Sindeloke
2020-05-02, 01:42 PM
A couple threads lately have touched on the disparity between classes who rely mostly on short rests and classes who rely mostly on long rests and the way in which that impacts the internal balance of the game when "most adventuring days in most campaigns are 4-8 encounters with 2 short rests" can't be guaranteed. So, as a thought experiment, I wanted to look at easy ways to fix that, without overhauling the game back to 4e or changing almost anything at all. Something low-impact, and simple to understand and implement, in the spirit of 5e.
Let's assume we have two different games. The first is a wilderness exploration game using the wildly misnamed "gritty realism" rest variant. Each 8-hour overnight sleep is a short rest, and three days of relaxation and doing absolutely nothing else in a safe settlement is a long rest, so we can expect 4-6 short rests per long rest will be the norm. The second is a time-insensitive treasure delve through a dungeon under normal rest rules with tiny huts on hand and a noob DM, so we can expect no short rests at all will be the norm. How would you, as smoothly and simply as possible, adjust the rules to keep all classes relevant in both campaigns?
From what I can see, compensating long rest characters for excessive short rests is easy for wizards, clerics, and land druids. If they seem to be falling behind, just give them one extra use of spell recovery so they get a little more access to low-level filler. Sorcerers might benefit from a small amount of short rest SP recovery in tier 1 or 2 rather than endgame, but they actually might be able to flourish here by spending most of their spell slots as SP to get more oomph out of cantrips and low-level slots without any alteration to the class at all. Bards have enough short rest features that they shouldn't need help, and even druids without spell recovery should be able to get mileage out of rituals and wildshape. Paladins and rangers likewise should be able to fall back on baseline stabbing without much loss. Honestly the class I'm most worried about in this scenario is the barbarian; under these conditions, it might be reasonable to switch rage to 1/short rest, doubled to 2/short rest at level 11.
Compensating short rest characters for the 15-minute day is harder. The most obvious solution is to take all short rest features and make them long rest features that can be done three times as often, but that isn't quite parity; a warlock will run out of rounds spamming shatter and hold monster with spell slots to spare and still never match the impact of a wizard casting wall of force in every fight. And pity the poor rogue, who has nothing to spam at all! Conversely, I worry that letting a fighter Action Surge basically every round means the "long rest" barbarian and ranger might as well not even show up. But I'm not sure what we could do beyond tripling uses of short rest abilities that wouldn't be "create and hand out new daily abilities for each class that can compete with high-level spells," which doesn't even slightly fit the premise of "low impact and simple."
Let's assume we have two different games. The first is a wilderness exploration game using the wildly misnamed "gritty realism" rest variant. Each 8-hour overnight sleep is a short rest, and three days of relaxation and doing absolutely nothing else in a safe settlement is a long rest, so we can expect 4-6 short rests per long rest will be the norm. The second is a time-insensitive treasure delve through a dungeon under normal rest rules with tiny huts on hand and a noob DM, so we can expect no short rests at all will be the norm. How would you, as smoothly and simply as possible, adjust the rules to keep all classes relevant in both campaigns?
From what I can see, compensating long rest characters for excessive short rests is easy for wizards, clerics, and land druids. If they seem to be falling behind, just give them one extra use of spell recovery so they get a little more access to low-level filler. Sorcerers might benefit from a small amount of short rest SP recovery in tier 1 or 2 rather than endgame, but they actually might be able to flourish here by spending most of their spell slots as SP to get more oomph out of cantrips and low-level slots without any alteration to the class at all. Bards have enough short rest features that they shouldn't need help, and even druids without spell recovery should be able to get mileage out of rituals and wildshape. Paladins and rangers likewise should be able to fall back on baseline stabbing without much loss. Honestly the class I'm most worried about in this scenario is the barbarian; under these conditions, it might be reasonable to switch rage to 1/short rest, doubled to 2/short rest at level 11.
Compensating short rest characters for the 15-minute day is harder. The most obvious solution is to take all short rest features and make them long rest features that can be done three times as often, but that isn't quite parity; a warlock will run out of rounds spamming shatter and hold monster with spell slots to spare and still never match the impact of a wizard casting wall of force in every fight. And pity the poor rogue, who has nothing to spam at all! Conversely, I worry that letting a fighter Action Surge basically every round means the "long rest" barbarian and ranger might as well not even show up. But I'm not sure what we could do beyond tripling uses of short rest abilities that wouldn't be "create and hand out new daily abilities for each class that can compete with high-level spells," which doesn't even slightly fit the premise of "low impact and simple."