, find magic, unravel mysteries, help a friend, etc....and then (for some insane reason) try to blow the minds of the NPC's they've already met with their accomplishments. Our thief, in particular, likes to brag about the mythic creatures he has slain. I guess it's a good sign that the NPCs seem real enough that the players cared what they think. Revisiting old haunts is tons of fun. As I've said before, you will be surprised at what the players noticed the first time, but gave no indication. With each visit, the locale grows in depth---as a DM that feels very satisfying.

I guess the level-advancement thing might be the crux of what makes this approach work. If you stay "outdoors" and on the known roads, travel is not particularly dangerous---but you will probably not get rich and/or go up in levels. Low risk/low reward in terms of game-mechanics, but rich in terms of a world-story reveal (exploration of the known-world?). It's how the bulk of the population lives. Only if you're "stoo-pid" and go poking around where no sane person belongs does the risk increase and you have a chance of unearthing something special (i.e. a pile of treasure, finding something magical, having your skin turn green, sprouting a tail, etc.).

The players get to decide how they want to mix-up these two contrasting ingredients. Forget Challenge Ratings too, let the players ride that wave.

This slow-burn type of play might not be your (or apparently most people's) cup of tea, but I really liked it. It was a bit different than how I played way-back when (i.e. more time inside mega-dungeons, more frequent death), but it grew naturally towards higher-level play in a way I think the original game intended. There were many unexpected "clues" over the years that the gears were meshing correctly, and that we were walking in other's foot-steps. Unlike Yora's complaint, I did not lose interest in D&D as a result---and instead of feeling constrained that the game mechanics did not allow me to "tell the kind of stories I wanted to tell", I felt the world had many stories that the players could "reveal" if they chose---in fact, far more than they had time to uncover. It was neat. Dare I suggest Yora's point about "player ability acquisition" as prime-motivator is on target? A flat PC power-curve seems key ("Don't focus on your character"...etc., etc.), otherwise they quickly outgrow the setting.

Still, I suspect my anecdote was probably not helpful to you, and that you are looking for a very different paradigm of play. Something more automatic and rapid. More hex-crawl-y. My approach was very hands-on and only mildly procedural: Distance as either a barrier of inconvenience (not usually attrition), an opportunity to encounter the new-and-interesting (set pieces), and that also serves to separate the zones of the major world-powers (also set pieces). And yet, distance and travel was quite palpable and important. Time equals distance. The players sometimes pressured me to hand-waive it, but in retrospective I think we're all glad we didn't.

EDIT: Again to your point: the net result of this way of handling travel was that my player became/are very miserly on the road with all resources---except clerical healing. Less so in-city. More so in dungeons. I'm not sure if there is causation, or it's just their nature.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

To Yora's problem: That looks to me like it all came down to rookie DMing issues (when your longest campaign is 19 sessions, I'm not surprised). The worldbuilding blandness, the confusion around overland travel, the difficulty balancing fights, being overwhelmed by player abilities, the non-understanding of dungeons... all these are the same problems rookies get, and they go away once you have a clear understanding of the game (and what it means to everyone involved, not just yourself), and once you hone your creativity/improvisation skills. Honestly, the solution to Yora's problem seems so simple you have to wonder why it wasn't solved before: don't be a DM, be a player. You say your players were having fun but you weren't? Then next time, maybe be a player?

Blaming D&D's design for your failure to have fun is like blaming Nintendo because you keep dying in a Mario game - sometimes, when millions others are having fun with the same thing, you eventually have to admit that the problem is you, not the Nintendo.

As to all this talk of attrition: I personally upscale combat encounters by adding more hp, thematic resistances, or tweaking damage if I have a need to eat away at player resources (which isn't often; D&D is more about adventure and story at my table than logistics and HR management), but that's as far as I generally go. My job as the DM isn't to mollycoddle the players to balance their resources for them; it's to go "here is the world, here is the danger, what do you want to do about it?"

The CR system, garbage as it is, is nonetheless supposed to be a guideline to balancing attrition - that's the whole point of it. If you follow it even loosely you are doing about 80% of the balancing work right there automatically. Otherwise I say let the party worry about attrition. If they arrive at the dungeon fresh as daisies, who cares? The contents of the dungeon will change that soon. If they find overland travel too safe, then add more danger (easiest thing to add ever). If they find everything too boring because nothing threatens them, then you've failed as a DM - there are many, many DMs who can offer up a session with ZERO combat encounters and still be fun. The game's fun isn't derived from inherent balance and mechanical combat, but rather from what the DM brings to the table, creatively.

 

[squeen]

One last point on resources: One concept I (sort of) preserved from my time as a player that our DM had invented/coined (I think), is the "One Way Dungeon". That was usually a large/mega dungeon that once you entered, you couldn't really exit until you made it out the other side. There were enough "way points" for resource recovered (whole bizarre "towns" inside the dungeon sometimes) and he would allow you to level-up if you reached them and rested. We didn't do formal class training costs---but other endeavors consumed gold rapidly like spell research, potion fab, or castle building. We waged some fairly large-scale battles beneath the earth, and spent a lot on fortifications. At higher levels, castle design could be a big down-time/between-game activity...as was spell-design for the MU (usually me).

Getting trapped inside a dungeon for months puts a whole new twist on resource management.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

Great stuff guys. I have a lot to say on this one since I've been running a wilderness hexcrawl for a while, but I'll have to compose a bigger comment over lunch maybe.

As to Yora's original post, it seems to be the same old thing. Giving up too early.

 

[Beoric]

To Yora's problem: That looks to me like it all came down to rookie DMing issues (when your longest campaign is 19 sessions, I'm not surprised).

As to Yora's original post, it seems to be the same old thing. Giving up too early.

I don't think that's really being fair. Different systems really are better at different things, and if Yora wants to find a system better suited to the playstyle, how can that be wrong? Its like he's been trying to drive a screw with a hammer, and now he wants to try a screwdriver, and you're haranguing him for not giving the hammer a fair shake. Sure he could pound in the screw. But why should he have to, if something else will work better?

EDIT: And @DangerousPuhson, stop telling people they're bad DMs. I've read plenty of your DMing advice, I can't say I've seen any sign that you're any better than anybody else.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

EDIT: And @DangerousPuhson, stop telling people they're bad DMs. I've read plenty of your DMing advice, I can't say I've seen any sign that you're any better than anybody else.

When the guy is giving up the game out of frustration, it's a sign there's a problem. It's not the players giving up, it's Yora, in his role as the DM. Ergo, Yora has a problem playing as a DM. I imply that perhaps he is not suited for being a DM, as would be indicative by his literally quitting the game over it.

I did not tell Yora he was a bad DM; Yora put up an entire blog post about how he is not well-suited for the job.

As for the personal attack - ouch. This forum, man. Y'all go for blood.
I'll have you know all my advice comes from field-tested, player-approved experiences spanning my 25 years of DMing.

 

[Beoric]

As for the personal attack - ouch. This forum, man. Y'all go for blood.
I'll have you know all my advice comes from field-tested, player-approved experiences spanning my 25 years of DMing.

So you can say Yora, who posts here, is a shitty DM and that's not personal, but me saying you aren't better than anyone else is personal? How does that compute?

 

[The1True]

So you can say Yora, who posts here, is a shitty DM

But he didn't say that. Admittedly the use of the word 'Rookie' probably isn't going to lead to a constructive reaction from any of our inflated DM egos, but he definitely did not call him a shitty DM. This is actually a really interesting discussion, could we please not devolve into another flame war guys?

 

[Beoric]

Ok, back on topic.

Some ways of adding back PC attrition:
1. vigilance - when you are on the watch for intrigue and assassins regaining spells and hp takes a full week of rest, if you lower your guard an assassin with the proper tools/luck slitting your throat in your sleep is fair game
2. attrition - one spell per day (maybe always highest level cast) and one full HD of hp per day lost is exhausted and may only be regained through a full month of non-adventuring downtime.

The vigilance thing falls into my category #2: high risk encounters. The attrition idea would take a lot of playtesting to get the numbers right, and isn't really useful until that work has been done. It also requires messing with the actual game system, which makes it hard to recommend as an a procedure, especially for BtB purists like EOTB and squeen.

One way of scaling it by level is connecting standard of living to recuperation, living like a vagabond is fine for 1st level adventurers but unless the gp is spent on living expenses proper to the characters level they don't heal the hp/spell. And the comforts of a higher lifestyle must be physically present in the form of comfortable tents, servants, surplus mounts, good food, expert trainers and assistants etc. so that going low profile works as long as you don't burn your resources but keeping up a campaign at your full potential requires ostentatious luxury.

I require 2% of xp in gp per month or they don't get the full benefits of their level.

I'm not clear on how this helps with either the issue of estimating the difficulty of fights or the issue that D&D requires attrition of resources to make choices interesting and provide challenge. Please elaborate.

[Post is too long to selectively quote]

So squeen's go to solution is category #3: fewer encounters, but the encounters are mini-adventures. Plus he doesn't really encounter the problem because his players don't care about levelling they only care about the narrative experience, and it sounds like nobody fusses much about difficulty of fights. Which means nobody in squeen's group cares about the things that D&D tries to push you to care about.

I note if Yora had squeen's group he might not have a problem.

I really like Two orcs' implied solution of switching the attrition formula to other resources. That is, different resources are required for success in long term travel, and you plan encounters to deal with those resources in particular. He suggested mercenaries, but predators taking out mounts or pack animals would also work, or scavengers stealing or spoiling rations. What I like about this is that it doesn't require new mechanics, it only requires you to identify the resources and take an approach to encounter building that takes those resources into account, and to tie risks to decisions. I bet it could be broken out into teachable principles, including techniques to avoid turning it into a bean-counting exercise.

This doesn't help with Yora's "I don't want to run an attrition based game" problem, but it does help with my long overland travel problem.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

The more I type, the less sure I am that any of my suggestions would help. You seem to be fighting against some of the structure of 4th edition here, but I don't know anything about it except what you have pointed out above. I run a very small wilderness game that is extremely dense with content, in a totally uncivilized region of the map. The idea is that it's always dangerous and the players don't really take long journeys. So there is some amount of attrition, but it is based on how *far* into the wilderness they want to go. Choosing their danger level, in a way like deciding how deep into the dungeon to delve.

It seems to me that the solution would be in how you set up your game world. How far is your group traveling?

 

[squeen]

So squeen's go to solution is category #3: fewer encounters, but the encounters are mini-adventures. Plus he doesn't really encounter the problem because his players don't care about levelling they only care about the narrative experience, and it sounds like nobody fusses much about difficulty of fights. Which means nobody in squeen's group cares about the things that D&D tries to push you to care about.

I note if Yora had squeen's group he might not have a problem.

I think it's easy to dismiss "my group" out-of-hand as outliers, but I don't think it's entirely a happy accident. My players were new to D&D, so their expectations grew to match the game I served up. My intent (as a new DM, this millennium) was:

• the game is lethal, let the dice fall where they may
• emphasis on the environment, not stories -- the world responds dynamically to what they do each session
• Finch's Old School Primer lessons: player skill, not character abilities
• no hurry to blow through low-level play, 1st-5th is a "sweet spot"
• Holmes Basic races/classes only --- we usually end up with a nice mix of multiple fighters, a cleric, a MU, and a thief
• DM keeps most die-rolls hidden

It initially was all the dice-rolls (like I preferred when when I was a player), but I enjoy the drama of them rolling their initiative, attacks and saves out in the open. But for the most part, I shield them from the mechanics of play. They get a "magic sword", but never know it's +1. They know their 3d6 stats, HP, spells, and equipment list. That's about it. I think exposing the mechanics too much can lessen the game...makes it a meta-game/faux-experience. Still, y'all have convinced me about "the players need info about the mechanics to make meaningful choices" so I have relaxed this rule quite a bit in recent years---but I'm not sure it improved the player's experience (and maybe the opposite). As a player (40 years ago, yikes!), I did it both ways and far preferred when the DM (who I trusted to be rigorously fair) held all the cards close to his chest. Like my "messy art" (to quote Malrex), your brain fills in more than what's probably there. If you have never played that way, don't condemn it---you might be surprised how insanely immersive it is. "How would you know [that]?" is a wonderful DM retort I stole from the late, great, Kenny Unferth. I played that way for almost a decade, and never found it's equal. I've even had decent success in replicating it with my group.

I initially chose AD&D, but we half-slid back into Swords & Wizardry (OD&D) because of it's elegant simplicity which I thought was better/simpler for a "new" DM and new players. I also had some weird Holmes Basic rules in my head from "ye olden times" (like AC 9). All-in-all, I think it had the following advantages:

• S&W has the OD&D shallow PC power-curve, mild stat bonuses, and goes out-of-its-way to encourage creativity
• I do BtB XP and always divided it by 1 share for each PC and 0.5 shares for all their (numerous) hirelings/allies. That meant leveling up only occurred after many sessions, and usually only after a "big haul", which are rare. "XP awards/multipliers" are pretty uncommon/non-existant too. Why not linger in that low-level sweet spot for as long as possible?
• They learned quickly that some fights you walk away from, and some you RUN! (I can recall one random wilderness encounter with a hippogriffon that attacked and ate one of their horses. One player thought it might be a good idea to try and stop it---it did not end well.)
• Also, I started them out in the B2 Keep...not the dungeon, where there were both helpful and nutty/hurtful NPCs. It got them used to interacting with a persistent world before and after each major excursion. The girls in the group vocally prefer the "town play" to the deadly dungeons.
• I kept throwing tons of hooks at them---far more than they could pursue. They've always had a backlog of "things we need to get to".
• Everything about the world was a "slow reveal". Not railroads. Player's choice---always. Many layers of events happening on vastly different time-scales to pick and choose from. "Walking away" was a real option---no Quantum Ogres. Improvisation about the world was minimal and I did my homework between sessions.

In short, my players got used to not leveling often (or continuous combat), and so never fixated on it. It's that simple. Not an accident.

And, "no", to @Beoric, that is in no way contrary to what D&D says you are suppose to be doing. The Holmes Basic set only covered levels 1-3. Do you think that was intended for just 3 sessions of play? Really?

The whole resource-management thing is just a piece in the puzzle of keeping your players challenged---putting limits on their capabilities so that they can never walk all over the game. The brass ring needs to be constantly dangling just out-of-reach. Challenge has very little to do with monster-encounters, and far more about the subtle art of stymieing PC desires (with the secret hope that they rise to the occasion and overcome, ad infinitum).

@Yora : Be the brave DM that says "NO" and run your best game---they will probably love you for it. (@The1True : "Yes" is not always better. Try being the good parent, not their best pal. In my experience, D&D works better when the DM is an legit authority figure, not "one of the gang". It's not about control, it comes out of love---for your players and the game. Indulgence is not a true kindness.)

OH YEAH! I almost forgot! (heh): I never tell them their XP! Just an approximation of "how far" to the next level.

Laugh and point at me all you want. This is D&D (and always has been, as far as I'm concerned).

(As an aside, I/we never liked the B/X rule revision when it first came out. Felt like they dumbed it down to appease the masses. It was the first time I felt D&D had started to lose some of its charm and wonder. X1 sat (sits!) on my shelf, un-played. The je ne c'est qua was definately missing. Even as a youngster I could detect a forgery. Again, mock if you will, but this is honest eye-witness testimony.)

 

[squeen]

Oh yeah! Totally forgot --- it's WAY risky (and physically impractical) for a magic-user to travel with their spell book.
They almost always leave it at home.

Even the smaller "Traveling Spell Books" have a big tendency to be targets. (Fire! Fire!)

The rules work. We just forget to use them sometimes.
(And sometimes, well-meaning dunderheads---self-included---edit them...)

 

[Beoric]

The more I type, the less sure I am that any of my suggestions would help. You seem to be fighting against some of the structure of 4th edition here, but I don't know anything about it except what you have pointed out above.

My outdoor adventure procedures are strictly old school, I use no 4e structures. So suggest away.

In terms of distance, it is about 2000 miles from one end of the core continent (Khorvaire) to the other; most of the area if more or less civilized, and travel by sea between ports is possible. It is about a month's travel by sailing ship to reach the continent of Xen'drik, which is a lot wilder and more suitable for mid to high level exploration play.

@squeen, rewarding combat and gold acquisition with XP, and reqarding XP with more power and new abilities, drives the game toward a certain type of play. So does the fact that you can explore until you run out of spells and hit points. The fact that you appear to have actively taken stepts to train your group not to chase XP does not mean that the system does not reward the gaining of XP. System does matter: OD&D gives you high lethality and a shallow power curve, which other editions/systems might not, and resolves most actions by narration/DM judgment rather than with a skill system; and the bits of it you don't like you have actively mitigated.

You notice I never tell anyone they should try 4e because they might like it? I don't do that because I know it isn't for everyone (and because the presentation pushes new DMs and players toward a particular type of gaming, and it requires someone experienced to show how the mechanics don't actually require that).

The fact is, if we are lucky, we find a system that mostly gives us the bits we want, and mostly doesn't force on us the bits we don't. But a lot of us don't experiment because we are only exposed to a limited number of basically similar systems, so we never know that there may be systems out there that better cater to the play experience we want. Plus we get set in our ways; somewhere out there is probably a system that would give me more of what I want than 4e, but I've been playing D&D for decades and frankly don't have time to test a bunch of new rulesets trying to find it.

My group is about evenly split between those who care about levelling more, and those who care about emerging narrative more. Like you and your players, I fall into the latter group, and were it not for my enjoyment of the tactical aspects of combat I would probably be looking for a different system, just like Yora. It sounds like Yora's group are all XP chasers, which changes the experience for him into something he would rather not run. I think that's valid, and if he thinks he has found something that would work better for him than D&D, he should go for it.