HEEGZ wrote:So, going back to the 7 minute hour? Sure! I've never liked this change to be honest. How about a new thread with a poll?
The reason for my initial post is that a single player stated that small groups of players who are adventuring together run low on hit points, run out of magic, can no longer heal, and then log off early stating that because they can't rest, there's nothing left to do without a DM online. The player expressed a desire for a solution that enables the entire group to keep adventuring, which will in theory keep the players who log off interested in continuing to play.
We're talking about two things here:
- 1) grinding monsters when no DM is online
- 2) Resting more often (or getting more healing from external sources) to keep grinding.
To address the magic aspect:
One problem with < 10 min : 1 hr time scale compression is that it makes min/level, 10 min/level, hour/level and persistent (or 24 hour) spells devalued in terms of duration. These spells are typically balanced to have less of a marked effect on character damage output/defensive ability but a longer duration compared to a spell of similar level. The round/level spells tend to be the higher damage output/defensive ability spells compared to spells of a similar level and their inherent balance is that they are short duration (or that they take metamagic feats and higher spell slots to use effectively over long term.)
This is why we moved away from 7 min : 1 hr and to the 13 min : 1 hr currently in place.
The move from 7 min : 1 hr to 13 min : 1 hr was well-received and the data suggest that it had several benefits that were not readily apparent during initial discussion, as Zelknolf pointed out. However, increasing it beyond 13 min : 1 hr may be problematic in terms of player perspective. To illustrate this, with 60 min : 1 hr (true 1:1) compression, balance would be ideal in terms of spell balance and d20 system compliance; it's also terrible from a player perspective because players in certain time zones would always do all of their adventuring at the same time of the day (or night) and rest cycles would be ridiculously far apart given our amount of time spent online.
Therefore, some amount of compression, greater than 10 min : 1 hr but less than 60 min : 1 hr is good. We're at 13 min : 1 hr and that's probably the best compromise.
This doesn't solve the problem of health recovery for adventuring in shorter non-DMd play periods for players who want to grind on monsters.
I think that a better way to handle this is to make consumable healing/buff items less costly, to increase the incidence of consumable healing/buff item drops, and/or to make these sorts of items more available to players. This will require effort on the part of the HDMs and builders. I'm willing to address this from a Standards perspective and also willing to address this from a BG HDM perspective, provided that we have support from other HDMs (or builders) to address it there.
To address grinding itself:
We have to determine what the players want and if that fits what we want to do for ALFA from a HDM/Administrative perspective.