House Rule: Rest and Recovery

The ease of a full recovery after just one extended rest (6 hours) is one of the most commonly criticized game mechanics of 4th edition. I feel it removes an important element of danger from the game and indeed I have never been a fan of the ease of magical healing in prevoius editions of D&D either.

Therefore, I'm introducing this house rule into my 4e game:

Per extended rest, a character may recover either one healing surge or may remove one failed death save. A short rest has no effect on recovering failed death saves.

The doesn't have a major effect on the tactics of an encounter but it does change the players' overall strategy between encounters. This puts 4e players in a more perilous position than players of eariler editions as there are no easy means of magical healing to speed up long term recovery. Any such magic would also have to be house ruled as well if used at all. Perhaps a new ritual or new magic item could be introduced to improve the recovery rate but I'm not inclined to include such items. I've always liked the "major wound" mechanic of the Pendragon RPG and I think this rule lends a little of its flavor to D&D.

Any 4e players or DMs out there have an opinion of this?

Prospecting for Metals

Access to rare metals could make or break the fortunes of a civilization. When PCs wish to secure a stronghold, it is natural they should seek out these resources. Propecting on their own holdings may reveal hidden sources of stability and wealth.

Prospecting requires a successful 5th level complexity one skill challenge. (The skill challenge is a 4e mechanic but can be adapted to any AD&D edition with the use of nonweapon proficiencies or skills.)

Prospecting for Metals Skill Challenge (5th Level)
Prospecting is time consuming, back breaking work with little chance of overnight success. Long hours are spent in cold mountain streams and dismal bogs sifting for rare materials.

Complexity:
1 (4 successes before 3 failures)
Primary Skill:
Dungeoneering - Moderate 5th level DC (15)
Secondary Skills:
History (1 use) - gives +2 bonus, Knowledge of past assay attempts.
Perception (1 use) - gives +2 bonus, A close eye is kept out for tell tale signs.
Endurance (1 use) - gives +2 bonus, Extra hours of back breaking labor.
All Moderate 5th level DC (15)
Time Required:
1 month
Area Covered:
1 five mile hex
Success:
One roll on the METAL PROSPECTING CHART.
Failure:
No results.
Reward:
200 XP

METAL PROSPECTING CHART (d100)
% chance / metal / frequency
01-94 Nothing of value in this area.
95-99 Iron 5% of Crust
00 Roll on RARE METALS CHART

RARE METALS CHART (d100)
% chance / metal / frequency
01-50 Zinc 75 parts per million
51-91 Copper 60 ppm
92-97 Lead 10 ppm
98 Tin 2 ppm
99 Arsenic 2 ppm
00 Roll for VERY RARE METALS CHART

VERY RARE METALS CHART (d100)
% chance / metal / frequency
01-57 Antimony 0.2 ppm
58-78 Silver 0.08 ppm
79-97 Mercury 0.07 ppm
98 Platinum 0.004 ppm
99 Gold 0.003 ppm
00 Roll for FANTASIC METALS CHART

FANTASIC METALS CHART DM's Pick
metal / suggested effect
Fey Iron (Radiant)
Shadow Iron (Necrotic)
Star Iron (Psychic)
Orichalcum (Force)
Mithril (lighter)
Adamantium (stronger)
Uxoricore (Fire)
Uru (Thunder)
Black Orichalcum (Psychic, Force)
Etc...

Prospecting is a time consuming undertaking and the appropriate random encounter rolls should be made.

Once a metal is discovered, it must be extracted which I'll detail in a future post. Placer mining was the most common method but shaft mining is also a possibility, especially in Dwarven operations.

I leave it to the DM to determine the details of any fantastic metal discovered but the rewards for successful extraction should be significant.

These charts should be taken with a grain of salt. For example, historically lead was collected at several times the quanity of copper, despite being more rare. This probably was because lead was in some way easier to extract than copper. Also, lead was often found with other metals such as copper, zinc and silver but this chart only produces a single metal on a successful role.

For more detailed information on various metals one might encounter in a D&D game, check out the recent post on The Tao of D&D about mining and metals.

I Attack Magic Missile With My Darkness

The forthcoming post on building economic systems is still in R&D mode but I decided not to let that stop me from posting about something which has recently raised a red flag for me.

In the 4e rules update from July 6, 2010, Magic Missile gets a major revision:

"Page 159: Replace the Attack, Hit, and Special
entries with the Effect and Special entries in the
power below. This update reflects an effort to restore
the power to its classical form.

...

Effect: 2 + Intelligence modifier force damage.
Level 11: 3 + Intelligence modifier force damage.
Level 21: 5 + Intelligence modifier force damage.
Special: If the implement used with this power has an
enhancement bonus, add that bonus to the damage. In
addition, you can use this power as a ranged basic attack."

To me, this sounds like an extraordinarily bad idea for several reasons. The stated thinking of restoring the spell to its "classical" form seems flawed. While granting the traditional "automatic" and "unerring" aspects to the spell with one hand, the other hand removes the just as iconic d4 damage dice. More importantly are the game balance aspects which didn't feel particularly broken in the first place. Pre-4th edition, it had limited availability in accordance with the number of spell slots the caster wished to devote to the memorizing the spell. In 4e, Magic Missile is an at-will spell that can be cast without limit at first level. No other character class has anything approaching this general guarantee of combat effectiveness. It certainly steps on the turf of the ranged attack based strikers. It also indirectly nerfs the threat of minions who will be dropped in a steady manner like clockwork. Is the archetypal image of the mage really akin to this?:



But of course with MM, the ammo never runs out.

I suspect this is one rules "fix" I'll ignore.