Long term endurance

[Sean Waters]

Long term endurance. Hmmm....

 

The current rules mean that you lose LTE only when your endurance in a turn exceeds your REC. In fact if your REC is exceeded by just 1 point a turn and you have 50 END (human maximum) then that means you are working hard enough to start taking STUN in ten minutes of continuous activity. You would have taken 2 points of LTE by the time you do. Doesn’t seem enough to me. OTOH if you are really exerting yourself and manage to burn through 20 LTE, and have a REC or (say) 5, it is going to take a little under a full day’s rest to recover it all. That seems too much to me. Never satisfied, eh?

 

By their own admission the rules are complex at present.

 

So what can we do and still make it playable but easy to administer and, hopefully, more realistic?

 

There seems to be two possible approaches: base LTE loss on RATE of END use (tied to REC, or CON or total END or an absolute, OR ALTERNATIVELY, base it on total END used; in my experience a high END use for a very short period recovers quicker than a longer term END use at a lower rate – it is the difference between the sprint and the 1500. You will be panting and sweating by the end of each race but you’ll recover faster from the sprint than the longer race as there will be far less lactic acid build up, and what there is will be eliminated faster, so it is not just about short terms supreme effort. For this reason I would be less inclined to base it on RATE of use.

 

The alternative is to base it on total used, so, for instance, each full 10 points of END (or REC points of END or CON/2 points of END) used in continuous effort (like a combat) results in 1 LTE. OK administratively it will take a little work, but frankly I think it is easier than the current system, which requires you to track END per turn and expresses loss calculations in terms of multiples of END.

 

Also I would make the recoveries per 20 minutes rather than per 5 hours: IME it just doesn’t take that long to get your wind back. That way a ‘normal’ with 20 END and 2 REC who exhausts themselves will take something over three hours of rest to recover rather than over 2 days.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Long term endurance

 

Looking good so far Sean. I hadn't really sat down to crunch numbers with the LTE rules, but now that you have, yeah, they seem a bit off. I mainly use LTE as a limitation for certain types of magic systems or as side effects. A LOT of my spell systems take a "-1/2 Costs 1 LTE per 5 end used in spell casting" common limit, to add some exhaustion rules to using magic (something the Belgariad put in my head back in the BBB days). I agree that the 5 hours seems arbritary. Maybe instead of 20 minutes, use the time chart, with 20 minutes for the first recovery and then bumping up the chart every, say 2 recoveries. That'd give the whole deep long term exhaustion that takes days to recover effect at the same time as allowing for a certain amount of LTE to come back with a shorter period of serious rest.

I think I like your second method better than the rate approach (obviously, as I've used the same thing in my games), but I'm not sure what'd be a good break point. Coming upwith a good way is probably a matter of trial and error, comparing it to various possible examples.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Long term endurance

 

I like the idea of quantifying the LTE rules, but more as a frame of reference, because I find that keeping track of things like that slows gameplay down for someone with limited mental capacity like myself. Generally I just tell the players "Okay you have been marching all day through the swamp when the orcs attack, so you are all tired and down by half your normal END" or somesuch. Pragmatically this usually works, but certainly having a rule for it to give the GM some kind of guideline is a good idea.

 

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"Nobody must know my name, for nobody would understand, and you kill what you fear, and you fear what you don't understand." the Guide Vocal from the Duke's Travels