Is default number of encounters per day in 5E it's biggest flaw? [Archive]

Benny89

2019-02-11, 11:46 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-11, 11:53 AM

Note: 1 adventuring day =/= one session. At least not by default. And it's more about

1) averaging > 1 encounter between any two rests.
2) averaging 2 short rests per long rest.

And if your combats are frequently running 5+ rounds or any round is taking more than a few minutes, you might be doing it wrong. A major goal of 5e is to speed things up. If anyone takes more than about 30 seconds for their turn (double that for the DM), people aren't paying attention or planning ahead or are slow-playing.

guachi

2019-02-11, 11:57 AM

Two quick comments:

An adventuring day doesn't have to equal one gaming session. Mine rarely do because of exploration and social encounters taking up time.

I have no problem in the games I run getting to 6-8 encounters in an adventuring day. It did take some time to figure out how to do that and how to balance short/long rest characters. I use Gritty Realism and I eliminated short rests for resource regeneration.

Deox

2019-02-11, 11:59 AM

Also, Encounter =/= Combat. A combat is a consequence of an encounter. By default, the game assumes the group will come across 6 to 8 encounters per adventuring day that will consume some sort of resource from the party. This number should not "kill any sort of story telling".

strangebloke

2019-02-11, 12:04 PM

No. Encounters per day is a very sensible thing for the kind of game DND is.

If you're upset that it didn't fit your narrative focused political intrigue campaign, well...

No duh. DND isn't really built for that.

I challenge your assertion that older players focus on the roleplay. I've seen just as many old grognards who just want to show up and bust heads.

But for increased time between encounters there's a great suggestion in the DMG: spread your "adventuring days" out over several in-game days. Yes this means that you'll probably not get through a full "day" in a session, but that's fine.

Also, its 6-8 medium encounters, *or* 3-4 deadly encounters. That's very manageable. My players are reasonably competent so I typically run 4-5 ultra deadly encounters. It's pretty great.

JackPhoenix

2019-02-11, 12:06 PM

Nothing says you should have 6-8 encounters per day. There's a recommended daily XP budget, and 6-8 is what you get if you apply it to only create medium and hard encounters. Harder encounters eat more of the XP budget, so you can have less of them, easier encounters give more, so you can face (not doing the math, just throwing a number, if anyone wants to call me out on that) 20 easy encounters or 3 deadly encounters in an adventuring day (i.e. between long rests). Or 1 super-deadly encounter that will most likely wipe out the party. You also don't need to meet the budget every adventuring day, but as you've noted, some classes are better than others in such circumstances. It should even out over time. And not all encounters need to be fights... social encounters where spellcasters charm or or decieve people with illusions still count, as do perils of overland travel and exploration, as long as some resources get used up.

Ultimately, Dungeons & Dragons is designed from exploring dungeons and slaying dragons, and 6 encounters and a boss fight is pretty reasonable number of encounters in a small to medium-sized dungeon.

Unoriginal

2019-02-11, 12:07 PM

Now the default 5E settings says that you should have (if I recall correctly) 6-8 encounters per day.

Incorrect.

There is no "it says that you should have 6-8 encounters per day".

It is "the designers have calculated that all the classes will likely run out of ressources if they fight 6 to 8 Medium encounters between long rests, with 2 short rests in-between."

I will be honest- never seen anyone doing that.

And there is no particular reason why you would.

6-8 bascielly kills all story telling and roleplay in typical 5-7 hour session (which is quite normal for people now with jobs and families).

As PhoenixPhyre and guachi said, 1 session is not necessarily 1 adventuring day. You could spend 8 sessions on the same adventuring day.

So because you want to put more effort into story and roleplay- what I usually see is on average 3 encounters per session. Sometimes 2, rarely 4. Never more.

That's a pretty high average, all things considered.

Now considering balance of classes- this shifts balance a lot towards long rest classes vs short rest classes.

It doesn't, unless the DM gives everyone free rests in-between sessions.

Of course there this rule of "Long rest = one week" but nobody sane would play with that- it would make on the other hand long rest classes totally unplayable imo.

Plenty of sane people use it. Tastes aren't sanity.

I am not looking for solutions or balance propositions as I myself and my friends don't really care about that.

If you and your group don't care about balance, why did you bring up balance between classes earlier?

and I wonder how it went through testings like that?

It went through testing because "you must have 6-8 encounter per session" is a mistaken assumption, which is never supported by the game.

I think it's the fault of system which somehow belives that most people play battle-simulator more than story-driven adventures when playing DnD 5E.

I just wanted to talk about that very clear flaw in the system

Well, given that the system does not believe that, that it's according to you its "biggest flaw", and that your group has been able to use it for your campaign through multiple hours-long sessions without issues, I'd say it's an indicator than 5e is quite well-designed.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-11, 12:10 PM

MaxWilson

2019-02-11, 12:14 PM

Unoriginal

2019-02-11, 12:15 PM

The "encounters per day" or "rest vs encounters ratio" thing that comes up a lot is one of my biggest head-scratchers in trying to figure out what 5e is trying to do. It's honestly a point of confusion for me.

5e classes are based on managing different ressources through various circumstances. Like D&D has always been, but more explicitly than in 3.X and less explicitly than in 4e.

What is confusing you?

Benny89

2019-02-11, 12:21 PM

Thanks for input guys.

Ok, I see that encounters per day =/= encounters per session. I see where are you coming from. It's true that one day can last few sessions. Myself I find that strange but I see what you mean by that. I could understand havin 1 day over 2 sessions, though never I have seen more than that. I just don't get how something like that makes narrative sense, but I fully understand that many people play differently at the table. So far in my life in most systems I played it was always more towards 1 day = 1 session, sometimes even 2-3 days = 1 session. Sometimes 1 day = 2 sessions, but never more. Maybe because nowadays if we manage to play once per 2 weeks it's great. I don't know.

But I see where you see the difference. It's something I didn't grasp in DnD, it's opposed to what I usually experienced in other systems.

About length of combat - well, I guess that depends. Maybe it's because my friends are still new to DnD to we are not that fast with all that difference dices, multiattacks, save throws etc. vs experienced DnD group. But for me even 3 turn combat takes quite a lot of time. 5 encounters like that can take quite a lot from session and it can be tiresome.

But thanks for different perspective. It's important to see things from different angles.

Unoriginal

2019-02-11, 12:31 PM

Merudo

2019-02-11, 12:42 PM

Malifice

2019-02-11, 12:45 PM

Unoriginal

2019-02-11, 12:46 PM

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-11, 12:47 PM

5e classes are based on managing different ressources through various circumstances. Like D&D has always been, but more explicitly than in 3.X and less explicitly than in 4e.

What is confusing you?

That's part of why it's frustrating, I don't know what piece I'm missing, so I can't even work on finding it. It may even be that I'm looking for an answer with no question, because there is no piece missing, and it's simpler than it looks.

It feels like an added layer of complexity that forces the GM to choose between the natural flow for the pace and events of the sessions and campaign, and thus having the expenditure of resources be "too fast" or "too slow"... or hammering them into an artificially consistent construct of rate and severity, and thus having certain events feel contrived.

Malifice

2019-02-11, 12:49 PM

Hail Tempus

2019-02-11, 12:49 PM

Out of curiosity, could you tell us how many people are in your group?

What you're describing is often a thing with 6-7 players groups, from what I've seen.
That’s a very common problem, from what I’ve seen. The first group I ran in 5e was typically 6-7 people, and combat just dragged. I needed more monsters for each encounter, people would get distracted waiting for their turn, players wouldn’t really be familiar with how their characters abilities interacted with the other characters etc. Never again. I’d strongly recommend keeping party size to no more than 5. If you’ve got a DM and 7 players, everyone would have more fun if you broke it down into two groups with two DMs.

With a smaller group, you’ll find encounters fly by. We just did the opening scenario in Dragon Heist with a party of 3 first level characters, and did 6 encounters in about 4 hours, and finished the scenario in one day in-game.

MaxWilson

2019-02-11, 12:52 PM

Truth is, players perform best when they are at maximum strength - which means it is optimal for them to sleep after every encounter. The main (only?) method to discourage that as a DM is to enforce a strict time limit on the adventure.

This isn't quite true. You don't have to enforce a strict time limit--but you do have to keep track of time on a calendar or something.

Did anyone here ever play the Magic Candle? In that game, you have up to 999 days to finish the quest and defeat the archdemon Dreax. It's plenty of time, but the player doesn't actually know how much time they will need until they finish the game, so just watching the clock tick down from 900 days to 899 puts a form of psychological pressure on you and makes you want to hurry up.

You can play D&D similarly. Even if the players don't know for sure if there's some kind of deadline, if they know that the DM is keeping track of how long they've been away from their homes and in the megadungeon, they'll be more likely to want to take an hour-long short rest ("total time is now 3 days and 12 hours in the dungeon") than a day-long long rest ("total time is now 4 days and 11 hours"). Even if they don't expect the dungeon to collapse or their hometown to be captured by slavers after a couple weeks in the dungeon, there's still a human desire to optimize and not spend 14 days on an adventure that could have been done in 48 hours.

That's my experience anyway. As Gary Gygax once said, "YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT." (Emphasis in original.)

MoiMagnus

2019-02-11, 12:53 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-11, 12:57 PM

If you run an official published adventure, you'll notice there is almost no guidance for DMs on achieving 6-8 encounters per day.

I strongly suspected the 6-8 encounters guidelines was abandoned early on by Wotc for their published adventures when they realized how hard it is to implement in practice.

Jeremy Crawford (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1012366625985609728) himself has backpedaled, stating "D&D doesn’t require a certain number of encounters per day" & "There is no minimum".

Truth is, players perform best when they are at maximum strength - which means it is optimal for them to take a long rest after every encounter. The main (only?) method to discourage that as a DM is to enforce a strict time limit on the adventure.

To my knowledge, none of the official published adventures have such a time limit. Even in modules like Out of the Abyss & Tomb of Annihilation where there is supposed to have a ticking clock; it's all illusion - PCs can take as much time as needed to complete the module.

My guess is that enforcing a time limit means it is possible for the players to fail the adventure by taking too long - however, most tables will only accept failure if it occurs through a combat-related TPK.

Averages are averages. As long as you have the threat of more than one encounter per rest, people will conserve properly and rough balance will be had. It's only when you have an expectation of 1-2 nova encounters per day (and no short rests) that things go off.

As a personal anecdote--my group is playing through PotA right now. And almost every adventuring day has multiple encounters with time for short rests between groups of them. And if we pulled back and did a 15-min working day we'd have lost a long time ago. I'd say we average about 4/long rest. If we were smart and didn't pull the whole "run into the middle of the camp and attack" gambit we'd have more easier ones. Our last adventuring "day" was (marking spoilers)

* 3 hellhounds
* 2 werewolves
* 3(?) fire cult guards, 2 fire cult casters, 2 hellhounds, and a fire elemental. This was probably supposed to be multiple encounters...
* a cult leader + 4 mephits
* 4 giant bats.

For story reasons we only had 1 short rest after the mega encounter. We probably could have done 2 SR without a problem, but a LR was out of the picture.

Unoriginal

2019-02-11, 12:59 PM

That's part of why it's frustrating, I don't know what piece I'm missing, so I can't even work on finding it. It may even be that I'm looking for an answer with no question, because there is no piece missing, and it's simpler than it looks.

It feels like an added layer of complexity that forces the GM to choose between the natural flow for the pace and events of the sessions and campaign, and thus having the expenditure of resources be "too fast" or "too slow"... or hammering them into an artificially consistent construct of rate and severity, and thus having certain events feel contrived.

Ah, I think I get where your confusion come from.

They didn't add a layer of complexity that forces the DM to do anything, or try to construct a consistent rate or severity system, and the book isn't telling the DMs to contrive events to make a certain pace.

The whole "adventurers can face X encounters of Y difficulty per Z period of time" thing isn't a requirement, obligation, or limitation, not even a suggestion.

It's a calculation of how much the game designers expect an average adventuring group to be able to handle.

Basically, the book is saying "we have calculated that a group of 4 level 19 PCs could be able to survive fighting 8 Balors in-between two long rests, before running out of ressources." Not "a group of 4 lvl 19 PCs should/must fight 8 Balors in-between two long rests."

MaxWilson

2019-02-11, 01:02 PM

That's part of why it's frustrating, I don't know what piece I'm missing, so I can't even work on finding it. It may even be that I'm looking for an answer with no question, because there is no piece missing, and it's simpler than it looks.

It feels like an added layer of complexity that forces the GM to choose between the natural flow for the pace and events of the sessions and campaign, and thus having the expenditure of resources be "too fast" or "too slow"... or hammering them into an artificially consistent construct of rate and severity, and thus having certain events feel contrived.

It's probably this bit in bold. 5E is in this respect less prescriptive than you think it is.

Do you feel like you know pretty much what would happen if you scattered two black puddings, a dozen hobgoblins, a couple of githyanki warriors, and a hill giant randomly throughout a cave complex in an adventure for 4th level PCs and the PCs wound up fighting all of them? Do you feel like you know basically what would happen if the hobgoblins are all in one group as opposed to two groups of six? If so, you can pretty much ignore the difficulty guidelines and XP budgets except when you're curious about how your game stacks up against the standard--you're too advanced to need it.

But if you're not sure what might happen, and you want a ballpark estimate of worst-case scenarios if the PCs do the dumbest possible thing, hop on kobold.club and plug in the encounters, and if you don't like the result then either change the adventure or change the level or number of PCs it's for.

TL;DR the guidance is a tool to help newbie DMs avoid killing newbie PCs accidentally with too-many-monsters-at-once.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-11, 01:05 PM

Bloodcloud

2019-02-11, 01:06 PM

FYI, I've been running my game on a 3-4 deadly per day for a while, and it works swimmingly. Having a few additionnal reason to drain some spell slot through exploration helps too. Maybe a really short easy fight against a small mob to drain a fireball every once in a while.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-11, 01:06 PM

Ah, I think I get where your confusion come from.

They didn't add a layer of complexity that forces the DM to do anything, or try to construct a consistent rate or severity system, and the book isn't telling the DMs to contrive events to make a certain pace.

The whole "adventurers can face X encounters of Y difficulty per Z period of time" thing isn't a requirement, obligation, or limitation, not even a suggestion.

It's a calculation of how much the game designers expect an average adventuring group to be able to handle.

Basically, the book is saying "we have calculated that a group of 4 level 19 PCs could be able to survive fighting 8 Balors in-between two long rests, before running out of ressources." Not "a group of 4 lvl 19 PCs should/must fight 8 Balors in-between two long rests."

I got the impression from a lot of these discussions that the PCs are "insufficiently challenged" if they aren't coming up against their "resource limits" on a routine basis -- and that too far one way or the other would unfairly favor certain classes depending on how their short and long rest recharges line up with the rate and type of encounters and breaks.

Is that just a "player level" assertion, and not something the books are actually saying?

E: to the below, thank you for the additional info -- I think I started my next post (above in this text) before you started your replies.

It's probably this bit in bold. 5E is in this respect less prescriptive than you think it is.

Do you feel like you know pretty much what would happen if you scattered two black puddings, a dozen hobgoblins, a couple of githyanki warriors, and a hill giant randomly throughout a cave complex in an adventure for 4th level PCs and the PCs wound up fighting all of them? Do you feel like you know basically what would happen if the hobgoblins are all in one group as opposed to two groups of six? If so, you can pretty much ignore the difficulty guidelines and XP budgets except when you're curious about how your game stacks up against the standard--you're too advanced to need it.

But if you're not sure what might happen, and you want a ballpark estimate of worst-case scenarios if the PCs do the dumbest possible thing, hop on kobold.club and plug in the encounters, and if you don't like the result then either change the adventure or change the level or number of PCs it's for.

TL;DR the guidance is a tool to help newbie DMs avoid killing newbie PCs accidentally with too-many-monsters-at-once.

As I note above, the discussions here make it SOUND quite prescriptive, and like there are major issues with "balance" and "challenge" and "fairness" if the DM strays too far from a standard rate & type of encounters and rests.

Agreed. Now certainly if you have certain classes (monks and warlocks, mainly) mixed with certain other classes (paladins and clerics, mostly), having a nice balance of short rests to long rests helps out. The only real pathological case is (sadly) the most common one--only ever having 1-2 encounters per long rest. Since the party goes into them fresh, they're much more powerful (and thus the encounters are much less threatening because the party can go nova freely) than expected. The natural response is to make those encounters even harder. Which increases the need to go nova (because otherwise you'll all die). And around and around it goes. This leaves those who can't really nova well (which is most classes) in the lurch compared to paladins (and especially sorcadins) who nova tremendously. It also increases the risk of a TPK due to just sheer bad luck.

The right response is to add in a few more easier encounters occasionally. Before, after, doesn't matter. Just give them a chance to have to fight several encounters per long rest and allow (in dungeon/adventure design) places to short rest. This is easier than before due to spells like rope trick or catnap (one of which produces a safe place to rest, the other allows a couple people to take 10-minute short rests at the cost of a spell slot.

This is kinda what I was talking about with impressions I'd picked up from discussions here, regarding the class variance interaction with counter and rest types, etc -- but puts it in a better perspective.

MaxWilson

2019-02-11, 01:10 PM

Agreed. Now certainly if you have certain classes (monks and warlocks, mainly) mixed with certain other classes (paladins and clerics, mostly), having a nice balance of short rests to long rests helps out. The only real pathological case is (sadly) the most common one--only ever having 1-2 encounters per long rest. Since the party goes into them fresh, they're much more powerful (and thus the encounters are much less threatening because the party can go nova freely) than expected. The natural response is to make those encounters even harder. Which increases the need to go nova (because otherwise you'll all die). And around and around it goes.

That isn't right. It increases the need to play smart, which could mean "divide the enemy and defeat them in detail" or "use hit-and-run tactics" or "nova if you've got it" or something else.

There's nothing wrong with expecting combats to have narrative weight and feel risky, and there's nothing wrong with having deadly threats in your adventure.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-11, 01:11 PM

Willie the Duck

2019-02-11, 01:19 PM

I noticed something since I started to play in 5E. I am myself quite experienced DM (though quite new to DnD). Been DMing various of RPG systems in last 15 years. Also people I play with (my players and other DMs where I play as player) are also quite experienced.

The one thing you can always notice when playing with "older" RPG people is that there is always more roleplay and story and less dices than when you play with new people or when you started with RPGs. Story and roleplay comes first, dialogues, diplomacy etc. Combat is still important and essential but it's not anymore a main focus, more likely it just serves the story and it's meant to be an "epic" piece of it.

It depends on the players, groups, and frankly how old is "older." D&D as played in the TSR era often took place completely in actual dungeons (for the early levels) where 6-8 encounters would be a ridiculously small number of encounters, followed by mid level hexcrawling where there often were 1-2 encounters per rest, and then high levels where you were likely rulers with keeps and armies (and then your actual physical abilities often took a back seat, although many people didn't play with this subsystem).

I would say that the biggest flawissue with 5e is that the normal gameplay has become decidedly bi-modal. People still play (at any level, now) dungeon crawls, which probably entail much greater than 6-8 encounters (perhaps necessitating finding a way to rest at or near the dungeon). People also play travel (where multiple encounters per day would make long-distance travel exceedingly frustrating, leading it to usually be a one/day maximum for encounters). And then, yes, people also play a bunch of political, city intrigue, or whatever play with a truly variable number of encounters. Sadly, splitting the difference on a bi-modal distribution does tend to land on a position that is exactly right for a decidedly small number of players.

And I don't think it's blame of DMs or players. I think it's the fault of system which somehow belives that most people play battle-simulator more than story-driven adventures when playing DnD 5E.

I am not looking for solutions or balance propositions as I myself and my friends don't really care about that. I just wanted to talk about that very clear flaw in the system and I wonder how it went through testings like that? People really just combat 90% of their sessions in RPGs?

Well, first of all, saying that you aren't looking for any solutions, you just want to level blame is an interesting way to start the discussion. I will make an observation or two. While the game is not a battle simulator, the part of the game that most needs a rules framework is definitely battle. The game was definitely an diplomatic and exploratory game from the start, yet non-Rogue (well, Thief) skills systems didn't start up until 11 years after the game debuted (perhaps a little late compared to calls for them, but still, people mostly wanted the rulebooks for the spells and combat, and decided the rest of the game themselves. Beyond that 'encounters' also include those non-combat situations where in-game resources might potentially be expended (be they HPs in the case of traps, a situation where you need to make skill checks or else potentially get into some kind of problem, or maybe needing to use a fly spell to get up a cliff face or the like), so there's a lot more situations that count as an encounter than just drawing blades and throwing fireballs.

And finally, what if the game is a battle-simulator? Is that a flaw, or is it just not the game for you? Generally speaking, I tend to call something flawed if it fails to do what it intends to. An ambulance is not a flawed race car, a screwdriver is not a flawed hammer , etc. On some level, I share your frustration, as splitting the difference on a bi-modal distribution seems like a rookie mistake. However, having the game be devoted 90% to what people will be using the unmodified ruleset for anyways (with those who want a political system or the like almost always importing their own way to do it anyways), well, I just can't call that a flaw.

Benny89

2019-02-11, 01:20 PM

Out of curiosity, could you tell us how many people are in your group?

What you're describing is often a thing with 6-7 players groups, from what I've seen.

Group I DM for is 5 players, group I play with as player is also 5 players + 1 DM (Including me of course).

I am also confused about whole - short rests vs long rests.

I feel, and this is not me hating on DnD, it adds some extra micromanagment for DM instead of letting natural flow direct the game. I feel like players should short/long rest when it's fitting, not counting it in "how many times they should do that". It seems.... fake, I guess? That might be correct word.

For example in my team I have Warlock and Paladin. I find it strange in having to micro them into being "balanced". They short rest when they feel like they should/can, and take long rest when they have opportunity. Even if that means they have to back track to rest- it's their decision, which also many times makes logical sense.

I dunno, seems because of my lack of experience in DnD system the whole "short/long rests" seems like unnecessary complication.

Willie the Duck

2019-02-11, 01:27 PM

I dunno, seems because of my lack of experience in DnD system the whole "short/long rests" seems like unnecessary complication.

It is certainly unnecessary if you do not want it. I believe there are rules in the DMG for converting SR-recharging classes into LR-recharging ones if you want to do away with some of the complication.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-11, 01:28 PM

For example in my team I have Warlock and Paladin. I find it strange in having to micro them into being "balanced". They short rest when they feel like they should/can, and take long rest when they have opportunity. Even if that means they have to back track to rest- it's their decision, which also many times makes logical sense.

This is the absolute worst case for rest-based balance right here, and why it feels wrong.

Paladins get nothing (except spending hit dice) from SR, Warlocks recharge almost completely (except high-level spells and hit dice) on short rests.

And frankly, as long as you have a mix of encounters you'll be fine. The real balance problems only show up in organized play (where no one cares about anyone else) and at tables that have fallen into the "there can only be one big-time encounter per adventuring day." Just mix it up--it'll average out just fine.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-11, 01:35 PM

That's mostly a player assertion, based on a particular play style (heavy into combat-challenge-focused gameplay). I tend to run many fewer encounters and rarely push the limits. Occasionally I'll spike things real hard--I can do this because I know where the limits are. This is true even if most of the time the focus is on finding other ways around things. And if the players (through smart actions) turn what was supposed to be a combat encounter into a diplomacy exercise (and thus don't use resources), that's fine.

TL;DR--people mistake ceilings as norms. Just like speed limits (I'm guilty of this one too).

Thanks... see above for my reply to your earlier response, I was trying to catch up with everyone's replies and got behind their other replies.

MaxWilson

2019-02-11, 01:36 PM

Paladins get nothing (except spending hit dice) from SR

Channel Divinity (Sacred Weapon/Oath of Vengeance/etc.) recharges on a short rest, and so do some Paladin-appropriate feats like Inspiring Leader and Healer.

Xetheral

2019-02-11, 01:37 PM

The "encounters per day" or "rest vs encounters ratio" thing that comes up a lot is one of my biggest head-scratchers in trying to figure out what 5e is trying to do. It's honestly a point of confusion for me.

That's part of why it's frustrating, I don't know what piece I'm missing, so I can't even work on finding it. It may even be that I'm looking for an answer with no question, because there is no piece missing, and it's simpler than it looks.

It feels like an added layer of complexity that forces the GM to choose between the natural flow for the pace and events of the sessions and campaign, and thus having the expenditure of resources be "too fast" or "too slow"... or hammering them into an artificially consistent construct of rate and severity, and thus having certain events feel contrived.

I sympathize. By having two types of rest, the designers tripled the number of rest-related mechanical interactions that affect class balance in comparison to 3.5. It used to be that combats-per-rest was the only rest-related factor that affected the balance between classes with at-will abilities and classes with limited-use abilities. Simply by varying the number of combats-per-rest, a DM could ensure that the rest schedule didn't impact class balance.

Now, there are three rest-related mechanical interactions that affect class balance: encounters-per-short-rest, encounters-per-long-rest, and short-rests-per-long-rest (note that the last is not merely determined by the first two because the distribution matters in addition to the mean). One can still try to achieve balance through variation, but juggling three parameters is a lot harder than one. The alternative that it seems many posters promote (although not in this thread so far) is keeping all three parameters constant. This leads to the "artificially consistent construct of [encounter] rate and severity" that you describe.

Like you, I'm perplexed as to why the designers thought this was a good idea. My best guess is that they wanted to keep the two types of rest from 4E, but also wanted to vary recharge mechanics from class to class, and didn't think through all the implications of changing one without changing the other.

Edit: a ton got posted in this thread while I was composing this post. It was not my intention to ignore relevant comments on this topic posted in the interim.

Unoriginal

2019-02-11, 01:51 PM

I got the impression from a lot of these discussions that the PCs are "insufficiently challenged" if they aren't coming up against their "resource limits" on a routine basis -- and that too far one way or the other would unfairly favor certain classes depending on how their short and long rest recharges line up with the rate and type of encounters and breaks.

Is that just a "player level" assertion, and not something the books are actually saying?

Basically. The books never say anything of the sort.

Group I DM for is 5 players, group I play with as player is also 5 players + 1 DM (Including me of course).

Fair enough.

I am also confused about whole - short rests vs long rests.

I feel, and this is not me hating on DnD, it adds some extra micromanagment for DM instead of letting natural flow direct the game. I feel like players should short/long rest when it's fitting, not counting it in "how many times they should do that". It seems.... fake, I guess? That might be correct word.

For example in my team I have Warlock and Paladin. I find it strange in having to micro them into being "balanced". They short rest when they feel like they should/can, and take long rest when they have opportunity. Even if that means they have to back track to rest- it's their decision, which also many times makes logical sense.

I dunno, seems because of my lack of experience in DnD system the whole "short/long rests" seems like unnecessary complication.

There is no assumption of "micromanagement for balance" by the game.

In play, characters are supposed to rest when they want, and when they can (as in, the DM determines if there is a place fitting for resting, if the group is tired enough to rest and get benefits from it, and if they'll be interrupted or not). If they try to rest at a time that is inappropriate (ex: if the evil priest will soon sacrifice the unicorn to the dark gods, resting 8 hours isn't a good idea), then there will be logical consequences for it.

The problem is that a lot of players will want to rest whenever they're not at full ressources, and a lot of DMs will feel obligated to give it to them.

It's not really a 5e problem by itself, but in 5e there is the additional issues that when some classes nova by spending all their ressources in 1-2 encounters, then demand a rest, they'll recover at the same rate as the short-rest classes when the use of their powers is supposed to be over a longer time period.

Basically, if a DM knows when to say "no", and the players know to accept it, it shouldn't be a problem.

GlenSmash!

2019-02-11, 02:12 PM

Currently playing a Barbarian and have a warlock in the Party, also a Moon Druid. I get nothing but Hit Dice back on a short rest, but both of them get lots of benefits for getting as many short rests as possible.

Still I have never tried to turn a short rest into a long rest because of narrative reasons. Sitting for an extra Seven hours is so I can rage more is a poor trade for our enemies running free for 8 times as long. Also you can't gain the benefits of more than one long rest in a 24 hour period, so potentially it could be 16 hours of sitting on our butts.

As far as I see it that last part is the only micromanaging on the part of the DM. IE Saying no you can't long rest yet, it hasn't been long enough.

MaxWilson

2019-02-11, 02:17 PM

Still I have never tried to turn a short rest into a long rest because of narrative reasons. Sitting for an extra Seven hours is so I can rage more is a poor trade for our enemies running free for 8 times as long. Also you can't gain the benefits of more than one long rest in a 24 hour period, so potentially it could be 16 hours of sitting

Potentially could even be 24 hours if you just finished another long rest, i.e. if you get in a fight right after getting out of bed in the morning.

GlenSmash!

2019-02-11, 02:18 PM

Potentially could even be 24 hours if you just finished another long rest, i.e. if you get in a fight right after getting out of bed in the morning.

Hmm. My character would love to start each day with a fight :smallbiggrin:

But I for one am glad the 5 minute workday doesn't work.

Skylivedk

2019-02-11, 02:41 PM

So because you want to put more effort into story and roleplay- what I usually see is on average 3 encounters per session. Sometimes 2, rarely 4. Never more.

Now considering balance of classes- this shifts balance a lot towards long rest classes vs short rest classes. Of course there this rule of "Long rest = one week" but nobody sane would play with that- it would make on the other hand long rest classes totally unplayable imo.

And I don't think it's blame of DMs or players. I think it's the fault of system which somehow belives that most people play battle-simulator more than story-driven adventures when playing DnD 5E.

Overall: agreed. The short rest system feels clunky at times. Remember that you can make social and exploration encounters challenging enough to warrant resource usage. Or just turn all short rest classes into long rest ones (maybe keep short rest for HD).

If you run an official published adventure, you'll notice there is almost no guidance for DMs on achieving 6-8 encounters per day.

(...)

Jeremy Crawford (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1012366625985609728) himself has backpedaled, stating "D&D doesn’t require a certain number of encounters per day" & "There is no minimum".

(...)

To my knowledge, none of the official published adventures have such a time limit. Even in modules like Out of the Abyss & Tomb of Annihilation where there is supposed to have a ticking clock; it's all illusion - PCs can take as much time as needed to complete the module.

My guess is that enforcing a time limit means it is possible for the players to fail the adventure by taking too long - however, most tables will only accept failure if it occurs through a combat-related TPK.

The published material I've seen has been super bad at helping DMs understand when short rests are good to allow, when to stress time pressure and also just foreshadowing in general. Ie. there's a clock on in ToA, but if I hadn't run into a spoiler I wouldn't feel it much.

Both the players and the new DMs I've played with who tried with and without short rest mechanics have preferred without. Small data set, granted. I did speak with the most mechanical sound player across all the tables about how I saw it kind of balance it in ToA once you got deeper in the campaign, maybe even tipping the scales in favour of the Warlock I played.

His response?

"Yeah, great system. You were mediocre or worse for five-six levels and now you're the only one with spells for the next three sessions".

Chronos

2019-02-11, 02:47 PM

My group is another one that typically has much fewer fights per day than seems to be expected. Yes, we have other encounters, and those non-combat encounters are significant, but they don't usually drain nearly as much resources as a combat encounter. And we like the non-combat encounters, and in fact have several times managed to turn what was designed as a combat encounter into a non-combat encounter. But it does leave us with a lot more resources available when we do have a combat, which both makes them a lot easier and shifts the spotlight towards the more nova-capable characters.

We could just spend more real-life time on each in-game day, but there's still only so much you can do in an in-game day, and if we're going to maintain the combat to non-combat ratio we like, we'd be pushing that. Plus, we only meet about once every three weeks, and it's hard enough remembering where we left off without having a long rest to reset the party resources.

So far, we've mostly just been accepting that things are too easy and that the nova classes get more spotlight. And it's working out OK, in that we're having fun. But it could be a lot better.

Merudo

2019-02-11, 02:53 PM

Basically, if a DM knows when to say "no", and the players know to accept it, it shouldn't be a problem.

Again, the main issue is that this is little to no guidance on how to do that in the DMG & published adventures.

Like you, I'm perplexed as to why the designers thought this was a good idea. My best guess is that they wanted to keep the two types of rest from 4E, but also wanted to vary recharge mechanics from class to class, and didn't think through all the implications of changing one without changing the other.

Yep. The designers made a very complex system with no rest classes, short rest classes & long rest classes. But instead of balancing it right, they left it to the individual DMs to figure out the correct balance.

Rhedyn

2019-02-11, 02:59 PM

GlenSmash!

2019-02-11, 03:00 PM

Again, the main issue is that this is little to no guidance on how to do that in the DMG & published adventures.

I feel like I do as a DM. I don't let them gain the benefit of a long rest within a 24 hour period from the last long rest. I think that's all the guidance I need.

I've never restricted how many short rests the players could take, and it turns out they have never asked for more than 2 between long rests.

Not saying it can't be a problem, it's just not one I've encountered yet.

Yora

2019-02-11, 03:17 PM

It's the biggest flaw of the system at low levels. At high levels, I think the lack of dangerous monsters is the biggest flaw (that is only fixed by making your own monsters or buying Tome of Beasts).

I've been working on some random encounter tables last week, and I quickly noticed that even pretty low-CR creatures add up to pretty major threats once they show up in significant numbers. At least if the encounter-XP-budget tables can be believed. I noticed that on my tables, crocodiles result in much more dangerous encounters than giant crocodiles, before the former appear in groups and the later alone.
When the enemies outnumber the PCs, things are going to get tough. What there might be is a lack of big solo-boss-monsters. And it's probably in the very nature of how D&D is structured and always has been, that single enemies are at a big disadvantage.

Rukelnikov

2019-02-11, 03:22 PM

The problem is that a lot of players will want to rest whenever they're not at full ressources, and a lot of DMs will feel obligated to give it to them.

It's not really a 5e problem by itself, but in 5e there is the additional issues that when some classes nova by spending all their ressources in 1-2 encounters, then demand a rest, they'll recover at the same rate as the short-rest classes when the use of their powers is supposed to be over a longer time period.

Basically, if a DM knows when to say "no", and the players know to accept it, it shouldn't be a problem.

But most of the time that "no" only means instead of waiting 8 hours, we wait a full day, and thus back to 5 min day.

If the players wanna rest, they are gonna do it. You can interrupt the rest with an encounter, but what do you achieve with that? That they will now be more inclined to rest than they were before, you can keep interrupting them, until eventually you are gonna have to allow them to rest or TPK. And thus it devolves into DM vs players, which is the worst kind of rpg.

Enforcing a time limit is the only non-petty way to force them not to rest, but if every single campaign needs to have a time limit, we might as well call the game "24".

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-11, 03:36 PM

But most of the time that "no" only means instead of waiting 8 hours, we wait a full day, and thus back to 5 min day.

If the players wanna rest, they are gonna do it. You can interrupt the rest with an encounter, but what do you achieve with that? That they will now be more inclined to rest than they were before, you can keep interrupting them, until eventually you are gonna have to allow them to rest or TPK. And thus it devolves into DM vs players, which is the worst kind of rpg.

Enforcing a time limit is the only non-petty way to force them not to rest, but if every single campaign needs to have a time limit, we might as well call the game "24".

I can't think of an adventure that I've run that has had a hard time limit, but none of them allow a 5-minute working day either. Because the world reacts to you. If you walk into an area, poke things and then retreat, you'll find yourself pursued by a horde or find the place reinforced when you come back. You have to clear to a stopping point (which usually involves multiple encounters).

As long as you enforce natural consequences, very few people will do the 5-minute working day. Because actions have consequences. And this is something that new, MMO-trained people understand. You always have respawns if you wait too long between encounters.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-11, 03:38 PM

I've been working on some random encounter tables last week, and I quickly noticed that even pretty low-CR creatures add up to pretty major threats once they show up in significant numbers. At least if the encounter-XP-budget tables can be believed. I noticed that on my tables, crocodiles result in much more dangerous encounters than giant crocodiles, before the former appear in groups and the later alone.
When the enemies outnumber the PCs, things are going to get tough. What there might be is a lack of big solo-boss-monsters. And it's probably in the very nature of how D&D is structured and always has been, that single enemies are at a big disadvantage.

This is absolutely the truth, and by design. More monsters beat bigger monsters every single time. Big solo fights don't work at all until higher levels (mid-late T2 at the earliest), and then are more likely to be pushovers than mass mob encounters.

The most challenging encounters have between 1 and 2 enemies per PC. I've been running random testing encounters (as in "pull a random encounter that meets the DMG guidelines from all sources") and they're brutal (even the "medium" ones). And the bulk encounter are much more challenging than the 1-2 monster ones.

J-H

2019-02-11, 03:43 PM

I've played two 5e games in person as a player with experienced DMs.
#1: 1st & 2nd level. Lasted ~5 hours. We traveled for 3 or 4 days, and had one rest while exploring the gnoll-occupied ruins. I can remember 7 distinct combat encounters, and there may be one small one that I'm forgetting. Everyone was very glad for our rest periods. We had 6 players.
#2: 3rd level adventure, 4 players. Rescuing kids on a timeline. No long rests, 1 or 2 short rests. We fought a chimera, avoided a pair of trolls, fought 4 death dogs, bypassed a trap through luck, had a social encounter, and killed two giants (boss fight). 3 or 4 fights in one day?

In both cases, we had enough resources to squeak by, but only just - spellcasters always running dry or playing super-conservative with spell slots, multiple characters knocked unconscious, and all hit die used up healing during short rests.

ad_hoc

2019-02-11, 03:45 PM

So because you want to put more effort into story and roleplay- what I usually see is on average 3 encounters per session. Sometimes 2, rarely 4. Never more.

Session and long rest are not the same thing.

Our table usually sees 1 long rest every 2-3 sessions. We usually end the session on a short rest.

I am glad they designed the game around dungeons. I want to have a goal and a finite amount of resources to achieve that goal. Long rests always reset that tension and make the game less interesting. I think it's great that 5e has been designed with that in mind. Short rests are the perfect solution to it.

Side Note: If anyone is having trouble with having 6-8 encounters per long rest, just run a published adventure. The published adventures will teach you how to play the game. They're fun, try them.

Benny89

2019-02-11, 03:46 PM

So far, we've mostly just been accepting that things are too easy and that the nova classes get more spotlight. And it's working out OK, in that we're having fun. But it could be a lot better.

We have also accepted that. I mean- it's maybe not balanced but as long as everyone at table (and I asked them) are ok with having that Nova-classes shine more- I am ok with that too. Since I tend to focus more on story I don't really care that much if my BBEG has been blow to pieces by Vengeance Paladin in 3 turns. What I do is I add a lot of more medium enemies around so Paladin goes for BBEG and do what Paladins should do while others have their own (many times much harder) fight to allow Paladin do his job.

I agree it benefits Paladin/Wizard player much more than Warlock and Battlemaster players but at least it's more natural.

If the players wanna rest, they are gonna do it. You can interrupt the rest with an encounter, but what do you achieve with that? That they will now be more inclined to rest than they were before, you can keep interrupting them, until eventually you are gonna have to allow them to rest or TPK. And thus it devolves into DM vs players, which is the worst kind of rpg.

I had simillar experience with different group. They wanted to rest (because they were short on resources) and I had one more big encounter (final) for them. They wanted long rest and I told them that they feel like this is not safe place to rest at all. So they.... left whole location because party Wizard said that it's stupid to push foward if they don't have any more resources left and all healing magic is gone. I could stop them from leaving but that could probably went into DM vs Players which I hate in RPG. Of course consequences were they lost an important clue in story but as party Fighter said "Better that then die like idiots". Which I agree with from "roleplay" perspective. I guess that what "real" adventures would do in DnD. They actually may die.

It's like soldiers going for last full tactical assault without ammo left. Tactically - that is stupid. Logic says to fall back, resupply and live to fight another day. Of course situation may be super desperate but that one wasn't and not every situation will be as that would be boring really fast.

I don't want to sound like I am whining I just found that having that Short Rests and Long Rests makes game less natural.

Maybe I should just double Warlock slots and make him long-rest too.... That would solve all issues.

Willie the Duck

2019-02-11, 03:46 PM

But most of the time that "no" only means instead of waiting 8 hours, we wait a full day, and thus back to 5 min day.
...
Enforcing a time limit is the only non-petty way to force them not to rest, but if every single campaign needs to have a time limit, we might as well call the game "24".

I am thinking about all the other games I have played, and trying to think about how those solved the problem.

oD&D and basic/classic D&D it was usually 'the denizens of the dungeon will reinforce/run away with the treasure' as the rest mechanism.
AD&Ds we played more 'Amazing Adventure' or 'Paladins and Princesses' and you rested when you could, and when the evil plot was pressing you didn't have the opportunity to rest on demand ('doom clock'/'24' model).
Champions/HERO System is mostly built around an ENDurance pool which is supposed to recharge between fights (i.e. it mostly uses 'encounter-level' powers.
GURPS uses mostly long term recovering Fatigue pool.
White Wolf games are all over the map, often fueling the strongest powers with resources like blood or gnosis which you have to go out and recharge as an adventure, or in the case of Mage the inherent risk of the spell-casting being the 'cost.'
Traveller and Cyberpunk run on money (cost of ammo/fuel) and opportunity (to go earn more money).
Numenera and Invisible Suns have rests which recharge things, and you choose which ones (shorter or longer ones) to expend at a given time.

That's just a representative smattering, but point is I'm not finding a common thread. I think the biggest problem with modern D&D is that it is relying more and more on expendable resource effects (it's not just Magic Users and half of a Cleric's abilities which have such recharge abilities), that many effects are so big that they need X/day constraint, and for whatever reason they have to yes recharge after a long rest (as opposed to 'spend money', or 'find gnosis'-style mechanics). It is a unique set of circumstances and I'm not sure how best to address it (other than the 4e model--modify the system past the point that it is accepted by the base audience).

Rukelnikov

2019-02-11, 03:52 PM

I can't think of an adventure that I've run that has had a hard time limit, but none of them allow a 5-minute working day either. Because the world reacts to you. If you walk into an area, poke things and then retreat, you'll find yourself pursued by a horde or find the place reinforced when you come back. You have to clear to a stopping point (which usually involves multiple encounters).

As long as you enforce natural consequences, very few people will do the 5-minute working day. Because actions have consequences. And this is something that new, MMO-trained people understand. You always have respawns if you wait too long between encounters.

That's the case in dungeons, however it doesn't apply to most traveling encounters.

Unoriginal

2019-02-11, 03:55 PM

But most of the time that "no" only means instead of waiting 8 hours, we wait a full day, and thus back to 5 min day.

And why would the situation not change while they wait?

They can wait if they want. But there will be logical consequences if they do.

If the players wanna rest, they are gonna do it. You can interrupt the rest with an encounter, but what do you achieve with that? That they will now be more inclined to rest than they were before, you can keep interrupting them, until eventually you are gonna have to allow them to rest or TPK. And thus it devolves into DM vs players, which is the worst kind of rpg.

Alternatively, I don't play with people whose favored playstyle don't work with mine.

That's the case in dungeons, however it doesn't apply to most traveling encounters.

There is no reason to bother with the time spent after most traveling encounters, too, so I'm not sure why you bring that up.

The PCs being in such a schedule that they can't take it easy for one hour while traveling a long distance all day is quite unlikely. And if they want to long rest, fine, they'll compensate by traveling 8 more hours rather than resting for the night (since they already did it earlier).

Rukelnikov

2019-02-11, 03:59 PM

And why would the situation not change while they wait?

They can wait if they want. But there will be logical consequences if they do.

Yeah, there should be consequences, and the players know this, but if they still decide to rest, there's not that much the DM can do in a regular basis.

Alternatively, I don't play with people whose favored playstyle don't work with mine.

I have the luck of playing with my lifelong friends.

There is no reason to bother with the time spent after most traveling encounters, either. So it's rarely a concern.

The concern is the one that started the thread, 5e requiring X ammount of encounters/short/long rest as a balance mechanic.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-11, 04:02 PM

That's the case in dungeons, however it doesn't apply to most traveling encounters.

Here's the thing. Traveling encounters are spice. They're not designed to be the major threat unless there's something keeping you from resting. They're just set dressing. So balance for travel encounters is meaningless unless you're doing a logistics heavy game (where every day spent is precious food resources spent). If you want them to be important in and of themselves, use the other Rest Variants from the DMG. Or even a mixture of rest variants:

* Modified Gritty (8 hr short rests, 24-hour long rests) for travel
* Normal (1 hr short rests, 8 hour long rests) for on-location exploration
* Heroic (5 minute short rests, 1 hour long rests) for those heroic pushes through major dungeons.

No one balances around traveling encounters. If you look at published adventures, they're always in this format:
* travel with 0+ encounters.
* locations with time pressure (usually due to consequences such as reinforcements or just no safe place to rest nearby) with many encounters.

Many, if not most, groups don't even do random encounters for travel at all. Mine certainly doesn't. So if the paladin shines during those--who cares? Those aren't that important either way.

Benny89

2019-02-11, 04:11 PM

Alternatively, I don't play with people whose favored playstyle don't work with mine.

That is only the case if you play with new people. I play with dear friends I know for 20 years + my wife. People are more important for me than my playstyle. Not saying that you are incorrect but that is very one-dimensional. I prefer to find some golden rule/balance point to allow everyone have fun as I prefer people I love to play with vs new people that will just accept my preferable playstyle. That is why I try to wrap my head around that short/long rest mechanic in 5E DnD.

Rukelnikov

2019-02-11, 04:27 PM

I am thinking about all the other games I have played, and trying to think about how those solved the problem.

oD&D and basic/classic D&D it was usually 'the denizens of the dungeon will reinforce/run away with the treasure' as the rest mechanism.
AD&Ds we played more 'Amazing Adventure' or 'Paladins and Princesses' and you rested when you could, and when the evil plot was pressing you didn't have the opportunity to rest on demand ('doom clock'/'24' model).
Champions/HERO System is mostly built around an ENDurance pool which is supposed to recharge between fights (i.e. it mostly uses 'encounter-level' powers.
GURPS uses mostly long term recovering Fatigue pool.
White Wolf games are all over the map, often fueling the strongest powers with resources like blood or gnosis which you have to go out and recharge as an adventure, or in the case of Mage the inherent risk of the spell-casting being the 'cost.'
Traveller and Cyberpunk run on money (cost of ammo/fuel) and opportunity (to go earn more money).
Numenera and Invisible Suns have rests which recharge things, and you choose which ones (shorter or longer ones) to expend at a given time.

That's just a representative smattering, but point is I'm not finding a common thread. I think the biggest problem with modern D&D is that it is relying more and more on expendable resource effects (it's not just Magic Users and half of a Cleric's abilities which have such recharge abilities), that many effects are so big that they need X/day constraint, and for whatever reason they have to yes recharge after a long rest (as opposed to 'spend money', or 'find gnosis'-style mechanics). It is a unique set of circumstances and I'm not sure how best to address it (other than the 4e model--modify the system past the point that it is accepted by the base audience).

Well, the main difference I see between D&D and most other systems is the "improve by killing stuff".

In most other systems taking a fight means investing in it, in WoD, a pack of werewolves fighting a spirit means it will take a couple days of draining the Foci till the pack is back to full essence, which leaves it vulnerable for a while, similarly for Mages cabals draining their stones, or taking ability damage. For vamps its spending blood, which, depending on the character, may be a chance for something to go wrong. And for most of them taking damage itself its something that may take various days to get back.

In SWd6 (either old system or the newer one) and TBZ, fighting actually means spending XP rather than gaining it.

So in those systems a fight is inherently relevant, because winning also takes its toll, and thus having had a streak of fights along some time means the group is in a weakened state. In DnD you need to have this happen within the span of a long rest for any of it to have any impact, and outside of a dungeon its somewhat hard to pull off, thus rendering travel either deadly or trivial, which IMO is one of the biggest problems.

sophontteks

2019-02-11, 04:35 PM

Encounters encompass almost any situation. Social encounters, terrain encounters, puzzles, mysterious happenings, combat encounters, etc etc.

There is a misconception that there are supposed to be a number of combat encounters per long/short rest, but they are only a fraction of the days encounters.

Merudo

2019-02-11, 04:37 PM

Side Note: If anyone is having trouble with having 6-8 encounters per long rest, just run a published adventure. The published adventures will teach you how to play the game. They're fun, try them.

Pretty sure none of the published adventures tell you how to have 6-8 encounters per long rest.

Rukelnikov

2019-02-11, 04:38 PM

Here's the thing. Traveling encounters are spice. They're not designed to be the major threat unless there's something keeping you from resting. They're just set dressing. So balance for travel encounters is meaningless unless you're doing a logistics heavy game (where every day spent is precious food resources spent). If you want them to be important in and of themselves, use the other Rest Variants from the DMG. Or even a mixture of rest variants:

* Modified Gritty (8 hr short rests, 24-hour long rests) for travel
* Normal (1 hr short rests, 8 hour long rests) for on-location exploration
* Heroic (5 minute short rests, 1 hour long rests) for those heroic pushes through major dungeons.

We tried something of the sort, full caster would only recover a certain ammount of slot levels per long rest instead of full allotment (effective "CL" plus highest casting stat), Monks and BMs recovered fully in long rest, and only 1 or 2 uses in short rests, only 1 HD recovered per long rest. It worked better for us than regular, but still didn't fully cut it, next adventure I'm gonna try Gritty to see how it plays out.

No one balances around traveling encounters. If you look at published adventures, they're always in this format:
* travel with 0+ encounters.
* locations with time pressure (usually due to consequences such as reinforcements or just no safe place to rest nearby) with many encounters.

Many, if not most, groups don't even do random encounters for travel at all. Mine certainly doesn't. So if the paladin shines during those--who cares? Those aren't that important either way.

Yeah, I guess the system is not aimed at travelling being that relevant, but I like it when some regions are dangerous, and just reaching the evil temple of doom is kind of a quest in and of itself.

sophontteks

2019-02-11, 04:39 PM

Pretty sure none of the published adventures tell you how to have 6-8 encounters per long rest.
Probably not out of the abyss. Curse of strahd easily hit that number every day.

Pelle

2019-02-11, 04:41 PM

The default number of encounters per day is certainly one of the things I dislike the most about the game.

One adventuring day =|= session, but it would be a lot smoother if it was! It's quite annoying when you play irregular sessions of 3-4 hours each, that you need to keep track of which resources you spent 3 or more weeks ago. Yes, you can record stuff on you sheet, but regardless the dynamic isn't fun since when you spend your best resources, you need to wait several sessions to get them back. It would be much more fun for the resource management aspect if it was easier to go through roughly one cycle per session.

Unoriginal

2019-02-11, 04:44 PM

Pretty sure none of the published adventures tell you how to have 6-8 encounters per long rest.

Which is good because it is not an assumption of the game.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-11, 04:48 PM

Which is good because it is not an assumption of the game.

Right. It's an extrapolation from the ceiling on encounters before people are hard out of resources. For balance all you need is opportunities to take short rests 2x or so on average with an encounter or more between each rest.

Skylivedk

2019-02-11, 05:06 PM

Session and long rest are not the same thing.

Our table usually sees 1 long rest every 2-3 sessions. We usually end the session on a short rest.

I am glad they designed the game around dungeons. I want to have a goal and a finite amount of resources to achieve that goal. Long rests always reset that tension and make the game less interesting. I think it's great that 5e has been designed with that in mind. Short rests are the perfect solution to it.

But honestly, even one hour rests make no sense in a dungeon. I've yet to hear about a secured area from any friends or army colleagues where you would wait around an hour to catch your breath in hostile territory. Before going away from short rests, we did 20-30 minutes to simulate the downtime

Side Note: If anyone is having trouble with having 6-8 encounters per long rest, just run a published adventure. The published adventures will teach you how to play the game. They're fun, try them.

This isn't true for the majority of the campaigns in:

Lost Mines of Phandelver

Tomb of Annihilation

Storm King's Thunder (my group is almost done and there's been tops 3 probably rather two dungeons/chapters where short rests made sense/where more than 1 was required. I made more)

Hoard of the Dragon Queen (at least the beginning).

I don't want to sound like I am whining I just found that having that Short Rests and Long Rests makes game less natural.
(...)
Maybe I should just double Warlock slots and make him long-rest too.... That would solve all issues.

X 3 or X 2,5 with a cap pr encounter of previous short rest has been our solution. Warlock is very weak otherwise.

Which is good because it is not an assumption of the game.
Except it kind of is. Reference the Warlock and the Battlemaster. They're not comparable to the long rest classes if you don't allow short rests.

Xetheral

2019-02-11, 05:18 PM

I think the biggest problem with modern D&D is that it is relying more and more on expendable resource effects (it's not just Magic Users and half of a Cleric's abilities which have such recharge abilities), that many effects are so big that they need X/day constraint, and for whatever reason they have to yes recharge after a long rest (as opposed to 'spend money', or 'find gnosis'-style mechanics). It is a unique set of circumstances and I'm not sure how best to address it (other than the 4e model--modify the system past the point that it is accepted by the base audience).

I too am not a big fan of expendable resources that quickly recharge over time. It turns resources into a fixed supply that needs to be rationed at a tactical level. I find it much more interesting when resources need to be acquired, accumulated, and triaged at the strategic level.

In the former case, all that matter is when a resource is spent, and the extent to which that expenditure reduces (or increases) the likelihood of running out prior to recharging. In the latter case, it becomes much more important how and why a resource is spent, and what goals those resources are devoted to.

5e has an element of the latter with gold, (and followers and political influence, etc.), but most of the rules focus is on the rechargable resources. I find it helps to run the game at a pace where those rechargable resources are rarely fully expended prior to recharging. The focus is still at the tactical level, but at least "how" and "why" resources are spent matters more when there isn't an omnipresent threat of resource exhaustion. This is because there is more freedom to spend resources on non-critical goals when they aren't under constant pressure.

Unoriginal

2019-02-11, 05:19 PM

Except it kind of is. Reference the Warlock and the Battlemaster. They're not comparable to the long rest classes if you don't allow short rests.

That has nothing to do with having 6 to 8 encounters a day. The published modules certainly give you the time to short rests appropriately for those classes to work.

ad_hoc

2019-02-11, 05:23 PM

Yes, you can record stuff on you sheet, but regardless the dynamic isn't fun since when you spend your best resources, you need to wait several sessions to get them back.

Then either don't spend them early or play a character like a Rogue who doesn't rely on them.

Long rest characters have huge potential power but are limited in how often they get to use it. High level spell slots should be pulled out when they are needed, not just whenever. This is a big source of strength for the Warlock, as they can cast many high level spells over the course of an adventuring day.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-11, 05:25 PM

I find it helps to run the game at a pace where those rechargable resources are rarely fully expended prior to recharging. The focus is still at the tactical level, but at least "how" and "why" resources are spent matters more when there isn't an omnipresent threat of resource exhaustion. This is because there is more freedom to spend resources on non-critical goals when they aren't under constant pressure.

This is very true IMX. There should be the threat of running dry if you overextend yourself, but most of the time you should have gas left when you replenish things. That's why it's critical to remember that the whole 6-8 encounter thing is a ceiling on the average endurance of a character, not a norm. In fact, if you're consistently pushing the cap then you'll death spiral sooner or later once you have 2 bad days in a row and burn all your HD (which don't come back completely on a long rest) and don't have enough for the next full day.

And for balance concerns, mostly its enough for people to be adults and to not spotlight hog. That may mean holding back and not double-smiting. It may mean taking a "sub-optimal" action to set someone else up. Etc. And with most groups (other than AL) a simple "hey guys, let's not do the 5-minute working day thing even if it's tempting" OOC chat fixes it all. Most groups of friends are more than willing to play nice together.

MaxWilson

2019-02-11, 05:31 PM

This is part of why 5e D&D seems too easy. Very few DMs are going to get 6-8 encounters per day done in anything except a dungeon. So most fights will be at near peak resources because narratives aren't that rigid and arbitrarily changing "what counts as a long rest" depending on the encounter/time density of the given story arch in the campaign breaks immersion just as much as jamming in 5-7 encounters before a boss fight.

It's the biggest flaw of the system at low levels. At high levels, I think the lack of dangerous monsters is the biggest flaw (that is only fixed by making your own monsters or buying Tome of Beasts).

I don't think this is the key factor. The thing is, if you break the adventuring day up into 6-8 Easy or Medium encounters, it gets even easier than if you've got 2-3 Deadly ones. An Easy or Medium encounter is frequently beatable without expending any resources at all, zero, so from an attrition standpoint they might as well not even exist. All they are is free XP.

The game is actually harder and IMO more interesting with a small number of Deadly encounters, or a good random distribution of Easy-through-uber-Deadly encounters, instead of a bunch of Easy/Mediums.

But then, I'm a fan of combat-lite games, where combat doesn't happen unless it has narrative weight and real stakes worth killing or dying for, so I am biased against the lots-of-fights paradigm.

WilliamHuggins

2019-02-11, 05:41 PM

I think Easy/Medium encounters are waste of time, I would never have them unless my players fight something that I did not expect them to fight, an adventuring day should be either one encounter that is pushing the upper limits of a deadly encounter(they play smart or someone dies, you usually put these encounters where narrative is closing, or when they **** something up and they rushed into something without trying to even the odds), or it should be two hard encounters(upper limits) and one proper deadly encounter(somone could die if too many bad rolls stack up or someone decides to throw the fight) with a short rest between each encounter. I tell my players that if they want to play warlocks, I could come up with a way to homebrew it to reduce its short rest dependency, none of them ever wanted to play a warlock yet. With these encounter rules, I only killed 3 characters in our 2 year long campaign, and we had a few close calls. I tried upping the number of encounters in the new campaign we started last month, I tried to put 5 combat encounters in a single session and they hated it (remind you we use roll20 and everyone has their fancy macros so it goes fast).

MaxWilson

2019-02-11, 05:47 PM

So in those systems a fight is inherently relevant, because winning also takes its toll, and thus having had a streak of fights along some time means the group is in a weakened state. In DnD you need to have this happen within the span of a long rest for any of it to have any impact, and outside of a dungeon its somewhat hard to pull off, thus rendering travel either deadly or trivial, which IMO is one of the biggest problems.

IMO the sweet spot is when it is uncertain, which isn't necessarily the same thing as "risky." It means "you can't quantify the risk," and therefore there is dramatic tension.

An encounter with three belligerent knights in ebon-black armor, demanding to share your campsite, can be fun and interesting even if it turns out in the end that the three knights are all overconfident 3rd level mooks, because you don't know when you decide to kick them out of your sleeping bag that they are in fact going to be mooks.

Same goes for a deep hole in the ground, from within which you think you see a glint of something shiny about 40' down. Is it a treasure trove or the gullet of a Purple Worm? Climb down and find out! (Perhaps even the DM does not know until you climb down and he rolls the dice to find out what happens!)

As you ride through the pass, a frost giant descends the mountain slopes towards you, carrying a large sack. It doesn't look angry but it does look very big. Do you ride away at top speed or wait to see what it has to say?

Uncertainty. That is what good dungeon fantasy is all about.

Skylivedk

2019-02-11, 06:44 PM

That has nothing to do with having 6 to 8 encounters a day. The published modules certainly give you the time to short rests appropriately for those classes to work.

No, they don't. Not for the majority of their chapters.

Storm King's Thunder

Goldenfields: town is attacked plus you have to make the commander extra stupid if the town guard isn't strong enough to kill them on their own (so I made him that). But an hour's rest as the city is burning?

The Wild Frontier: an entire chapter basically without a single dungeon needing a short rest.

The Oracle: first proper dungeon where short rests make sense... Well, besides the encounters being super easy until BBEG shows up and resources hardly matter anyway.

Frost giants hold: tops one short rest needed (but a long rest group could blast through and be fine)

Maelstrom: 0-1 SR

In the Tentacles: only long rest encounters (I added a Doomsday clock twice to change that).

Under the Desert: look forward to trying it.

Tomb of Annihilation:
All the hex crawling encounters are basically Nova fodder. Short rest has only been an advantage if sleep was lost. Only mattered to our cleric.

Medusa had a good balance of encounters.

Temple of the night serpent has been good for short rest // temple town in general had us do some... Well, mostly because I asked for them. We could have sacrificed more NPCs.

Lost Mines:
The Red Hoods. That's it. Haven't played the whole thing through yet.

SKT, player level 1-9: two areas
ToA, 1-7: two areas
Lost Mines 1-4: 1 area

Snowbluff

2019-02-11, 07:57 PM

Rukelnikov

2019-02-11, 09:08 PM

IMO the sweet spot is when it is uncertain, which isn't necessarily the same thing as "risky." It means "you can't quantify the risk," and therefore there is dramatic tension.

An encounter with three belligerent knights in ebon-black armor, demanding to share your campsite, can be fun and interesting even if it turns out in the end that the three knights are all overconfident 3rd level mooks, because you don't know when you decide to kick them out of your sleeping bag that they are in fact going to be mooks.

Same goes for a deep hole in the ground, from within which you think you see a glint of something shiny about 40' down. Is it a treasure trove or the gullet of a Purple Worm? Climb down and find out! (Perhaps even the DM does not know until you climb down and he rolls the dice to find out what happens!)

As you ride through the pass, a frost giant descends the mountain slopes towards you, carrying a large sack. It doesn't look angry but it does look very big. Do you ride away at top speed or wait to see what it has to say?

Uncertainty. That is what good dungeon fantasy is all about.

I wholeheartedly agree with that (and that's one of my biggest gripes with linear systems like dnd, but that's a discussion for another time).

Problem is, every bet has to be all or nothing, in any given situation, a player knows that the only possible risk is death (at least in the lower levels, then you can threaten their magic items), because either you defeat the encounter and rest, so nothing happened (actually you are stronger than before), or you die, dnd is pretty much "what does not kill me makes me stronger".

And that puts the DM in a tricky situation, do I wanna turn every encounter into a potential TPK? Not really, every now and then maybe. Then most of my encounters will have no repercussion in the PCs, except they do, because players get XP from those encounters, then either they are challenging but not fatal, resulting in players earning sizeable XP, which over the course of a campaign would amount to a lot, or they have to be boringly trivial, so they don't overlevel the adventure too fast.

There are of course other things that can be done besides death, enemies stealing/destroying magic items is one of the most dangerous things to happen, very often far worse than death. PCs can be taken prisioners, but that's not something that fits most adventures.

I think my problem is the lack (mostly) of manageable lasting resource drain.

Agent-KI7KO

2019-02-11, 10:28 PM

The word “encounter” includes elaborate trap rooms, puzzles, diplomacy. It’s not just combat, and yes you can award XP for these.

Tanarii

2019-02-11, 10:37 PM

The one thing you can always notice when playing with "older" RPG people is that there is always more roleplay and story and less dices than when you play with new people or when you started with RPGs. Story and roleplay comes first, dialogues, diplomacy etc. Combat is still important and essential but it's not anymore a main focus, more likely it just serves the story and it's meant to be an "epic" piece of it.
Those must be very young "older" people. IMX D&D grognards tend towards being the most old-school dungeon & wilderness adventuring crawl oriented folks around. They won't assume combat, in fact they often try to avoid it or make sure they'll win it. But 6-8 encounters per adventuring day, combat or not, is on the low side for a crawl-type adventure. And course, since roleplaying is making decisions for your character in the fantasy environment, they tend to be some of the heaviest roleplayers too, since dungeon and wilderness crawls usually tend to involve many meaningful decisions being made regularly just to survive.

That's when they play D&D of course. For "story" heavy gaming, old-school grognards tend to play other games instead.

I'm guessing most folks you've encountered that are "older" mostly grew up on 2e, or happen to buy into the idea that roleplaying is about cooperative storytelling.

Xetheral

2019-02-12, 12:57 AM

Problem is, every bet has to be all or nothing, in any given situation, a player knows that the only possible risk is death (at least in the lower levels, then you can threaten their magic items), because either you defeat the encounter and rest, so nothing happened (actually you are stronger than before), or you die, dnd is pretty much "what does not kill me makes me stronger".

I can't agree with this at all. Sure, in dangerous, climactic combats, it's sometimes win-or-die. But for most significant combats, the question is whether or not the PCs will achieve their goals, rather than whether they survive. The orc guardsmen are no threat to the PCs... but can the PCs prevent them from raising the alarm? The kidnappers are no threat to the PCs... but can the PCs stop them from killing the victim? The enemy has dispatched a spoiling force to slow the PCs and their army... the PCs' forces can easily crush the enemy detachment, but can they do so fast enough to catch up to the main enemy force? It can even be as simple as opportunity cost: sure, the PCs weren't in any real danger themselves, but by taking the time to move against one foe, another is left unchecked.

Pex

2019-02-12, 01:09 AM

The flaw is having some classes be mostly if not entirely short rest dependent while others are mostly if not entirely long rest dependent. Ironic for me to say since I hate the system, they should have had more faith in 4E in giving all the classes long rest dependent goodies and short rest dependent goodies. The sameness problem of 4E wasn't entirely everyone having the same resource mechanic. As long as class abilities are significantly different enough from each other and within themselves as you gain levels in the class the sameness problem of 4E wouldn't be a factor.

The stress is, in my opinion, mostly on short rest dependent classes because it's harder to conserve their resources. They don't get a lot of it because it's expected to be refreshed. However, too often there isn't in game time to take the rest or the party is not in a safe area. There will be short rests but not at the convenience of the short rest dependent characters. Long rest classes aren't pressed for time and a safe place or as safe as can be will be found. When they need a long rest everyone needs a long rest, and they'll get it.

Rests happen when gameplay naturally allows for it. The number of encounters per game day will vary. The DM can try to pace it, but player decisions and randomness of dice rolls will alter it. Short rest classes over or under benefit as the events happen.

Now, if you want the thread title question answered literally in what I think is 5E's biggest flaw, that's a whole other can of worms a few of my regular readers would rather I not bring up here. :smallbiggrin:

sithlordnergal

2019-02-12, 01:16 AM

The stress is, in my opinion, mostly on short rest dependent classes because it's harder to conserve their resources. They don't get a lot of it because it's expected to be refreshed. However, too often there isn't in game time to take the rest or the party is not in a safe area. There will be short rests but not at the convenience of the short rest dependent characters. Long rest classes aren't pressed for time and a safe place or as safe as can be will be found. When they need a long rest everyone needs a long rest, and they'll get it.

I actually found a way to balance Short and Long Rests. Even if the party finds a safe place they can long rest, simply tell them what sort of benefits they can gain at that moment in time. For example, if you have a Moon Druid who wakes up, uses a Wild Shape, then tries to short rest before the adventuring day starts so that they have all their Wild Shapes and can start as a Beast/Elemental, tell them they don't get the benefits of a short rest. If the party is in a safe place, and they want to do some of that "5-minute adventuring day" stuff where they want to take nothing but long rests, inform them any resting they do will only grant them the benefits of a short rest.

You don't have to explain it, but if you do want to you can explain it as "You've just been resting, therefore you would not gain any benefits of such a rest". I do it with my players, and it works wonders. Short Rest classes get a proper number of short rests without the issue of the Warlock resting after every encounter, and long rest classes have to actually ration their resources properly. And if you're good at keeping track of party resources in your head, like keeping track of how many spells each spell caster has used, you can generally adjust the encounters throughout their adventuring day accordingly.

Tanarii

2019-02-12, 01:20 AM

Long rest classes aren't pressed for time and a safe place or as safe as can be will be found. When they need a long rest everyone needs a long rest, and they'll get it.
IMX it is newer players of long rest casters (in particular) in my campaign that will blow their wad and start crying about a long rest far before anyone else in the party is ready for one.

Otoh I also generally have 1 long rest = one session, which encourages players to press on, as opposed to ending the session early.

I also have no problem fitting 1 to 1-1/3 adventuring days of (combat and non) encounters into a 3-4 hour session. Although I do agree that talking encounters and simple traps/tricks encounters, both of which I generally rate as Easy due to no significant loss of resources expected, take up the most time per slice of the adventuring day.

BurgerBeast

2019-02-12, 01:37 AM

I think it’s the rapid healing that is problematic, but it’s my opinion that those two things (rapid healing and encounters per day design goal) are interconnected to the point that it’s a chicken-or-the-egg thing.

So yes, I do think the number of encounters against which the game is balanced is problematic.

At the end of the day, they had to design the game with some number If encounters a in mind... so it’s just preference. My reasons are that I like to have the ability to have slower attrition over days as a possibility. Maybe it is possible and I just haven’t found that balance yet.

MeeposFire

2019-02-12, 02:23 AM

Actually in 4e a class with no dailies and all encounter powers could do very well (a slayer with access to his choice of fighter encounter powers would be really nasty and give any striker a run for its money). The "problem" in 5e is not that there are short rest and long rest based classes but rather the fact that in some people's games short rest classes do not get access to their expected short rests. IN 4e encounter powers reset in 5 minutes while dailies took that 8 hours of rest. This meant you had to really try to prevent a character from getting his encounter powers back before the next fight. In 5e the 1 hour time to get back short rest abilities is the real limiting factor not as much the number of encounters (unless you are doing the 1 encounter per long rest but most do not advocate for that). If you change the duration of short rests to work for your game (I have experimented with a 5 minute first short rest, 10 minutes for the 2nd, and 1 hour for every short rest after that) then your short rest characters will be fine in almost any number of encounters.

djreynolds

2019-02-12, 02:30 AM

I'm currently DMing Undermountain.

At first I told players we would try in 3 hours to get through each level. Well we are still in level 2, after 5 or 6, three hour sessions.... and they seem content.

It's not just about beating the dungeon for them, they like to look through everything and explore... I just try nudge them along.

They're accumulating wealth, saving poor souls, taking notes, helping Volo finish latest novel.

I encourage short rests and the deal is I roll 17-18 it's a random encounter. If they rest right after a fight, I roll with advantage, because they made ruckus.

Find out what your table wants and what the adventure requires, and really remember to make sure everyone shines

MaxWilson

2019-02-12, 02:30 AM

I wholeheartedly agree with that (and that's one of my biggest gripes with linear systems like dnd, but that's a discussion for another time).

Problem is, every bet has to be all or nothing, in any given situation, a player knows that the only possible risk is death (at least in the lower levels, then you can threaten their magic items), because either you defeat the encounter and rest, so nothing happened (actually you are stronger than before), or you die, dnd is pretty much "what does not kill me makes me stronger".

Nitpick: you can still destroy magic items at high level (IMG any item not currently being held by a fully-conscious PC has no plot armor, and I don't think RAW says any differently) and you can kill one PC without it necessarily being a TPK, and you can set up situations that threaten other things (like their income stream or social standing/reputation).

But that's a nitpick because I agree with your basic point here: D&D, especially 5E, is oriented very much around "what does not kill me makes me stronger." It's un-idiomatic to have PCs grow weaker over time due to losses--this isn't Call of Cthulhu. :-)

And that puts the DM in a tricky situation, do I wanna turn every encounter into a potential TPK? Not really, every now and then maybe. Then most of my encounters will have no repercussion in the PCs, except they do, because players get XP from those encounters, then either they are challenging but not fatal, resulting in players earning sizeable XP, which over the course of a campaign would amount to a lot, or they have to be boringly trivial, so they don't overlevel the adventure too fast.

I feel like this is somewhat of a false dichotomy, because you can tweak the XP rules (e.g. 10x normal XP to advance), but I agree that 5E's built-in XP tables do cause you to rocket up in levels very quickly, especially if you use high-CR monsters against low-level PCs. (Not so much if you use low-CR monsters against mid- or high-level PCs; a company of 200 hobgoblins may be a pain and a half to kill, but they only yield 5000 XP per PC for a party of four.)

There are of course other things that can be done besides death, enemies stealing/destroying magic items is one of the most dangerous things to happen, very often far worse than death. PCs can be taken prisioners, but that's not something that fits most adventures.

I think my problem is the lack (mostly) of manageable lasting resource drain.

I hear you. One of the things that IMO makes 5E not a very good TTRPG is that it's so deeply rooted in consequence-free play as a philosophy. It tends to make the game boring and samey. It is possible to change that, but it's not idiomatic for 5E, and you wind up having to do lots of the work yourself (e.g. inventing economic systems or systems for representing/gaining/losing reputation, so the players can invest themselves in that system and so you can generate dramatic tension by within that system instead of the built-in mostly-consequence-free 5E systems like health and magic items).

5E makes a good basis for a CRPG but a fairly mediocre TTRPG.

Edit: oh, let's not forget how easy it is to break even the parts of 5E that are supposed to represent consumable resources, whether that is the ease of cranking out magical longbows for animated skeletons using Xanathar's rules, or the ridiculous amount of wealth a mid-level party can gain from raiding the hoard of a CR 17 dragon (on the order of hundreds of thousands of gp per dragon hoard, even if you ignore the DMG's advice about rolling multiple times for creatures that like to hoard). It's relatively easy to fix but still somewhat irksome--one gets the sense that whoever wrote up those treasure tables imagined that CR 17 monsters would only be killable by level 17+ adventurers, but due to the rest of the system that just ain't so.

JoeJ

2019-02-12, 02:33 AM

MaxWilson

2019-02-12, 02:50 AM

I divided the expected average xp per day by the encounter difficulty thresholds at each level. The number of encounters needed to meet the daily average varies slightly from level to levels, so I took the mean.

By this measure, if all encounters are deadly there should be an average of 2.9 encounters per adventure day (a low of 2.6 at levels 12, 13, and 14, and a high of 3.4 at level 4). If all encounters are easy, there should be an average of 13.2 encounters per adventure day (a low of 11.5 at level 12, and a high of 16.0 at level 3). In actual play, most days should have a mix of encounter difficulties, so the number of encounters necessary to reach the average daily xp will be somewhere between these extremes.

Those numbers don't look right to me. For example, at level 12, the daily budget for four PCs is 48,00 XP, the Easy threshold is 4000 XP, and the Medium threshold is 8000 XP. A typical Easy encounter will be 4000-7999 XP, call it 6000 XP on average, so you should have about eight Easy encounters per long rest--not 11.5 of them. At level 3, there should be about ten and a half Easy encounters per day, not sixteen.

JoeJ

2019-02-12, 02:57 AM

Those numbers don't look right to me. For example, at level 12, the daily budget for four PCs is 48,00 XP, the Easy threshold is 4000 XP, and the Medium threshold is 8000 XP. A typical Easy encounter will be 4000-7999 XP, call it 6000 XP on average, so you should have about eight Easy encounters per long rest--not 11.5 of them. At level 3, there should be about ten and a half Easy encounters per day, not sixteen.

I was using the threshold for each encounter difficulty. At level 12 you've got 11,500 divided by 1,000, or 11.5 encounters. At level 3 it's 1,200 divided by 75, which is 16.

Rukelnikov

2019-02-12, 02:59 AM

I can't agree with this at all. Sure, in dangerous, climactic combats, it's sometimes win-or-die. But for most significant combats, the question is whether or not the PCs will achieve their goals, rather than whether they survive. The orc guardsmen are no threat to the PCs... but can the PCs prevent them from raising the alarm? The kidnappers are no threat to the PCs... but can the PCs stop them from killing the victim? The enemy has dispatched a spoiling force to slow the PCs and their army... the PCs' forces can easily crush the enemy detachment, but can they do so fast enough to catch up to the main enemy force? It can even be as simple as opportunity cost: sure, the PCs weren't in any real danger themselves, but by taking the time to move against one foe, another is left unchecked.

I was talking about traveling encounters, not all in general.

MaxWilson

2019-02-12, 03:14 AM

I was using the threshold for each encounter difficulty. At level 12 you've got 11,500 divided by 1,000, or 11.5 encounters. At level 3 it's 1,200 divided by 75, which is 16.

Okay. I'll merely observe then that the just-barely-Easy threshold is not, in my experience, representative of the typical Easy encounter, and so on for other difficulties. If anything a encounters tend to skew high IME, but maybe I'm just a jerk DM who delights in making "Easy" encounters as difficult as possible while still remaining Easy, etc. Maybe every other DM out there delights in the opposite, making Easy encounters just barely hard enough not to fall off the difficulty table entirely.

JoeJ

2019-02-12, 03:40 AM

Okay. I'll merely observe then that the just-barely-Easy threshold is not, in my experience, representative of the typical Easy encounter, and so on for other difficulties. If anything a encounters tend to skew high IME, but maybe I'm just a jerk DM who delights in making "Easy" encounters as difficult as possible while still remaining Easy, etc. Maybe every other DM out there delights in the opposite, making Easy encounters just barely hard enough not to fall off the difficulty table entirely.

This wasn't intended as a commentary on anybody's DMing style. I just wanted to know the actual range of encounters per day that fit within the xp budget given in the DMG if no encounter goes over the minimum threshold for deadly or under the minimum for easy.

MeimuHakurei

2019-02-12, 05:57 AM

To answer the title question, I'd say it's close to the problem, but not quite: It's not that there's too many/few encounters per day, it's that the awkward short rest mechanic along with the general lack of tools for time pressure (and noncombat encounters) means that holding up this encounter day is exceedingly difficult. 1 hour is a long time for a break and often in areas where an 8 hour rest is also possible, discouraging short resting most of the time (The gritty rest rules usually don't have this problem, however). The game also doesn't reward pushing on for more encounters like 4e does, either.

That said, handling encounter days has the additional caveat that not always do player want (or in fact, are able to) to complete the encounter day and rest early. While abusing long rests is a problem, so is forcing the group to march forward into a guaranteed TPK due to lack of resources. And interrupting a long rest will only make the group want to long rest even more.

Pelle

2019-02-12, 06:23 AM

Then either don't spend them early or play a character like a Rogue who doesn't rely on them.

That's possible to do, but doesn't change that the game would be even more fun (for how my group plays) if the total amount of resources available were halved.

Benny89

2019-02-12, 06:40 AM

I have problem with short rests because many times they seem totally out of place from story perspective. For example I had an "adventuring day" where party was chasing a members of cult who kidnapped a young girl. There were pressed by time hard and encounters were designed so they can feel desperation of "not making it" and press on harder to save the girl in time. There were 2 encounters before they reached them + puzzle and then a final fight with dramatic ending.

There is no way in circumstances like, and when narrative is flowing smoothly that someone will say "ok, but let's take a 1 hour short rest". You can't waste hour, even minutes for something like, and you can't waste time for 2 such rests.

Therefore party short-rest member was out of resources most of the chase. You could say it's my fault as DM, but I wanted to make that desperate race with time feeling, and short rest classes are just not suitable for that. Long Rest have to divide their resources but they can, with smart playing, make that in the end they still have some left.

Short rests in general are imo totally counter-narrative many times. "We beaten those enemies here, but the castle is burning, people are dying.... they are for the artifact!! We have to get to Princess!", "Ok, nice, but can we take a 1 hour rest please first?"

It's just....well, stupid in so many cases when you make dynamic events in your story.

Not every story is "Dunegon, Room to Room fight, rest between" as it's well... Not really exciting plot. At least not when it happens too often.

ad_hoc

2019-02-12, 07:14 AM

There were 2 encounters before they reached them + puzzle and then a final fight with dramatic ending.

That is right in line with the amount of encounters on average that will be had between short rests.

It's also completely okay to have a day where there were 4+ encounters between short rests. Gives the Rogue a chance to shine.

As is my constant recommendation; play a published adventure to learn how to properly pace the game. There is even a great example of a chase like this in OotA.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-12, 07:21 AM

That is right in line with the amount of encounters on average that will be had between short rests.

It's also completely okay to have a day where there were 4+ encounters between short rests. Gives the Rogue a chance to shine.

Exactly. As long as on average there's a mix of fights everyone will be fine. Some days the SR people shine. Other days the LR people shine. And on yet others the no-rest people (rogues) shine.

The balance of this edition is not so fragile as to be shattered by variation. In fact, it's improved by variation, by uncertainty. Unless you have munchkins and no concern for in-universe consequences (ie in AL), the story and balance concerns work out fine.

And if you really have a situation that doesn't give time for short rests, consider giving out short-rest tokens--single-use items that they can burn (as long as they have a minute to catch their breath) to get the benefit of a short rest. I gave out literal in-game items (called "Apprentices's Friend", basically magical black coffee). They got 2 of them and not everyone had to use them at the same time. They came with a drawback that occurred if they used too many before they got a long rest (so if they pooled them and one PC chugged them), but they never hit this point.

Benny89

2019-02-12, 07:29 AM

That is right in line with the amount of encounters on average that will be had between short rests.

It's also completely okay to have a day where there were 4+ encounters between short rests. Gives the Rogue a chance to shine.

As is my constant recommendation; play a published adventure to learn how to properly pace the game. There is even a great example of a chase like this in OotA.

I don't think you understood what I meant. I meant that in dynamic adventure day a short rest is simple not possible from role play/narrative perspective. I gave examples above.

My point was that short rest itself is many times just not suitable considering events during adventure day. Long rest is much more intuitive.

With all due respect to anyone who likes published adventures, me and my friends find them too banal and simplistic from story perspective. They feel... very artificial, if you know what I mean. They are just not for our taste, no offense.

And if you really have a situation that doesn't give time for short rests, consider giving out short-rest tokens--single-use items that they can burn (as long as they have a minute to catch their breath) to get the benefit of a short rest. I gave out literal in-game items (called "Apprentices's Friend", basically magical black coffee). They got 2 of them and not everyone had to use them at the same time. They came with a drawback that occurred if they used too many before they got a long rest (so if they pooled them and one PC chugged them), but they never hit this point.

I understand I can do many things as DM, but what I am saying is that default/RAW rules of short resting are just...well, bad in my opinion.

Of course I can houserule everything, but that is home solution, the flaw in system still stays.

sophontteks

2019-02-12, 07:40 AM

Skylivedk

2019-02-12, 07:44 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-12, 07:48 AM

I don't think you understood what I meant. I meant that in dynamic adventure day a short rest is simple not possible from role play/narrative perspective. I gave examples above.

My point was that short rest itself is many times just not suitable considering events during adventure day. Long rest is much more intuitive.

With all due respect to anyone who likes published adventures, me and my friends find them too banal and simplistic from story perspective. They feel... very artificial, if you know what I mean. They are just not for our taste, no offense.

I understand I can do many things as DM, but what I am saying is that default/RAW rules of short resting are just...well, bad in my opinion.

Of course I can houserule everything, but that is home solution, the flaw in system still stays.

From a roleplay standpoint its completely unrealistic for your characters to be rolling through multiple encounters without stopping to catch their breath, stretching, conspiring their next move, bandaging their wounds, and eating some trail mix. Are you roleplaying adventurers or robots?

The only reason it seems unreasonable is because time is frozen while characters make plans, and the time lapse of rounds is unreasonably accelerated.

Combat lasts 18 seconds (3 rounds) on average. You can roll through a dungeon in 1-2 minutes going by rounds. By these standards an hour is long, and an adventuring day is an eternity.

This is very true. The vast majority of all adventuring days are not "exciting chases where every second counts". If they are, that's you causing the problem, not the system.

And consider the options.

1. No more SR, everything is LR-based (or at will). This was what 3e did. The (much worse) 5-minute working day was the result. And that's horrible for the story aspect--much worse than having an hour break here and there. This also encourages novas, which leaves out those who can't nova. Or if you do the SRx3 resource hack, you end up with warlocks being able to nova harder than anyone. No wins here.

2. Most things recharge after an encounter (ie 5-minute SR). The 4e way. If you take this too far, it stretches the imagination and makes everybody feel the same without much to differentiate the classes from a resource perspective. But there's a variant for this in the DMG--if you can't take time for a 1hr SR, use the Heroic Rest variant instead. That's what it's there for.

3. No recharging resources at all (ie everything is at-will). Yeah, that's a bit far from the core feel of D&D. D&D has always had a mix of resources styles.

4. Mana/stamina bars. I personally find these obnoxious outside a video game. If they don't regen in discrete chunks after rests, they're a pain to deal with. If they do, then see above.

Benny89

2019-02-12, 08:15 AM

From a roleplay standpoint its completely unrealistic for your characters to be rolling through multiple encounters without stopping to catch their breath, stretching, conspiring their next move, bandaging their wounds, and eating some trail mix.

It's very realistic when you are chasing someone, when there is siege going and walls are falling, when you have to stop a ritual from going off, when one of your party members is dying, when they know they have to resolve a plot by the end of the day or culprit will get away or an innocent person will lose their live. When you are running out of dungeon filled with toxic mist that makes you lose your senses. When you need to get an antidote for poisoned NPC, who is a key figure for story etc.

The above story ideas are very normal, standard things in RPG games. I am not saying I do all of this above every session, but those are quite common ideas in RPGs. I am not making anything original here. You never had such adventures?

Of course I am making problems- I am trying to make interesting, good plots and stories that will be remembered and are exciting. Not go from A to B, fight, go from B to C, fight. Not killing yet another dragon in cave or on mountain (at least not all the time). I am saying that this short/long rest system was made totally for different kind of narratives it seems. More artificial, less realistic.

Sometimes I think most people just go from orc band, through couple demons to dragon 9/10 time in DnD resting and relaxing between... No offense.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-12, 08:22 AM

It's a very normal, standard thing in RPG games. I am not saying I do all of this above every session, but those are quite standard ideas in RPG stories. I am not making anything original here. You never had such adventures?

Those adventures are fine, but they're only memorable when they're the exception, not the rule. If every (or even most) quest is on such a rushed timeline, then you should use the Heroic Rest variant instead. That's what it's there for.

In general, good gameplay has a rhythm to it. Slow sessions mixed with frantic sessions. A blend of time spent playing with goblin children and time spent assaulting a Dark Lady's fortress to stop her ritual ascension (that would also kill all life for miles around). And much in between.

Both of those are real examples from my longest-running campaign, both part of the same arc.

5e is adaptable. As long as you're not jamming the stick hard in one direction or the other, things work. And there are published, official variants for exactly the cases you're bringing up. And there's no need to stick with one variant or the other. You can swing back and forth as much as it makes sense in your campaign.

5e works on rulings, not rules. Don't think "oh, but that's homebrew" (and thus "improper" or "to be avoided"). You are the master of the rules, and if you stick to rules that are giving you problems you only have yourself to blame. Because the rules don't say to stick to them if they're giving you problems. They say to do what's best for your table.

On the other hand, those same rules work just fine for me and for many others. So saying that they're an objective flaw is wrong. They don't work for the play-style you've decided to use. That's all. Now you can adapt to that and make your group happy in one of two ways. Change the play-style or change the rules. Both of which are in your power.

Benny89

2019-02-12, 08:32 AM

Those adventures are fine, but they're only memorable when they're the exception, not the rule. If every (or even most) quest is on such a rushed timeline, then you should use the Heroic Rest variant instead. That's what it's there for..

Yes of course they are exceptions or a turning/dynamic points during campaign between more slower phased adventures. Nevertheless they usually are most dramatic and challenging and this is where I have problems with short-rest classes.

Heroic Rest variant might be a good idea, thank you. I totally forgot about those. I may try to run this during Heroic part of campaign. Appreciate suggestion.

ad_hoc

2019-02-12, 08:37 AM

{Scrubbed}

sophontteks

2019-02-12, 08:37 AM

It's very realistic when you are chasing someone, when there is siege going and walls are falling, when you have to stop a ritual from going off, when one of your party members is dying, when they know they have to resolve a plot by the end of the day or culprit will get away or an innocent person will lose their live. When you are running out of dungeon filled with toxic mist that makes you lose your senses. When you need to get an antidote for poisoned NPC, who is a key figure for story etc.

The above story ideas are very normal, standard things in RPG games. I am not saying I do all of this above every session, but those are quite common ideas in RPGs. I am not making anything original here. You never had such adventures?

Of course I am making problems- I am trying to make interesting, good plots and stories that will be remembered and are exciting. Not go from A to B, fight, go from B to C, fight. Not killing yet another dragon in cave or on mountain (at least not all the time). I am saying that this short/long rest system was made totally for different kind of narratives it seems. More artificial, less realistic.

Sometimes I think most people just go from orc band, through couple demons to dragon 9/10 time in DnD resting and relaxing between... No offense.
There is nothing wrong with having moments where the players would go through multiple encounters without short resting, giving the long rest characters a chance to shine, just as there is nothing wrong with having moments where its easy to short rest between encounters, allowing short rest characters a chance to shine.

But you do have to contend with the roleplaying. Its just not realistic for characters to go through fight after fight without resting. That is breaking the immersion. Tension and excitement shouldn't be limited to just throwing combat encounter after combat encounter at your party. Is this creating memorable moments, or creating a slog of endless combat?

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-12, 08:40 AM

Unoriginal

2019-02-12, 08:46 AM

On long rests being taken too often, why not just say that, like real sleep, you can't just go back to bed for another 8 hours 5 minutes after getting up -- unless you need 16 hours to fully recover anyway, in which case the long rest just needs to be longer anyway to get the recharges/resets.

That's been said, yes. PCs can't rest if they are not tired enough to rest.

Which is why all that coffeelock stuff is nonsense.

Benny89

2019-02-12, 09:25 AM

But you do have to contend with the roleplaying. Its just not realistic for characters to go through fight after fight without resting. That is breaking the immersion. ?

This is absolutely off-topic but it's nothing unusual for soldiers to be under extreme pressure for even days of constant combat or long hours before they can really take a proper rest (when adrenaline goes down and body can really rest, not just catch a breath). Same in older times for example during sieges where fights could be going for long hours before both sides had to call it a day and rest. Hell, a proper big scale battles between two armies could last for few hours. Surveillance from cops many times required a 12h without sleep activity.

There is nothing unrealistic in fight after fight without rest. Actually it's quite common during a war or extreme situations (and those are extreme situations during campaign). And since we don't have adventurers chasing for cults and dragons in real life- this is closest comparison you can get when it comes to that.

I don't think it breaks immersion, I actually think it increases it.

But that is off-topic and very table-dependent so let's drop it.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-12, 09:55 AM

On long rests being taken too often, why not just say that, like real sleep, you can't just go back to bed for another 8 hours 5 minutes after getting up -- unless you need 16 hours to fully recover anyway, in which case the long rest just needs to be longer anyway to get the recharges/resets.

That's in the rules--you can only benefit from 1 long rest per 24 hours.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-12, 09:57 AM

This is absolutely off-topic but it's nothing unusual for soldiers to be under extreme pressure for even days of constant combat or long hours before they can really take a proper rest (when adrenaline goes down and body can really rest, not just catch a breath). Same in older times for example during sieges where fights could be going for long hours before both sides had to call it a day and rest. Hell, a proper big scale battles between two armies could last for few hours. Surveillance from cops many times required a 12h without sleep activity.

There is nothing unrealistic in fight after fight without rest. Actually it's quite common during a war or extreme situations (and those are extreme situations during campaign). And since we don't have adventurers chasing for cults and dragons in real life- this is closest comparison you can get when it comes to that.

I don't think it breaks immersion, I actually think it increases it.

But that is off-topic and very table-dependent so let's drop it.

But do note that doing so for more than a single day is going to cause serious issues. People just don't sustain long stretches of fever pitch/full attention very well at all. You're looking (in game terms) at a level of Exhaustion or so for doing this. Exceptions are exceptional--don't use exceptions to make rules. Adjust the rules when those exceptions come up, leaving the "happy path" un-altered.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-12, 10:00 AM

That's in the rules--you can only benefit from 1 long rest per 24 hours.

Huh. You know, it seems like a lot of these gimmicks that get pushed on this forum, well, are maybe the result of people not reading the actual rules?

Skylivedk

2019-02-12, 10:07 AM

This is very true. The vast majority of all adventuring days are not "exciting chases where every second counts". If they are, that's you causing the problem, not the system.

And consider the options.

1. No more SR, everything is LR-based (or at will). This was what 3e did. The (much worse) 5-minute working day was the result. And that's horrible for the story aspect--much worse than having an hour break here and there. This also encourages novas, which leaves out those who can't nova. Or if you do the SRx3 resource hack, you end up with warlocks being able to nova harder than anyone. No wins here.

2. Most things recharge after an encounter (ie 5-minute SR). The 4e way. If you take this too far, it stretches the imagination and makes everybody feel the same without much to differentiate the classes from a resource perspective. But there's a variant for this in the DMG--if you can't take time for a 1hr SR, use the Heroic Rest variant instead. That's what it's there for.

3. No recharging resources at all (ie everything is at-will). Yeah, that's a bit far from the core feel of D&D. D&D has always had a mix of resources styles.

4. Mana/stamina bars. I personally find these obnoxious outside a video game. If they don't regen in discrete chunks after rests, they're a pain to deal with. If they do, then see above.

Re 1. Have you given any thoughts to my proposed version of this? SRx3 with encounter cap of SR? Biggest challenge I've seen with it so far is druids becoming even more versatile.

Re 2. Might try using more of the rest variants for the next campaign I DM.

Re 4. I've considered creating a system based on this inspired by the Witcher games. I struggle with reducing book keeping though. I don't want the logs of 3e

Not understanding how to play the game is not a fault of the game.

You could continue to complain on the internet that the resting rules are broken. Or you could learn how to play. There are excellent resources out there which teach how pacing works. You don't even really need to actually run a published adventure if you can read and understand how they work.

The resources are there, it's all on you.

Do you intend to come across as demeaning, condescending and arrogant? OP, Benny and I have each given polite reasons from different angles as to why the current mechanics can feel very clunky. Broad lines:

A) narrative reasons in high pressure environments (I've seen Malifice have great suggestions for this in other threads)

B) inter party dynamics and OOC perceptions of fun: long rest and no rest classes might both push to other play styles. Also, if you have weeks between sessions (not unusual for those with other commitments), it's not necessarily a great experience to have an entire session with none/few of your fun resources available (goes for both LR and SR based)

C) you keep mentioning the published adventures. I've requested you name them. I've played three and gone through how small a portion of them actually live up to the balanced adventuring days. I'm all ears for better ones

sophontteks

2019-02-12, 10:56 AM

This is absolutely off-topic but it's nothing unusual for soldiers to be under extreme pressure for even days of constant combat or long hours before they can really take a proper rest (when adrenaline goes down and body can really rest, not just catch a breath). Same in older times for example during sieges where fights could be going for long hours before both sides had to call it a day and rest. Hell, a proper big scale battles between two armies could last for few hours. Surveillance from cops many times required a 12h without sleep activity.

There is nothing unrealistic in fight after fight without rest. Actually it's quite common during a war or extreme situations (and those are extreme situations during campaign). And since we don't have adventurers chasing for cults and dragons in real life- this is closest comparison you can get when it comes to that.

I don't think it breaks immersion, I actually think it increases it.

But that is off-topic and very table-dependent so let's drop it.
Great argument against long rests, but everyone in all those situations take short rests. How long can boxers go before they are exhausted? Why do you think soldiers in war are any different?

Unoriginal

2019-02-12, 11:01 AM

Huh. You know, it seems like a lot of these gimmicks that get pushed on this forum, well, are maybe the result of people not reading the actual rules?

Well yeah. Did you expect otherwise?

Though there are also people who read the book and then claim the book says something very different than what is written.

I'm all for rulings and houserules and changing the game to fit your tastes, but a LOT of the things claim 5e fails to do is actually covered by the rules in an entirely reasonable manner.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-12, 11:07 AM

Well yeah. What did you expect?

Guess it just throws me off when I see vehement, assertive, bold statements of "fact" that turn out to be easily demonstrated to be counterfactual and thus false, especially when someone doubles-down on them as they become less supportable.

I mean, do they just not care about how it makes them look?

If I'm not certain about something, I hedge my statement to make that clear. When I see a bold statement of "fact" that doesn't seem right, I go do some reading, or I phrase my response as a question to get more info, before I respond to make sure I'm not mistaken myself.

Rukelnikov

2019-02-12, 11:07 AM

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-12, 11:14 AM

4. Mana/stamina bars. I personally find these obnoxious outside a video game. If they don't regen in discrete chunks after rests, they're a pain to deal with. If they do, then see above.

I find the mystic system to be decent (even though it encourages nova too much) and it is consequent with sorcerery point costs too, so it shouldn't be that hard to adapt for them at least.

I've been poking at the idea of a caster that has a pool of "spell levels" to cast out of -- that is, if the have 9 "points", they can cast one 9th level spell, or nine 1st level spells, or a 4th and a 5th, or etc.

Looking up the Mystic on UA... my idea isn't going that far, and not Psionics... it's still spells, just more flexible in what can be cast, but less total raw power before they run out.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-12, 11:28 AM

I find the mystic system to be decent (even though it encourages nova too much) and it is consequent with sorcerery point costs too, so it shouldn't be that hard to adapt for them at least.

I've been poking at the idea of a caster that has a pool of "spell levels" to cast out of -- that is, if the have 9 "points", they can cast one 9th level spell, or nine 1st level spells, or a 4th and a 5th, or etc.

Looking up the Mystic on UA... my idea isn't going that far, and not Psionics... it's still spells, just more flexible in what can be cast, but less total raw power before they run out.

This has all the problems with encouraging 5-minute working days, plus a bunch of balancing issues. Because not all spells of the same "level" are equal. It's also a lot more work to track.

I should be clear. I haven't found one that I really like. The Law of Conservation of Annoyance is in full effect here--the only real differences are in which parts are annoying.

And as for the idea of taking SRx3 = total resources but then limiting the number you can use in a combat (posted above):

For me it's the worst of all worlds.
1) it's totally arbitrary at that point and doesn't fit the fiction in any way. It's a pure game-balance dictate.
2) It still leaves those who can't nova unable to nova while encouraging novas by removing even the idea of taking short rests and having lots of fights.
3) It's more cumbersome to track--you have to track both "how many do I have left" and "how many have I used this fight/how many can I use this fight". Simplicity is a major issue for me (and for the designers).

Rukelnikov

2019-02-12, 12:10 PM

This has all the problems with encouraging 5-minute working days, plus a bunch of balancing issues. Because not all spells of the same "level" are equal. It's also a lot more work to track.

This is not much more encouraging of 5 min workday than Sorcs already are, they can burn through most of their allotance with preparation and 3 rounds of combat if they want too.

sithlordnergal

2019-02-12, 12:11 PM

I actually found a really good fix for DMs that are having problems with players who always want to rest, be it long rests or short rests. Now, it does require you to be able mentally keep track of approximately how many resources players have used, but that isn't as hard as it sounds.

The method is that you decide when players get the benefits of any sort of resting. If you feel the players are trying to long rest too much, you inform them that they will not gain the benefits of a long rest at this time. If the players short rest too much, you do the same thing.

It allows the DM to have a bit more control of the adventuring day, makes it easier to have multiple encounters between long and short rests, and, once you get good at tracking player resources, it makes short and long rest classes easier to balance between each other.

bc56

2019-02-12, 12:14 PM

In general, I've found that players are fairly reasonable about rests. If you don't try to force them to rest or not to rest, they'll usually rest when they need to.

If they start trying the 15-minute workday, then you have to start telling them when they can and can't rest, or imposing penalties for resting. The best ways to do that are to say that you can only take long rests so often, say at nightfall, or giving time-sensitive objectives that extra long rests would significantly hamper.

MaxWilson

2019-02-12, 12:23 PM

This wasn't intended as a commentary on anybody's DMing style. I just wanted to know the actual range of encounters per day that fit within the xp budget given in the DMG if no encounter goes over the minimum threshold for deadly or under the minimum for easy.

But that's my point--those numbers are only correct if you assume that DMs are using just-barely-Easy as their Easy standard encounter, and just-barely-Medium as their Medium standard. If you want accurate numbers it makes more sense to take the average Easy/Medium/Hard encounter as typical instead of the easiest-possible Easy/Medium/Hard encounter.

And if you do that you wind up with about ten and a half Easy encounters per long rest at maximum (third level), not sixteen.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-12, 12:41 PM

This is not much more encouraging of 5 min workday than Sorcs already are, they can burn through most of their allotance with preparation and 3 rounds of combat if they want too.

But now everyone can be a sorcerer and burn through all their resources fast!

Pex

2019-02-12, 12:49 PM

1. No more SR, everything is LR-based (or at will). This was what 3e did. The (much worse) 5-minute working day was the result. And that's horrible for the story aspect--much worse than having an hour break here and there. This also encourages novas, which leaves out those who can't nova. Or if you do the SRx3 resource hack, you end up with warlocks being able to nova harder than anyone. No wins here.

I see this as a player problem, not a system problem. Players need to learn to conserve their stuff, and DMs need to learn pacing. The 5 minute day problem can happen in 5E just as well. If each gaming session has only one combat and a long rest at the end that's the same thing no matter how many in game days happen with all the dramatic role playing you want.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-12, 12:52 PM

But now everyone can be a sorcerer and burn through all their resources fast!

For me, at least, I was looking at one very particular thought experiment Class, an INT half-caster, not changing any of the existing Classes.

Pex

2019-02-12, 12:58 PM

Those adventures are fine, but they're only memorable when they're the exception, not the rule. If every (or even most) quest is on such a rushed timeline, then you should use the Heroic Rest variant instead. That's what it's there for.

Total bias on my part.

Your point is valid, but I think DMs are reluctant to use the Heroic Rest variant because it feels too easy for players. They use their stuff and get it back so quickly there's no resource management to worry about. There's no tension, little risk, and feels too gamey. It seems like the players are getting away with something they shouldn't or haven't earned.

Anecdotal, but ever since 5E came out I think you are first person I've read to have made any post here recommending someone use the Heroic Rest variant. I only recall once a couple of years ago of it even being mentioned in a post.

JoeJ

2019-02-12, 01:13 PM

But that's my point--those numbers are only correct if you assume that DMs are using just-barely-Easy as their Easy standard encounter, and just-barely-Medium as their Medium standard. If you want accurate numbers it makes more sense to take the average Easy/Medium/Hard encounter as typical instead of the easiest-possible Easy/Medium/Hard encounter.

And if you do that you wind up with about ten and a half Easy encounters per long rest at maximum (third level), not sixteen.

But I didn't want numbers that some hypothetical typical DM might use. I wanted the full range of encounter numbers encompassed by these rules. IOW, how may encounters of each category can a DM run while still staying within the daily xp allowance.

Also, I had to use the minimum threshold for deadly encounters, because that's the only number given for this level of difficulty (yeah, I could just pull a different number out of my a**, but if I did that there would be little point in doing the calculations at all). And I figure that if I'm using the minimum threshold for one category, I ought to be consistent and use it for all of them.

MaxWilson

2019-02-12, 01:47 PM

But I didn't want numbers that some hypothetical typical DM might use. I wanted the full range of encounter numbers encompassed by these rules. IOW, how may encounters of each category can a DM run while still staying within the daily xp allowance.

Then at minimum you need to be careful when communicating your results. When you say this:

I divided the expected average xp per day by the encounter difficulty thresholds at each level. The number of encounters needed to meet the daily average varies slightly from level to levels, so I took the mean.

By this measure, if all encounters are deadly there should be an average of 2.9 encounters per adventure day (a low of 2.6 at levels 12, 13, and 14, and a high of 3.4 at level 4). If all encounters are easy, there should be an average of 13.2 encounters per adventure day (a low of 11.5 at level 12, and a high of 16.0 at level 3). In actual play, most days should have a mix of encounter difficulties, so the number of encounters necessary to reach the average daily xp will be somewhere between these extremes.

you make it look like you are saying that 13.2 encounters will fit in the budget as long as they are easy--and that's not accurate. Maybe you mean, "There absolutely cannot be more than 13.2 Easy encounters per day or you will go over budget even with the easiest-possible Easy encounters." The way you actually reported your results is likely to make anyone who relies on them accidentally break their budget. It's less misleading to use the median XP value in the computation instead of the minimum threshold.

Anyway, that horse is now dead, so I'll stop beating it.

/End

Unoriginal

2019-02-12, 02:04 PM

Rhedyn

2019-02-12, 02:08 PM

That has been said, yes. The DM decides if the PCs are capable of resting. If the PCs want to stand around doing nothing when they don't get any benefit from it, then it's still their choice.

That's basically admitting the encounter pacing is a huge problem in the game if you have to constantly adjust the resource recovery rate in a game where combat is mainly about resource management.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-12, 02:15 PM

That's basically admitting the encounter pacing is a huge problem in the game if you have to constantly adjust the resource recovery rate in a game where combat is mainly about resource management.

Or that variable things are variable. Which they are. Trying to enforce consistency in such an environment causes its own set of problems no matter what rules you enforce. And most of the time it handles itself as the fiction suggests. It's only in exceptional cases (which usually mean you're using the system outside its design specs) that you have to step in.

Skylivedk

2019-02-12, 02:33 PM

Great argument against long rests, but everyone in all those situations take short rests. How long can boxers go before they are exhausted? Why do you think soldiers in war are any different?

Soldiers don't do an hour's rest in combat, neither do boxers.

This has all the problems with encouraging 5-minute working days, plus a bunch of balancing issues. Because not all spells of the same "level" are equal. It's also a lot more work to track.

I should be clear. I haven't found one that I really like. The Law of Conservation of Annoyance is in full effect here--the only real differences are in which parts are annoying.

And as for the idea of taking SRx3 = total resources but then limiting the number you can use in a combat (posted above):

For me it's the worst of all worlds.
1) it's totally arbitrary at that point and doesn't fit the fiction in any way. It's a pure game-balance dictate.
2) It still leaves those who can't nova unable to nova while encouraging novas by removing even the idea of taking short rests and having lots of fights.
3) It's more cumbersome to track--you have to track both "how many do I have left" and "how many have I used this fight/how many can I use this fight". Simplicity is a major issue for me (and for the designers).
Interesting. I forgot to mention that HD is still a short rest (30 min).

1) I might try the rest variants next time. I liked this one better than the heroic rest to cap the amount of short rest regains. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same in terms of verisimilitude. I like that reintroducing SR and LR will allow random encounters while traveling to tax players like a dungeon and then turn up the speed dial and allow heroic rests for collapsing castles, etc.

2) hasn't been much of an issue. But in general my players live in a healthy fear of dying. Having one or two players at less than 10 hp, the rest rolling death saves, at the end of the climatic encounter is my DM trademark by now

3) it's one of the least mechanically oriented players who play the monk in one of the two campaigns where we test it. He's had no complaints so far; quite the opposite. His notation is like this
MAX Encounter/LR.
SPEND

At the end of an encounter he subtracts the used from the LR

Skylivedk

2019-02-12, 02:38 PM

Or that variable things are variable. Which they are. Trying to enforce consistency in such an environment causes its own set of problems no matter what rules you enforce. And most of the time it handles itself as the fiction suggests. It's only in exceptional cases (which usually mean you're using the system outside its design specs) that you have to step in.

I have a hard time agreeing with this point. If all classes had long rest and short rest powers mixed (I guess like 4e, haven't played it- or 13th age which I have at least read), it wouldn't be an issue. The design specs are specifically what's being criticized, so naturally that's a yes: the frustration being that the system without variants lead to very samey drama curves or sessions where one part of players or the other is bored/has limited access to class defining features.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-12, 02:38 PM

Soldiers don't do an hour's rest in combat, neither do boxers.

Interesting. I forgot to mention that HD is still a short rest (30 min).

1) I might try the rest variants next time. I liked this one better than the heroic rest to cap the amount of short rest regains. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same in terms of verisimilitude. I like that reintroducing SR and LR will allow random encounters while traveling to tax players like a dungeon and then turn up the speed dial and allow heroic rests for collapsing castles, etc.

2) hasn't been much of an issue. But in general my players live in a healthy fear of dying. Having one or two players at less than 10 hp, the rest rolling death saves, at the end of the climatic encounter is my DM trademark by now

3) it's one of the least mechanically oriented players who play the monk in one of the two campaigns where we test it. He's had no complaints so far; quite the opposite. His notation is like this
MAX Encounter/LR.
SPEND

At the end of an encounter he subtracts the used from the LR

I have a hard time agreeing with this point. If all classes had long rest and short rest powers mixed (I guess like 4e, haven't played it- or 13th age which I have at least read), it wouldn't be an issue. The design specs are specifically what's being criticized, so naturally that's a yes: the frustration being that the system without variants lead to very samey drama curves or sessions where one part of players or the other is bored/has limited access to class defining features.

I'm very not fond of #2 as a play-style (except as an exception). This isn't role-playing fantasy Vietnam (as I heard someone say). That kind of thing breeds PTSD real real fast. And if every (or even most) fight is that way, you're most likely not going to survive (or it will be very obvious that you're fudging things) just on sheer probability grounds.

But that's (the new stuff) only a problem if you run your games that way. I have to say I've never seen this issue once I said "remember you can take short rests" once. That is, outside organized play it requires a particular non-standard play-style for it to be a problem in the first place. People naturally take short rests and long rests where they fall unless you give incentives not to.

JoeJ

2019-02-12, 02:41 PM

Soldiers don't do an hour's rest in combat, neither do boxers.

So soldiers in combat can't spend hit dice to recover hp or use action surge or use second wind more than once each, and their superiority dice don't recharge until there's a lull in the fighting. That... sounds reasonable to me.

MaxWilson

2019-02-12, 02:48 PM

I'm very not fond of #2 as a play-style (except as an exception). This isn't role-playing fantasy Vietnam (as I heard someone say). That kind of thing breeds PTSD real real fast. And if every (or even most) fight is that way, you're most likely not going to survive (or it will be very obvious that you're fudging things) just on sheer probability grounds.

That's what makes high-level adventurers famous (and rare)--they have done the highly-improbable, often.

I can't stand games where reaching high level is par for the course.

Xetheral

2019-02-12, 03:08 PM

But that's (the new stuff) only a problem if you run your games that way. I have to say I've never seen this issue once I said "remember you can take short rests" once. That is, outside organized play it requires a particular non-standard play-style for it to be a problem in the first place. People naturally take short rests and long rests where they fall unless you give incentives not to.

I think one thing discussions like this can show is that there is such a diversity of playstyles that none of them can truly to be said to be "standard".

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-12, 05:56 PM

I think one thing discussions like this can show is that there is such a diversity of playstyles that none of them can truly to be said to be "standard".

Going without short rests (what I was responding to) is decidedly non-standard by the designer's standards. Which is what counts when we're talking about the design of the rules. If you're complaining about how badly your pitchfork works as a teaspoon, maybe the problem is that you're using a pitchfork as a teaspoon in the first place and you should re-think that?

ad_hoc

2019-02-12, 06:17 PM

I think one thing discussions like this can show is that there is such a diversity of playstyles that none of them can truly to be said to be "standard".

Keep in mind that this board represents a very very small part of the 5e player base.

For example, AL can't be more than around 1% of 5e players and yet many people here play in AL.

Skylivedk

2019-02-12, 06:24 PM

So soldiers in combat can't spend hit dice to recover hp or use action surge or use second wind more than once each, and their superiority dice don't recharge until there's a lull in the fighting. That... sounds reasonable to me.

If HD represents stamina as well, then yes. I was referring to the length; an hour is a looooong time in hostile territory.

I'm very not fond of #2 as a play-style (except as an exception). This isn't role-playing fantasy Vietnam (as I heard someone say). That kind of thing breeds PTSD real real fast. And if every (or even most) fight is that way, you're most likely not going to survive (or it will be very obvious that you're fudging things) just on sheer probability grounds.

But that's (the new stuff) only a problem if you run your games that way. I have to say I've never seen this issue once I said "remember you can take short rests" once. That is, outside organized play it requires a particular non-standard play-style for it to be a problem in the first place. People naturally take short rests and long rests where they fall unless you give incentives not to.

I wrote climatic for a reason :) it's far from every session (and I also consider myself lucky for having it happen a couple of times; that doesn't change the reputation though).

I've tried a couple of times referring to official published adventures where the adventuring days are not in line with recommendations for how to tax a group. I didn't make up the rules at random. It was a direct effect of playing Storm King's Thunder and the group finding the battlemaster and the monk not being on par in their collective experience.

As a DM, and a player, I want my friends and co-players to have fun above all. Maybe flex their creative muscles a bit as well. We didn't have the issue in the previous campaign where everything was designed from the ground up by me.

Going without short rests (what I was responding to) is decidedly non-standard by the designer's standards. Which is what counts when we're talking about the design of the rules. If you're complaining about how badly your pitchfork works as a teaspoon, maybe the problem is that you're using a pitchfork as a teaspoon in the first place and you should re-think that?
And I think the criticism is that it would have been great if the game allowed for more versatile play styles without a number of classes suffering as a result. As in: I'd much rather have a knife than a pitchfork of I can only choose one tool to get by with. Or a Leatherman Multitool. Or a green ring that allows me to shape light in durable shapes. But y'know... Analogies. Can't discuss and have fun without then, can't necessarily make much sense with them ;)

ad_hoc

2019-02-12, 06:53 PM

And I think the criticism is that it would have been great if the game allowed for more versatile play styles without a number of classes suffering as a result. As in: I'd much rather have a knife than a pitchfork of I can only choose one tool to get by with. Or a Leatherman Multitool. Or a green ring that allows me to shape light in durable shapes. But y'know... Analogies. Can't discuss and have fun without then, can't necessarily make much sense with them ;)

I think that would result in a worse game. I'd rather a game have a vision and be the best version of that vision rather than try to be a catchall and be mediocre at everything.

I think multiclassing, for example, makes the game worse because that is something the designers need to consider when creating classes and subclasses. It is one of the last things they think about but it is still there.

ChiefBigFeather

2019-02-12, 07:43 PM

I really like the gritty realism rules. They suit non dungeon focused adventuring very well.

Xetheral

2019-02-12, 10:23 PM

Going without short rests (what I was responding to) is decidedly non-standard by the designer's standards. Which is what counts when we're talking about the design of the rules. If you're complaining about how badly your pitchfork works as a teaspoon, maybe the problem is that you're using a pitchfork as a teaspoon in the first place and you should re-think that?

For a playstyle to ever be considered standard I think it would need to be shared by a majority (or at least a very large plurality) of the player base. The designers can try to influence playstyle with what they write in the rulebooks, but they have no power to unilaterally set standards for how people play the game. (Nor do I think they have any intention to.)

From my standpoint, D&D is the individual games played around the world, in all their myriad shapes and sizes. The game isn't the words in the rulebooks--those are just a tool. Like any tool, it is fair to consider how well those words meet the needs of those who want to use them.

Keep in mind that this board represents a very very small part of the 5e player base.

For example, AL can't be more than around 1% of 5e players and yet many people here play in AL.

If a small sample size shows incredible variation, it is highly unlikely (although still technically possible) that the broader population is anywhere close to uniform.

JoeJ

2019-02-12, 10:46 PM

I really like the gritty realism rules. They suit non dungeon focused adventuring very well.

There's no reason you can't use gritty realism when the PCs are traveling in the wilderness, regular resting in town and most dungeons, and epic heroism when they invade the BBEG's fortress at the climax of the campaign. Just admit up front that you're being cinematic rather than realistic, and don't worry about the mental gymnastics of trying to justify it on any other grounds.

ad_hoc

2019-02-12, 10:48 PM

If a small sample size shows incredible variation, it is highly unlikely (although still technically possible) that the broader population is anywhere close to uniform.

We're talking about a sample size of 20ish tables vs the 15+ million 5e players.

This board represents an extreme outlier. Nothing here is indicative of the 5e player base.

Tanarii

2019-02-12, 11:31 PM

This wasn't intended as a commentary on anybody's DMing style. I just wanted to know the actual range of encounters per day that fit within the xp budget given in the DMG if no encounter goes over the minimum threshold for deadly or under the minimum for easy.For the majority of levels, it's roughly 12 Easy, 6 Medium, 4.5 Hard, or 3 Deadly.

At some levels it spiked up to 8 medium.

It's not really 6-8 medium or hard. That sentence in the DMG does not match the table. People really need to stop quoting it all the time. Unless we want to assume the table is wrong instead.

I see this as a player problem, not a system problem. Players need to learn to conserve their stuff, and DMs need to learn pacing. The 5 minute day problem can happen in 5E just as well. If each gaming session has only one combat and a long rest at the end that's the same thing no matter how many in game days happen with all the dramatic role playing you want.
Yeah, I didn't really have the 5mwd problem in 3e either. Nor 2e, 1e, or classic.

There's no reason you can't use gritty realism when the PCs are traveling in the wilderness, regular resting in town and most dungeons, and epic heroism when they invade the BBEG's fortress at the climax of the campaign. Just admit up front that you're being cinematic rather than realistic, and don't worry about the mental gymnastics of trying to justify it on any other grounds.
I tried it. It works okay.

Xetheral

2019-02-12, 11:42 PM

We're talking about a sample size of 20ish tables vs the 15+ million 5e players.

This board represents an extreme outlier. Nothing here is indicative of the 5e player base.

If you have a drawer of 15 million socks of unknown colors, and you draw 20 at random, and all 20 are different colors, what are the odds that a majority of those 15 million are the same color? No greater than 1 in 2^19. That's a little worse than 1 in half a million, and it's only that high with very generous assumptions about the color distribution of the non-majority socks.

Of course, we aren't a random sample here. It's possible that the very thing that leads us all to post on a forum also makes all of us have playstyles that diverge both from each other and from a common playstyle shared by a majority of the player base. But I contend it's more likely that the heterogeneity seen in the sample of people who post on these forums reflects a heterogeneity of the player base at large.

MeeposFire

2019-02-12, 11:51 PM

For the majority of levels, it's roughly 12 Easy, 6 Medium, 4.5 Hard, or 3 Deadly.

At some levels it spiked up to 8 medium.

It's not really 6-8 medium or hard. That sentence in the DMG does not match the table. People really need to stop quoting it all the time. Unless we want to assume the table is wrong instead.

Yeah, I didn't really have the 5mwd problem in 3e either. Nor 2e, 1e, or classic.

I tried it. It works okay.

It would be hard to do a 5 minute work day in 1e since it took so long to get spells back at higher levels. It was also rarer in the per 3e editions since back then warrior types were a pretty big deal and they would keep you going. Where you may see this change is in 3e especially if you were in a group that decided that they did not want to go the traditional route of having 1 or more warrior types around. This was doable in 3e due to numerous mechanics that make it much easier to eliminate all class roles using just spell casters. This was also boosted by the use of easy access to wands and those wands being able to extend caster resources further (you can cheaply buy a wand of cure light wounds, or even better less vigor, and use that to heal the party without having to use your personal spell slots and generally you make more on an adventure then it takes to get those 50 charges back because those wands become stupid cheap fairly quickly). If you did not have such a group (my personal group did not try to play this way at least most of the time) then you would be less likely to see 5 minute work day since the more warriors and the like you have the less desire you would have to do a 5 minute day. The more casters there are the more you are tempted to do it (assuming you do not have a clock to push you of course).

I do find it takes a certain type of player to want to go for the 5MWD and in order to make it happen you need more than one or at least several people willing ot make that happen combined with a DM that is going to essentially let that happen.

In 4e you did not have to do it and it really would be overkill to do the 5 minute day. Your encounter powers were enough to carry most of an encounter by themselves you really did not need to use more than 1 daily in a major encounter unless it was a REALLY dangerous encounter.

Corran

2019-02-13, 01:06 AM

From a roleplay standpoint its completely unrealistic for your characters to be rolling through multiple encounters without stopping to catch their breath, stretching, conspiring their next move, bandaging their wounds, and eating some trail mix. Are you roleplaying adventurers or robots?

Let's see. The characters enter the goblin underground base. They go through 2 encounters with goblins and emerge victorious, but they have taken some beating themselves as well. Mechanically speaking, the characters would certainly profit from a short rest. They know that they haven't defeated all the goblins, and they have certainly not accomplished the mission, which is to defeat the goblin shaman and retrieve the magical staff he has stolen. But at this point, in the state they are in, they are less certain they can suceed than they were when they were entering the dungeon. From a roleplaying standpoint, what is more realistic?

A) Roleplay (or explore) the morale of your character and propose and/or commit to continuing or retreating either indefinitely or just for the time being?

B) Go back to town to have a cup of tea and come back for round 2?

C) Go to that one small room you found, get in there, barricade it, sit there for about an hour, eat a ration, drink a healing potion, have the bard sing a song, and then pick up from where you left off?

Spending a few moments to catch your breath or patch up your wounds is far different to a short rest, at the very least timewise. Not taking a short rest does not mean that the characters shout ''CHARGE!'' after an encounter ended and while they are immediately rushing to the next. And the decision to take or not take a short rest is as much influenced by the situation the pc's are in just as much by their resources' status. I am all for trying to rationalize (or even fluff) a short rest at times when perhaps it isn't the most realistic/ narratively appropriate course of action, but let's not pretend that taking a short rest is somehow the definition of roleplaying standards.

ad_hoc

2019-02-13, 01:23 AM

If you have a drawer of 15 million socks of unknown colors, and you draw 20 at random, and all 20 are different colors, what are the odds that a majority of those 15 million are the same color? No greater than 1 in 2^19. That's a little worse than 1 in half a million, and it's only that high with very generous assumptions about the color distribution of the non-majority socks.

Of course, we aren't a random sample here. It's possible that the very thing that leads us all to post on a forum also makes all of us have playstyles that diverge both from each other and from a common playstyle shared by a majority of the player base. But I contend it's more likely that the heterogeneity seen in the sample of people who post on these forums reflects a heterogeneity of the player base at large.

A better analogy is if you were to walk into a punk show and ask 20 people who they're voting for and then call the election based on those results. It's not just a forum either, it's this particular forum which is far different than other places like ENWorld or Reddit. Many people here play AL and yet only around 1% of the player base does. Most people here use feats and yet less than half of all groups do. The same is likely true of multiclassing (I would wager quite a bit less than those who use feats). Standard Human is the most popular race, but I bet it isn't here. The list goes on.

But okay, I will try to explain it a different way.

If the question was "Why did 5e fail" and your response was "people's playstyles were not congruent with how it was designed" then it would be worth looking into to see if you were right.

Given:

1. Most 5e players are new to hobby gaming
2. Most 5e players play published adventures
3. 5e is wildly popular, becoming by far the most popular RPG of all time - and still growing

It stands to reason that 5e's design is congruent with the vast majority of people's playstyles. That doesn't mean all people, there will be some people who play despite taking issue with major design paradigms.

It was certainly not a mistake to design the game this way.

Yora

2019-02-13, 04:17 AM

ad_hoc

2019-02-13, 04:42 AM

People talk about optimization because optimization is something that you can talk about endlessly. There's not much to discuss about Lets's see what happens and come up with ideas ss we go.

The 5e forum on ENWorld consists mainly of news, and then there are people's musings on the game, stories, requests for homebrew, the odd rules question, etc.

The optimization forum on ENWorld isn't very active. Optimization questions are sometimes misplaced in the 5e forum, but they are a minority of posts.

Yora

2019-02-13, 05:02 AM

ChiefBigFeather

2019-02-13, 05:02 AM

There's no reason you can't use gritty realism when the PCs are traveling in the wilderness, regular resting in town and most dungeons, and epic heroism when they invade the BBEG's fortress at the climax of the campaign. Just admit up front that you're being cinematic rather than realistic, and don't worry about the mental gymnastics of trying to justify it on any other grounds.
I will be implementing another solution in my campaign: Sometimes people can cope with fewer hours of sleep for a rest, maybe once per long rest. This is more risky then resting just one hour, but maybe still doable. Long rests are 2-3 days of only light activity.
This allows for overall gritty realism rules without killing the possibility of short rests in dungeons.

Sure, Soldiers trained for it can go longer with less sleep. But they can‘t cast spells, and resting for a week won‘t cure all their injuries. I like my solution for a good compromize of realism and good game rules.

Skylivedk

2019-02-13, 05:53 AM

If the question was "Why did 5e fail" and your response was "people's playstyles were not congruent with how it was designed" then it would be worth looking into to see if you were right.

Given:

1. Most 5e players are new to hobby gaming
2. Most 5e players play published adventures
3. 5e is wildly popular, becoming by far the most popular RPG of all time - and still growing

It stands to reason that 5e's design is congruent with the vast majority of people's playstyles. That doesn't mean all people, there will be some people who play despite taking issue with major design paradigms.

It was certainly not a mistake to design the game this way.
I don't think it has failed, nor have I seen the claim. It's by far my favourite edition so far. That doesn't mean I don't like changes (which is true for me about almost all of my favourite things even a lot of my favourite people).

I will be implementing another solution in my campaign: Sometimes people can cope with fewer hours of sleep for a rest, maybe once per long rest. This is more risky then resting just one hour, but maybe still doable. Long rests are 2-3 days of only light activity.
This allows for overall gritty realism rules without killing the possibility of short rests in dungeons.

Sure, Soldiers trained for it can go longer with less sleep. But they can‘t cast spells, and resting for a week won‘t cure all their injuries. I like my solution for a good compromize of realism and good game rules.
Can you link that? I've not really seen much convincing evidence for training in sleep deprivation. Most attempts at doing it are just unhealthy.

The closest we get is automating responses to be best muscle memory and maybe some tricks to stay awake when your body is trying to do a forced shut down, but as far as I know, soldiers still perform significantly worse with no sleep (not sleeping fit 24 hours equals the mental impairment of being slightly drunk).

I've tried it on my own body in service and while I could go very far without sleep, I was not worth much more than a mule after the first 30 hours (well; sleep had also been reduced to 4,5-6 hours the days prior).

ad_hoc

2019-02-13, 05:59 AM

You will also notice that the 5th edition forum on Enworld is overall not as active as here. I think when you were to take out the optimization discussions, the overall amount of posts might be quite similar.

But of course, the presence of plenty of optimization discussion encourages people to start new ones.

ENWorld is more active.

ENWorld:

Threads: 25,592
Posts: 803,749

(numbers don't include the optimization forum)

GiTP:

Threads: 28,789
Posts: 700,638

Rhedyn

2019-02-13, 08:58 AM

There's no reason you can't use gritty realism when the PCs are traveling in the wilderness, regular resting in town and most dungeons, and epic heroism when they invade the BBEG's fortress at the climax of the campaign. Just admit up front that you're being cinematic rather than realistic, and don't worry about the mental gymnastics of trying to justify it on any other grounds.
You might as well turn Short-rest into "Per Scene" and Long-Rest to "Per Intermission"

But the constant changing of the resource recovery rate is a house-rule. The variant rest times are meant to set the tone of campaign and not change once selected.

Being able to house-rule around this problem does not mean it is not a problem.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-13, 09:50 AM

You might as well turn Short-rest into "Per Scene" and Long-Rest to "Per Intermission"

But the constant changing of the resource recovery rate is a house-rule. The variant rest times are meant to set the tone of campaign and not change once selected.

Being able to house-rule around this problem does not mean it is not a problem.

They're all official rest variants, so not house rules. And house rules (aka rulings) are how this edition works. The bold is your interpolation, not rules.

Sception

2019-02-13, 09:54 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-13, 10:09 AM

This is the biggest problem I've had with the system (which overall I love). Putting mechanical tools on a narrative timer gets clunky and awkward, in the same way that, say, balancing a mechanically overpowered class with narative restrictions would be. As a DM, I feel like I have to do too much micromanaging of rest opportunities and go out of my way to design adventures around 5e's aggressive encounter schedule rather than simply designing stories and places and letting the adventure happen organically. 4e, for all its other flaws - and there were many, I do enjoy 5e better - was a lot easier for me to run.

I do wish that short rests had been short enough to guarantee between every encounter, turning them into encounter abilities & balancing them as such, and I do wish every class had a more even split of short and long rest resources, so characters would be taxed in similar ways by similar adventuring days. I dont enjoy table arguments between players about when to rest.

See, I don't pay much attention to the "encounter schedule", because it's a cap (and I'm well below that cap by nature), not a requirement or an expectation. I check that I'm within the adventuring day budget and that there are opportunities for short rests, but those all come naturally and always have.

I think the biggest flaw is that people think (for some reason) that the "6-8 encounter" thing is an expectation or balancing design criteria. It's not. It's a cap in what you should expect to be able to handle without severe risk or downward spirals over a few adventuring days. There is no expectation that you'll average that--in fact, you shouldn't average that because that implies going well over it. The only balance related assumption is that you're usually taking at least one, and usually around 2 SR on an average day.

Having a day where you only fight one thing is fine. Having lots of those is going to make the SR people unhappy. Having a day where you have 6 fights with SR between every one is fine. Having lots of those makes the LR people unhappy and the SR people very happy. And everything in between. Variety (as comes naturally) solves all the problems.

If you're consistently not running a "heroic" campaign (where you're having a bunch of fights you recover quickly from but where attrition is the challenge), that's what the rest variants are for.

Jophiel

2019-02-13, 10:27 AM

It's not just a forum either, it's this particular forum which is far different than other places like ENWorld or Reddit. Many people here play AL and yet only around 1% of the player base does. Most people here use feats and yet less than half of all groups do. The same is likely true of multiclassing (I would wager quite a bit less than those who use feats). Standard Human is the most popular race, but I bet it isn't here. The list goes on.
This feels true in my (anecdotal) experience. When I play AL, out of around twenty regular people I'm familiar with, I might be the only one who multiclasses. I think I've seen two other people start VHuman for a feat. There is very little optimization going on from what I can tell and people regularly using spells that would rank purple or black in the class guides. A number of "questionable" racial picks from that perspective as well. Which is all well and fine and they're fun players and never felt like they were doing badwrongfun. But I do feel like the perspectives on this forum are a distinct minority out in the wild. But I can only lean on my own experiences there.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-13, 10:35 AM

Here is the DMG guidance (pg 84)

The Adventuring Day
Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.

In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress.

For each character in the party, use the Adventuring Day XP table to estimate how much XP that character is expected to earn in a day. Add together the values of all party members to get a total for the party's adventuring day. This provides a rough estimate of the adjusted XP value for encounters the party can handle before the characters will need to take a long rest.

<table>

Short Rests
In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day.

Note that these are rough guidelines for what a party can handle, not what they should handle. They're not expectations. They're not rules. They're boundaries before you start running risks. They're pacing guides. Once you write the adventure, you can figure out how much time it should take and make sure that you're giving the opportunity to short rest along the way if you're expecting a full day. It's there so you don't set things like "you have 12 hours to do this thing involving 52 fights" (intentionally exaggerated example).

ChiefBigFeather

2019-02-13, 10:47 AM

Can you link that? I've not really seen much convincing evidence for training in sleep deprivation. Most attempts at doing it are just unhealthy.

The closest we get is automating responses to be best muscle memory and maybe some tricks to stay awake when your body is trying to do a forced shut down, but as far as I know, soldiers still perform significantly worse with no sleep (not sleeping fit 24 hours equals the mental impairment of being slightly drunk).

I've tried it on my own body in service and while I could go very far without sleep, I was not worth much more than a mule after the first 30 hours (well; sleep had also been reduced to 4,5-6 hours the days prior).
A friend told me. He used to train soldiers. But I think it was more about stress/endurance training then trying to train your body to require less sleep (which is probably impossible). He said they had trained mountain troops doing long hikes for days with just a few hours of rest. Maybe he was boasting, maybe it was about speed, dunno. I'm not a military man and I need lots of sleep :)

My point is: It is not unreasonable to let your group get away with 3-4 hours of rest in a pinch (like in a dungeon) when playing gritty realism rules.

Numbers of encounters per day is not really a problem because rest requirements can easily be tailored to your campaign.

Man_Over_Game

2019-02-13, 11:45 AM

A friend told me. He used to train soldiers. But I think it was more about stress/endurance training then trying to train your body to require less sleep (which is probably impossible). He said they had trained mountain troops doing long hikes for days with just a few hours of rest. Maybe he was boasting, maybe it was about speed, dunno. I'm not a military man and I need lots of sleep :)

My point is: It is not unreasonable to let your group get away with 3-4 hours of rest in a pinch (like in a dungeon) when playing gritty realism rules.

Numbers of encounters per day is not really a problem because rest requirements can easily be tailored to your campaign.

The catch here is that the rest system isn't adaptable, and making it so makes it really wonky in the narrative.

For example, if you have a slower-paced rest system (where a night's rest is a Short Rest), and you want your players to trek through a dungeon with multiple hard fights over the course of a day or two, it'll both be hard to fit the number of fights you want with the amount of rest characters need. Do you:

Make all the fights easier?
Make the dungeon take a week or so to clear?
Change how long a Rest takes just so that your players can clear it in a timely manner?

Sometimes, none of those are the option. Sometimes, DMs just want to have 1 fight in a day, almost every day, and that fits their narrative, and making a "Long Rest" taking longer than sleeping overnight doesn't fit the same narrative. And while that seems like a reasonable choice, that is going to put a lot of favoritism on Clerics and Paladins, and it's probably the same reason people feel that Monks and Warlocks are subpar.

I've experienced it in my own games; with my last character, I got to level 3 (6 sessions or so) without ever needing or using a Short Rest.

If this is a concern, I really recommend that DM's take a look at my Adrenaline Surge homebrew in my signature. It makes boss fights last longer while also rewarding Short Rest characters midway through combat. It makes it so that you can afford to have a single combat in a day while still making each character feel rewarded in their own way.

------------------------

I don't have it in front of me (but I'll look for it) but there was a detailed analysis on the forums that showed that compared a level 11 Fighter and a level 11 Paladin against identical creatures, multiple times through the day. Assuming two fights between Short Rests, I think the Paladin did more damage until there was a second Short Rest.

Or, in other words:

If Short Rests < 2
Then Paladin > Fighter

MaxWilson

2019-02-13, 11:47 AM

Let's see. The characters enter the goblin underground base. They go through 2 encounters with goblins and emerge victorious, but they have taken some beating themselves as well. Mechanically speaking, the characters would certainly profit from a short rest. They know that they haven't defeated all the goblins, and they have certainly not accomplished the mission, which is to defeat the goblin shaman and retrieve the magical staff he has stolen. But at this point, in the state they are in, they are less certain they can suceed than they were when they were entering the dungeon. From a roleplaying standpoint, what is more realistic?

A) Roleplay (or explore) the morale of your character and propose and/or commit to continuing or retreating either indefinitely or just for the time being?

B) Go back to town to have a cup of tea and come back for round 2?

C) Go to that one small room you found, get in there, barricade it, sit there for about an hour, eat a ration, drink a healing potion, have the bard sing a song, and then pick up from where you left off?

The only thing wrong with option C from a narrative perspective is that deliberately boxing yourself in, in enemy territory, is stupid. If the goblins discover you, you'll be fighting the whole clan at once, on their home ground, with nowhere to retreat. If instead you take a minute to forge a letter from a neighboring goblin clan, saying they're terribly insulted and are declaring war, and then you leave that letter in a prominent place near the dead goblin bodies and then you retreat to the forest outside the goblin caves (or whatever) to watch and see what happens next... You probably don't want to wait a full 24 hours before killing your next goblins (that's too much time for these goblins to hear from/coordinate with their neighbors, you could wind up fighting twice as many) but waiting an hour for them to hopefully send some goblin warriors off in the wrong direction shouldn't be an issue.

Obviously Rope Trick has some extra utility in this scenario since it lets you get a rest in AND attack from an unexpected direction, behind the lines, inside their base.

The advantage to relentless attack is that you retain the initiative, so on a realistic adventure you should never willingly pause unless you *want* the enemy to take action, e.g. if you've prepared a ruse or an ambush. That's when you should rest.

(C) is more appropriate than (A) sometimes, if you do it intelligently instead of casually.

Rhedyn

2019-02-13, 11:54 AM

They're all official rest variants, so not house rules. And house rules (aka rulings) are how this edition works. The bold is your interpolation, not rules.
Yes variants, but wildly changing the rest times based on current narrative pacing in the campaign isn't a variant it's house-rules.

Not a ruling.

It's you trying to fix broken mechanics on your own. It's a flaw of 5e and arguably the biggest problem with this edition.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-13, 12:10 PM

Yes variants, but wildly changing the rest times based on current narrative pacing in the campaign isn't a variant it's house-rules.

Not a ruling.

It's you trying to fix broken mechanics on your own. It's a flaw of 5e and arguably the biggest problem with this edition.

Only by your say so.

I, for one, do not see it as broken or in need of fixes because I play like the designers expected people to. It's only when you try to use it off-spec that you run into problems and it seems broken. You're using a pitchfork (which is a perfectly good tool) as a teaspoon and blaming the pitchfork! People cause themselves problems. That's not the system at fault--that's them using it well outside the design assumptions. And if you're already outside the design assumptions, you will have to fix things that your changes already broke.

When does it break worst? Any (or multiple) of the following are pathological cases that require DM intervention.
1) when you try to focus on challenge and constantly run on the ragged edge, where every fight is a substantial TPK risk (or at least strong chance of lethality). You'll find yourself ignoring the CR guidelines (including the adventuring day recommendations) because they're designed around sustainable, repeated fights. This usually leads to "nova or nothing" play that leaves most classes behind. Really, only paladins are good at alpha strikes. Everyone else can do them more or less, but they're substantially action limited.

2) constant rush-rush days where the story does not provide any time for short rests. If used occasionally, nothing bad happens. But used constantly you diminish the adjusted XP you can handle by about 1/3. Which is fine, unless you try to pack an entire adventuring day worth of aXP into fewer fights instead of just using a shorter adventuring day. That way risks TPK and again, incentivizes nova play.

3) People who can't get along. Sure, the barbarian doesn't get much from short rests (other than spending hit dice). But his friend the bard does and so does the fighter, the monk, and the warlock, so everyone else is better off if you take a short rest even if one person doesn't need it. This becomes a problem when one person refuses to take that 10 seconds of table time and instead wants to keep pushing on. This is solved by talking to people as people, and it will always be a problem, because impatience is independent of game design.

The long and short of it is that it's only a problem if you choose for it to be one. And if you choose a play-style for which the default isn't well suited, use a rest variant. If you switch play-styles frequently, choose a rest variant on a session-by-session basis. Nothing in the rules forbids this (or even says you should stick to one). It's not fixing a flaw, it's adapting to changing circumstances. Consistency is not an inherent virtue here, and no recharge system will work for everyone. So you do what works for your table, right now.

Rhedyn

2019-02-13, 12:34 PM

Only by your say so.

I, for one, do not see it as broken or in need of fixes because I play like the designers expected people to. It's only when you try to use it off-spec that you run into problems and it seems broken. You're using a pitchfork (which is a perfectly good tool) as a teaspoon and blaming the pitchfork! People cause themselves problems. That's not the system at fault--that's them using it well outside the design assumptions. And if you're already outside the design assumptions, you will have to fix things that your changes already broke.

When does it break worst? Any (or multiple) of the following are pathological cases that require DM intervention.
1) when you try to focus on challenge and constantly run on the ragged edge, where every fight is a substantial TPK risk (or at least strong chance of lethality). You'll find yourself ignoring the CR guidelines (including the adventuring day recommendations) because they're designed around sustainable, repeated fights. This usually leads to "nova or nothing" play that leaves most classes behind. Really, only paladins are good at alpha strikes. Everyone else can do them more or less, but they're substantially action limited.

2) constant rush-rush days where the story does not provide any time for short rests. If used occasionally, nothing bad happens. But used constantly you diminish the adjusted XP you can handle by about 1/3. Which is fine, unless you try to pack an entire adventuring day worth of aXP into fewer fights instead of just using a shorter adventuring day. That way risks TPK and again, incentivizes nova play.

3) People who can't get along. Sure, the barbarian doesn't get much from short rests (other than spending hit dice). But his friend the bard does and so does the fighter, the monk, and the warlock, so everyone else is better off if you take a short rest even if one person doesn't need it. This becomes a problem when one person refuses to take that 10 seconds of table time and instead wants to keep pushing on. This is solved by talking to people as people, and it will always be a problem, because impatience is independent of game design.

The long and short of it is that it's only a problem if you choose for it to be one. And if you choose a play-style for which the default isn't well suited, use a rest variant. If you switch play-styles frequently, choose a rest variant on a session-by-session basis. Nothing in the rules forbids this (or even says you should stick to one). It's not fixing a flaw, it's adapting to changing circumstances. Consistency is not an inherent virtue here, and no recharge system will work for everyone. So you do what works for your table, right now.

I don't think both Dungeon Crawl and Hex Crawl are "not as intended by the designers" and 5e does not do both well without flipping the rest-times around in an immersion breaking house-rule fashion.

MaxWilson

2019-02-13, 12:37 PM

When does it break worst? Any (or multiple) of the following are pathological cases that require DM intervention.
1) when you try to focus on challenge and constantly run on the ragged edge, where every fight is a substantial TPK risk (or at least strong chance of lethality). You'll find yourself ignoring the CR guidelines (including the adventuring day recommendations) because they're designed around sustainable, repeated fights. This usually leads to "nova or nothing" play that leaves most classes behind. Really, only paladins are good at alpha strikes. Everyone else can do them more or less, but they're substantially action limited.

Paladins are only good at alpha strikes under contrived circumstances where they happen to be already in melee range of the enemy when the balloon goes up. (Even then, they aren't great unless they're built for it using e.g. sorcerer multiclassing with Quickened Booming Blade.) Otherwise, they are bad at alpha strikes because they can't even engage at first.

Sharpshooter Samurais and Sorlocks are probably the best at alpha strikes in general.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-13, 12:55 PM

Paladins are only good at alpha strikes under contrived circumstances where they happen to be already in melee range of the enemy when the balloon goes up. (Even then, they aren't great unless they're built for it using e.g. sorcerer multiclassing with Quickened Booming Blade.) Otherwise, they are bad at alpha strikes because they can't even engage at first.

Sharpshooter Samurais and Sorlocks are probably the best at alpha strikes in general.

True, but I'm using it a bit differently. Nova potential is about how fast you can drop resources into damage once you're in position.

And of the base (sub)classes, paladins and paladin multiclasses can do it tremendously well--2xSmite + smite spell yields a crap-ton of damage. And no waste (except the smite spell, possibly) as you use them when they hit. At higher levels they can do this a couple rounds in a row as well (as long as they're willing to burn everything).

Most other classes (including sorlocks) are mostly action limited. Sorcerers can quicken + cantrip, but that's it. Everyone else gets one big thing in a turn for using resources. Fighters are pretty good at burst...one turn per long rest (until very high levels).

So in a resource-conversion sense, paladins are about the best but run dry real fast. That's why they're paired with sorcerer levels--so they can burst more, longer.

Now compare to the other classes.

* Barbarians? Nope. No significant on-demand resource->damage boost. Rage is either on or it's off.
* Bards? Burst damage? Bards? Nope. Not unless they have particularly weird builds. Most of their things are BA limited.
* Clerics? Action limited, and limited direct damage anyway.
* Druids? Most of their big guns are concentration and take rounds to set up.
* Fighters? Decent. Again, once per day (until level 17, then once per turn). Samurai's big thing (the extra attack) isn't until level 15.
* Monks? You can burn out just using stunning strike, but that's not damage. Their conversion rate is pretty bad.
* Rogues? No resources to spend.
* Rangers? Can't smite/turn spell slots into extra damage.
* Sorcerers? Decent, but still action limited.
* Warlocks? Nope, not unless they eldritch smite, in which they're even more limited. If you sorlock, you're basically playing the paladin game.
* Wizards? Action limited.

So paladins and paladin-esque sorlocks are the only game for burning lots of resources in a single turn and converting them straight to damage.

This is important because when you're doing the "one super-extra-mega-deadly fight/day" thing, the only way to win is to kill the enemy quickly. Slugging it out risks that one bad round with back-to-back crits. And at the necessary CRs to make it a threat...back-to-back crits is likely going to one-round-KO someone. Or worse.

Talionis

2019-02-13, 01:03 PM

I actually think its a plus. Players make a choice which types of characters to build and they know when they do what they choose. Warlocks will be in situations where they cannot rest to get spell slots back and they will have to rely on Weapon/Eldritch Blast attacks and invocations. In some games they will rest a lot and get to feel like they made a great choice, in other games it will strain them.

When I DM and when the others I play with DM we try to have both happen without interfering in the emersion. We try to have good balances of lots of short rest and some few short rests and it lets the different characters shine and have their moment and makes the players rely on each other.

Not saying its a 100% positive, but I don't see how most experienced tables can't do a good job of balancing and making the choice of short rest classes and long rest classes matter without falling into a default. The goal is to have fun and this can be a great way to create tension.

Pex

2019-02-13, 01:18 PM

. . . there will be some people who play despite taking issue with major design paradigms.

https://i.postimg.cc/jSGKBPQ0/whome.gif

:smallbiggrin:

MaxWilson

2019-02-13, 01:23 PM

True, but I'm using it a bit differently. Nova potential is about how fast you can drop resources into damage once you're in position.

And of the base (sub)classes, paladins and paladin multiclasses can do it tremendously well--2xSmite + smite spell yields a crap-ton of damage. And no waste (except the smite spell, possibly) as you use them when they hit. At higher levels they can do this a couple rounds in a row as well (as long as they're willing to burn everything).

Most other classes (including sorlocks) are mostly action limited. Sorcerers can quicken + cantrip, but that's it. Everyone else gets one big thing in a turn for using resources. Fighters are pretty good at burst...one turn per long rest (until very high levels).

So in a resource-conversion sense, paladins are about the best but run dry real fast. That's why they're paired with sorcerer levels--so they can burst more, longer.

Now compare to the other classes.

* Barbarians? Nope. No significant on-demand resource->damage boost. Rage is either on or it's off.
* Bards? Burst damage? Bards? Nope. Not unless they have particularly weird builds. Most of their things are BA limited.
* Clerics? Action limited, and limited direct damage anyway.
* Druids? Most of their big guns are concentration and take rounds to set up.
* Fighters? Decent. Again, once per day (until level 17, then once per turn). Samurai's big thing (the extra attack) isn't until level 15.
* Monks? You can burn out just using stunning strike, but that's not damage. Their conversion rate is pretty bad.
* Rogues? No resources to spend.
* Rangers? Can't smite/turn spell slots into extra damage.
* Sorcerers? Decent, but still action limited.
* Warlocks? Nope, not unless they eldritch smite, in which they're even more limited. If you sorlock, you're basically playing the paladin game.
* Wizards? Action limited.

So paladins and paladin-esque sorlocks are the only game for burning lots of resources in a single turn and converting them straight to damage.

This is important because when you're doing the "one super-extra-mega-deadly fight/day" thing, the only way to win is to kill the enemy quickly. Slugging it out risks that one bad round with back-to-back crits. And at the necessary CRs to make it a threat...back-to-back crits is likely going to one-round-KO someone. Or worse.

Maybe it's my BattleTech experience speaking here (from whence the term "alpha strike" originates, referring to firing all your weapons at once with no regard to the resource cost in heat), but the goal of an alpha strike isn't to burn resources--it's to do damage.

If (arguendo) a Sorlock can do damage similar to a smiting paladin, but the Sorlock burns 10% of his resources in the process while the paladin burns 60%, that doesn't make the paladin better at alpha striking than the Sorlock--it makes him worse. Otherwise we'd have to say that Fighters are better at alpha striking than paladins specifically because they can burn their one Alpha Strike resource in a single round (Action Surge) instead of spreading it over multiple rounds like a Paladin does... but that reasoning is nonsensical.

The quality of the alpha strike is the effect it has on the enemy, not the fraction of your resources it burns. The class with the biggest impact on the enemy has the best alpha strike. In the ideal case, multiclassed Tier 4 paladorcs can be optimized to have a fantastic alpha strike doing hundreds of points of damage in a single turn even against high-AC targets with legendary resistance. This would still be a great alpha strike even if the paladorc was able to do it for 20 rounds in a row for whatever reason.

In terms of concrete numbers, a 12th level Samurai Sharpshooter Action Surging 6 attacks at +6 for d8+15 apiece for 84.24 damage against AC 18 is fully competitive with a 12th level Paladin 6/Sorcerer 6 hitting with Greatsword + Quickened Booming Blade three times at +9 for 2d6+5d8+5 (plus 2d8 on the Booming Blade attack) for 72.38 damage against AC 18, but the Samurai is more likely to get to do it first. (And of course his effectiveness after the alpha strike remains high.)

Note: if the Paladin has a source of advantage too, e.g. from a teammate or Mounted Combatant, he can achieve 95.56 damage against AC 18. Further optimizations are possible for both warriors. The exact numbers aren't the point here, just the fact that they're competitive with each other.

Xetheral

2019-02-13, 01:40 PM

A better analogy is if you were to walk into a punk show and ask 20 people who they're voting for and then call the election based on those results. It's not just a forum either, it's this particular forum which is far different than other places like ENWorld or Reddit. Many people here play AL and yet only around 1% of the player base does. Most people here use feats and yet less than half of all groups do. The same is likely true of multiclassing (I would wager quite a bit less than those who use feats). Standard Human is the most popular race, but I bet it isn't here. The list goes on.

But okay, I will try to explain it a different way.

If the question was "Why did 5e fail" and your response was "people's playstyles were not congruent with how it was designed" then it would be worth looking into to see if you were right.

Given:

1. Most 5e players are new to hobby gaming
2. Most 5e players play published adventures
3. 5e is wildly popular, becoming by far the most popular RPG of all time - and still growing

It stands to reason that 5e's design is congruent with the vast majority of people's playstyles. That doesn't mean all people, there will be some people who play despite taking issue with major design paradigms.

It was certainly not a mistake to design the game this way.

That's not a better analogy. In my analogy, (and in this discussion), we're starting with the observation that the sample itself is highly variable. Given a highly variable random sample, the probability that the general population is largely uniform is extremely low.

Your analogy, by contrast, omits the key initial data point that the sample itself is highly variable. When we add that back in to your analogy, we are left with sampling 20 people at a punk concert to determine who they're voting for and getting 20 different answers. We still would have no clue who would win the election, but we can conclude that the existence of the sample vastly decreases the odds that any one candidate has an outright majority. (Because it isn't a random sample, the exact odds would depend on the likelihood that those who attended this punk concert disagree with each other politically at a vastly higher rate than the general populace disagrees with each other.)

Statistically-speaking, we can validily conclude that the odds that a majority of the player base shares a common playstyle are reduced by the demonstrated existence in this thread (and forum) of wild variation in playstyle between posters. I would argue that it is reasonable to assume this reduction is very large, because I think it is unlikely that propensity to discuss D&D on GiantITP is strongly correlated to having an idiosyncratic playstyle. (Note that the correlation would have to be extremely strong to completely explain the wild diversity of playstyles in our sample if there existed a majority playstyle.)

In regards to your second explanation, we appear to have wildly different interpretations of the discussion in this thread. I haven't seen anyone argue that 5e has failed. Instead, the conversation seems instead to be focusing on whether 5e would have been even better if its rest mechanics (and class reliance on rests) had better accommodated a wide variety of playstyles.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-13, 01:41 PM

Maybe it's my BattleTech experience speaking here (from whence the term "alpha strike" originates), but the goal of an alpha strike isn't to burn resources--it's to do damage. If a Sorlock can do damage similar to a smiting paladin, but the Sorlock burns 10% of his resouorces in the process while the paladin burns 60%, that doesn't make the paladin better at alpha striking than the Sorlock--it makes him worse. Otherwise we'd have to say that Fighters are better at alpha striking than paladins specifically because they can burn their one Alpha Strike resource in a single round (Action Surge) instead of spreading it over multiple rounds like a Paladin does... but that reasoning is nonsensical.

The quality of the alpha strike is the effect it has on the enemy, not the fraction of your resources it burns. The class with the biggest impact on the enemy has the best alpha strike. In the ideal case, multiclassed Tier 4 paladorcs can be optimized to have a fantastic alpha strike doing hundreds of points of damage in a single turn even against high-AC targets with legendary resistance. This would still be a great alpha strike even if the paladorc was able to do it for 20 rounds in a row for whatever reason.

In terms of concrete numbers, a 12th level Samurai Sharpshooter Action Surging 6 attacks at +6 for d8+15 apiece for 84.24 damage against AC 18 is fully competitive with a 12th level Paladin 6/Sorcerer 6 hitting with Greatsword + Quickened Booming Blade three times at +9 for 2d6+5d8+5 (plus 2d8 on the Booming Blade attack) for 72.38 damage against AC 18, but the Samurai is more likely to get to do it first. (And of course his effectiveness after the alpha strike remains high.)

True enough. I was mainly focused on resource consumption because it's the subject here. High damage can be

Utterly unbalanced if you can do it for most/all rounds in an average day and others can't.
On par if either everyone can do it (and the monsters are built around it) or if you can do it sometimes but can run out of gas if you don't pace yourself.
Under par if you can only do it once in a long day.

Since the topic was # of encounters, I was focused on the part about how fast you'd burn through them if you're doing max possible. The idea was that even 1 extra round of contact time (since most monsters are much poorer at range than in melee) would risk a dead person.

One other interesting thing to note about that is that if you're in a super-deadly environment, that sorcadin is much more squishy (unless burning resources on defenses) than a pure paladin or the samurai.

Back on topic, I also find the variation in resource mechanics to be a feature, not a bug. It lets me focus the spotlight on people in different ways while avoiding the "everything feels the same" problem of 4e's PHB I classes as well as mitigating (slightly) the 5-min working day of 3e.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-13, 01:55 PM

Reading this thread, it's interesting trying to see where the wiggly line between "useful flexibility" and "rule 0 fallacy" snakes it way through.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-13, 02:03 PM

Reading this thread, it's interesting trying to see where the wiggly line between "useful flexibility" and "rule 0 fallacy" snakes it way through.

I reject the "rule 0 fallacy" as it's generally used. People claim that things are "broken" when it doesn't fit their own play-style (as opposed to just being dysfunctional for all play styles) and then cry Oberoni when you point out that
a) it works for them
b) if they want to make their own play-style work, they can try X, Y, or Z.

There are very few actually fully dysfunctional things in most modern game systems. These would be things that don't work even by their own design standards. The only one I can think of in 5e is one of the pieces of the Grappler feat, but I think that got errata'ed already.

Do things work how some people want them to? No. And not liking the design goals/assumptions is a fair complaint (albeit one that's subjective and taste-based). But claiming that it's objectively flawed or broken requires that it fails at what it was intended to do. And that's a much less common thing.

Edit: and one thing that 5e does intentionally is delegate. You can't claim "houserule fix" when the designers deliberately left it up to the individual DM to decide certain things. You're not using rule 0 there at all--you're following instructions. Which were to decide for yourself what's best.

MaxWilson

2019-02-13, 02:05 PM

Since the topic was # of encounters, I was focused on the part about how fast you'd burn through them if you're doing max possible. The idea was that even 1 extra round of contact time (since most monsters are much poorer at range than in melee) would risk a dead person.

Huh. That's not what I got out of your statement here:

When does it break worst? Any (or multiple) of the following are pathological cases that require DM intervention.

1) when you try to focus on challenge and constantly run on the ragged edge, where every fight is a substantial TPK risk (or at least strong chance of lethality). You'll find yourself ignoring the CR guidelines (including the adventuring day recommendations) because they're designed around sustainable, repeated fights. This usually leads to "nova or nothing" play that leaves most classes behind. Really, only paladins are good at alpha strikes. Everyone else can do them more or less, but they're substantially action limited.

*snip*

What I got out of this was the same thing you've said multiple times in this thread and other threads--you oppose cranking up encounter difficulty because it leads (in your opinion) to a vicious circle, because you think nova'ing is the only way to survive high-difficulty fights. I didn't see anything there about "one extra round of contact time would risk a dead person," and if that's your point the answer is even simpler: "Seek ways to reduce the damage you take every round. Extra defense in 5E is generally more cost-effective than extra offense."

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-13, 02:30 PM

What I got out of this was the same thing you've said multiple times in this thread and other threads--you oppose cranking up encounter difficulty because it leads (in your opinion) to a vicious circle, because you think nova'ing is the only way to survive high-difficulty fights. I didn't see anything there about "one extra round of contact time would risk a dead person," and if that's your point the answer is even simpler: "Seek ways to reduce the damage you take every round. Extra defense in 5E is generally more cost-effective than extra offense."

Here's the thing. Everybody hits on a 20. And if you crank the enemy's CR up high enough to challenge a fresh party (ie you spend the entire day's aXP budget on a single fight with a single enemy), you risk the "miss miss miss splat" scenario. It's rocket tag--he who hits first wins.

And extra defense comes in one of a few ways (against physical attacks which form most of the threat):
* Reducing the hit chance). That's hard without getting to pick your magic items or burning resources. It's also class-specific. It also doesn't do what you want--yes, you take fewer hits. But when one good hit is enough to floor you...

* Increased HP. Only really comes through gaining levels.

* "Soak" abilities (resistance). Mostly class restricted. Also don't stack very well.

So I'm not sure how increasing defense is easier than increasing offense. Most of the "optimized/super-strong" characters I see are glass cannons (compared to the less-focused ones). A sorcadin, for example, loses tons of offense if they have to be defensive.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-13, 02:35 PM

I reject the "rule 0 fallacy" as it's generally used. People claim that things are "broken" when it doesn't fit their own play-style (as opposed to just being dysfunctional for all play styles) and then cry Oberoni when you point out that
a) it works for them
b) if they want to make their own play-style work, they can try X, Y, or Z.

There are very few actually fully dysfunctional things in most modern game systems. These would be things that don't work even by their own design standards. The only one I can think of in 5e is one of the pieces of the Grappler feat, but I think that got errata'ed already.

Do things work how some people want them to? No. And not liking the design goals/assumptions is a fair complaint (albeit one that's subjective and taste-based). But claiming that it's objectively flawed or broken requires that it fails at what it was intended to do. And that's a much less common thing.

Edit: and one thing that 5e does intentionally is delegate. You can't claim "houserule fix" when the designers deliberately left it up to the individual DM to decide certain things. You're not using rule 0 there at all--you're following instructions. Which were to decide for yourself what's best.

At some point "you decide" turns into vagueness, or a cop-out, and near there is where "if the GM can fix it, it was never broken" starts to happen. I don't know where that point is, exactly, yet, for 5e... but I can smell it in threads like this.

Xetheral

2019-02-13, 02:39 PM

Having a day where you only fight one thing is fine. Having lots of those is going to make the SR people unhappy. Having a day where you have 6 fights with SR between every one is fine. Having lots of those makes the LR people unhappy and the SR people very happy. And everything in between. Variety (as comes naturally) solves all the problems.

I don't think your claims support your conclusion that variety solves all the problems. Even if I, for purposes of argument, accept your supporting claims as true, there is still the problem that you can't have lots of one-encounter or many-SR days without making someone unhappy. Avoiding both extremes requires enforcing a middle-of-the-road pace (with only occasional deviation) as the norm. Variety, by contrast, will sometimes include both extremes, at which point, by your own claims, someone is unhappy. And that's a problem.

Put differently, the "variety" you're advocating for implicitly requires a normal-ish distribution of encounter pacing, with only occasional extremes. I would argue that maintsing such a distribution amounts to enforced pacing, rather than true variety.

I, for one, do not see it as broken or in need of fixes because I play like the designers expected people to.

Ok, I'm really flummoxed by this assertion. Given the rampant disagreement here over how the designers "expect" people to play, what possible evidence could you have that might convince others that your playstyle is deserving of the special status you're claiming?

It's only when you try to use it off-spec that you run into problems and it seems broken. You're using a pitchfork (which is a perfectly good tool) as a teaspoon and blaming the pitchfork! People cause themselves problems. That's not the system at fault--that's them using it well outside the design assumptions. And if you're already outside the design assumptions, you will have to fix things that your changes already broke.

You're completely overlooking the fact that (to use your analogy) there is disagreement over whether 5e is a teaspoon or a pitchfork. Yes, if someone deliberately tries to use what they agree to be a pitchfork as a teaspoon, the resulting failure is on them. But if someone tries to use what they reasonably think is a teaspoon as a teaspoon, and has difficulty, it's perfectly rational to discuss potential flaws in the teaspoon.

In other words, your analogy only works if there is consensus over whether 5e is a teaspoon or a pitchfork. There is evidently no such consensus. By relying on the analogy anyway, you appear to be claiming the sole right to determine whether 5e is a pitchfork or a teaspoon.

Sure, the barbarian doesn't get much from short rests (other than spending hit dice). But his friend the bard does and so does the fighter, the monk, and the warlock, so everyone else is better off if you take a short rest even if one person doesn't need it. This becomes a problem when one person refuses to take that 10 seconds of table time and instead wants to keep pushing on. This is solved by talking to people as people, and it will always be a problem, because impatience is independent of game design.

(Bold emphasis added. Itallic emphasis in original.) A short rest takes an hour of IC time in addition to 10 seconds of OOC time. You're ignoring the former. It is perfectly reasonable for characters to disagree IC as to the tactical wisdom of stopping for an hour. Heck, the characters arguing that it is wiser to push on may sometimes be the ones who would personally benefit the most from the rest. The short rest mechanics can make such IC debates endemic at some tables, and they can't be avoided simply by OOC comity--there is a legitimate tactical question to be resolved before an IC decision can be made.

This is important because when you're doing the "one super-extra-mega-deadly fight/day" thing, the only way to win is to kill the enemy quickly. Slugging it out risks that one bad round with back-to-back crits. And at the necessary CRs to make it a threat...back-to-back crits is likely going to one-round-KO someone. Or worse.

Hmm. We appear to have different experiences here. In my experience, direct confrontation against a significantly-more-powerful opponent is almost always a losing strategy. Guerilla warfare and other asymmetric tactics, (or finding a solution that doesn't require physical confrontation at all) have a much better chance of success.

Put another way, I guess I would define any encounter capable of being won quickly with the resources on hand as not "super-extra-mega-deadly".

Rhedyn

2019-02-13, 02:51 PM

At some point "you decide" turns into vagueness, or a cop-out, and near there is where "if the GM can fix it, it was never broken" starts to happen. I don't know where that point is, exactly, yet, for 5e... but I can smell it in threads like this.
Oh it happened. Someone is like, "Hey no rest variant works for my campaigns."

Response, "Use different rest variants depending on the current encounter pacing of your campaign."

I'm like, "Isn't that immersion breaking / house-ruling to cover up a problem with the mechanics"

Response, "No see the problem is fixed then and therefore not rule-0 because it works and no single rest variant will work for every story and since 5e is perfect then the problem must be with how the GM is using the rules."

I really dislike the culture around 5e where "blame the DM" is the answer to every rule/mechanics problem.

ad_hoc

2019-02-13, 03:02 PM

Ok, I'm really flummoxed by this assertion. Given the rampant disagreement here over how the designers "expect" people to play, what possible evidence could you have that might convince others that your playstyle is deserving of the special status you're claiming?

Just because people disagree about something doesn't mean there isn't a right answer.

It is pretty easy to figure out that the game is designed around taking both short and long rests with encounters in between. I don't understand why that is a matter of contention.

We also have the published adventures which all conform to this playstyle.

The designers aren't 'expecting' people to play any which way. But they did design the game around a particular playstyle. One that fits neatly into dungeon exploration.

You are welcome to deviate from that but if and when your game suffers don't blame the design. Square pegs and round holes.

5e is not all things to all people and nor should it be. It's okay to not like it, that doesn't mean it is wrong.

Rukelnikov

2019-02-13, 03:18 PM

Just because people disagree about something doesn't mean there isn't a right answer.

It is pretty easy to figure out that the game is designed around taking both short and long rests with encounters in between. I don't understand why that is a matter of contention.

The problem is that for the system to work properly, it needs the players, not the DM, to play in a certain way.

We also have the published adventures which all conform to this playstyle.

This has been contested every single time, and not once was proof shown of it actually being that way.

ad_hoc

2019-02-13, 03:37 PM

The problem is that for the system to work properly, it needs the players, not the DM, to play in a certain way.

That is simply not true. It is often too dangerous to long rest. When the players manage to find a safe spot to long rest, they will then fail the quest. Time goes on.

This has been contested every single time, and not once was proof shown of it actually being that way.

All you need to do is actually go play one.

The vast majority of chapters are designed this way. I have played HotDQ, CoS, LMoP, OoTA, and a couple adventures from Yawning Portal. They all conform to this playstyle.

Typically when they diverge they are overland travel chapters.

The typical formula is when the PCs show up they set events in motion and they then need to do the thing. Sometimes they get into danger and have no room for long resting (Even if LTH is used they will either face the wrath of the dungeon or the denizens will have had time to leave/build up defenses.

In either case long resting means failing the objective. The game would be entirely tedious and boring if the PCs could just long rest whenever.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-13, 03:38 PM

I don't think your claims support your conclusion that variety solves all the problems. Even if I, for purposes of argument, accept your supporting claims as true, there is still the problem that you can't have lots of one-encounter or many-SR days without making someone unhappy. Avoiding both extremes requires enforcing a middle-of-the-road pace (with only occasional deviation) as the norm. Variety, by contrast, will sometimes include both extremes, at which point, by your own claims, someone is unhappy. And that's a problem.

Put differently, the "variety" you're advocating for implicitly requires a normal-ish distribution of encounter pacing, with only occasional extremes. I would argue that maintsing such a distribution amounts to enforced pacing, rather than true variety.

Having variety naturally results in a rough bell curve. And it only has to be rough, with substantial skew being fine (especially depending on table preferences). Saying that you must replace the distribution with the median is fallacious.

Ok, I'm really flummoxed by this assertion. Given the rampant disagreement here over how the designers "expect" people to play, what possible evidence could you have that might convince others that your playstyle is deserving of the special status you're claiming?

You're completely overlooking the fact that (to use your analogy) there is disagreement over whether 5e is a teaspoon or a pitchfork. Yes, if someone deliberately tries to use what they agree to be a pitchfork as a teaspoon, the resulting failure is on them. But if someone tries to use what they reasonably think is a teaspoon as a teaspoon, and has difficulty, it's perfectly rational to discuss potential flaws in the teaspoon.

In other words, your analogy only works if there is consensus over whether 5e is a teaspoon or a pitchfork. There is evidently no such consensus. By relying on the analogy anyway, you appear to be claiming the sole right to determine whether 5e is a pitchfork or a teaspoon.

It may be circular, but the fact that my play style matches the design and works smoothly is evidence that it's what they expected. To think otherwise is to think that the designers were just incompetent. And that is an assertion in need of substantial evidence. If there are multiple ways to play and one works fine while the others work less fine, then it's reasonable to assume that the one that works was intended. Especially when we have explicit word of the designers to that effect. Which we do here, both in the books and from interviews.

The fact that people disagree is not evidence that there is no design intent. Merely that people disagree. People disagree about a lot of things, including purely factual matters. Simply disagreeing does not mean that you're right. You can disagree and be wrong. My side has the book evidence, play evidence, and developer statements. The other side has...nothing. Other than sheer assertion.

(Bold emphasis added. Itallic emphasis in original.) A short rest takes an hour of IC time in addition to 10 seconds of OOC time. You're ignoring the former. It is perfectly reasonable for characters to disagree IC as to the tactical wisdom of stopping for an hour. Heck, the characters arguing that it is wiser to push on may sometimes be the ones who would personally benefit the most from the rest. The short rest mechanics can make such IC debates endemic at some tables, and they can't be avoided simply by OOC comity--there is a legitimate tactical question to be resolved before an IC decision can be made.

So you talk about it both IC and OOC. Either way, if there's never or rarely a clear chance to rest for 1 hour twice between long rests on busy days, then you probably should be using the heroic rest variant. On the other hand, if there's usually or always such a chance, you should probably be using the gritty rest variant. That's what they're there for.

Hmm. We appear to have different experiences here. In my experience, direct confrontation against a significantly-more-powerful opponent is almost always a losing strategy. Guerilla warfare and other asymmetric tactics, (or finding a solution that doesn't require physical confrontation at all) have a much better chance of success.

Put another way, I guess I would define any encounter capable of being won quickly with the resources on hand as not "super-extra-mega-deadly".

I was using that term for an encounter that by the guidelines is well beyond the threshold for "Deadly". Not in the sense of being actually super-extra-mega-deadly, because that's only perceptible in retrospect.

What I've seen people do (both as reported in the forums and seen in person) is see that their one fight wasn't hard enough ("it was a cakewalk"), so the DM ramps up the difficulty of that one daily encounter for the next time. And that means that players learn to nova or die. And since a fresh party has a lot of nova capability, they beat the next one. So the DM makes it harder. And the spiral continues until you get a TPK or the non-nova capable people (most of the party) gets left behind. It's a story I've heard countless times on these forums alone and seen in play at one particular table. There were one-shots pitting a level 2 party against 2 wyverns and a manticore for goodness sake! Most of them survived, but only by luck.

ad_hoc

2019-02-13, 03:42 PM

What I've seen people do (both as reported in the forums and seen in person) is see that their one fight wasn't hard enough ("it was a cakewalk"), so the DM ramps up the difficulty of that one daily encounter for the next time. And that means that players learn to nova or die. And since a fresh party has a lot of nova capability, they beat the next one. So the DM makes it harder. And the spiral continues until you get a TPK or the non-nova capable people (most of the party) gets left behind. It's a story I've heard countless times on these forums alone and seen in play at one particular table. There were one-shots pitting a level 2 party against 2 wyverns and a manticore for goodness sake! Most of them survived, but only by luck.

Obviously that means the game is broken and the designers are idiots.

MaxWilson

2019-02-13, 03:47 PM

Here's the thing. Everybody hits on a 20. And if you crank the enemy's CR up high enough to challenge a fresh party (ie you spend the entire day's aXP budget on a single fight with a single enemy), you risk the "miss miss miss splat" scenario. It's rocket tag--he who hits first wins.

And extra defense comes in one of a few ways (against physical attacks which form most of the threat):
* Reducing the hit chance). That's hard without getting to pick your magic items or burning resources. It's also class-specific. It also doesn't do what you want--yes, you take fewer hits. But when one good hit is enough to floor you...

* Increased HP. Only really comes through gaining levels.

* "Soak" abilities (resistance). Mostly class restricted. Also don't stack very well.

So I'm not sure how increasing defense is easier than increasing offense. Most of the "optimized/super-strong" characters I see are glass cannons (compared to the less-focused ones). A sorcadin, for example, loses tons of offense if they have to be defensive.

Yes, you have to burn resources to increase defense, but you have to burn resources to increase offense too--and you generally get a better rate of return on resource expenditure if you spend on defense instead of offense. E.g. you can easily double your durability (rounds-until-death) with a Blur spell or Protection From Evil, but you can't double your offensive output with a first or second-level spell. You can use a 3rd level spell slot to smite for 4d8 (18) points of damage or to heal your party after combat for 70 points of damage--that's four times more effective!

There are some exceptions such as Sharpshooter/GWM/Mounted Combatant/Agonizing Repelling Eldritch Blast which can yield offensive rates of return similar to or even superior to defensive rates of return (Defensive Duelist, Mobile), but those are rare enough that you can take those offensive boosts without compromising your defense. Contrary to your assertion, a sorcadin doesn't lose much of anything at all if he casts Blur with one of his 2nd level slots instead of smiting with it for 3d8 (13) points of damage--in a tough fight against e.g. a dozen githyanki warriors, he will get far more mileage out of not dying than he will out of dealing 25% HP damage to one of those githyanki and having a 30%ish chance at preventing it from making one more attack.

Excellent defensive abilities include stealth abilities like Pass Without Trace (especially with Cunning Action/Nimble Escape, even moreso if you've got Skulker as well), movement spells/abilities like Mobile/Haste/Misty Step/Blink, crowd control like Hypnotic Pattern, battlefield control abilities like Wall of Force, HP buffer abilities like Armor of Agathys/Aid/Death Ward/Polymorph/wildshape, and don't-get-hit abilities like Blur/Shield/Protection From Evil/Improved Invisibility/Foresight/sometimes-Darkness. Typically the rate of return on these abilities, in terms of effect on DPR::damage-taken ratios, is far better than e.g. the crummy +4-8 points of damage per round that you get from Rage or Song of Victory.

Xetheral

2019-02-13, 03:57 PM

Just because people disagree about something doesn't mean there isn't a right answer.

True. But it does mean (by definition) that there is disagreement over which answer is right.

It is pretty easy to figure out that the game is designed around taking both short and long rests with encounters in between. I don't understand why that is a matter of contention.

Contrary to your assertion, I don't think that is a matter of contention. What is being contended is the degree to which encounter and rest pacing is specified by the design. Note the disagreement (in this thread and others) between whether 6-8 is a recommended maximum, mean, mode, or median, and whether adhering to that max, mean, mode, or median is mandatory for the game to work correctly, or if it's merely a suggestion to try. There's even been disagreement in this thread over whether 6-8 is the range being recommended.

We also have the published adventures which all conform to this playstyle.

Whether the published adventures conform to the recommendations of the DMG is as contentious as interpreting the recommendations in the DMG in the first place.

The designers aren't 'expecting' people to play any which way. But they did design the game around a particular playstyle. One that fits neatly into dungeon exploration.

You are welcome to deviate from that but if and when your game suffers don't blame the design. Square pegs and round holes.

5e is not all things to all people and nor should it be. It's okay to not like it, that doesn't mean it is wrong.

And I contend it's perfectly ok for someone who believes they are attempting to put a round peg into a round hole to discuss the shortcomings of that peg. Your opinion that the peg is instead square is just as valid as their opinion that the peg is round, and I think it's totally fine to try to convince them that the peg is too square to fit in the round hole. But asserting that they can't "blame the design (peg)" on the grounds that the peg is square, when you already know that they disagree with you on the shape of the peg, comes across as you expecting them to value your opinion over their own.

Man_Over_Game

2019-02-13, 03:59 PM

Obviously that means the game is broken and the designers are idiots.

What is your sarcasm contributing that a thoughtful rebuttal couldn't?

I feel like 5e had a plan, to combine "The Game" with "The Narrative". Turns out, a lot of players either like "The Game" OR "The Narrative", and sometimes they don't care for both. Most DMs I've had focus more on "The Narrative" than balancing "The Game", and end up only having 1-2 major threats per Long Rest, and it was fine from a Narrative standpoint, even though that ends up neglecting The Game.

I think it comes from a lack of balance or a lack of understanding on the DM's part to truly understand what is needed for a perfect game. Everyone can tell a story, but who wants to do the accounting needed to track the CR of their enemies that the player may-or-may-not encounter? What DM wants to change their entire outline and their pacing because the majority of the team are Short-Rest based classes?

Or, alternatively, in a combat-focused campaign, do you expect most DMs to make an exception for you because you took Expertise in Religion and History?

Most DMs are understanding enough to recognize that something like Favored Enemy: Beast requires more beasts to be included in the campaign, or that an Undying Patron Warlock should deserve to face a few Undead along the way. However, something like Short Rests vs. Long Rests is a much more subtle, more consistent problem. The pacing of a campaign isn't going to change much from beginning to end, so it really determines how much someone can contribute from the get-go.

If there is a major failure in 5e, it isn't that there is a difference between Short Rests and Long Rests, but that the PHB and the DMG didn't explain those differences well enough.

We all just assume that all the classes just kinda...work, in almost every campaign and every solution. But there's a big difference between 1 fight a day and 5 fights a day with how each class works, and honestly, most DMs don't know about it or don't care.

ad_hoc

2019-02-13, 04:16 PM

I feel like 5e had a plan, to combine "The Game" with "The Narrative". Turns out, a lot of players either like "The Game" OR "The Narrative", and sometimes they don't care for both. Most DMs I've had focus more on "The Narrative" than balancing "The Game", and end up only having 1-2 major threats per Long Rest, and it was fine from a Narrative standpoint, even though that ends up neglecting The Game.

Here's the thing.

A game will not be liked by all people.

And that's okay.

If the narrative you like to play doesn't fit into the paradigm of Dungeons and Dragons then you will probably have a better time playing a game that does.

D&D is not for all players of RPGs. No game is. That doesn't mean there is something wrong with the game.

Boci

2019-02-13, 04:21 PM

D&D is not for all players of RPGs. No game is. That doesn't mean there is something wrong with the game.

Yes, but by the same token, just because people like an RPG doesn't mean the RPG doesn't have flaws in its design and could be tweaked to appeal to more people without losing those who already like it.

Vampire is a good game with a lot of fans, but it is also flawed, and shrugged that off with "Well, no RPG is for everything" isn't helpful.

Man_Over_Game

2019-02-13, 04:25 PM

Rukelnikov

2019-02-13, 05:10 PM

That is simply not true. It is often too dangerous to long rest. When the players manage to find a safe spot to long rest, they will then fail the quest. Time goes on.

Do the rules say that every adventure has to be on a doomsday clock? That's a fix you apply when you DM. But if PCs are gonna explore a dungeon for treasure and glory, they have no doomsday clock ticking, nor is there a reason storywise for one to be there.

All you need to do is actually go play one.

The vast majority of chapters are designed this way. I have played HotDQ, CoS, LMoP, OoTA, and a couple adventures from Yawning Portal. They all conform to this playstyle.

Typically when they diverge they are overland travel chapters.

The typical formula is when the PCs show up they set events in motion and they then need to do the thing. Sometimes they get into danger and have no room for long resting (Even if LTH is used they will either face the wrath of the dungeon or the denizens will have had time to leave/build up defenses.

In either case long resting means failing the objective. The game would be entirely tedious and boring if the PCs could just long rest whenever.

Which only reinforces my point that 5e NEEDS doomsday clock to work.

Xetheral

2019-02-13, 05:24 PM

Having variety naturally results in a rough bell curve. And it only has to be rough, with substantial skew being fine (especially depending on table preferences). Saying that you must replace the distribution with the median is fallacious.

(Bold emphasis added. Itallic emphasis in original.) The bolded portion is incomplete, mathematically. A normal distribution arises naturally from uncorrelated variety. That's a key distinction. If all variety naturally led to a normal distribution, the normal distribution would be the only kind of distribution.

For example, at my table, there is variation in encounter pacing. But that variation is better described by a power law distribution than a bell curve. I would have to deliberately intervene if I wanted the distribution of encounter pacing at my table to fit a bell curve.

It may be circular, but the fact that my play style matches the design and works smoothly is evidence that it's what they expected. To think otherwise is to think that the designers were just incompetent. And that is an assertion in need of substantial evidence. If there are multiple ways to play and one works fine while the others work less fine, then it's reasonable to assume that the one that works was intended. Especially when we have explicit word of the designers to that effect. Which we do here, both in the books and from interviews.

The fact that people disagree is not evidence that there is no design intent. Merely that people disagree. People disagree about a lot of things, including purely factual matters. Simply disagreeing does not mean that you're right. You can disagree and be wrong. My side has the book evidence, play evidence, and developer statements. The other side has...nothing. Other than sheer assertion.

Three questions. (1) Do you agree that you and I disagree over the degree to which the book evidence, play evidence, and developer statements support your side? (2) If so, what possible persuasive value is there in supporting your claims in the above quote with a statement you already know I disagree with? (3) If you know your evidence has no persuasive value due to being contested, how does offering it anyway differ from sheer assertion?

For what it's worth, I agree that your style was likely intended to be supported by the designers. I agree that the fact that your style works well for you is (anecdotal) evidence to that effect. The same argument should work for me: the fact that my style works well for me should be (anecdotal) evidence that the designers intended to support my style. (And evidence that I'm not trying to use a pitchfork as a teaspoon.)

I simply want 5e to work even better for me than it currently does, and consider it a drawback/flaw of the system that it doesn't. That the system isn't perfect for my style does not in any way constitute (even anecotal) evidence that the designers intended not to support my playstyle.

So you talk about it both IC and OOC.

That doesn't address the problem that the tactical decision made by the group whether or not to take a short rest may result in some players having less fun than they would have had their available resources not hinged on whether or not they take the rest.

Either way, if there's never or rarely a clear chance to rest for 1 hour twice between long rests on busy days, then you probably should be using the heroic rest variant. On the other hand, if there's usually or always such a chance, you should probably be using the gritty rest variant. That's what they're there for.

That sounds to me like a strictly-enforced bell curve distribution for encounter pacing.

ad_hoc

2019-02-13, 05:35 PM

Yes, but by the same token, just because people like an RPG doesn't mean the RPG doesn't have flaws in its design and could be tweaked to appeal to more people without losing those who already like it.

Vampire is a good game with a lot of fans, but it is also flawed, and shrugged that off with "Well, no RPG is for everything" isn't helpful.

This is a fundamental design we're talking about though. Pacing is a core feature of the game. We're not talking about cleaning up some errant rules here and there.

Some people don't like that there are classes in the game either.

It isn't a fault of the game that it isn't for everyone. I am glad they had a vision and went with it rather than trying to be GURPS.

Do the rules say that every adventure has to be on a doomsday clock? That's a fix you apply when you DM. But if PCs are gonna explore a dungeon for treasure and glory, they have no doomsday clock ticking, nor is there a reason storywise for one to be there.

Well every published adventure has urgency in the goals of the PCs. Even the ones where the PCs are simply exploring a dungeon for treasure such as some Yawning Portal adventures there is time pressure. Make a ruckus and you need a place to hide to take a short rest. Dally too long and the reinforcements will come home.

Imagine an action movie where the protagonists get to sit around and only engage with enemies, one by one, at their leisure. Imagine Terminator, but every time they get away the Terminator stops for a couple days to let them rest. They get chased for a while, get 1 full rest in the middle of the movie, and then it is rising action from there.

Boci

2019-02-13, 05:55 PM

This is a fundamental design we're talking about though. Pacing is a core feature of the game. We're not talking about cleaning up some errant rules here and there.

Some people don't like that there are classes in the game either.

It isn't a fault of the game that it isn't for everyone. I am glad they had a vision and went with it rather than trying to be GURPS.

Well you repeat variations of the phrase "no game is for everyone" after being told why it isn't useful, it really starts to look like a shield more than a reasonable point.

Well every published adventure has urgency in the goals of the PCs. Even the ones where the PCs are simply exploring a dungeon for treasure such as some Yawning Portal adventures there is time pressure. Make a ruckus and you need a place to hide to take a short rest. Dally too long and the reinforcements will come home.

See? You've stopped talking about 5th edition here. This is just general

Yes, you probably want some form of pacing in your game, RPG or computer, or novel or series. I agree 5th ed, belonging to the previously listed groups, should have a form of pacing. That doesn't mean the way 5th ed's is paced issacrosaint and must not be tweaked.

ad_hoc

2019-02-13, 06:04 PM

Well you repeat variations of the phrase "no game is for everyone" after being told why it isn't useful, it really starts to look like a shield more than a reasonable point.

Why isn't it useful? The complaint is that the game isn't for me so it's bad. My response is that's okay and not a design flaw.

See? You've stopped talking about 5th edition here. This is just general

Yes, you probably want some form of pacing in your game, RPG or computer, or novel or series. I agree 5th ed, belonging to the previously listed groups, should have a form of pacing. That doesn't mean the way 5th ed's is paced issacrosaint and must not be tweaked.

Yes, the concept of pacing is in every story.

5e has its own pacing model. That pacing model isn't for everyone and that is okay. An action movie is not paced the same as a drama, that doesn't mean the action movie is wrong for those who like dramas. And that is okay.

Unoriginal

2019-02-13, 06:05 PM

Well you repeat variations of the phrase "no game is for everyone" after being told why it isn't useful, it really starts to look like a shield more than a reasonable point.

See? You've stopped talking about 5th edition here. This is just general

Yes, you probably want some form of pacing in your game, RPG or computer, or novel or series. I agree 5th ed, belonging to the previously listed groups, should have a form of pacing. That doesn't mean the way 5th ed's is paced issacrosaint and must not be tweaked.

I think the point is to differenciate what is objectively a flaw (ie, something that doesn't work as intented) and what is only a question of taste.

5e set out to accomplish something, and succeeded. So it can't be said to be a flaw.

Then there is the matter of taste. If you don't like something, tweak it as much as you want. The game books themselves encourage that. But "some people don't like the way X works" isn't the same as "X doesn't work".

If you don't like X, it's natural for others to say "well have you tried Y? you might like it better."

Boci

2019-02-13, 06:10 PM

I think the point is to differenciate what is objectively a flaw (ie, something that doesn't work as intented) and what is only a question of taste.

5e set out to accomplish something, and succeeded. So it can't be said to be a flaw.

Most games accomplish something though, that's why they have fans, doesn't mean they couldn't succeed more. What matters isn't whether or not the game "succeed", but whether or not you can improved without losing its current fans. If the answer is yes, no amount "no game is for everything" is going to be reasonable.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-13, 06:12 PM

@Xetheral

I think there's something getting lost, because what you're responding to does not seem at all to be what I wrote. Let me back off and make my chain of logic much more explicit here.

Assumption 1: The developers are neither incompetent nor malicious. If we can't agree to assume this at least arguendo, then no further discussion is to be had.

Fact 1: The developers differentiated Short Rests from Long Rests. Many abilities recharge on one but not the other.
Deduction 1: The developers assumed that Short Rests would happen more than a trivial amount of the time (otherwise it would be incompetent or malicious to differentiate the two).
Fact 1a: SR-recharging abilities are generally weaker or have fewer uses than LR-recharging abilities (cf. spell slots).
Deduction 1a: The developers assumed that SR would be more frequent than LR, on average.

Fact 2: The developers set the default length of a Short Rest at 1 hour (up from 4e's 5-minute equivalent).
Deduction 2: The developers assumed that a SR should not be trivial to achieve.
Fact 2a: The DMG says that the assumptions behind the adjusted XP table for the Adventuring Day (quote posted previously) generally will require 2 SR/adventuring day, at about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the day. It also ties this to adventuring days that approach the thresholds in the table, which are explicitly characterized as the fastest pace the party can expect to maintain assuming average luck.
Deduction 2a: Averaging 2 short rests per full adventuring day is the norm. More if you push harder, less if you don't push that hard.

Combined Deduction: Putting this together, we should expect to see between 1 and 2 short rests on "normal" adventuring days.

Fact 3: The DMG explicitly gives rest variants for games that deviate from the assumed parameters consistently. These handle the "lots of fights per 24-hour period" case (Heroic Rest Variant) and the "few fights per 24-hour" case (Gritty Rest Variant).
Deduction 3: The developers assumed a middle ground.

Fact 4: The developers have explicitly, directly said that they did not balance around 6-8 encounters.
Deduction 4: They're telling the truth (otherwise they'd be incompetent or malicious, both of which we've assumed away).
Deduction 5: The whole "you have to always run all these encounters and it breaks the fiction" thing is founded on a mistaken assumption.

Fact 5: I have run parties with a full mix of classes (warlock/druid/rogue/monk was one of my first ones) without ever running into a problem with adventure pacing or allowing enough/too many short/long rests. I did so without any special consideration for adventuring days, going with what was natural to the fiction. Sometimes they got a bunch of rests, other times not very many. There were no balance problems.
Deduction 5: Either I'm lying about this fact or this is not some intrinsic problem with the system.

Observation: My play-style matches all the deductions above and I haven't had problems. Other people who do not match all the deductions report problems.
Final Deduction: My play style matches developer intent and is "standards compliant." If you chose to deviate from these default standards, you should probably check out the variant rest options or (in extreme cases) look for a different game that handles your case better.

As a side note: I have seen lots of "fixes" for this presumed problem. All of them, in my opinion, make things worse. They throw out interesting trade-offs and fictional flexibility in favor of artificially imposed "consistency". In effect, those fixes would make things worse for me; they are not Pareto optimal.

Unoriginal

2019-02-13, 06:20 PM

Most games accomplish something though, that's why they have fans, doesn't mean they couldn't succeed more. What matters isn't whether or not the game "succeed", but whether or not you can improved without losing its current fans. If the answer is yes, no amount "no game is for everything" is going to be reasonable.

The answer being "yes" is a BIG "if".

You are always going to lose a certain amount of current fans when something changes.

Boci

2019-02-13, 06:23 PM

The answer being "yes" is a BIG "if".

You are always going to lose a certain amount of current fans when something changes.

All generalizations are wrong. But seriously, there's always a danger yes, but flat out declaring that 5th ed cannot be tweaked without driving people away just doesn't sound like a genuine belief.

Unoriginal

2019-02-13, 06:34 PM

All generalizations are wrong. But seriously, there's always a danger yes, but flat out declaring that 5th ed cannot be tweaked without driving people away just doesn't sound like a genuine belief.

I never said that.

However, I will say that I have never seen an alternative to the 5e rest system that I liked more than what was presented in the books.

It may exist, it's perfectly possible. But I haven't found it. Maybe you have one that works for your table, but that's our respective tastes.

Boci

2019-02-13, 06:37 PM

I never said that.

Pretty sure you did:

You are always going to lose a certain amount of current fans when something changes.

Did I misinterpret that? You said lose and I said drive away, but pretty sure those have the same meaning.

Unoriginal

2019-02-13, 06:55 PM

Pretty sure you did:

You are always going to lose a certain amount of current fans when something changes.

Did I misinterpret that? You said lose and I said drive away, but pretty sure those have the same meaning.

Oh, I understand the confusion. When you said "people", I thought you meant as in "in large number".

Because objectively speaking, yes, there will always be a certain number of persons driven away by any change, to anything. Because it is impossible to satisfy everyone, even when something is an objective improvement.

If the number of people driven away by the change is significant is another matter. The new treasure rules for AL probably have driven a few people away, but obviously not enough to make the people reconsider it as of now. And that is what I meant: people will be driven away, it doesn't mean it is noteworthy.

Most likely, if the designers published yet another rest variant, some people would ignore it and continue with what they have, some people will like it and adopt it, some people will tweak it further and very few people would quit playing 5e over it.

Skylivedk

2019-02-13, 07:09 PM

Here's the thing. Everybody hits on a 20. And if you crank the enemy's CR up high enough to challenge a fresh party (ie you spend the entire day's aXP budget on a single fight with a single enemy), you risk the "miss miss miss splat" scenario. It's rocket tag--he who hits first wins.

And extra defense comes in one of a few ways (against physical attacks which form most of the threat):
* Reducing the hit chance). That's hard without getting to pick your magic items or burning resources. It's also class-specific. It also doesn't do what you want--yes, you take fewer hits. But when one good hit is enough to floor you...

* Increased HP. Only really comes through gaining levels.

* "Soak" abilities (resistance). Mostly class restricted. Also don't stack very well.

So I'm not sure how increasing defense is easier than increasing offense. Most of the "optimized/super-strong" characters I see are glass cannons (compared to the less-focused ones). A sorcadin, for example, loses tons of offense if they have to be defensive.

It's s bad player, mechanically and tactically, who is a lot weaker as a Sorcadin, than as a pure Paladin. Most of the optimization I've seen end up with very durable characters.

That is simply not true. It is often too dangerous to long rest. When the players manage to find a safe spot to long rest, they will then fail the quest. Time goes on.

All you need to do is actually go play one.

The vast majority of chapters are designed this way. I have played HotDQ, CoS, LMoP, OoTA, and a couple adventures from Yawning Portal. They all conform to this playstyle.

Typically when they diverge they are overland travel chapters.

The typical formula is when the PCs show up they set events in motion and they then need to do the thing. Sometimes they get into danger and have no room for long resting (Even if LTH is used they will either face the wrath of the dungeon or the denizens will have had time to leave/build up defenses.

In either case long resting means failing the objective. The game would be entirely tedious and boring if the PCs could just long rest whenever.

Which is your favourite of those? I'm asking from a sincere want of trying a well-written published adventure (and I've asked many times).

I tried half of LMoP, maybe more (twice), and as mentioned earlier, I've only had one sub-area where the adventuring was requested. Most of the possible side quests in town don't adhere to it, nor does the first dungeon. Unless my group is super naturally DnD players. We went from HotDQ to SKT on recommendation, so I only saw the beginning (which didn't adhere either).

Is the problem that we use feats? We normally only have 1 multiclass if any in our group.

As a side note: am I the only wishing they had given recommendations for turning up the difficulty in the published adventures for feats/more players/multiclassing. I know you can do it yourself (I have... A lot), but I buy written adventures to work less; not more.

It isn't a fault of the game that it isn't for everyone. I am glad they had a vision and went with it rather than trying to be GURPS.
--
Well every published adventure has urgency in the goals of the PCs. Even the ones where the PCs are simply exploring a dungeon for treasure such as some Yawning Portal adventures there is time pressure. Make a ruckus and you need a place to hide to take a short rest. Dally too long and the reinforcements will come home.

Imagine an action movie where the protagonists get to sit around and only engage with enemies, one by one, at their leisure. Imagine Terminator, but every time they get away the Terminator stops for a couple days to let them rest. They get chased for a while, get 1 full rest in the middle of the movie, and then it is rising action from there.
Agreed on them having a vision being a good thing.

Well that's my issue with the short rest as it is. It's too long to not deflate tension in hostile territory (and published adventures do not come with recommendations to change rest variants for different chapters as far as I remember).

The sense of urgency also varies wildly. You know people are going in ToA and that giants are running rampant. Yet you have weeks or travel time in both, meaning the urgency in the individual areas (the ones they gridded) is quite limited.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-13, 07:15 PM

If a small sample size shows incredible variation, it is highly unlikely (although still technically possible) that the broader population is anywhere close to uniform.

Branching out into video game companies, the whole "forum users never inform us about the broader playerbase, most players don't care about this stuff" presumption has been used as a kneejerk dismissal of feedback from players on forums for a couple decades now.

ChiefBigFeather

2019-02-13, 07:22 PM

The catch here is that the rest system isn't adaptable, and making it so makes it really wonky in the narrative.

For example, if you have a slower-paced rest system (where a night's rest is a Short Rest), and you want your players to trek through a dungeon with multiple hard fights over the course of a day or two, it'll both be hard to fit the number of fights you want with the amount of rest characters need. Do you:

Make all the fights easier?
Make the dungeon take a week or so to clear?
Change how long a Rest takes just so that your players can clear it in a timely manner?

Sometimes, none of those are the option. Sometimes, DMs just want to have 1 fight in a day, almost every day, and that fits their narrative, and making a "Long Rest" taking longer than sleeping overnight doesn't fit the same narrative.
Yeah, you want the deep fried ice here. Every rest based system has this problem. The only system that can provide the same challenge no matter the pacing is a permanent resource system, but those usually come with their own problems.

Xetheral

2019-02-13, 07:29 PM

I think the point is to differenciate what is objectively a flaw (ie, something that doesn't work as intented) and what is only a question of taste.

5e set out to accomplish something, and succeeded. So it can't be said to be a flaw.

Maybe this entire debate comes down to differing definitions of the word "flaw". When I talk about what I perceive as the flaws of 5e, I'm talking about the drawbacks to using the system as a tool for playing the game at my table. In other words, on a list of pros and cons of using 5e, the flaws are those things in the "cons" column. My list will necessarily be subjective: what I view as a flaw others might view a strength.

5e takes a more-complicated approach to encounter pacing than previous editions. That comes with drawbacks, many of which are being discussed in this thread. Unless someone wants to argue that more-complicated encounter pacing was itself an explicit design goal of 5e, I don't see how the claim that the system meets its design goals immunizes it from discussion of the drawbacks of the inclusion of more-complicated encounter pacing.

----

@PhoenixPhyre: it will take me awhile to respond to your detailed post. I will get to as at time permits.

Rhedyn

2019-02-13, 08:18 PM

Maybe this entire debate comes down to differing definitions of the word "flaw". When I talk about what I perceive as the flaws of 5e, I'm talking about the drawbacks to using the system as a tool for playing the game at my table. In other words, on a list of pros and cons of using 5e, the flaws are those things in the "cons" column. My list will necessarily be subjective: what I view as a flaw others might view a strength.

5e takes a more-complicated approach to encounter pacing than previous editions. That comes with drawbacks, many of which are being discussed in this thread. Unless someone wants to argue that more-complicated encounter pacing was itself an explicit design goal of 5e, I don't see how the claim that the system meets its design goals immunizes it from discussion of the drawbacks of the inclusion of more-complicated encounter pacing.

----

@PhoenixPhyre: it will take me awhile to respond to your detailed post. I will get to as at time permits.Encounter pacing has been an intricate and complicated subsystem since 3e. Both 4e and 3e though had equally complicated and meaningful CR systems to adjust the encounter pacing as need. You can have mono-encounter days or 30 encounter meat grinders. The lack of "bounded accuracy" allows that to be more of a thing.

Xetheral

2019-02-13, 08:20 PM

Questions for everyone:

When planning a new campaign, do you select a game system based on which one will be most useful? Or do you select a game system first and then design a campaign to fit that system?

Also, do you think that 5e is intended only for use by DMs that answer the first question in a particular way? Or is it intended for use by DMs no matter which way they answer the first question?

I can see how differening answers to these questions could lead us to wildly different ideas about what it means for something to be a "flaw" in a game system.

Unoriginal

2019-02-13, 08:35 PM

Questions for everyone:

When planning a new campaign, do you select a game system based on which one will be most useful? Or do you select a game system first and then design a campaign to fit that system?

Depends. What's matter is that the campaign fits the system, and the system fits the campaign. Which comes first doesn't really matter, and depends if you want to play a game in particular or a campaign in particular.

Also, do you think that 5e is intended only for use by DMs that answer the first question in a particular way? Or is it intended for use by DMs no matter which way they answer the first question?

Not sure what you're aksing. D&D 5e is meant for DMs and players who want to play D&D 5e, but it doesn't matter if you want to play 5e and come up with a campaign or if you have a campaign idea and see 5e is fitting for it.

Now if you want a campaign that doesn't fit D&D 5e, then you're better off with a different system. Running an Exalted or Vampire or Pathfinder campaign using 5e rules would be an unsatisfying nightmare, unless you adapt it to the point it's just a 5e campaign.

But that's true for all systems. You can't do GURPS with Amber RPG.

MaxWilson

2019-02-13, 08:50 PM

Questions for everyone:

When planning a new campaign, do you select a game system based on which one will be most useful? Or do you select a game system first and then design a campaign to fit that system?

Goals of play and genre first, then game system, then campaign setting, in that order. (Although "campaign setting" is really just adventure setting unless/until multiple adventures have been completed there.)

Also, do you think that 5e is intended only for use by DMs that answer the first question in a particular way? Or is it intended for use by DMs no matter which way they answer the first question?

Clearly the latter--the designers intended to market this game to everyone under the sun, hence the DMG discussions on customizations and rule variants. How well they accomplished this is debatable, but they clearly intended to have a wide audience, IMO.

Xetheral

2019-02-13, 09:17 PM

ad_hoc

2019-02-13, 09:20 PM

Which is your favourite of those? I'm asking from a sincere want of trying a well-written published adventure (and I've asked many times).

I tried half of LMoP, maybe more (twice), and as mentioned earlier, I've only had one sub-area where the adventuring was requested. Most of the possible side quests in town don't adhere to it, nor does the first dungeon. Unless my group is super naturally DnD players. We went from HotDQ to SKT on recommendation, so I only saw the beginning (which didn't adhere either).

Both CoS and OotA are quite good. CoS is my favourite. CoS has overland travel encounters that are mostly there for flavour. Individual adventure sites don't allow for long rests for one reason or another, I don't want to get into spoilers there.

Well I will use HotDQ as an example since you have played it.

Spoilers Ahead:

Except for the overland travel chapter (3 I think) the chapters all follow the regular paradigm. The party really doesn't have a chance to long rest in the middle of the chapters. Maybe after the swamp before the castle. The castle is the main thrust of that chapter. Just in general too, the adventure is a chase. The clock is ticking.

What are they going to do in the swamp castle? There are hostile creatures everywhere. They have the opportunity to sneak their way into a rarely used section to have a short rest. A long rest though? Not likely. Plus events are happening, as I recall someone they are chasing uses a portal under the castle and it would be great if the PCs could prevent them. Or at the very least find out about the portal and how to use it. If they spend 8 hours resting they will miss that character completely and have trouble going forward. Besides, no one should risk trying to long rest when the whole castle could be organized once they wake up.

The next chapter they are in a house. There isn't a chance to rest there at all once they approach. Everyone is aware of the PCs including some nasty trolls, the owner and whoever else I forget. They might even need to go straight from the swamp castle to the house without a long rest depending on how well they did in the previous chapter.

In the floating castle they again don't have a chance. Not only are they in hostile territory again with ogres and other creatures roaming about (even a vampire), their mission is to stop the cargo from being delivered successfully.

In all cases the PCs have no idea how long they have to go before they get a long rest. In the 2 castles it is quite a while, in the house pretty short, but even when it is shorter PCs would be wise to conserve their resources just in case. So yes, they could abandon what they are doing and go find a safe place to long rest. But then they are failing their quests.

Willie the Duck

2019-02-13, 09:23 PM

Encounter pacing has been an intricate and complicated subsystem since 3e. Both 4e and 3e though had equally complicated and meaningful CR systems to adjust the encounter pacing as need. You can have mono-encounter days or 30 encounter meat grinders. The lack of "bounded accuracy" allows that to be more of a thing.

Which kind of brings me back to my (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23700430&postcount=52) original question of what is so different about 5e? Admittedly, 5e has both the short rest and long rest mechanics, but that just means that altering the pacing (and whether there are opportunities for short rests) gives relative differences between classes. The issue of encounter pacing has existed throughout (farther back than 3e, the 5 minute workday theoretically existed since the beginning, at least once you left the 'no recharging this session, and the session is a whole dungeon' model that many people never even started with). Why is it so glaring/noticeable in 5e?

Rhedyn

2019-02-13, 10:22 PM

Which kind of brings me back to my (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23700430&postcount=52) original question of what is so different about 5e? Admittedly, 5e has both the short rest and long rest mechanics, but that just means that altering the pacing (and whether there are opportunities for short rests) gives relative differences between classes. The issue of encounter pacing has existed throughout (farther back than 3e, the 5 minute workday theoretically existed since the beginning, at least once you left the 'no recharging this session, and the session is a whole dungeon' model that many people never even started with). Why is it so glaring/noticeable in 5e?

Well the problem my group ran into is that 5e handles mono encounter days pretty terribly.

In our campaigns it's hard to justify a massive gauntlet before a BBEG. You either hit them rested or they hit you with all their minions at once because they aren't stupid. (and if they are stupid then you can just rest before the boss fight)

But we also do very little dungeon crawling. Which wasn't that big of an issue in other editions.

KorvinStarmast

2019-02-13, 10:24 PM

But we also do very little dungeon crawling. Which wasn't that big of an issue in other editions. You are invited to investigate the DMG, and the daily encounter budget. You obviously do not understand it. (And you may need to juggle that number up or down Depending Upon How Sharp Your Group is).

Pex

2019-02-14, 01:03 AM

The problem is that for the system to work properly, it needs the players, not the DM, to play in a certain way.

This has been contested every single time, and not once was proof shown of it actually being that way.

Indeed. In one of the Yawning Portal modules, I forget the name, the party can't short rest at all because poison gas will kill them.

JoeJ

2019-02-14, 02:13 AM

But the constant changing of the resource recovery rate is a house-rule. The variant rest times are meant to set the tone of campaign and not change once selected.

Do you have a citation for this? I just saw them listed as options. I don't remember anything about how often you can switch.

Being able to house-rule around this problem does not mean it is not a problem.

Something not being to your taste does not mean it is, generally speaking, a problem.

Skylivedk

2019-02-14, 02:23 AM

Both CoS and OotA are quite good. CoS is my favourite. CoS has overland travel encounters that are mostly there for flavour. Individual adventure sites don't allow for long rests for one reason or another, I don't want to get into spoilers there.

Well I will use HotDQ as an example since you have played it.

Thank you. I'll push for CoS as my next adventure - or maybe more of HotDQ; we only did the beginning before branching into SKT. Do you DM or mostly play as a PC? If you DM, what's your favourite approach to making the published adventures better? Ie, I usually:
I) flesh out the NPCs a lot more (and include cross campaign references, a bit of foreshadowing when I've done my home work, but also references to other NPCs/towns in settings)
II) turn most passive items (+1) into weaker active items
III) turn most mono type encounters into multiple enemy type encounters
IV) remove,. by far forward narrating, or upgrade random encounters for traveling to let them be significant if players are to spend time on them
IV) add new attacks/tactics to oft recurring monsters (giants in SKT)

Well the problem my group ran into is that 5e handles mono encounter days pretty terribly.

In our campaigns it's hard to justify a massive gauntlet before a BBEG. You either hit them rested or they hit you with all their minions at once because they aren't stupid. (and if they are stupid then you can just rest before the boss fight)

But we also do very little dungeon crawling. Which wasn't that big of an issue in other editions.
Maybe try with SR = 8 hours and LR = 24 hours (maybe with comforts) then? That would allow the DM to have the travel time to the BBEG have ambushes, accidents etc on easy to your attack be important and resource draining.

Even my main table version (turning SR classes into LR classes with encounter caps) isn't good for what you describe. As such they still get very close to the original adventuring day. The conversion has more allowed for:
A) hostile territory not being rest friendly. At all.
B) enemies coming in waves; the last barely dropping before the reinforcements arrive
C) tactical retreats and regrouping while being chased with sticking it to the SR classes

(Most of the above could probably also be done with the heroic rest variant; it hasn't been on my/our mind for a while)

The one day encounter has other issues than SR resources, namely extreme swinginess which will, when the die are against the PCs, kill characters/lead to TPKs. Multiple smaller attacks are way easier to manage from a DM point of view.

ad_hoc

2019-02-14, 02:55 AM

Thank you. I'll push for CoS as my next adventure - or maybe more of HotDQ; we only did the beginning before branching into SKT. Do you DM or mostly play as a PC? If you DM, what's your favourite approach to making the published adventures better? Ie, I usually:
I) flesh out the NPCs a lot more (and include cross campaign references, a bit of foreshadowing when I've done my home work, but also references to other NPCs/towns in settings)
II) turn most passive items (+1) into weaker active items
III) turn most mono type encounters into multiple enemy type encounters
IV) remove,. by far forward narrating, or upgrade random encounters for traveling to let them be significant if players are to spend time on them
IV) add new attacks/tactics to oft recurring monsters (giants in SKT)

Oh sorry, I thought you had played HotDQ and not RoT. Hope I didn't spoil it.

I DM more than I play. Honestly, I just read the first couple pages of a chapter and then just go from there. I find the published adventures super easy to run as there is text to read out in every location. (an exception to this is CoS which is a sandbox so it's pretty important to have all of the chapters in mind as the PCs could go anywhere at any time.)

I improvise NPC stuff. I use treasure hoards from the DMG instead of specific treasure.

I find there really aren't that many single monster encounters. I think it is fun to have them here and there as it is fun to take down a big creature as a team. Solo monsters are fine to have in 5e, just don't expect them to be a big challenge.

noob

2019-02-14, 03:12 AM

I think 59345934688132848234868246825688^1024 centillion encounters per day you are supposed to get is too much.
4 encounters a day would be less problematic.
Maybe short rest based classes should gain more resources per short rest and have short rests that takes 5 minutes or less and then we could do 4 harder encounters per day and still have short rest based classes vs long rest based classes be balanced.

Rhedyn

2019-02-14, 08:05 AM

You are invited to investigate the DMG, and the daily encounter budget. You obviously do not understand it. (And you may need to juggle that number up or down Depending Upon How Sharp Your Group is).
The system is not designed to handle mono-encounter "days" at full-resources well.

We've experienced this.

It's even what the devs think.

So by all means try it at your table and report back your tips and tricks.

Maybe try with SR = 8 hours and LR = 24 hours (maybe with comforts) then? That would allow the DM to have the travel time to the BBEG have ambushes, accidents etc on easy to your attack be important and resource draining. .
My group really doesn't have time for "resource draining" fights and any BBEG smart enough to set ambushes is also smart enough not to waste minions on fights they can't win.

The rest mechanic would have to be purely narrative scene/chapter pure-story game style for 5e to work for our group. Even though our group is big into story telling, we aren't big on weird meta-mechanics like that.

Most 5e DMs/groups just come to terms with the fact that the party is all but impossible to challenge-not-kill outside of a dungeon. Very few do this suggested idea of flipping the rest duration around willy nilly.

MaxWilson

2019-02-14, 09:45 AM

Most 5e DMs/groups just come to terms with the fact that the party is all but impossible to challenge-not-kill outside of a dungeon. Very few do this suggested idea of flipping the rest duration around willy nilly.

I don't even understand why you'd want "challenge-not-kill" to be the DM's goal. Seems like a player responsibility to me. The DM's job is to set up dramatic Bang!s for you to deal with, and if those Bang!s involve violence, the most likely source of tension is possible death for PCs or at least friendly NPCs (e.g. in hostage rescue scenario). "Will this monster make Sir Bruno break a sweat?" is not much of a dramatic question compared to "Is this the end of Sir Bruno?"

In a novel, you know the answer already because of meta knowledge (of course it's not the end of Sir Bruno! There are three more books about him) but in a game the tension is real, either because of risk (the odds are bad against this monster) or uncertainty (the player doesn't know what the odds are, because he only has partial information about the monster like the fact that it just ate his horse in one bite).

The DM's goal should be challenge-but-not-necessarily-kill, ensuring at least two ways to survive (e.g. fight, surrender, or flee).

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-14, 09:54 AM

"Bang!s"

Really?

MaxWilson

2019-02-14, 09:55 AM

"Bang!s"

Really?

Yeah, it's a term stolen from Sorcerer. Call them scenario hooks or whatever you like--it's the DM's job to make the player characters' lives interesting so the players can make meaningful choices.

In a sandbox the DM sets the hooks up way in advance instead of during play but the idea is the same.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-14, 10:05 AM

Yeah, it's a term stolen from Sorcerer.

I know.

Thus my response. Perhaps it could have used the arched-eyebrow smiley. :smallconfused:

To make that response clear... I have some cheap used copies of "Sorcerer" stuff, filed under "know thy enemy (http://whitehall-paraindustries.com/Theory/Threefold/rpg_theory_bad_rep.htm) ".

Rhedyn

2019-02-14, 10:14 AM

I don't even understand why you'd want "challenge-not-kill" to be the DM's goal. Seems like a player responsibility to me. The DM's job is to set up dramatic Bang!s for you to deal with, and if those Bang!s involve violence, the most likely source of tension is possible death for PCs or at least friendly NPCs (e.g. in hostage rescue scenario). "Will this monster make Sir Bruno break a sweat?" is not much of a dramatic question compared to "Is this the end of Sir Bruno?"

In a novel, you know the answer already because of meta knowledge (of course it's not the end of Sir Bruno! There are three more books about him) but in a game the tension is real, either because of risk (the odds are bad against this monster) or uncertainty (the player doesn't know what the odds are, because he only has partial information about the monster like the fact that it just ate his horse in one bite).

The DM's goal should be challenge-but-not-necessarily-kill, ensuring at least two ways to survive (e.g. fight, surrender, or flee).
When the party is fully rested an encounter is either "no-one could possibly die" or "everyone is going to die".

Getting the encounter to the point of "even fight" or "maybe someone will die" is immensely difficult. Ideally a fight's result is influenced by the players decisions not predetermined before the dice are ever rolled.

What I am saying is that any reasonable fight for a mono-encounter day is easy. Any idiot can just keep piling on monsters to make that single fight entirely unwinnable. (I still remember that time we were jumped by 7 black dragons and ran away. Neat every once in awhile, but when you either run from a fight or destroy it every time, it gets boring)

guachi

2019-02-14, 10:18 AM

Most 5e DMs/groups just come to terms with the fact that the party is all but impossible to challenge-not-kill outside of a dungeon. Very few do this suggested idea of flipping the rest duration around willy nilly.

I've found it's quite easy to challenge-not-kill outside of a dungeon (though it depends on what you consider a dungeon) by altering rest rules and anyone who is changing rest rules based on where the adventure is taking place isn't doing it "willy nilly". I think The One Ring for 5e has altered rest mechanics for overland travel, for example, and it's certainly not "willy nilly".

Tanarii

2019-02-14, 10:28 AM

I don't even understand why you'd want "challenge-not-kill" to be the DM's goal. Seems like a player responsibility to me. The DM's job is to set up dramatic Bang!s for you to deal with, and if those Bang!s involve violence, the most likely source of tension is possible death for PCs or at least friendly NPCs (e.g. in hostage rescue scenario). "Will this monster make Sir Bruno break a sweat?" is not much of a dramatic question compared to "Is this the end of Sir Bruno?"

In a novel, you know the answer already because of meta knowledge (of course it's not the end of Sir Bruno! There are three more books about him) but in a game the tension is real, either because of risk (the odds are bad against this monster) or uncertainty (the player doesn't know what the odds are, because he only has partial information about the monster like the fact that it just ate his horse in one bite).

The DM's goal should be challenge-but-not-necessarily-kill, ensuring at least two ways to survive (e.g. fight, surrender, or flee).Bang!s don't require putting players in a position where they have significant risk of a TPK in each and every battle. And in fact, doing so ensures that in short order, it WILL happen. If the odds are 10% chance of TPK in each and every battle, and every battle is Deadlyx3 (ie a single encounter in the adventuring day) with a 10% chance of TPK (IMO low for Deadlyx3), then the chance of a TPK by level 5 is 47%, and by level 11 is 90%.

Now if you run one of those per Tier, and your standard adventure has say a 1% chance of TPK over an entire adventuring day if they over-extend themselves (ie chose to go past their resources, maybe adventuring day x1.5 or so), then you're only looking at a 33% chance of TPK before level 11. Which is IMO fairly acceptable odds for a lethal campaign.

Rhedyn

2019-02-14, 10:47 AM

I've found it's quite easy to challenge-not-kill outside of a dungeon (though it depends on what you consider a dungeon) by altering rest rules and anyone who is changing rest rules based on where the adventure is taking place isn't doing it "willy nilly". I think The One Ring for 5e has altered rest mechanics for overland travel, for example, and it's certainly not "willy nilly".

That's cool and all, but I would consider it immersion breaking (willy nilly). You lack an in-world reason for that to be happening. You are only doing that because mechanical flaws in the system require it. I know little of The One Ring, but it seems to at least specify when you are suppose to do that as explicit mechanics in the system. 4e D&D had "encounter powers" too and if the DM wasn't running them as "per 15 minutes of rest" powers then you get a similar narrative pacing on rest mechanics. The difference between both of those systems and 5e is the variable time for rest requirements are explicit in the rules. Not a list of variant rules that a DM might flip between to convince himself he isn't houseruling because "5e must be perfect and I am clearly not fixing broken mechanics with houserules".

Willie the Duck

2019-02-14, 11:00 AM

That's cool and all, but I would consider it immersion breaking (willy nilly). You lack an in-world reason for that to be happening. You are only doing that because mechanical flaws in the system require it.
I'm sorry, but taking this, plus:

In our campaigns it's hard to justify a massive gauntlet before a BBEG.
And I'm not convinced-- that a given game system does not match your specific campaign style is not a mechanical flaw in the system. It is a poor match.

Frankly, if, as you stated, even the designers acknowledge that the game does not handle mono-fights well, then choosing this system for a group that wants mono-fights is a customer-product mismatch.

Personally, I'm reading the pdf version of the latest version of your beloved Savage Worlds, and it still sounds much more in line with what you're looking for in a game. 5e, it is designed to work best with multiple encounters between resource recharge. That's not a flaw, but it is something that you probably don't want in your game with your personal campaign setup.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-14, 11:06 AM

Why would the rate of rests or time needed for rests change with circumstances? Why would Long Rests take 1 hour, 8 hours, or 24 hours, depending on... what?

Is there some in-setting ("in-fiction") reason for this to happen? Or is this purely the intersection of "needs of the narrative" and game mechanics, everything else be damned?

Anyway, the more I look into Rests and per-rest abilities, the more I read this discussion, the more that entire construct seems very Disassociated (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer) -- like it doesn't really represent anything and is just there for balance and tension.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-14, 11:21 AM

That's one of the things that's giving me pause in this discussion.

Why would the rate of rests or time needed for rests change with circumstances? Why would Long Rests take 1 hour, 8 hours, or 24 hours, depending on... what? Is there some in-setting ("in-fiction") reason for this to happen? Or is this purely the intersection of "needs of the narrative" and game mechanics, everything else be damned?

This depends on the exact details (for me at least).

I personally would not use the gritty realism rules at all, so I'm not going to touch those ones.

The one time I switched to Heroic Rest it was "rationalized", the situation was as follows.

The party was working with an international strike force that was going to invade a fortress through a portal network connection (with a traitor on the inside giving them access). They had to move fast because otherwise the big bad dark lady would trigger a ritual (ascending to become a demon prince) early that would blast the nearby countryside, killing all life. So they had to jump in, let the allies hold the line and they break through and disarm the ritual before the BBEG could get there. They figured they'd have multiple fights (one at the portal, a couple on the way in, plus the boss herself) and only about 10 minutes of time to do this before the boss started the ritual.

So the strike force leaders gave them each a "potion" that, when consumed over the course of an uninterrupted minute, would grant them the benefits of a short rest. Basically methamphetamine + cocaine. Horribly addictive, makes you sicker than a dog when you come down, but gets the job done. Since they were going to have multiple days/weeks/months of downtime after that, the consequences got handwaved (but existed in-fiction).

This was totally a retroactive justification--I knew they'd need a short rest and that it wasn't going to be possible otherwise due to the fictional circumstances. However, that "Apprentice's Friend" is now a known, existing thing in the setting. Most versions aren't so bad, but it all has horrible consequences if used.

And as far as associated/disassociated--it's more associated than 4e, certainly. It's still a bit disassociated, but it always has been from the time of spell slots. YMMV on how much of a problem that is. I came up with a whole fictional "justification" for it, but it was just that--a justification for how things work, not the reason they work that way in the system itself.

Man_Over_Game

2019-02-14, 11:25 AM

The Encounter per Short Rest per Long Rest balance issues are something that I'm really passionate about. However, fixing it by modifying rests can be an extreme solution that causes more problems. That can be the equivalent of being too cold and turning the thermostat 20 degrees hotter.

However,

I suggest that rather than changing how many rests someone gets, use a tool that puts the control and the narrative in the DM's hands. Rather than changing the weather because you're cold, wear a blanket. I've been working on two different solutions; use them for inspiration for your own if you like:

-------------------------------------------------------------

Solution 1: Ley Lines

Use a gritty realism style of resting for the majority of the campaign. In areas where you want players to adventure further, place Ley Lines (specified rooms or small areas) that reduce the time it takes for a Short/Long Rest (maybe changing it to 10m/SR and 60m/LR).

Ley Lines are easily detected from 1000 feet away via any ability that detects magic or portals. Mages and monsters will often build their lairs around these Ley Lines to regularly harness their energy for their plans, but Ley Lines constantly shift over time. Where a Ley Line originally started in the center of a dungeon, it may have now shifted over to an unlikely location. This incentivizes players to know when they can push forward, and rewards them for planning ahead. It also provides narrative reason why villains may be able to consistently raid or recuperate after a lost battle.

After gaining the benefits of a rest from a Ley Line, a character cannot gain the benefits from the same kind of rest at a Ley Line for 24 hours. The Ley Line can charge someone full of Positive Energy from the Evocation magic oozing from it (representing the Rests), but your body can only absorb so much.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Solution 2: Adrenaline Surge

When a powerful enemy reaches a certain threshold of damage (50%, for instance), they activate their Adrenaline Surge feature without any needed resource. An Adrenaline Surge causes these things:

The enemy gains a new ability that modifies the battle. This can be an aura, Absorb Elements at no spell slot cost, resistance to non-magical damage, or some other effect.
The battlefield undergoes a major change, such as a rift along the ground, acid oozing from the enemy, a shockwave that pushes creatures back from the enemy, or a similar effect.
All other creatures gain the benefit of a Short Rest.
All creatures reroll initiative, with the Enemy having Advantage.
All other creatures gain one stack of Exhaustion.

The idea here is that Short Rest characters are now more adept at having more endurance for combat, which is the entire point of a character using Short Rests vs. Long Rests. Now you can afford to have fewer fights per day and still make your Warlocks feel rewarded. This also allows you to throttle the strength of your boss monsters, as they can often be difficult to gauge on power level. Rather than making them too strong or too easy, you can now afford to make them both as needed.

Similarly, when clocks at sea were inaccurate due to metals contracting or expanding at different rates, John Harrison found that combining two different metals with different expansion rates together created a perfectly balanced system. (The Gridiron Pendulum) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridiron_pendulum)

More details on the Adrenaline Surge option are available in my signature.

Rhedyn

2019-02-14, 12:04 PM

I'm sorry, but taking this, plus:

And I'm not convinced-- that a given game system does not match your specific campaign style is not a mechanical flaw in the system. It is a poor match.

Frankly, if, as you stated, even the designers acknowledge that the game does not handle mono-fights well, then choosing this system for a group that wants mono-fights is a customer-product mismatch.

Personally, I'm reading the pdf version of the latest version of your beloved Savage Worlds, and it still sounds much more in line with what you're looking for in a game. 5e, it is designed to work best with multiple encounters between resource recharge. That's not a flaw, but it is something that you probably don't want in your game with your personal campaign setup.

I will agree that 5e meshes terribly with my group. The point where I think it becomes a mechanical flaw is when 5e doesn't work for both "Dungeon Crawl" and "Hex Crawl" on the same rest variant. With the default rules, the real game is in "dungeon-like" situations and conflict during the Hex Crawl won't work right against a fully rested party each time.

Doing both kinds of crawl well seems like a reasonable expectation for me even for the kind of game 5e is trying to be.

Though I do think an RPG should be able to handle mono-encounter fights at full resources if the RPG has both fights and resources. Facing down a tough foe when you and the party are at your best should be a cool and exciting experience, not when the system decides to break down and emit fumes.

mephnick

2019-02-14, 12:04 PM

Just allow instant short rests and limit them to 2 per long rest. Evens out every class and never worry about pacing again.

MaxWilson

2019-02-14, 12:10 PM

When the party is fully rested an encounter is either "no-one could possibly die" or "everyone is going to die".

What a surprising statement. In my experience this is the opposite of true. Even in cases where the players make bad decisions like ramming and boarding a neogi deathspider stuffed with umber hulks and heavy weaponry and I legitimately expect that they're all going to die, frequently they don't.

I prefer to skip over the "no one could possibly die" encounters as much as possible, narrating them without rolling dice unless the players don't yet know that no one could possibly die (e.g. if they don't know yet whether the undead plate-armored skeleton clutching a greatsword is just an undead skeleton or a Death Knight, it's not time yet to just say "Okay, you kill the skeleton and take its sword. [describe the sword]").

Getting the encounter to the point of "even fight" or "maybe someone will die" is immensely difficult. Ideally a fight's result is influenced by the players decisions not predetermined before the dice are ever rolled.

This is actually trivial to accomplish. A Deadly x3-4 fight is, in my experience, hard enough to have dramatic tension but a long way from "everyone is going to die" even if players make bad decisions. If players make good decisions they're pretty much guaranteed to win that fight. To put it another way, if you have 4 PCs of level N, and 3 monsters of CR N, that's going to be an tough fight but the PCs can win it if they're smart, and that makes it interesting.

What I am saying is that any reasonable fight for a mono-encounter day is easy. Any idiot can just keep piling on monsters to make that single fight entirely unwinnable. (I still remember that time we were jumped by 7 black dragons and ran away. Neat every once in awhile, but when you either run from a fight or destroy it every time, it gets boring)

I think what you call a "reasonable fight" is probably easier than I prefer.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-14, 12:49 PM

Personally, I find that "challenge" focused gaming (meaning where the primary stakes are whether the party lives or dies) is boring. More interesting to me are challenges to things the party cares about. Interesting dilemmas are my bread and butter--do they side with group A (with mixed consequences X, Y, and Z) or do they side with group B (with mixed consequences X', Y', and Z'), or do they find some third path? Or even knowing that they'll succeed...but at what? I want to see what they make of the campaign world, not how far they get before they get squished.

This style makes balance concerns (which in my experience only become salient when pressed hard) much less pressing and "how many rests do we get" a non-issue. It also lets me train my players to feel tension from much less risky things--they get tense if someone goes low on health and really tense if someone actually goes to 0. That's only because it doesn't happen frequently. If it was every combat, then they'd adjust.

After now 4+ years of DM'ing multiple groups concurrently, I have permanently killed exactly 1 character. And he was a moron (level 2 paladin who tried to solo a dire yeti, even after being warned multiple times). Yet my parties have taken things very seriously, spending sessions deciding how to act to preserve the game world.

Usually, they'll have a period where short rests and long rests are basically free--nothing serious is going on. But then they'll go to an adventure site and win-or-lose, they can't take a long rest while they're there. Not because I say no, but because there's no safe place to do so or the mission is such that taking 8+ hours off will lead to failure. And usually it's not even the time, it's the problem of site access. They only have that one shot at it based on how they got there--if they leave they can't really come back.

The most recent example of that was climbing a tower. Each floor was separate, so they could short rest relatively freely. But if they actually slept, they'd go insane like all the other people there. And they had gotten there by getting a guide through some tunnels, and that guide wouldn't let them stay there either and it was a one-time thing. So win or lose, they had to finish their business in the tower in a single adventuring day. Not because I was worrying about adventure pacing or imposing some artificial deadline, but because the fiction demanded it.

MaxWilson

2019-02-14, 01:14 PM

Bang!s don't require putting players in a position where they have significant risk of a TPK in each and every battle.

I agree. I prefer Bang!s that are not combat-oriented at all. But if you're going to use a combat Bang! there had better be some dramatic tension or you are just wasting everyone's time. IMO encounters which exist purely to use up spell slots and HP are boring. Sometimes it makes sense for 8th level PCs to stumble across an allosaur or a crocodile, sure, but that isn't a Bang! in and of itself. It's just color. If they want to kill it, they will kill it. In order for it to become a Bang! there has to be something else involved--you find allosaur tracks parallel to carriage tracks and a dropped lace handkerchief, and when you follow the allosaur tracks you find a mostly-eaten horse and a screaming lady inside a small cave a few feet away from the wreckage of a carriage. Oh, and by the way, there's a hungry-looking allosaur right outside the cave.

That's a Bang! but it's mostly a social bang--how will you interact with the lady, assuming you kill or capture the allosaur?

And in fact, doing so ensures that in short order, it WILL happen. If the odds are 10% chance of TPK in each and every battle, and every battle is Deadlyx3 (ie a single encounter in the adventuring day) with a 10% chance of TPK (IMO low for Deadlyx3), then the chance of a TPK by level 5 is 47%, and by level 11 is 90%.

I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from (seems like you're making certain assumptions about levelling pace), and in any case not all battles are Bang!s. There's nothing wrong with skipping over boring battles and just saying, "Okay, you kill the Blue Slaads here the same way you killed the other ones. Everyone lose your choice of 5d8 HP or one third-level spell slot, and gain 1950 XP each," and then moving on, as long as the players are okay with skipping them too. Don't spend table time on uninteresting stuff.

Sometimes I'll do something like offer the players a deal: "If you can beat these here Phase Spiders making every roll at disadvantage while the Phase Spiders make every roll at advantage, we'll call that your unluckiest fight of the spider campaign, and I'll handwave the other 38 Phase Spiders on this island and just say you killed them all much more easily." Result: a fight with lots of dramatic tension (and a spelljamming ship that came within an initiative roll of crashing and killing everyone onboard), and a whole bundle of XP once they won.

Anyway, the assumptions going into your numbers are your assumptions, not mine.

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-14, 01:17 PM

Sometimes it's fun just to have the characters get in a fight and kick some butt, having nothing to do with "dramatic tension".

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-14, 01:23 PM

Sometimes it's fun just to have the characters get in a fight and kick some butt, having nothing to do with "dramatic tension".

Right. I have players who live for the moments they slaughter enemies. I have other players who would rather talk. A good DM will balance the concerns/desires of the players. "Dramatic Tension" has its moments, but I find combat is not usually the place for such things. Combat, in fact, is one means of resolving dramatic tension.

The last arc of my long-running (1-20) campaign was the party getting a chance to go kick some Demon Prince butt, a demon prince that had been particularly obstreperous throughout the campaign. And then go resolve a character's story. The combats weren't particularly hard--it was more about the players finally getting to run wild and not care about collateral damage and play with all the toys they'd accumulated over the campaign. A giant chance to run wild and go crazy kicking butt where it wouldn't affect anyone else. It was a blast.

The dramatic tension of the game was in how they resolved the situations, not if they resolved the situations.

MaxWilson

2019-02-14, 01:25 PM

Sometimes it's fun just to have the characters get in a fight and kick some butt, having nothing to do with "dramatic tension".

I understand this, and I even empathize with it to some degree as a player, but running those kinds of fights always makes me question, "Why haven't I automated this yet? Why am I, a human being, wasting my time running this meaningless fight instead of offloading it onto a computer?" Hence my current hobby of CRPG-izing 5E.

PhoenixPhyre

2019-02-14, 01:28 PM

I understand this, and I even empathize with it to some degree as a player, but running those kinds of fights always makes me question, "Why haven't I automated this yet? Why am I, a human being, wasting my time running this meaningless fight instead of offloading it onto a computer?" Hence my current hobby of CRPG-izing 5E.

Because it's not meaningless to the players. Also because it's fun (or should be fun) for the DM as well. If it's not...yeah.

Different people get fun in different ways. For me, "dramatic tension" combats are un-fun. Walking the edge of a knife just isn't interesting to me.

MaxWilson

2019-02-14, 01:48 PM

Different people get fun in different ways. For me, "dramatic tension" combats are un-fun.

That's fine. You can use your free time any way you like, including running combats without dramatic tension. It's your life.

Pex

2019-02-14, 02:00 PM

Because it's not meaningless to the players. Also because it's fun (or should be fun) for the DM as well. If it's not...yeah.

Different people get fun in different ways. For me, "dramatic tension" combats are un-fun. Walking the edge of a knife just isn't interesting to me.

Yep.

I don't mind the occasional dramatic tension combat, but I enjoy those combats when it's only about the game part of a roleplaying game. The story and mystery are done. No more exploring. No more researching. No more talking. The BBEG must die. It's clobbering time!

Max_Killjoy

2019-02-14, 02:01 PM

Right. I have players who live for the moments they slaughter enemies. I have other players who would rather talk. A good DM will balance the concerns/desires of the players. "Dramatic Tension" has its moments, but I find combat is not usually the place for such things. Combat, in fact, is one means of resolving dramatic tension.

The last arc of my long-running (1-20) campaign was the party getting a chance to go kick some Demon Prince butt, a demon prince that had been particularly obstreperous throughout the campaign. And then go resolve a character's story. The combats weren't particularly hard--it was more about the players finally getting to run wild and not care about collateral damage and play with all the toys they'd accumulated over the campaign. A giant chance to run wild and go crazy kicking butt where it wouldn't affect anyone else. It was a blast.

The dramatic tension of the game was in how they resolved the situations, not if they resolved the situations.

I had a long-running Vampire character who was so much more dangerous in a fight (Celerity, Fortitude, Melee, Dodge, and swords... and wooden stakes count as melee weapons...) than most PCs and NPCs in the campaign, and known to be that dangerous, on top of the restrictions on combat between Vampires in that setting, that she rarely had a chance to fight.

To the point that some other PCs (and their players) started to doubt that she was all that dangerous, despite what they'd been told by NPCs who'd seen her in real fights in the campaign backstory.

So it was like multiple holidays rolled into one when she finally had the chance to cut loose and silence the quips and snide remarks -- by personally stopping half a dozen Assemites (vampiric assassins / boogiemen) in a highrise lobby at 3am.

And I still appreciate that one player who had the good nature to have his social-focused PC standing their slack-jawed in shock at the end of it.

E: got cut off by surprise meeting earlier -- the point is, just getting that fight was the fun part, it didn't need any added "dramatic tension" or "Bang" or "narrative significance".