The 1-Minute Cooldown

[Porkslope]

Once you use this feature, you cannot use it again until 1 minute has passed.

I've been tinkering with 5e homebrew since the game came out and I've mainly tried to stick to duplicating or altering mechanics present in the core rulebook, with only a few outliers here and there (like imitating 3.5's psionic focus mechanic), but a 1-minute cooldown is something I can't remember ever seeing in a game. I think it could have a place for features that are too strong for at-will use, but not strong enough to justify a refresh on a short rest.

What I wanted to discuss are the implications of that mechanic and how it could change the use of an ability. With a 1 minute cooldown, that feature could be used once a battle, and players are encouraged to use it as soon as they see an opportunity, rather than save it for when they think they need it. This way, there won't be a feeling of "I held back too much with my short rest features, now we're more worn down than we should be" when the party takes a short rest. You could even apply it to a point-based resource if you wanted to get more granular and let them spend the resource on more than one feature.

Do you think a mechanic like the 1-minute cooldown could fit in to D&D 5e? Is it too video gamey? Is it not video gamey enough? What would you like to see it applied to, or do you think it should go in the trash?

[Breccia]

Do you think a mechanic like the 1-minute cooldown could fit in to D&D 5e?

Not really, no.

Leaving the video game parallel aside, there aren't a ton of D&D fights that last over a minute. Take, for example, a lvl 17 fighter, cleric, wizard and rogue against an adult red dragon.

The red dragon has AC 19, 256 hp.

The fighter attacks three times per round with Str 20 and a longsword +2. With a +13 to hit, that's 75% hit rate and therefore 25.875 damage per round. So, already, the dragon's dead in 10 rounds.

The wizard could cast 3 level 5 lightning bolts, 3 level 4, and 3 level 3, in that order. The dragon has +6 to Dex saves and the DC is at least 19, so, it fails 60% of the time, so that's 28/26.2/22.4 damage on average, and the dragon is now dead in the eighth round.

The rogue has a dagger +2, Dex 20, and makes a Sneak Attack once per round. Like the fighter, he has a 75% hit rate, and therefore does 30.75 average damage per round. Now, the dragon is dead in the fourth round when the rogue attacks first.

So even assuming the cleric does nothing but heal the entire time, any "one minute cooldown" is seven rounds after the dragon hits the floor.

Now, is every fight going to go that way? Of course not. But look at those numbers above. These PCs are dragging their feet on this fight, and the fighter alone can still solo the dragon's hp in a minute. I can't think of a realistic party that would take longer than the underperforming fighter alone.

The long rest/short rest "recharge" system might not be perfect, but a one-minute cooldown is effectively "once per combat". This means a character is going to use it 4-6 times at most anyhow. The only difference between "four times per day" and "once per minute" is the PC can dump all their uses right away, which they're not going to do unless they know it's the last encounter or they know they're going to die if they don't. I don't think there's any reason to prevent either of those issues.

[Bjarkmundur]

This is a very good point actually. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when the developers were discussing frequency of use.

Why do you think the short/long rest mechanics exist at all? What was the design goal of these rules?

I'd personally love to see cooldowns in dnd, at least for a playtest or two, just to see the effect.

I've actually seen someone implement a system like this. He talked about 1-10-100, and using a period of 10 minutes as a standard time for "one room" in a dungeon. It was pretty interesting.

[Tvtyrant]

I've been tinkering with 5e homebrew since the game came out and I've mainly tried to stick to duplicating or altering mechanics present in the core rulebook, with only a few outliers here and there (like imitating 3.5's psionic focus mechanic), but a 1-minute cooldown is something I can't remember ever seeing in a game. I think it could have a place for features that are too strong for at-will use, but not strong enough to justify a refresh on a short rest.

What I wanted to discuss are the implications of that mechanic and how it could change the use of an ability. With a 1 minute cooldown, that feature could be used once a battle, and players are encouraged to use it as soon as they see an opportunity, rather than save it for when they think they need it. This way, there won't be a feeling of "I held back too much with my short rest features, now we're more worn down than we should be" when the party takes a short rest. You could even apply it to a point-based resource if you wanted to get more granular and let them spend the resource on more than one feature.

Do you think a mechanic like the 1-minute cooldown could fit in to D&D 5e? Is it too video gamey? Is it not video gamey enough? What would you like to see it applied to, or do you think it should go in the trash?

It seems fine to me if you want to go for a very high level setting where the PCs are inherently powerful and heroic. Short Rest is replaced by 1/minute and Long Rest by 1/hour means the party can fight more or less continuously if battle is kept to small groups. It becomes more like Diablo with HP refreshing constantly and magic refreshing at longish intervals.

I'm not sure if 5E has combat interesting enough to justify that kind of game, but if you really enjoy grindy dungeon crawls where every room has monsters and death traps or you like doing wars it seems fine.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Not really, no.

Leaving the video game parallel aside, there aren't a ton of D&D fights that last over a minute. Take, for example, a lvl 17 fighter, cleric, wizard and rogue against an adult red dragon.

The red dragon has AC 19, 256 hp.

The fighter attacks three times per round with Str 20 and a longsword +2. With a +13 to hit, that's 75% hit rate and therefore 25.875 damage per round. So, already, the dragon's dead in 10 rounds.

The wizard could cast 3 level 5 lightning bolts, 3 level 4, and 3 level 3, in that order. The dragon has +6 to Dex saves and the DC is at least 19, so, it fails 60% of the time, so that's 28/26.2/22.4 damage on average, and the dragon is now dead in the eighth round.

The rogue has a dagger +2, Dex 20, and makes a Sneak Attack once per round. Like the fighter, he has a 75% hit rate, and therefore does 30.75 average damage per round. Now, the dragon is dead in the fourth round when the rogue attacks first.

So even assuming the cleric does nothing but heal the entire time, any "one minute cooldown" is seven rounds after the dragon hits the floor.

Now, is every fight going to go that way? Of course not. But look at those numbers above. These PCs are dragging their feet on this fight, and the fighter alone can still solo the dragon's hp in a minute. I can't think of a realistic party that would take longer than the underperforming fighter alone.

The long rest/short rest "recharge" system might not be perfect, but a one-minute cooldown is effectively "once per combat". This means a character is going to use it 4-6 times at most anyhow. The only difference between "four times per day" and "once per minute" is the PC can dump all their uses right away, which they're not going to do unless they know it's the last encounter or they know they're going to die if they don't. I don't think there's any reason to prevent either of those issues.

I am envious of your math but feel a need to point out some battles aren't very static. In my world bads Teleport out and back in. Dragons and demons fly by and get partial hits after they (me the DM) get shown the party's readied actions the first time.

Admitedly the groups I DM for wish I'd leave the bad guys standing in place but hey, think of it as me showing even the new PC's how to melee attack, Misty Step and take cover.

[Breccia]

Why do you think the short/long rest mechanics exist at all? What was the design goal of these rules?

Trite response: because if you had infinite healing spells, the adventure would take the characters about ten minutes.

Now for a real answer.

Since the beginning of time...well, no, but early in the game at least...there's been basically two major truths in the D&D world.
1) Spellcasters are more powerful than nonspellcasters.
2) Until they run out of spells.

Simply put, magic missile does 3d4+3 at the minimum and never misses, doing 10.5 damage per round. If he's "competing against" a fighter, he's probably winning for a while. If the fighter does 1d8+3 and attacks twice per round, the fighter does less damage unless he can hit with a natural 6. Unless it's a werewolf, golem, ghost, anything with cover, vampire, vampire that sparkles, demon, devil, daemon, slaad, salad, or any number of other things.

Until the spellcaster is out of magic missiles. Depending on which edition you're playing, the spellcaster either reverts to a cantrip, pulls a light crossbow, or takes a smoke break. 1st Edition was NOT a wizard's best friend.

The idea of "running out of gas" is part of the difference in playstyles, even above and beyond the other RPG elements. On one end, there's the Rogue, who either never runs out of anything, or has nothing to run out of, your call. At the other end is the barbarian, oddly enough, who has a fixed number of rages between long rests, and outside those, underperforms the fighter in pretty much every way. Neither are particularly numerically interesting. The baseline rogue has one attack and Sneak Attack, the barbarian has Rage, and that's about it. Everyone else is between them somewhere, from the warlock who lives in the short rest to short rest period, to the cleric/druid who get their channel divinity/wild shape back at a short rest, but not their spells.

https://i.imgur.com/OyRUf2d.jpg

Don't hold this up as laser accurate or anything. It's just a quick rough sketch, not the Classtine Chapel.

At this point, we talk briefly about 4th Edition STOP BOOING YOU KNEW IT WAS COMING. 4th Edition made everyone balanced by making everyone equal. Everyone had the same number of "short rest" "long rest" and "cantrips". Wizards knew more, but that's it. And I'd be willing to bet, if you looked around for opinions as to why 4th Edition was so different from the rest -- and why it ended -- that'd be high on the list.

D&D, like many RPGs, doesn't just allow options but encourages them. This includes choices of playstyle. If you want your game actions to be simple, with minimal bookkeeping, there are ways to do that. If you want a five-page character sheet loaded with options, you can do that, too.

The NFL is an intense, physical sport that players need a week to recover from -- or two, if you're going to the Super Bowl -- and even with the players "only" on the field thirty minutes, they still frequently get game, or career, ending injuries. Baseball players have short bursts of action spread out over several hours, and play a few times a week. Tennis players constantly move for an hour or two, and in competitions a few days in a row (unless they lose). And a sprinter could expend every square inch of energy in ten seconds and be done for the year. Every sport is a little bit different. But a bigger deal than all of that is the Olympics. Everyone has their favorite events. And the more and more involved a country is, the more and more events they compete in, representing a wider and more interesting mix of skill.

Oh, and nobody binges the whole thing in ten minutes.

[noob]

One minute cool-down is similar to 1 time per encounter cool-down: it will probably happen more often than short rests.(especially with "gritty" rests)

[johnbragg]

I think it could have a place for features that are too strong for at-will use, but not strong enough to justify a refresh on a short rest.

That's a reasonable bar hypothesis. To evaluate, I think we'd need to get specific and talk about exactly what abilities would make more sense as a 1 minute cooldown than as a short rest.

(Right now, I'm assuming you don't have any abilities in mind that are currently at-will that are overpowered and should be put on a cooldown clock.)

Or, to start drifting the thread almost immediately, what if a "Short Rest" was changed to 10 minutes from a full hour. (Do you really want to add another resource management clock? Maybe you do)


With a 1 minute cooldown, that feature could be used once a battle...

This answers Breccia's case that all a 1 minute cooldown means is "once per combat." That's the general idea.

So let's make a quick list of "short rest recovery" features and mechanics and whatnot.

Spending HD to recover HP.

Barbarian--none ?
Bard--Song of rest (HD/HP interaction)
Cleric--Channel Divinity
Druid--wild shape
Fighter--second wind, action surge
Monk--Ki points refresh
Paladin--Channel Divinity
Ranger--none ?
Sorcerer--None ?
Warlock--spell slots
Wizard--arcane recovery

I'm sure there are archetype features I've missed--this was just 5 minutes clicking through 5esrd.

[Bjarkmundur]

The main thing is, that you don't have to rest for 1 hour.
If anyone feels rests just bog down gameplay, why not just use minutes of cooldown?

I mean, when designing a game system with abilities that can be used often vs. seldom, how come "rest" is the solution?
When you think about it, there are at least hundred other mechanics that can be used to moderate frequency of use. You can have things be "x number of uses per level" or "at the start of your turn, roll a d100 to see which of your abilities recharge" etc.

Well, then there's also the "multiply all short rest abilities by 3, and have them recharge on long rest" houserule.

But yeah, I can see a handful of abilities recharge on short rest without having to take a short rest.

[Breccia]

Sorcerer--None ?

None until 20th level. They're an odd bunch -- like divine spellcasters they need a long rest, but they can forfeit their metamagic if they want to get spells back instantly.



If anyone feels rests just bog down gameplay, why not just use minutes of cooldown?

Because this changes the game from three kinds of recharge (immediate, short rest, long reet) to two. It's also a balance of power switch. As it stands, some classes (most notably spellcasters) get some of their powers back when the party decides collectively to take a short rest. Others have no reason to stop because nothing comes back (rogue and barbarian). If your power needs a recharge, it's allowed to be more powerful, because you can't spam it. Allowing, as a hypothetical, wizards to get Arcane Recovery every minute makes them far more dangerous in a dungeon setting. Or, if a paladin/cleric got Channel Divinity every minute, they would obliterate pretty much any number of undead in anything under Lord of the Rings battles (and quite possibly even then). Or, just as bad, if such powers were moved from short to long rest, they'd be far less useful (Channel Divinity) or useless (Arcane Recovery).

Basically, if I was the 6th level rogue, and the 6th level wizard next to me got to cast fireball once/minute without reducing their spell slots (because Arcane Recovery was on a one-minute cooldown) I'd feel kind of cheated, since no way can I outclass that much damage in a standard dungeon setting. By contrast, if I was the wizard and I did not have Arcane Recovery at all, I'd probably make a sub-folder labeled EMERGENCY USE NO REALLY and only use the spells in that if we would die otherwise -- reducing the amount I'd have available during normal combat, just to make sure a random encounter on the way out of the dungeon didn't wipe the part.

Also, without short rests, Hit Dice don't exist. Hit Dice means the party doesn't need to burn all the healer's/healers' spell slots, which means they can actually use those spell slots for other things...if they take a short rest. Or, you have a party of Wolverines that can recover from a savage beating in under sixty seconds. I don't think that fits the genre.

"Percival! The hag has blinded Krogg! Krogg needs it removed or Krogg will be useless!"
"Yeah I get that Krogg, but remember when you said 'I only have 74 hp left, heal me' and I said 'I'm running out of spells' and you said 'Why else did we bring you?' literally one minute ago?"
"Krogg remembers it differently."
"Well, this is why else you brought me. And now I can't, because you wanted to push on since you don't have spell slots to get back. So now, you get to spend the rest of the fight blinded. Good luck."

Some of you are having 3rd Edition flashbacks right now. I'm not apologizing.

Now, I will point out that, in 4th Edition, a short rest took five minutes. I don't see any particular problem with reverting to that -- if the NPC is running away, a five minute head start in a dungeon is just as good as an hour. But if it's the paperwork of short rests that's your issue, well, that's different. Is it possible to play 5th Edition D&D with no such thing as a short rest? Yes. But it'd require a redesign of multiple classes' multiple features as well as other game features like Hit Dice. And that's a pretty hefty project.

Now all of that said, you probably could make some custom class/archetype powers that are effectively once/minute. Something along the lines of "the first time you hit an enemy with XXX spell" is more or less the same thing as "once per combat" which in turn is "once per minute" in a lot of cases. I just recommend toning such effects down so they don't overshadow an ability that another character has to wait an entire hour to recover.

You're trying to speed the game up. I get that. That's a valid goal. If I were the DM, and some of my players were taking too long to edit in a short rest, I'd find another way to get that working -- a quick access template, for example, that they'd write up ahead of time. Since the PCs aren't editing a ton of details (they aren't getting back individual spells, for example, they're getting back spell slots) it shouldn't take long for an experienced player to do it. But I, personally, would not try a moderate re-write of game mechanics for the sole purpose of removing that paperwork.