D&D 5E [ToA] Hex-crawling and Long Rests

[Sacrosanct]

He's making assumptions FOR - HIS - GAME. Not yours... HIS. And thus you are in absolutely no position to tell him that what he thinks his players will do WON'T happen. So rather than trying shut down his thread by saying "There's no reason to even talk about this other ideas because they aren't going to happen"... why don't you just walk away and let CapnZapp and anyone else who wishes to participate do so.

Besides which... how do you even know he's going to run sections 1 and 2 at level? Hmm? You don't. Perhaps he's going to start at level 9 like the book says he can. And yes, while the book says doing so will make sections 1 and 2 rather trivial... perhaps he's trying to figure out ways so that IT ISN'T TRIVIAL. Even *if* his party has Create Food and Water and Leomunds Tiny Hut, etc. etc. etc.

But you've got this huge bug up your rear end that make you come running into a completely new thread trying to shut it down just because you don't like how CapnZapp expresses himself. A thread that he purposefully took out of another thread in order to avoid overlapping on that one... and you come chasing after him telling him his thread isn't worth even looking at.

I'd like to think that if he had just put at the top of his first post "Okay, here's a thought experiment I'd like to work out for my personal game I'm going to run... it might not happen but just in case it does..." that you wouldn't spend all your time going through it saying "No! No! False! No!"... but my instincts tell me you'd probably have done that anyway because you just can't help yourself when CapnZapp is involved.

This has nothing to do with how he expresses himself, or his preferred playstyle. Resorting to strawmen is a clear indicator that you really don't, or can't, come up with an argument that actually addresses what I've said. That's pretty telling.

What this has to do with, is him saying all these challenges that would come up are going to just be handwaved away as trivial based on a list of assumptions that are factually incorrect. Many of the solutions (lists of all the spells) he gives aren't even accessible for that phase of the game as designed. That is a factual statement. Nothing to do with opinion, or playstyle, or whatever. He hasn't even seen the book, and tried to tell me I was wrong and that exploration of Chult was tier 2 when it's clearly not. Again, factual inaccuracy that has nothing to do opinion.

He's making several claims that are objectively not true, and here you are making personal attacks on me and my character while making assumptions of your own to defend his arguments (He never mentioned anything about starting at level 9, so how the heck are we supposed to know that, let alone assume it). Literally every other thread in the past 3 years hasn't been presented by him as his own opinion or style. They've been comments like "You can't do that in this game without changing it." (that was just yesterday in fact, and I tagged you on it so you know exactly what I am talking about) or "the game is broken, the designers are lazy/incompetent, and you're all apologists for defending it." The last three YEARS have been like that, over and over. But here you are, saying, "No man, he's just stating his opinion, not trying to act like it's objective." when that flies totally counter to his posting history. If Captzapp doesn't want me (and others who have also chimed in) to come away with the impression that he's saying his way is the one true way, then maybe over the past three years he shouldn't have over and over made claims that his way is the only right away and the game is broken and we're all apologists for bad game design for disagreeing with him, or that we can't play the game as intended without changing it.

You attack me personally by saying I have some sort of agenda of hate against him when the only thing I've ever done is point out how his claims are not actually objectively true, when it's you who seems to completely ignore all the actual evidence and bend over backwards to defend the argument that depends solely on your own assumptions that there isn't any evidence of. "Well, if you assume he changes x, y, and z, and ignores a, b, and c, then I can see where that may be the case, even though he never said he was planning on changing x, y, or z, or ignoring a, b, or c." Unless he specifically states he's starting at a high level, then it's entirely reasonable that people are going to respond with the assumption he's going to be running the adventure as designed, and therefore it's entirely reasonable to point out how some things he's mentioned that would make the situation trivial wouldn't actually apply.

*Edit* And if he is going to start at a higher level, that definitely should have been mentioned, because it changes everything. The adventure is designed to give the feel of the sheer suckiness of the jungle at low levels. By the time you reach tier 2 (Dwellers of the Forbidden City), the adventure is designed assuming the party is going to bypass much of the sucktitude of the jungle (in no small part because the players will by then have access to spells that mitigate it like he says). I.e., it doesn't want players still spending a lot of time dealing with dehydration and exhaustion because it wants the players to focus on the dungeon areas by that point. The game is clearly designed to not have those exhaustion rules and dehydration rules be as big of a factor or impact to PCs once you hit tier 2 level. It's meant to set the stage and the feel of the environment for those first several sessions only. If he's going to start at a higher level and bypass how the game is designed, then that is a pretty darn important thing to mention up front because it changes the entire context of this whole discussion.

 

[Quickleaf]

Something like that, yes.

Except one thing: the pseudoscientific explanation why you can't rest isn't/can't be based on physical location, or the party simply brings up Leomund's Tiny Hut, Rope Trick etc

I'm more inclined to describe it as something akin to "evil radiation", i. e. something that can't be circumvented, something that makes the player permanently abandon any workarounds so they can start focusing on the real intended game here:

Conserving resources over multiple encounters, irrespective of how many days it takes to travel to the next safe camp. ☺

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

"Evil radiation" that reaches into extradimensional pockets, sure, why not? You're the DM! Have fun with it!

With respect to those two spells in particular...

When I've seen players cast Leomund's Tiny Hut in a "hostile wilderness", I've just made it common practice for intelligent monsters encountering an opaque dome of magic to set up ambushes. IIRC, when this happened, I checked for encounters at night, got one, then guesstimated the encounter happened mid-way into the party's long rest within the magic dome...so the monsters (who had a shaman who knew about the spell) had roughly 4 hours to prepare. They began by covering the dome in mud (to obscure the PCs' sight, so the PCs couldn't see all the traps and ambushes the monsters were setting up). I wasn't a *total* rat bastard, however, as I didn't have the monsters place heavy tree logs on top of the dome that would fall on top of the PCs when the spell ended. IMHO, that should be standard operating procedure for many intelligent monsters. For example, the Batiri goblins in ToA? They should do this 100%.

Rope Trick is a bit more problematic, and has long been considered a bit too good for a 2nd level spell, at least as far back as AD&D1e. Again, I'd look at the nature of the monsters in the given hostile territory the PCs are rope trick camping in...with an eye toward creating ways intelligent monsters could detect the "invisible window" of the rope trick. This might mean a suspicious shaman monster casting detect magic, or the monsters (having been previously alerted to adventurers) going to get a monstrous ally with True Sight or ability to cast see invisibility, or improvising a monster "seer" with the kuo-toa's Otherworldly Perception. Or even on a more mundane level, having scouts keeping an eye on the adventurers from a distance, noting where they cast rope trick when stopping to rest. IMHO rope trick should feel a bit like playing chicken (where 2 car drivers drive straight at one another in a test of nerves) with both the environment & monsters... You're in an extradimensional space, so you have no awareness of environmental changes (e.g. flash floods) taking place while you're up in your rope trick extradimensional tree house. Also, while it's less likely that you'll be detected than with tiny hut, IF you are detected (probably through habitual use of rope trick in territory of hostile intelligent monsters), then it's really bad news because you have a 60-ft climb down with monsters waiting for you! And if you don't get out in time, that's a 60-ft fall whewn the rope trick expires!

However, one thing both spells do well is almost totally protect a party from non-intelligent monsters (e.g. zombies or poisonous snakes). There's the rare possibility that the PCs make a fire inside the magic dome of a tiny hut, for example, and swarms of insects flock to edge of dome sensing heat...I guess the spell is ambiguous about heat radiance. But by and large, these spells are intended to protect PCs from non-intelligent monsters, and reading through ToA, that's very in keeping with the low DC group Stealth checks ToA calls for to evade certain monsters/zombies. If someone wants to cast a 2nd or 3rd level spell to avoid that, they should totally go for it, no problem.

 

[CapnZapp]

And I'm telling you they can't. Not sure why this is so hard to understand.

Bonus points for persistence... but your quest is truly quixotic.

Are you seriously going to devote your time here on the forums to convince me you know my players better than I do?

Walk away, Sacrosanct. If for no other reason that I don't want to start doubting your mental status.

 

[CapnZapp]

I was thinking the same thing too! Limiting long rests in the jungle will stop them from just NOVA-ing their way through a 1-2 encounter travel day.

One thing I'm playing with is, the idea that they can only take long rests in base camps. So they either have to become friendly with a group that already has a base camp, or they've got to set up their own somehow. I'm trying to work out a system for how setting up a safe basecamp would work- maybe they've got to clear out hexes surrounding the one they want to set camp on, or maybe it's a reward for a side quest, something like that?

I'm also thinking, once they've got multiple base camps set up, they can essentially "Fast travel" between them, we handwave those journeys because we assume they're able to push through to safety along known trails.

"Set up lots of base camps" can be a good side goal during the exploration part of the adventure.

Yes, this

 

[CapnZapp]

I see the jungle environment as somewhat "aware". You have a random encounter, you make a bunch of noise, you spill some blood, some creatures can smell and hear from a very long distance. Are you seriously going to camp anywhere near there, now that every hyena/t-rex/etc. can smell a bunch of fresh meat? That sounds like a guaranteed encounter, no need to roll.

The problem is that "wandering monster" is not enough to prevent long rests.

In the end, it's easier to just say it outright: "you can't do long rests". Instead of coming up with specific excuses why it doesn't work in particular instances.

Mainly because "you can't rest because of the heat/disease/mosquitoes/whatever" encourages players to try to get rid of those specific issues so they can take their long rest anyway.

When the whole point is to switch the focus away from precisely this kind of planning. The goal is for players to not think about long rests. The goal is for them to try to survive without them.

Put in another way - instead of spending play time on ways to get a long rest, we want players to spend play time on managing limited resources

 

[CapnZapp]

"Evil radiation" that reaches into extradimensional pockets, sure, why not? You're the DM! Have fun with it!

Thanks!

 

[CapnZapp]

With respect to those two spells in particular...

With respect, I'm not particularly interested in viewing troublesome spells as a roleplaying or DM challenge to get working just enough. I just want the players to stop trying to gain more long rests than they're allotted.

It's easier to just say "you can sit inside your Tiny Hut all you like, you still gain no long rest".

The spell then becomes protection against nightly encounters, but not a way to circumvent the game's pacing.

And we can return to discussing approximately how often (as in one out of four? three? six? hexes) they are going to find a "safe" hex for the adventure to work as a game.

 

[CapnZapp]

I see nothing wrong with going for the full 6-8 between long rests. Equal chances of 0, 1, or 2 average out to 1/hex, so, 7 hexes, which correlates to a week of travel. Seems neat enough.

Well, no, since this creates a spread from perhaps 2 - 12 encounters with 7 being the average in the middle.

And 12 encounters is probably much too much, especially if you have (further) bad luck with harder encounters.

I was more thinking of a spread where 7 is the upper bound more than the average, so that the adventure will feature some such stints, but not seven-encounter stints on average.

If every fourth hex is a safe hex, you will on average walk three unsafe hexes before you reach the next safe hex. But you could easily miss one and end up walking four or five or even more unsafe hexes. With bad luck on the encounter rolls, that's easily 12 encounters.

I think the adventure works best if that's a rare exception. We must keep in mind that the game doesn't actually need 7 encounters - it only needs the threat of 7 encounters!

 

[Quickleaf]

With respect, I'm not particularly interested in viewing troublesome spells as a roleplaying or DM challenge to get working just enough. I just want the players to stop trying to gain more long rests than they're allotted.

It's easier to just say "you can sit inside your Tiny Hut all you like, you still gain no long rest".

The spell then becomes protection against nightly encounters, but not a way to circumvent the game's pacing.

And we can return to discussing approximately how often (as in one out of four? three? six? hexes) they are going to find a "safe" hex for the adventure to work as a game.

Sure, many ways up the mountain. Nothing wrong with an easier one.

This may be relevant to your topic about "risk of 7 encounters, but not necessarily followthrough"... When I created an Underdark mega-encounter table with my friend for our Night Below/OotA game, I used a "meta-table" that involved checking for...

• Is there a terrain/environmental encounter? Just one? More than one?
• Is there a monster encounter? Just one? More than one?
• How do the monsters react to PCs as a baseline? If there are multiple monster groups encountered, how do they interact?

What this does is takes your # of possible encounters and makes that same # much more dynamic. In essence, you do more with less work. You increase the unpredictability. And reduce chance of a repeated encounter in the same way.

I think ToA could really benefit from this as it reads like an adventure with LOTS of random encounter checking.

And this could lead to scenarios where the party might usually think "Oh, we can risk one more encounter before bedding down for the night, no problem!" but lo and behold that could turn into 2 or 3 or even 4 encounters stacked on top of one another in various creative DM ways (I'm not just saying "make it harder").

For example, if you're using ToA's default of an encounter on 16+ on a d20, you might interpret the results as...

16 – Roll one encounter
17 – Roll one encounter
18 – Roll two encounters, mix & season
19 – Roll three encounters, mix & season
20 – Roll four encounters, mix & season

 

[Sacrosanct]

Bonus points for persistence... but your quest is truly quixotic.

Are you seriously going to devote your time here on the forums to convince me you know my players better than I do?

No. I'm not. Nothing close to that. How about responding to what I wrote instead of a strawman for you to knock down. All I said was that to do what you said would make the game trivial, the players would have to spend their rare slots (especially at low level where this particular scenario is focused on: tier 1 PCs) in order to do, leaving them with few or none to use in combat. And based how you've described your players over the years, they are very combat centric as that's the pillar they/you enjoy the most. So it seems to me to be unlikely that a player who likes to plan out their maneuvers in combat would sacrifice all/most of their spell slots to get around finding clean water and good food and wandering monsters.

Walk away, Sacrosanct. If for no other reason that I don't want to start doubting your mental status.

And now you've added more personal attacks on top of your strawman. Anyone pointing out your inconsistencies and how your assumptions may not be true is crazy now, huh?