Comment dungeon crawl limitation (Score 2, Interesting) 482
As a DM, I find myself constantly limiting my modules (self created) so to make sure the players will not run out of spells or run so low on hit points that they decide to camp for the night (and thus end the adventure early). This puts a burden on a lot of DM's, where we have to carefully watch our CR and maybe even fib (I admit to it) on the hit points remaining on some monsters (or remove the monsters entirely) because we see that we have either overwhelmed the players or they are saving their "good" spells for the boss at the end or just in case. I would love to be able to let them fight their way to the boss only to discover that after they defeat the boss, they have to now fight their way back out, or maybe the boss runs when low on health and the players must then fight their way to another location to face him again. Currently the only way to do this is to camp "real quick like", but that destroys the reality of the world as whole would actually camp in the middle of a haunted gnoll cave, when gnolls are just behind the next door? Plus, no real time passes, so the overall reality is lost even more!
How about allowing players to either have a recast timer or I might even suggest to get as drastic as giving them a "mana pool" to cast from which can regenerate over time while resting or some other way. I would love my players to have animate rope handy ready when we happen to be using rope, but nobody brings it to the adventures because the other spells are just too valuable. In reality, limiting spell selection does add strategy, but at the cost of adventure and paths that will not be taken because they do not have that "worthless" spell ready to go (yes, my players call many spells worthless because they never know whether to bring them, so they all load up on healing and damage spells because they know they will need them. In addition, all my players save up their spells, sometimes not even using them because of the one and done reality of the game. If they knew they could get it back and maybe cast it again, they might be a bit more willing to let the magic fly when based with a smaller foe. Sure, make it a penalty, either in a device which costs gold or with having to wait X about of minutes in real time. You could even only allow some spells to be recast, but not all (two classes of spells, reusable and rest based) Yes, it will unbalance the classes, but a fighter can keep swinging until he has no more hit points left; a mage may be done after 6 spell casts. I doubt any melee class will complain about extra heals and more adventure.
Something similar was tried in DnD Online, but who is going to put rest stones in the middle of a dungeon? You have this nice little opportunity to make the adventures epic and furious with an increased pace and lets face it, but we are growing impatient these days...we want to get to the good part.
Keep the action going I say, we all crave more adventure.....give it to us. Which brings me to my question: Will any of the above be solved in the 4th Edition and if not, why not?