Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

Hey guys. How do you handle resting in dungeons? The rules say that PCs regain 1 hp every day, provided the character has food and water. They also say that every 4 turns the DM should check for a random encounter. Do we simply not allow resting in dungeons? ( I know I wouldn't want to sleep in one ) Or will it really take 5 days of rest to recover 5 hit points? This isn't an issue that's come up yet, but I want to be clear on what's possible for the players to do, or not do.

We used Revolution Virtual Playspace, and I brought us into a Kobold infested temple, complete with summoning rituals and bloody stews.

Non-magical healing is slow. Generally, I reduce the rate of monster encounters when the players hole up in a room and spike the door shut. Don't think you're doing it wrong if you enter a dungeon, get beat up in your first fight, and go right back to town in time for lunch.

Solomoriah wrote: Don't think you're doing it wrong if you enter a dungeon, get beat up in your first fight, and go right back to town in time for lunch.

That's pretty standard on the low level games I've played.

My group always marks all the possible shelters on the maps in case of need of rest.

Why shouldn't you rest in a dungeon? You rest in the forest when traveling and you have just as much chance of an encounter. And concerning wandering monsters, IMO if a party is is a side room with a shut door making little noise they should have much less of a chance for encounters than they would if they were moving around, making noise carrying torches, opening and closing doors, etc.. Natural healing takes a long time no matter where you rest up, but resting in a town gives you less of a chance that your rest will be interrupted by combat or having to beat feet. In which case you don't get the 1 hp healing. Need clerics or healing potions if you plan to stay in a dungeon long.

Solomoriah wrote:Non-magical healing is slow. Generally, I reduce the rate of monster encounters when the players hole up in a room and spike the door shut. Don't think you're doing it wrong if you enter a dungeon, get beat up in your first fight, and go right back to town in time for lunch.

Yep, this is how I handle it as well. You'll notice in later BECMI text (e.g. the Rules Cyclopedia) it actually reduces the chance of encounter in dungeons to like 1 in 10 at night, if I recall correctly -- provided the room gets boarded up.

So in the B/X and BECMI universe, camping by the horses outside the dungeon is not necessarily more private; nevertheless bad stuff can happen in dungeons: oozes can seep through door cracks, or giant bugs squeeze their way into the room so there's always that chance.

I like the B/X approach of spells per day (instead of every 4 hours of rest at low levels) because as days go by for rest, food and torches get used up fast and keeps it more on edge; but at the same time, the game does not assume b-movie status checking for zombies every so many minutes (game time.)

It also depends on if the game is more of a distant land (far from civilization) adventure or a typical dungeon crawl with neighboring towns. In the later situation, if players like to go back to town after every encounter to heal up, then you could just say it takes so many days to make the trek back (enforcing upkeep costs, costs of the inn, etc) for example -- assuming they are able to safely make it out of the dungeon.

EDIT: Another thing to consider is the quality of rest. A cold hard stone floor could cause one to lose sleep. But characters will usually have bedrolls, etc to keep warm. Also deciding to allow character to sleep in metal armor or not.

For natural healing I am doing 1 or 2 x level.

For a more cinematic play, I usually do con mod + level per night (8hrs) of rest, halving it for an interrupted but non-combat sleep.

For most of my games I just use the con mod instead of 1hp. This makes characters heal somewhat faster but not extremely fast.

I use a roll of 1HD plus one extra HD per 4 levels gained. And modify the die result based on any healing assistance received.

Metroknight wrote:For a more cinematic play, I usually do con mod + level per night (8hrs) of rest, halving it for an interrupted but non-combat sleep.

For most of my games I just use the con mod instead of 1hp. This makes characters heal somewhat faster but not extremely fast.

I add Con in as well...

Awesome guys. Thanks!