small rant - all classes should be long rest based

[Bannan_mantis]

now so, the current 5e short rest and long rest system is kinda nice. The whole idea of making classes like fighters short rest fits thematically with making them mundane but still powerful but I think there are some problems with it, especially within the problem of 1 big encounter style days. While keeping to 5e's 6-8 encounters and 2-3 short rest structure is doable it's not easy, common or just versatile in terms of application since it's honestly quite rigid. For this reason I have a personal opinion that is essentially just, every class should be long rest based in terms of resources with no one having abilities which come back on a short rest.

It'd make it so a larger range of different adventuring days ranging from 1 encounter up to 10 encounters would be balanced as classes could burst or spread their abilities out as much as they'd like. Additionally this would then mean less pressure on DMs to make sure you reach the perfect amount of encounters per day and short rests which is good to allow the structure of an adventuring day be more based around roleplay or story reasons rather than balance ones.

Now I can see a problem with this and mainly within how it'd remove some of the charm of certain classes. Fighters being short rest dependant makes it feel like they have a large amount of stamina and that while they're not as powerful as other classes in terms of raw power (thematically) they can keep up by being able to always keep going. But honestly I feel like if you could redesign them good enough you could still maintain this charm and feel within the classes while making them long rest heavy.

But that aside what are your opinions on this? Would you be open too seeing a redesign of 5e like this within a UA or errata book or do you prefer 5e's differences within short and long rest classes?

[ProsecutorGodot]

I'd say it's pretty awful actually, it would require a huge restructuring of the current system because it's an integral part of the balance aspect of the game. Even ignoring all other variables, the most obvious thing that happens is that Long Rest casters start to undeniably outshine the now Long Rest based martials who don't have as many uses of their features as the casters have spell slots for their spells and the two refresh at the same rate rather than allowing the martials to refresh faster.

Other problems include healing through hit die, which is already a horrendously underutilized feature.

I don't see any easy or good way to make this work without risking homogenization 4E style where you had a lot of "unique" named features for classes that were functionally identical.

[Sigreid]

We've honestly never had the problems you call out in my group. Nobody expects to be able to one and done the encounter day so everyone has to spend their resources wisely.

[Bannan_mantis]

I'd say it's pretty awful actually, it would require a huge restructuring of the current system because it's an integral part of the balance aspect of the game. Even ignoring all other variables, the most obvious thing that happens is that Long Rest casters start to undeniably outshine the now Long Rest based martials who don't have as many uses of their features as the casters have spell slots for their spells and the two refresh at the same rate rather than allowing the martials to refresh faster.

Other problems include healing through hit die, which is already a horrendously underutilized feature.

I don't see any easy or good way to make this work without risking homogenization 4E style where you had a lot of "unique" named features for classes that were functionally identical.

could you expand on this? I agree on the redesign part but I personally disagree on the balance part since if a fighter could do something like action surge 2-3 times in a row (since 2-3 short rests would mean it's designed to be used 3-4 times in a day) it'd do a lot of damage and do things a caster couldn't. Plus, the paladin already kind of does this since it's a long rest class but one that functions like a martial with how divine smite and it's buff spells work.

[ProsecutorGodot]

could you expand on this? I personally disagree since if a fighter could do something like action surge 2-3 times in a row (since 2-3 short rests would mean it's designed to be used 3-4 times in a day) it'd do a lot of damage. Plus, the paladin already kind of does this since it's a long rest class but one that functions like a martial with how divine smite and it's buff spells work.

If your suggestion to keeping the fighter in line is to give them 2 or 3 more action surges (more than they get as an 17th level Fighter) then we start running into the opposite end of the spectrum.

I don't understand what you mean about the Paladin either, "functioning like a martial"? The Paladin is a martial class, not all martials are automatically short rest based classes, I just pointed out that the ones that were (Fighter and Monk) would see some major blow back.

I'm kind of thinking that you just don't like the Fighter how it is, switching it to a long rest class and handing them a few more Action Surges might make it more "exciting" and less mundane as you put it, but I'm not sure how well balanced that would be.

[Bannan_mantis]

If your suggestion to keeping the fighter in line is to give them 2 or 3 more action surges (more than they get as an 17th level Fighter) then we start running into the opposite end of the spectrum.

I don't understand what you mean about the Paladin either, "functioning like a martial"? The Paladin is a martial class, not all martials are automatically short rest based classes, I just pointed out that the ones that were (Fighter and Monk) would see some major blow back.

I'm kind of thinking that you just don't like the Fighter how it is, switching it to a long rest class and handing them a few more Action Surges might make it more "exciting" and less mundane as you put it, but I'm not sure how well balanced that would be.

I meant more in how they function like a martial since their abilities are fundamentally very similar to a fighters. Paladins have high single target damage with divine smite and large amounts of durability with spells like shield of faith but fighters have similar abilities in the form of action surge and second wind. Basically, for instance, if fighters could burst and use multiple action surges and second winds you could just balance it around the power a paladin gets when they burst in a similar way.

Fighters are cool but I more have a problem with how to maintain balance you need to reach a rigid style of 6-8 encounters and 2-3 short rests. I see this problem within monks and warlocks too, basically just I feel it'd be better if class balance could be less based around how many encounters the DM has given the players. This is just one suggestion to change that which I feel could work for reasons I've said already

[ProsecutorGodot]

I meant more in how they function like a martial since their abilities are fundamentally very similar to a fighters. Paladins have high single target damage with divine smite and large amounts of durability with spells like shield of faith but fighters have similar abilities in the form of action surge and second wind. Basically, for instance, if fighters could burst and use multiple action surges and second winds you could just balance it around the power a paladin gets when they burst in a similar way.
I don't know if I'd agree, Paladin's abilities are generally focused around nova damage while Fighters are focused around consistent damage, both can do alright in eachothers field but it's undeniable that after a while the Paladin won't be able to keep up without a long rest while the Fighter can be consistent, and sometimes keep up with the Paladin, given only a short rest.

You see them as functionally very similar, I actually see them as more of opposites as far as their martial tendencies go. It's difficult to avoid some overlap though, which I think is another reason to avoid trying to make the Fighter into Paladin Lite through excessive Action Surge uses.


Fighters are cool but I more have a problem with how to maintain balance you need to reach a rigid style of 6-8 encounters and 2-3 short rests. I see this problem within monks and warlocks too, basically just I feel it'd be better if class balance could be less based around how many encounters the DM has given the players. This is just one suggestion to change that which I feel could work for reasons I've said already

I don't really agree, unless your campaign is actually centered around single big encounters you should be able to ration resources out at a rate that's acceptable to keep everyone pretty on level. On paper there can appear to be a lot of discrepancy, but in practice with diverse parties I've never seen someone run away with the spotlight.

That's not even touching on the fact that if you're ending up with those single big encounter types you're not really differentiating a whole lot between short and long rest classes either, both just throw all they have at it and come back refreshed for the next fight. This problem isn't because of the classes design, it's a problem with the DM's game versus the expectations you'd have as a player.

[Bannan_mantis]

I don't know if I'd agree, Paladin's abilities are generally focused around nova damage while Fighters are focused around consistent damage, both can do alright in eachothers field but it's undeniable that after a while the Paladin won't be able to keep up without a long rest while the Fighter can be consistent, and sometimes keep up with the Paladin, given only a short rest.

You see them as functionally very similar, I actually see them as more of opposites as far as their martial tendencies go. It's difficult to avoid some overlap though, which I think is another reason to avoid trying to make the Fighter into Paladin Lite through excessive Action Surge uses.


These are some good points yes, but I'd just argue back it'd be hard to express these differences if you were looking at a small amount of encounters. This said I do think your point about the fighter becoming paladin lite is accurate with the idea of giving the fighter just more action surge uses which I'd then argue back by saying that if the fighter had long rest abilities which weren't big damage all at once but more giving a large buff to your damage across an encounter (kind of like rage or hunter's mark) you could keep this fundamental difference but still have it be a case where they can function as a long rest class and gain some advantages I've already kind of talked about.



I don't really agree, unless your campaign is actually centered around single big encounters you should be able to ration resources out at a rate that's acceptable to keep everyone pretty on level. On paper there can appear to be a lot of discrepancy, but in practice with diverse parties I've never seen someone run away with the spotlight.

That's not even touching on the fact that if you're ending up with those single big encounter types you're not really differentiating a whole lot between short and long rest classes either, both just throw all they have at it and come back refreshed for the next fight. This problem isn't because of the classes design, it's a problem with the DM's game versus the expectations you'd have as a player.

This is where I disagree with you but I think this might be more on personal views. Basically I personally feel that if the classes could be designed around being played in a larger amount of encounter days (from 1 big one to maybe 12 different fights) it'd improve their overall design and while a DM can design a day to be balanced in terms of days if the classes were already balanced to be equal across different days there wouldn't be a need to really even do this.

Edit: ok sorry just like to apologise if it seemed like I was going against you in the second paragraph, I wasn't trying to ensue you were idiotic or anything like that when I talked about personal views. I'm arguing with you to try and reach a better conclusion, not to just say your ideas are dumb and your dumb (which they aren't, your suggestions and points have been really good)

[Man_Over_Game]

I'm more of a fan of making all characters have a ratio of Zero-Short-Long Rest resources that had similar weight on each aspect (so the Fighter's Long Rest features we're almost as powerful as the Wizard's, Wizard's Zero Rest features almost as powerful as the Fighter's).

Ironically, 4e did that pretty well, but the way they did it didn't feel organic (calling "short rest" powers as "encounter powers), and it reminded players that they were playing a board game instead of a role playing game.

[MaxWilson]

now so, the current 5e short rest and long rest system is kinda nice. The whole idea of making classes like fighters short rest fits thematically with making them mundane but still powerful but I think there are some problems with it, especially within the problem of 1 big encounter style days. While keeping to 5e's 6-8 encounters and 2-3 short rest structure is doable it's not easy, common or just versatile in terms of application since it's honestly quite rigid. For this reason I have a personal opinion that is essentially just, every class should be long rest based in terms of resources with no one having abilities which come back on a short rest.

It'd make it so a larger range of different adventuring days ranging from 1 encounter up to 10 encounters would be balanced as classes could burst or spread their abilities out as much as they'd like.

It would help somewhat, but don't forget about the third category: at-will abilities. It would still feel very different to be a Rogue in a Five Minute Workday adventure (1 big action scene per day) than an extended megadungeon crawl (dozens of interactions and potential hostile encounters without a real rest).

But I agree that things are simpler to manage in AD&D where there's basically only at-will abilities and 1/day spells and a few N/day special abilities.

[Bannan_mantis]

I'm more of a fan of making all characters have a ratio of Zero-Short-Long Rest resources that had similar weight on each aspect (so the Fighter's Long Rest features we're almost as powerful as the Wizard's, Wizard's Zero Rest features almost as powerful as the Fighter's).

Ironically, 4e did that pretty well, but the way they did it didn't feel organic (calling "short rest" powers as "encounter powers), and it reminded players that they were playing a board game instead of a role playing game.

Yeah this was definitely 4e's biggest problem. The idea of how they balanced characters was, in my opinion, pretty good and one of the only ways the linear martial vs quadratic caster issue has been fixed (it's been kinda fixed in 5e but it still exists.) This said the execution was somewhat sloppy with people feeling the classes were the same. I suppose this, in a way, aims to take that concept of balance into 5e but keep the organic and roleplay feel of 5e.

[Bannan_mantis]

It would help somewhat, but don't forget about the third category: at-will abilities. It would still feel very different to be a Rogue in a Five Minute Workday adventure (1 big action scene per day) than an extended megadungeon crawl (dozens of interactions and potential hostile encounters without a real rest).

But I agree that things are simpler to manage in AD&D where there's basically only at-will abilities and 1/day spells and a few N/day special abilities.

ah yeah this is a good point. This type of change might work on a fighter without a huge drastic change (they still have a decent amount of resource abilities despite a lot of their at-will power) for the rogue it'd definitely come with a very big change in the way they function.

[bendking]

I totally agree.

[Kane0]

I would much rather have all classes with some short rest and some long rest abilities.

[Bannan_mantis]

I would much rather have all classes with some short rest and some long rest abilities.

Ok this is actually a pretty good idea and something I could see working more than this idea of everything being purely long rest based. It'd probably give more incentives to use short rests too

[Skylivedk]

When playing Storm King's Thunder, I, the DM, noticed that there were tons of encounters/chapters where the SR characters would feel passed over because the design of that area/encounter was a 5 minute adventuring day.

Hence everyone was converted into an LR class. 3 times the SR abilities, per encounter max use was the original SR allotment.

Easy, the monk and fighter loved it. Short rest was still used for healing and regaining spell slots for druids and Wizards. Based on rest schedules from my army experience, we also cut short rest to half an hour.

As a player in Tomb of Annihilation, I tried the system without changes. Hex crawling was punishing for the SR classes and dungeons (or rather one dungeon, guess which) were punishing for the long rest classes.

[Sam113097]

Personally, I like the distinction, as it can give different players a chance to shine when the number of combat encounters varies. I think that the current system works fine, as long as the party is not facing the same amount of encounters every day. For example, the group that I DM has a Warlock and a Sorcerer. In my own experience, the Sorcerer outshines the Warlock significantly when there are only one or two big fights in a day, as the Warlock uses his two or three spell slots quickly, while the Sorcerer can keep pulling out cool and interesting spells throughout the fights. However, when the party has several encounters in a single day, the Warlock has fresh slots for every battle, while the Sorcerer has to burn her Sorcery Points just to keep being useful. While I understand that a more homogenous rest-based system would simplify some things, I believe it would eliminate some of the distinctions between classes that help them "play" different, if that makes sense.

[RSP]

SRs vs LRs is an interesting issue, as it does put a burden/restriction on the DM, but any failings of that fall to the players.

If you don’t stay true to the balance, some classes will feel more powerful while others less. Doing a dungeon crawl with no SRs really screws the Monk and Warlock. However, if that same crawl allows SRs between each encounter, they’ll outshine all the other classes.

It’s added pressure on the DM, but generally not a huge issue, I find, as 1 encounter workdays are more common than crawls with no SRs; and the 1 encounter workday isn’t that big of an issue. Yes, LR classes will be able to nova, but generally they won’t come near to expending their resources, so it actually tends to compare more closely to what the SR classes put out (the Paladin, and to a lesser extent certain Sorc builds, being the exception as they can really nova when wanting to).

[Bannan_mantis]

I think looking through these posts made me release something a bit more and basically just the difference between having classes be mixed in their resources is a design idea of balance vs uniqueness.

Basically most of this seems to be a case where if you keep the distinction of short and long rest style classes they'll feel different and have more uniqueness than every class being long rest based but this creates a balance which is dependent upon DM's keeping to a specific number of encounters and short rests per day which if broken or missed causes this balance to get broken.

On the flip side making more classes long rest based can overall greatly improve balance with different adventure day types not having a real effect on balance but removes some of the distinction between long and short rest classes lessening the difference and part of the uniqueness between them which you can alleviate through the classes working differently in terms of fundamentals (like how a paladin uses high AC and saves to tank but a barbarian uses high HP and resistances) that removed uniqueness will still be there.

Overall I guess this comes down to more what's more important for people as players which gets to be more and more subjective. Whichever people like more can depend and vary from person to person.

[RSP]

Basically most of this seems to be a case where if you keep the distinction of short and long rest style classes they'll feel different and have more uniqueness than every class being long rest based but this creates a balance which is dependent upon DM's keeping to a specific number of encounters and short rests per day which if broken or missed causes this balance to get broken.

One critique of this statement: I don’t think balance is broken by missing the 6-8E/2-3SR per LR. It’s when a DM heavily favors one type of adventure day over another, that the problems arise. If the DM has equal days of 4+ SRs between encounters as 1 encounter workdays, then there shouldn’t be an issue; different classes will shine equally, just on different days.

However, if all that’s ever run are no SRs dungeon crawls, then there will be issues with balance.

Variety (or staying with the 6-8/2-3 model) is what’s best.

[Waazraath]

now so, the current 5e short rest and long rest system is kinda nice. The whole idea of making classes like fighters short rest fits thematically with making them mundane but still powerful but I think there are some problems with it, especially within the problem of 1 big encounter style days. While keeping to 5e's 6-8 encounters and 2-3 short rest structure is doable it's not easy, common or just versatile in terms of application since it's honestly quite rigid. For this reason I have a personal opinion that is essentially just, every class should be long rest based in terms of resources with no one having abilities which come back on a short rest.

It'd make it so a larger range of different adventuring days ranging from 1 encounter up to 10 encounters would be balanced as classes could burst or spread their abilities out as much as they'd like. Additionally this would then mean less pressure on DMs to make sure you reach the perfect amount of encounters per day and short rests which is good to allow the structure of an adventuring day be more based around roleplay or story reasons rather than balance ones.

Now I can see a problem with this and mainly within how it'd remove some of the charm of certain classes. Fighters being short rest dependant makes it feel like they have a large amount of stamina and that while they're not as powerful as other classes in terms of raw power (thematically) they can keep up by being able to always keep going. But honestly I feel like if you could redesign them good enough you could still maintain this charm and feel within the classes while making them long rest heavy.

But that aside what are your opinions on this? Would you be open too seeing a redesign of 5e like this within a UA or errata book or do you prefer 5e's differences within short and long rest classes?

I'm happy with it as it is. In my experience, if you do as in the first part of your post that I bolded for emphasis, it works fine. If you have plenty of days in which there are several encounters, long rest casters learn fast enough not to go all in / nova on the first encounter. They might regret it by the time encounter 5 starts. And sometimes you online have 1 encounter, and the nova classes can shine. And sometimes you have 15, and the short rest or "keep going as long as you have HP"-classes can shine. And that's all fine. As long as nog every adventuring day is the same, it works for me. Campaigns so far (PotA, OotA) work so far as well, regarding this specific part of game balance.

[MrStabby]

I think a shift towards short rests and at will abilities would be better.

At present it is not generally the short rest abilities that screw things up. It is the big powers than mean that fights are functionally over before other players get to use their cool class abilities that I find are the problem. The less of this that happens the better.

[DarknessEternal]

The problem you’re trying to fix is too few encounters per day. Fix that by having more encounters. Don’t change classes.

[Skylivedk]

I'm happy with it as it is. In my experience, if you do as in the first part of your post that I bolded for emphasis, it works fine. If you have plenty of days in which there are several encounters, long rest casters learn fast enough not to go all in / nova on the first encounter. They might regret it by the time encounter 5 starts. And sometimes you online have 1 encounter, and the nova classes can shine. And sometimes you have 15, and the short rest or "keep going as long as you have HP"-classes can shine. And that's all fine. As long as nog every adventuring day is the same, it works for me. Campaigns so far (PotA, OotA) work so far as well, regarding this specific part of game balance.

My experience as a player, and that's maybe because because pre-written campaigns are too easy/Hexblade is too good/both, is that in reality a lot of the smaller encounters are handled by the SR classes and at-will/low level abilities from the LR classes. Occasionally an LR player gets too bored spamming cantrips and wastes a big gun resource for flavour or for the lulz, but otherwise the murder cloud Hexblade and the sharpshooting battlemaster probably got it without breaking much of a sweat. Add a moon druid to the mix and you need something a couple of notches above medium before there's any significant danger level.

You have to 2x-3x the standard adventuring to challenge experienced players. A somewhat optimised Hexblade can kill all non-template dragons except ancient red and gold in 1-2 lucky rounds. Archmages die to level 10 parties.

[stoutstien]

I feel it would be best if all classes had a good mix of short and long rest resource pools.

[MrStabby]

My experience as a player, and that's maybe because because pre-written campaigns are too easy/Hexblade is too good/both, is that in reality a lot of the smaller encounters are handled by the SR classes and at-will/low level abilities from the LR classes. Occasionally an LR player gets too bored spamming cantrips and wastes a big gun resource for flavour or for the lulz, but otherwise the murder cloud Hexblade and the sharpshooting battlemaster probably got it without breaking much of a sweat. Add a moon druid to the mix and you need something a couple of notches above medium before there's any significant danger level.

You have to 2x-3x the standard adventuring to challenge experienced players. A somewhat optimised Hexblade can kill all non-template dragons except ancient red and gold in 1-2 lucky rounds. Archmages die to level 10 parties.

I think when raising things up, you need to pretty uniformally make encounters harder - or at least be careful.

I have seen games where at first glance it looked like at will and long rest characters were dominating similar numbers of fights, as indeed they were, but that is only half the story. Those with high level spells won the big important victories over the most significant enemies and dominated the epic battles. The fighters and rogues found their niche in killing the two random guards that followed the party into the alley or the squad of unnamed soldiers that didn't really warrant use of more resources. If it was important one group got to be cool and powerful, else it was the other group. In some ways this is fair and reasonable but the catch is that only one set of these gets to make the choice - one type of character gets to shine in a fight, not so much because they chose to as because another player chose to permit them to shine.

If we have a game built round limited resources, it should hurt to not have them - players need to be in a position where they feel that opportunity cost. The biggest issue here, I think, is the out of combat abilities:

"Ok, so we used arcane eye to find the layout of the castle. There are six sets of guards, the dragon we need to kill and a cleric of Tiamat and her guards. We should probably kill the cleric as well. Lets spider climb over the walls, pass without trace to sneak past the guards - there is a bottleneck and we might have to kill one set - then up the tower to kill the cleric which might be a hard fight - then lets head out to the courtyard to kill the dragon."

The DM/Adventure sets up for a long day where every class gets to shine, but the party can skip over the bits where some classes shine and the classes that most often are able to let that happen are not the classes that shine in these easier, grinding encounters. Now of course a DM can put steps in place to stop this and make it all a bad idea but you run into the issue of shutting down player agency and getting to make meaningful plans.

Lining up the classes just a bit better in terms of resource profiles would really help this.

[DarknessEternal]

You have to 2x-3x the standard adventuring to challenge experienced players. A somewhat optimised Hexblade can kill all non-template dragons except ancient red and gold in 1-2 lucky rounds.

Got any proof of this ridiculous claim?


Archmages die to level 10 parties.
Of course they do, Archmages are CR 12.

[Benny89]

I think that it's time for DnD system to ditch out the whole spells/day mechanic and introduce some sort of mana/stamina (casters and mundane classes). Since I started my journey with DnD 3.0 I have been playing tons of other systems and DnD one seems so archaic.

I for example started to DM with spell point system (with some tweaks here and there) and generally players said they felt it was better and they had not only more fun with spells/abilities but felt like they had more forgiving resource management.

I honestly think less power but more usage of said power would work better for future DnD editions.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I think that it's time for DnD system to ditch out the whole spells/day mechanic and introduce some sort of mana/stamina (casters and mundane classes). Since I started my journey with DnD 3.0 I have been playing tons of other systems and DnD one seems so archaic.

I for example started to DM with spell point system (with some tweaks here and there) and generally players said they felt it was better and they had not only more fun with spells/abilities but felt like they had more forgiving resource management.

I honestly think less power but more usage of said power would work better for future DnD editions.

See, our table wasn't really a fan of the spell point system. Early on it was fantastic, spellcasters were noticeably happier about the options they had and it didn't affect their relative power level too much.

The issues appear the later we went, when spellcasters had a large amount of spell points and zero incentive to cast spells under 5th level (aside from staples like Fireball and Lightning Bolt) it became clear that Spell Points were encouraging the frontloaded throw your high level magic at them playstyle without the usual limits of "but you can only do this a handful of times before rest".

Spellcasters are, unsurprisingly, not that upset when their low level spells slots are converted into higher level ones at not cost, which is effectively what Spell Points do. The catch is that it does that while also giving them the instant flexibility to actually maintain those lower level slots in the cases they are useful still, such as Shield, Misty Step and Absorb Elements to name a few key spells.

We're maintaining the rule for the remainder of our current campaign (currently level 17 starting from 1 and 70+ sessions in) and then dumping it.

I'm actually curious about the tweaks you mentioned though, were they made with any of these issues in mind and what are they?

[Kane0]

One easy way to do it is split SP into 2 or 3 categories, so you cant use say your 1st-3rd level spell points on 4th-6th or 7th-9th spells.