Talk:Attrition-based Campaigns (3.5e Variant Rule)

Initial Thoughts

These would make for a possibly more "realistic" game, and I can see them well-suited to a low-magic campaign, but could also would be less fun, unless everyone in the party loves micromanaging their inventory by tracking food, water, and other supplies, as well as constantly checking their weight and carrying capacity (unless the party is traveling with a pack animal, for which they must also now track food and water). If players want that, more power to them. But as a DM I find that it's easier to assume (within reason) that everyone has accounted for these things and let everyone focus more on the adventure. There are other ways to immerse the players into your world that aren't constant dealing with perishable items. Again, that's my personal preference, so your actual mileage may vary.

It's interesting that you throttled back on healing, food creation and needs for nourishment but not death and resurrection. If ever there was a ruleset that cried out for harsher penalties for dying and the banning of Death-as-Revolving-Door at higher levels, this would be it.

"Features like Fast Healing and Regeneration are restricted to healing only 2 hit points per hit die per day total." Wow, suddenly trolls and hydras just became stupidly easy to kill. Since those and similar monsters are designed to give players encounters that are more difficult to overcome just by straight hacking and slashing, this rule throws their concepts out the window. Something to consider.

"All creature types now need to eat. Constructs live on coal or wood and oil or water, undead eat blood, bones, or specific organs, outsiders eat souls, and so on." Hmm. This seems like it would be really straining to implement and would involve a lot of extra work reflavoring the basic mechanics of quite a few monsters. For example, almost all methods I know of for trapping and using souls are universally evil in nature. Sorry, solars, archons, and other good outsiders, you now have to harvest and consume souls to survive. Good luck with that.

Lastly, the Time Limit section seems unnecessary. Time sensitive objectives are inherent in many quests, and the examples given seem to belabor really obvious points. Unless the party is evil or chaotic stupid, no one's going to put the famine relief mission on hold and go run a week-long side quest. If they actually DO something along those lines, there are consequences. This is not something that we need alternate rules for, this is basic DMing. If consequences AREN'T happening, your party is probably off the rails anyway, and the game has bigger problems.

That's all I got for the moment. Spanambula (talk) 06:56, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I normally play campaigns where the characters are fully rested before nearly every encounter. All that stuff with daily spells and limited healing, and a conversation about how deserts aren't dangerous got me thinking about how easily one could make D&D into a game that played completely different.

I'm not quite sure why death should necessarily be less of a revolving door for this campaign style. It's not like using true resurrection to reset the timer on starvation is a very sensible plan.

The point of Time Limit isn't to introduce the idea of time-sensitive objectives as some novel innovation. Rather, the purpose of that section is to make it clear that that's the only type of adventure this campaign style works well with. I'll probably go in and edit the "limit on the number of days" thing so it doesn't sound like a strict time limit. --Foxwarrior (talk) 07:34, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

"I normally play campaigns where the characters are fully rested before nearly every encounter." Then that's what's breaking the game, since all of D&D is designed for 3-4 encounters on average before an 8-hour rest.Spanambula (talk) 08:24, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Although we all realize that the 3-4 encounters is generally the exception and not the rule. --Undead_Knave (talk) 09:15, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

"We all" don't realize anything. I've always shot for a 4 encounter day in my games (Salin being the exception for obvious reasons). My point is that if you're going to let your casters let loose with their best spells/powers/whatever every combat, of course it's going to be a much different game than if they have to hold stuff back for later. If they can choose a bunch of travel-related spells knowing they can rest between their destination and an encounter, of course traveling is going to be easy. I'm not saying that's a wrong way to play; if everyone's having fun, who cares? But complaining that spells make things like natural healing, environmental hazards and starvation irrelevant because you're letting your casters fully recharge between every scene is just silly. Spanambula (talk) 10:37, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Okay, if you make sure that all quests follow the time limits that you find so obvious, then yes, spells that simply solve the other problems aren't perfect because they're still a hefty tax on the casters' spell slots. I could take an argument based on that that only the Time Limit section is necessary, but if you're marching through the desert, you might as well be actually dying of thirst, not just spending 1 or 2 of the Cleric's level 0 slots per day.

On a slightly related note, I've been brought up on a healthy dose of fantasy novels that involve weeks to months of travel, court politics, or discovering demonic conspiracies between every battle. --Foxwarrior (talk) 18:15, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I never said "all quests" had to follow time limits (stop libeling me! X3). Variety is the spice of an interesting D&D game as well as life. I'm just saying that D&D mechanics presuppose a 4 encounter day*, and if you regularly deviate from that then it shouldn't be surprising that casters can go whizzing through the game shouting "WHEEEEEEE!" ***Edit: Ok, having reread the encounter section in the DMG, it does not explicitly say that, So I'll eat some crow on that one. However, I don't feel this invalidates my overall point.***

And on your related note, I call apples to oranges. Unless the DM is really railroading things, the mechanics of narrative used in writing a book differ significantly from the type of interactive narrative between a DM and the party. But even if you don't agree with that, you can also find plenty of fantasy books where characters must get through multiple encounters before resting. Such as: "'A Balrog,' muttered Gandalf. 'Now I understand.' He faltered and leaned heavily on his staff. 'What an evil fortune! And I am already weary.'" Spanambula (talk) 22:00, 10 August 2013 (UTC)