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Numos Profile
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Registered: 12-2006
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Campfires


As some of you may have seen, you may now place campfires in the module. For now these are props for role-play.

I was wondering... however, what everyone thought of restricting resting to inn rooms and near out-door campfires. At higher levels spell-casting classes often seldom risk running out of spells before the 20 minute rest-timer expires. Being able to cast so liberally gives them a greater-than-intended advantage over non-magical characters.

Additionally, there's something about resting on a bridge over a lava-pit that's just immersion breaking.

Thoughts?

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Numos: Shapeshifting wizard
Taevis Bentham: Woodsman
4/12/2013, 6:25 pm Link to this post Send Email to Numos   Send PM to Numos
 
Sabella Profile
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Registered: 03-2013
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Re: Campfires


Maybe resting on a bridge isn't realistic, but the party can't exactly find a deserted room, bar the door, and rotate watch in a game like NWN.

Sure you could RP it out, but at a certain point RPing out things like rest and sleep just aren't very interesting and don't contribute much to the furtherance of a story.

Also, spells fade a lot quicker in NWN than they do in PnP because of the way time works in the game. Normally you wouldn't have to rest so often, but when one hour = 1 minute or however time is configured in the module, this becomes much more noticeable.

As an example, you could make the argument that resting in front of the Barghest is immersion breaking, because it is.

Except consider this: a group I was with the other night detected the threat before it arrived, cast all our buffs to prepare for battle, and then proceeded converse with the creature for roughly 20-30 RL minutes before fighting it.

By that time, many of our buffs had warn off. As far as NWN was concerned, we had a 20 hour conversation with the Barghest -- which is silly.

This is a common issue with DM events. Players have to RP and prepare for battle and the clock is always ticking while people are typing. But you want the interaction, so people just have to deal with whatever immersion breaking there is.

I don't really want to constantly feel like I'm on the clock and that can't step back and RP if I want because I won't be able to rest in the dungeon again.

You could always scatter safe rooms around dungeons to enable resting. I guess you just have to decide whether the issue is big enough to merit the dev time.



Last edited by Sabella, 4/12/2013, 7:50 pm
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Numos Profile
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Re: Campfires


As for DMed quests where buffs might expire after prolonged interactions, a DM can of course let PCs rest if they take appropriate precautions. In any case I think stopping to rest warrants a bigger fuss than simply plunking down mid-conversation to restore spells and health anywhere and almost any time without skipping a beat.



Last edited by Numos, 4/12/2013, 9:07 pm


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Taevis Bentham: Woodsman
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Ruby Pyralis Profile
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Re: Campfires


I was of the understanding that resting is treated as stopping for a few moments to catch your breath despite the fact that our avatars physically sit down for its duration, but I'm fine with changing that attitude. Considering the entire server is currently a rest-friendly zone, I think it may be a little extreme to suddenly change it to a very restrictive standard in which only campfires and inn rooms are restable, so if any changes are to be made, I would suggest something more gentle such as disabling resting in dungeons.

---
Player of:
Brìghde: The coolest druid you'll meet today.
Nomeli: Rainbow princess!
Evendlyn: I'll see you cut asunder!
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ExplodingRunes Profile
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Re: Campfires


What worked well for me in the last server I hosted, was having only certain areas you could rest in (not in dungeons or city streets, but pretty much anywhere else), and having the hour set to twenty minutes. It gave enough time that durations of spells didn't run out during a dungeon crawl if you had to stop to rp some, and the passage of day to night to day again didn't pass at a dizzying pace. It had the possible downside that people of high level could run around buffed all the time.

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Creator of A Tale of Bone and Steel.

Cloak and Dagger
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SharranAes Profile
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Re: Campfires


The main drawback of not being able to rest everywhere, is that it kind of puts a rush on people (Or parties) who rely on spell buffs;
In short, because time passes so swiftly in NwN, it makes buffs lasts a very short time (Figuratively), which mechanically almost forces rushing instead of careful exploration and actual RP while dungeon crawling.
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The Wids Profile
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Re: Campfires


Well, considering that spellcasters go through their beginning Levels as very squishy and very mortal characters who practically need allied warriors to keep them alive (with the possible exception of Clerics), high-level spellcasters are expected to be remarkably powerful after climbing so high. That's just another time-honored part of D&D: Warriors are linear, wizards are quadratic. But if there are fears about spellcasters becoming too powerful through effectively longer spell durations, the solution may be as simple as adding more monsters with Dispel Magic, Spell Resistance or other anti-magic abilities (ie. beholders).

But I've been on quite a few NWN servers in my history, and many of them have also addressed the problem of Bioware making the default time progression too fast. This server has added minimum time between rests, as have other servers (Pirate isles, Forgotten Realms: Cormyr, Forgotten Realms: Thay, Prisoners of the Mist and many more). And it's a step in the right direction, to be sure.

Other servers have already implemented this idea of limiting rests to specific areas or to certain distances from designated Restful objects. Such servers have included Cormyr, Pirate Isles, Thay, Castlevania: Vampire's Kiss, The Way Inn, Star Wars: Rise of the Rebellion, Modern Zombie Survival, Resident Evil Online and more. And I never heard any complaints from the players on those servers about that system (with one possible exception for Castlevania, which used Olander's system, which required characters to light a campfire before they could use a bedroll...even if it was high noon on a summer day).

Stretching the hours also works. Prisoners of the Mist does this; their hours aren't quite as long as real-life hours, but they feel pretty close to it. Since that server also has a fatigue system, as well as settlements and safehouses which are few and far between, characters often need the extra time to get to safety before the sun sets...because that's when all the bad things come out. That system also benefits the players who play some of those bad things (ie. vampires, werewolves, werebears, wights, et al), because the longer nights give them more playtime...more time to roam around and catch any player-characters who didn't get indoors before nightfall. Again, no complaints from the players (but then, the players on PotM also tend to keep plenty of alts, just in case their main character has to take shelter from the night in a lonely little shed with no one else for company).

The Way Inn also stretched the rest time itself. I kid you not: you could go to your kitchen, microwave a pot pie and come back to your computer, and your character would still be resting. In that system's defense, it made a bit more sense than the ten seconds or so it normally takes to rememorize all your spells and heal fully from Near Death to Uninjured. TWI's lengthy rest duration was still plenty more lenient than tabletop's recommended four hours or more, but it was enough to stave off the "revolving door" effect for characters in a party trading watch shifts.

So don't be afraid to try some of these measures; the players might not complain as much as you expect.
4/13/2013, 6:51 am Link to this post Send Email to The Wids   Send PM to The Wids Blog
 
Numos Profile
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Re: Campfires


With regard to buffs and enchantments. One consideration should be when and how they're used. It may not, and should not, always be optimal to spend 5 minutes casting your most powerful enchantments and walking around with them constantly. For example, it might be better to wait until you see a big scary enemy to give the fighter concealment.

That's just my opinion. When I do play a mage-buffer having to know what to use and when makes it a lot more interesting.

---
Characters:
Numos: Shapeshifting wizard
Taevis Bentham: Woodsman
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